The Dangers of Febreze

Posted by Andre & Erika Lacroix on

The Dangers of Febreze- EZ BreatheThe Dangers of Febreze

Febreze is classified as an air freshener, created by Proctor & Gamble. It reports to work by “trapping” odor molecules in a donut-shaped chemical.

The first thing that is really important to understand: the product does not remove odor molecules and it doesn’t clean the item it comes into contact with.

The odor molecules are still there. Your nose just can’t perceive them because you smell the chemical product instead.

For more related information on how EZ Breathe can help with smells and odors.

That alone should be your first warning. We know inhalation of any chemicals is dangerous, and several of its ingredients listed below are known to irritate the lungs… but this is a chemical whose entire purpose is to be inhaled!

The Natural Resources Defense Council studied the effects of air fresheners, discovering that they currently undergo no safety testing. The results were disturbing, because they revealed high levels of phthalates, which are known to be especially harmful to children. These chemicals were even present in sprays which were claimed to be “All-Natural” and “unscented”. Phthalates were not disclosed in the list of ingredients for any of the products. “Phthalates are hormone-disrupting chemicals that can be particularly dangerous for young children and unborn babies. Exposure to phthalates can affect testosterone levels and lead to reproductive abnormalities, including abnormal genitalia and reduced sperm production. The State of California notes that five types of phthalates — including one that we found in air freshener products — are ‘known to cause birth defects or reproductive harm.’” — Natural Resources Defense Council

1,4- Dichlorobenzene is a chemical that is found in the blood of 96% of Americans. It has been linked to lung damage, is a known carcinogen, and it is an E.P.A. registered pesticide. Studies found it to increase rates of asthma. It can be found in the majority of air fresheners, toilet deodorizers, and mothballs. It works by attacking the receptors in the nose, and thus eliminating the sense of smell. This is how the new generation of air fresheners actually “freshen”. This chemical was introduced into the American market with the Febreze product from Proctor & Gamble. The new generation of air fresheners that were inspired by the success of Febreze are literally using chemical warfare to destroy their customers’ sense of smell. That lack of smell is where the illusion of freshness comes from. The user only smells these air fresheners for about a minute after they have been sprayed, and then the nose cannot smell most fragrances anymore. This is not a normal adjustment to odors, anymore than a loss of one of the other four senses. The process is the equivalent of using a chemical blinding agent to escape the unpleasantness of a bright light; when that chemical is known to be both poisonous and carcinogenic. By design, the freshening chemical causes damage to the mucous membrane, which is claimed to be temporary. However, no long-term studies have ever been done to test the effects of chronic exposure. It is important to remember that anything inhaled is immediately absorbed into the blood through the lungs relatively unchanged.

Unfortunately there is not much data being shared on Febreze and their many products, but the Environmental Working Group (EWG) did conduct a test for the ingredients of one of their products, Febreze Air Effects.

Shockingly, P&G only disclosed THREE ingredients in this product, but the EWG…they found 87 chemicals in total!

Now this is just one Febreze product, but the fact that only 3 ingredients were disclosed and that so many undisclosed ingredients are dangerous, it’s safe to assume that their other air fresheners are just as dangerous.

Febreze Ingredients

Below you’ll find a list of just some of the 87 chemicals found by the EWG in Febreze Air Effects, listed in order of their toxicity to humans:

