On a typical cleaning day in an average home in Canada, levels
of chemicals in the indoor air can be hundreds, even thousands
of times higher than the outdoor air in the most polluted of
cities. In fact, indoor air pollution levels would be high
enough to trigger an inspection by health and safety authorities
in any workplace setting, and evacuation if it were a public
building. (The Nature of Things, CBC-TV 2002). Many chemicals
contained in household cleaning products are the same as those
used in industrial settings. Many scientists are now becoming
concerned that long-term low-level exposure to these chemicals
may be just as dangerous as short-term high-dose exposures. They
also worry that we do not understand the impact of exposure to
combinations of chemicals found in household air and dust.
Testing for human health effects is normally done on single
chemicals. But in the real world, we are all exposed to a
variety of chemicals every single day. The ingredients contained
in conventional petrochemical-ba