VIDEO: How To Improve Poor Indoor Air Quality

In this video, Dr. Aly Cohen, founder of The Smart Human, discusses indoor air quality and things you can do right now to reduce your exposure to some pretty toxic chemicals.

Many of the products that fill our air in our home are filled with fragrance chemicals, antibacterial chemicals like Triclosan, preservatives and propellant chemicals, pesticides and non-stick chemicals. These chemicals are not tested for safety before going into your household products.

That’s right: cleaning products are not regulated in the US for safety or toxicity. It’s a free for all. Even the word ‘fragrance’ or ‘parfume’ listed on a label is considered proprietary or a trade secret, so you as the consumer are not allowed to know the actual ingredients.

Added fragrance can contain hundreds of harmful chemicals that get into the body and can affect the normal workings of the endocrine and immune systems and even cause difficulty with breathing and trigger asthma attacks.

After intravenous, the second fastest route into the body is inhalation through your mouth, lungs, and then right into your bloodstream, just like the oxygen we breathe.

Synthetic chemicals that we breathe in are especially harmful for pregnant women carrying a growing fetus and young children who are developing at such a rapid rate.

Here are a few of my recommendations. Try to clean up more and not have to use air fresheners. And use natural products, like white vinegar, water, sea salt to scrub sticky surfaces and natural lemon juice or 100% natural lavender oil for added fragrance.

If the temperature outside is reasonable and your pollen allergies are not so bad, open up your windows for at least 15 minutes every day. Ditch the fake air fresheners in your home. I’m talking aerosols, diffusers, carpet powders, and any products that have synthetic ingredients.

Look for 100% organic cleaning products. Candles, incense and even laundry detergent. Vacuum weekly with the HEPA filter vacuum, because household dust has been found to contain 100s of chemicals that come from products we use in our homes every day. Children and household pets have been shown to have the highest levels of many chemicals in their bodies because they’re on the floor where dust collects and sticks to toys, fingers, and paws.

Add household plants to clean the air, such as money plant, mother in law’s tongue, dracena and spider plant. Take off your shoes before you enter your home to avoid tracking in pesticides and other outdoor chemicals.

Remove carpeting and carpet backing and possibly replace with hardwood floors, not vinyl. Listen folks, we spend 12 to 18 hours of our day inside our homes or workplace, so let’s try to clean up the air so we can all breathe easy and improve our health.

Dr. Cohen shares these prevention tips and more on thesmarthuman.com website and on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Remember, when it comes to our environment and health, you too can be the smart human.

The Smart Human LLC seeks to educate, coach, and empower everyday people to make safer, smarter choices for human health. Its goal is to help hospitals, schools, and manufacturers, make changes to reduce unsafe chemical exposure of the children and adults that they serve. It’s a lofty goal, but it has to start somewhere!