Natural Resources Defense Council
Hazardous chemicals migrate out of every day products and building materials and collect in dust.
dust in U.S. homes is chock-full of hazardous chemicals from our products—phthalates, flame retardants, and other toxic chemicals are unwelcome visitors in each and every one of our homes. Even worse, the chemicals don’t stop there: They can waltz right into our bodies when we breathe contaminated air or dust, touch contaminated dust, and accidentally get dust in our mouths from our hands. These chemicals pose health hazards including cancer, hormone disruption, and toxicity to the reproductive system.
Hazardous chemicals migrate out of every day products and building materials and collect in dust.
For each chemical, we calculated the average level found in dust, estimated human intake and identified health hazards.
We looked at each chemical in household dust from three different angles: how much is in the dust, how much gets into us, and what the health hazards are. But no matter which way we looked at it, phthalate and flame-retardant chemicals stood out as top offenders. They’re found at higher levels, have higher estimated intakes for kids, and are linked to multiple health hazards.
Phthalates are used in numerous plastic and vinyl materials, as well as personal care products and cleaning products. Flame retardants are chemicals found in furniture, electronics, and building insulation. These products all shed phthalates and flame retardants into dust.
To better understand how risky these chemicals in dust might be, we completed an additional analysis separately from the published study.
Unfortunately there are not standards established for chemicals in household dust, so we looked for something else we could compare to. Because exposure to dust is a lot like exposure to soil, we used soil-screening levels established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for sites contaminated with chemicals as a comparison. These soil-screening numbers reflect the levels at which a chemical might pose health risks to people, and thus exceedances require further investigation. The EPA calculates two different numbers, one for cancer health risks and another for non-cancer health risks, such as developmental or reproductive toxicity. Note that many chemicals in our study do not have soil-screening levels established, but we did the comparison for the ones that did.
The graphs show the average dust concentration we calculated in our study by pooling data from individual studies (circle), the highest (maximum) level of the chemical found in each individual study (triangle), and the EPA screening level (black line). Shockingly, the levels of some phthalates and flame retardants in U.S. house dust exceeded the EPA’s screening numbers (shown in red).
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exceed EPA’s soil screening levels
The levels of some chemicals in house dust exceed EPA’s soil screening levels.
For the phthalate DEHP, average levels in dust exceeded EPA screening levels—for both cancer and non-cancer effects. DEHP is also ubiquitous in U.S. homes, as studies that tested for it found it in 100 percent of dust samples. This means that if an EPA site manager tested the dust in a typical living room, they would be concerned about the level of DEHP found there!
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The levels of some chemicals in house dust exceed EPA’s soil screening levels.
For the phthalate BBP and the flame retardants TDCIPP, TCIPP, and TCEP, the average level in dust does not exceed the soil-screening level (though it comes close for TDCIPP cancer risks). But as the “highest concentration in dust” data points show, levels in some homes are much higher than the average, sometimes by an order of magnitude or more.
Exceedance of the EPA screening levels for this portion of the population is a concern. Higher levels of phthalates or flame retardants in indoor dust may be linked to the presence of particular products (like vinyl flooring for phthalates or baby products for flame retardants) and/or particular building characteristics, like ventilation rate.
It’s also important to note that our comparison only considers the amount of chemical in dust in the home, but in reality, people’s exposures are almost certainly higher because we come into contact with these chemicals from many other sources, including the food we eat, products we use, and other places we spend time.
Learn More About Structured Air
For those who live in areas where the windows can be open many days of the year, think about what is entering from outdoors.
Are pesticides regularly sprayed in your neighborhood?
Are there large agricultural fields in the vicinity which spray herbicides and pesticides?
Are there manufacturing or chemical plants which put pollution in the air?
Even if these are located many miles away, the wind patterns circulate these pollutants close to our homes.
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