When it comes to keeping kids safe, most parents do not think about household dust as a potential hazard. But dust can expose kids to a wide range of chemicals. A new UC Davis Health study funded by a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency will track which chemicals kids might accidentally ingest through household dust, and also how much they are ingesting.
Read more about the UC Davis study: https://health.ucdavis.edu/newsroom/news/headlines/how-much-is-the-dust-in-your-home-affecting-your-child/2021/10
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as part of Children's natural development, they often explore their environment with their hands in their mouths and so they're on the floor there, plain bit of that dust is going to stick to their hand. All of a sudden it's back in their mouth. And that's all just very natural behavior that you want to have Children to have. Because you want Children to explore there environment and to continue to to develop, we want to understand how much dust kids are eating and what chemicals are in it. So that in turn we can hopefully reduce the chemicals in the home so that the dust that the kids are eating eventually doesn't have harmful chemicals in it. So there's a number of different things in your home that have chemicals in them. So for example, many sofas have flame retardants in the foam in the sofas and those flame retardants aren't bound to that phone. There are chemicals and they come out of the sofa and then once they're in the air, many chemicals have a low vapor pressure. They don't want to be in the air. They would rather be attached to a solid material. So if they have a choice between being in the air and absorbing to a piece of dust they're going to absorb to the dust. We also have plastics in the home shower curtains, vinyl flooring and those all have, for example, a chemical called phthalates in them. Often plasticizers that make those plastic soft and those chemicals come out and then end up in the dust when we put personal care products on and sunscreen some of that ends up not necessarily on us, but in the dust and pesticides when you apply them outdoors, they often break down in the sunlight, but when you apply them in the indoors they tend to remain for a longer period of time. If you do use pesticides make sure to follow the directions rather than apply more than necessary. So lots of different ways for chemicals to get in the dust in general. Your child is not going to have any harm from from a little incidental ingestion of dust. However, you know, there are subtle effects that occur from some of these compounds long term and if we don't properly count for exposure through dust we're not going to really understand how much exposure kids have. And the E. P. A. Won't be able to properly conduct their risk assessments. And so you know now and in the future we may end up with chemicals in the home that shouldn't be there if we don't properly account for exposure from dust. Mhm mm hmm.
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