Maths, Physics & Chemistry
A House Of Toxins? How Cleaning Products Can Create An Unhealthy Living Environment
Using some common household cleaning products lead to the formation of indoor pollutants. During realistic use, we observed for the first time that chemical vapors from certain cleaning products can rapidly change into small airborne particles harmful to the cardiovascular and respiratory systems. This has consequences for professional cleaners and people frequently exposed to cleaning products.

Most people associate a clean home with good hygiene and will therefore regularly clean their house. Indeed, the use of cleaning products and disinfectants have intensified in recent years, but our new study suggests that this may be doing us more harm than good: a few minutes of mopping indoors using pine- or citrus-scented cleaning products can produce as many potentially harmful particles as from vehicle exhaust along a busy urban street!
Common personal care and household consumer products contain volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. They are commonly added to cleaning products because of their ability to remove oil and grease, in addition to their pleasant scents. These chemicals are not only found in synthetic chemical products—they also occur naturally. For example, limonene is present in the rinds of citrus fruits, while α- and β-pinene are present in pine tree oils. In itself, exposure to VOCs may cause acute effects like eye, skin, or throat irritation and nausea, among other health effects. Furthermore, a certain class of VOCs called monoterpenes, which include limonene, α- and β-pinene, react with ozone in the air to form very small particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs. Once lodged deep in the lungs, these very small particles can irritate cells and cause respiratory problems, or worse, introduce foreign material into the bloodstream, leading to health problems such as cardiovascular diseases.
While previous studies have found that cleaning products can generate particles from their reaction with ozone, our study is the first to reveal, in real-time, how vapors from cleaning products transform into particles when reacting with ozone during realistic indoor cleaning conditions. In addition, we showed that this level of indoor particle pollution, and more importantly ultrafine particles (i.e., very small, nanometer-sized), is comparable to outdoor combustion from vehicle exhaust, raising serious health concerns.
The chemical reactions that we have seen in this mopping simulation are not new—these reactions have been known to occur naturally outdoors when trees emit monoterpenes. These monoterpenes react with ozone to produce aerosols contributing to smog and particle pollution. However, outdoors, this happens over longer time scales (for example, over the course of a day). Knowing that this chemical reaction can happen outdoors, we brought this knowledge into the indoors, and we used different instruments to track the chemical reactions in real-time, starting from the moment the vapor is released up until the particles are formed and grown. Interestingly, we found that these chemical reactions need less ozone indoors than outdoors (where ozone levels are usually about ten times higher) and still happen much faster than outdoors when the “recommended” amount of cleaning product is used!
Our work is particularly important for professional cleaners, custodians, and people who frequently clean, as they may be exposed to elevated particle concentrations even during brief cleaning periods indoors. Getting familiarized with the potential harm of products that we use can help influence regulation and change our behaviors. For example, regulations can be based not only on the potential harm caused by the primary emissions (vapors) from the cleaning products but should also consider the particles that form from the interaction with other common components in the indoor air, like ozone. As such regulations do not yet exist, we can prevent our personal exposure by taking precautions such as increasing ventilation, wearing a protective mask while cleaning, choosing the time to clean when outdoor ozone is low, or searching for a cleaning product that does not contain monoterpenes. As we continue to live through the pandemic and spend more time indoors, indoor air quality scientists continue to explore and understand the microenvironment that we spend about 90% of our lives in.
Original Article:
Rosales, C. et al. Chemistry and human exposure implications of secondary organic aerosol production from indoor terpene ozonolysis. Science Advances 8, (2022)Next read: Responding to sea-level rise: the importance of culture by Robert L. Barnett , Sophie L. Ward
Edited by:
Dr. Rik Voorhaar , Senior Scientific Editor
We thought you might like
Ouch, that needle hurts! How some viruses inject their DNA
Sep 25, 2020 in Microbiology | 3.5 min read by Ameneh Maghsoodi , Ioan Andricioaei , Noel PerkinsVicious Circles – how changes in the shape of DNA can drive cancer
Aug 17, 2020 in Health & Physiology | 3.5 min read by Sihan Wu , Paul S. MischelEnvironmental sustainability of nationally recommended diets
Jun 14, 2018 in Health & Physiology | 3 min read by Paul BehrensA cup of green tea can solve many problems!
Jul 3, 2019 in Health & Physiology | 3 min read by Monika StankovaMore from Maths, Physics & Chemistry
Making nature compute for us
Jan 27, 2023 in Maths, Physics & Chemistry | 4 min read by Martin M. SteinAn eye-opening molecular explosion
Dec 19, 2022 in Maths, Physics & Chemistry | 4 min read by Rebecca Boll , Till JahnkeNetwork resuscitation – pumping life into a failed complex system
Sep 15, 2022 in Maths, Physics & Chemistry | 4 min read by Hillel Sanhedrai , Baruch BarzelMathematical paradoxes unearth the boundaries of AI
Aug 29, 2022 in Maths, Physics & Chemistry | 3.5 min read by Matthew J. Colbrook , Vegard Antun , Anders C. HansenCreating Tiny Stars On Earth In The Quest For Fusion Power
Aug 1, 2022 in Maths, Physics & Chemistry | 3.5 min read by Christopher V. YoungEditor's picks
Trending now
Popular topics