  • BHT – Known as a neurotoxin, endocrine disruptor, immunotoxicity, non-reproductive organ system toxicity, skin eye and lung irritator
  • Acetaldehyde – Known to cause cancer, toxic to reproduction and development, immunotoxin, non-reproductive organ system toxin, skin, eye and lung irritator
  • “Fragrance” – One of the three ingredients actually disclosed, it’s a neurotoxin, immunotoxin and allergen
  • Propylene Glycol – Causes cancer, allergies, toxic to immune system, accumulates in the system, non-reproductive organ system toxin, is classified with “enhanced skin absorption” and irritates the skin, eye and lung
  • 1,3-Dichloro-2-propanol – Carcinogenic (causes cancer)
  • Limonene – Allergen, immunotoxin and skin, eyes and lung irritator
  • Methyl pyrrolidone – Toxin to reproduction and development, allergen and immunotoxin, non-reproductive organ system toxin and skin, eyes and lung irritator
  • Alcohol denatured – Also disclosed in the ingredients of Febreze, it’s linked to cancer, developmental/reproductive toxicity, organ system toxicity and skin, eyes and lung irritator
  • Butylphenyl methylpropion al – allergen, immunotoxin and and skin, eyes and lung irritator
  • Ethyl acetate – linked to developmental/reproductive toxicity, neurotoxicity, organic system toxicity and and skin, eyes and lung irritator
  • Geraniol – Linked to allergies, immunotoxicity, organi system toxicity and and skin, eyes and lung irritation
  • Linalool – allergen, immunotoxin, and and skin, eyes and lung irritator
  • Benzaldehyde – neurotoxin, and skin, eyes and lung irritator
  • Diethylene glycol monoethyl ether – non-reproductive organ system toxicity
  • Ethylhezanol – developmental and reproductive toxin and skin, eyes and lung irritator
  • Hexyl cinnamal – allergen, immunotoxin and skin, eyes and lung irritator
  • And way too many more…

You can find the EWG’s full report on the dangers of Febreze and other common cleaners here.

Removing Odors Naturally

Again, it’s important to understand that these types of products are not only dangerous to our health, but they aren’t actually cleaning the air or eliminating odor. They are just masking it…the bacteria and molecules are still hanging around, maybe even making you sick themselves.

If you really want to remove odors naturally there are two recommendations I have:

  1. Types of Houseplants That Clean the Air – In this article I’ll point out the best houseplants to use to freshen indoor air, as well as just how effective they really are.
  2. Removing Odor Naturally – Here I’ll show you how you can actually remove odors for all kinds of surfaces…safely, easily and naturally.
  3. ACTUALLY Purify the Air: Febreze doesn’t purify, but only masks odors. But essential oils can actually purify the air and eliminates odor.

Source: The Dangers of Febreze.

Kitchen As A Pollution Hazard – Cleveland, OH

Posted by Andre & Erika Lacroix on

Kitchen As A Pollution Hazard- EZ Breathe

Kitchen As A Pollution Hazard

By midmorning, the smell of hot peanut oil dissipated and inside the tightly sealed laboratory known as Building 51F, a pink hamburger sizzled in a pan over a raging gas flame. Overhead, fans whirred, whisking caustic smoke up through a metallic esophagus of ductwork.

Woody Delp, 49, a longhaired engineer in glasses — the Willie Nelson of HVAC — supervised the green bean and hamburger experiments. He sat at a computer inside a kitchen simulator, rows upon rows of numeric data appearing on his screen, ticking off the constituents of the plume sucked up the flue. A seared hamburger patty, as he sees it, is just a reliable source for indoor pollution.

“I can claim Alice Waters’ influenced the recipe,” he said. “It’s all fresh and local.”

But Dr. Delp and his colleagues aren’t really interested in testing recipes. They are scientists at the Energy Department’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the morning’s experiment concerned another kitchen conundrum, a fight against physics: how to remove harmful contaminants caused by cooking.

Find out why installing the EZ Breathe Ventilation System is beneficial to your home.

Simply put, cooking is an act of controlled combustion — you set oil, fat, and carbohydrates on fire. As a health hazard, incinerating hamburgers and green beans may pale in comparison with lighting wood or coal fires indoors, the leading environmental cause of death and disability around the world. Yet frying, grilling or toasting foods with gas and electric appliances creates particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, and volatile organic compounds. (Acrolein, which most cooks recognize as the smell of burnt fats or oils, was used in grenades in World War I because it causes irritation to the lungs and eyes.)

Emissions of nitrogen dioxide in homes with gas stoves exceed the Environmental Protection Agency’s definition of clean air in an estimated 55 percent to 70 percent of those homes, according to one model; a quarter of them have air quality worse than the worst recorded smog (nitrogen dioxide) event in London. Cooking represents one of the single largest contributors, generating particulate matter (formally known as PM2.5) at concentrations four times greater than major haze events in Beijing.

“Because we’re used to the smell, we don’t think of it as an issue,” said Jennifer M. Logue, 32, an air quality engineer at the Berkeley Lab. “When you live in a small building, you cook a lot and don’t use your range hood, which may not be very effective anyway, then you’re probably going to have a problem with pollutants from cooking.”

Recently Dr. Logue estimated the long-term health effects expected from hundreds of chemicals found in average homes. Her 2012 study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, used a common epidemiological metric known as disability-adjusted life-year to show that the population-wide health impact of indoor pollutants is on a par with that of car accidents, and greater than that of traditional concerns like secondhand smoke or radon.

“It’s well over violence,” she said. “It’s not a small risk.”

Federal policy and financing tends to focus on research outdoors — air quality, drinking water, wastewater, hazardous waste sites and soil contamination. “We haven’t had that regulatory driver for the indoor environment, and yet the indoor environment is probably the most important environment in terms of human health,” said Richard L. Corsi, an engineer and professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

“If you look at just the dose of toxic chemicals we take into our bodies during our lifetime that are of environmental origin, it’s dominated by the air that we breathe and the surfaces that we touch indoors,” Dr. Corsi said.

The Berkeley Lab’s research is driven, in part, by renewed efforts to tighten building envelopes and save on energy costs. Airtight buildings keep outdoors out, but they also trap contaminants. Efforts to mask odors — incense, candles, and air fresheners — exacerbate the hazard. After all, indoor combustion creates more pollutants that linger in tightly sealed spaces; and, formaldehyde, for example, is formed when ozone reacts with gases, especially scenting agents, plug-in air fresheners and cleaners.

Since people aren’t likely to stop cooking, the lab aims to come up with science-based ventilation standards. “People don’t need to radically change their lifestyles,” Dr. Logue said. “We need to change the building codes so that everyone gets a venting range hood.”

Current ventilation standards — the V in HVAC — represent a best engineering judgment. There’s never been much science involved in determining how well range hoods and other ventilation systems should work in terms of human health. Existing metrics for performance, most notably the Energy Star rating, measure energy use, not the impact of the appliance on human health.

And while it’s difficult to rid a home of the semi-volatile organic compounds that leak out of, say, a couch over a long period of time, volatile compounds from fire and water vapor can be removed with an effective kitchen fan. “A lot of homes don’t have that,” said Brett Singer, the lab’s director. “Secondly, a lot of the ones that do, people don’t use them, and thirdly, even if they have it and even if they use it, a lot of them don’t work very well.”

When they tested seven different commercially available range hood designs, Dr. Singer and Dr. Delp found that the airflow and the amount of burner exhaust and cooking contaminants whisked away — the so-called “capture efficiency” — varied from 15 percent to 98 percent. (Dr. Singer refers to recirculating hoods, only somewhat jokingly, as “forehead greasers.”)

Inside the kitchen simulator, fresh air whooshed through the room — an exchange rate of about 12 times per hour, nearly 40 times the amount circulating in an average home. But the experiments hadn’t generated much appetite. One lab assistant, Omsri Bharat, passed on the burgers because she is a vegetarian, and the other, Marcella Barrios, a science teacher, admitted to having packed a lunch.

Dr. Singer is optimistic that new scientific standards might even change habits inside actual homes. “We want people to cook,” he said. “The health of America will probably get better. We just want to make sure all those pollutants, vapors and moisture from cooking get vented outside.”

 

Peter Andrey Smith
The New York Times