Environmental Allergies and Relocating: How to Make Your New Home Easier to Breathe In

Recently I’ve had a few patients who expressed concern about moving.  Moving can be anxiety-provoking for those who have environmental or multiple chemical sensitivities, because landlords (bless their hearts!) try to make apartments and homes look fresh and updated for their new residents, but (damn their eyes!) they use the cheapest, smelliest paints, flooring, and carpets known to mankind!  

The last time I moved, my landlord very generously put in a new (faux) wood floor, painted the whole place, and put in new fixtures in the kitchen and bathroom.  Yay!  Right?  No!  BOO!  A couple of weeks after I moved, the floor started off-gassing the most atrocious chemicals, and I was sick for weeks.  

So what’s a sensitive person to do??  

Well, the good news is that there are some relatively easy solutions.  Regardless of what could be off-gassing in your new place—flooring, carpeting, whatever—you can quickly and inexpensively do a couple of things that can help a lot.

Let’s start with paint.  Regular paint is super-smelly, and tends to off-gas for much longer than people realize.  Furthermore, the stuff it off-gasses, called VOC (which stands for volatile organic compounds) is unbelievably toxic—not as toxic as having a running automobile in your living room, granted, but not that far behind.  Luckily, there is a type of paint you can buy called Low VOC.  Low VOC paint (available in stores like Sherwin Williams and Benjamin Moore) will not only release far fewer toxins in the air, but it will also help absorb odors from other sources in your home.  So if you had new carpet, painting the walls would actually absorb some of the toxic off-gassing from the carpet too.  Low VOC paint is a little more expensive than regular paint, but not that much more.  And if you’re on a really tight budget, one alternative would be to just paint one wall instead of all four.

If you would like more information on Low VOC paint, here’s a link that I found to be very informative:

http://home.howstuffworks.com/home-improvement/construction/materials/low-voc-paint.htm

The other thing that will help tremendously is an air purifier.  Especially when you can’t open the windows (because it’s too cold or hot outside), having a good air purifier can make breathing a lot easier.  The one thing I found was to beware of air purifiers that said they released ozone (like that was a good thing—because it’s not!)—ozone is one of the things released by paint that you’re trying to remove, and it’s why you are getting the air purifier in the first place.

Here’s a link to an informative web page about air purifiers:

http://www.achooallergy.com/air-purifier-buying-guide.asp

When Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: Fires in SoCal

There is a reason that I have included the Local Pollen Count on my blog page. Please take a moment to notice that today, under the heading “Air Quality” it says “Unhealthy for Sensitive People,” and under “Primary Pollutant” it says “Particulate matter.”
Attention, Southern California: we have a state of emergency. Please stay in your homes with windows and doors shut.
It may seem pretty obvious, and you may wonder, why is she going on about this? But I would really like to make a solid point here.
If this fire was a simple brush fire, in which trees, grass, and shrubs were burning, I would probably not make such a big deal about it. However, what is burning today are houses. House fires are much more dangerous to all of us, especially those of us with compromised immune systems, because of the toxic content of the smoke.
Houses are constructed to last. There's insulation made of fiberglass, cellulite, vermiculite, polystyrene, and polyurethane. Think burning plastic. There's arsenic-treated 2 X 4's,which frame pretty much each and every house in Southern California. There's sheetrock, which is made of gypsum, fiberglass, plasticizer, potash (a highly toxic and reactive chemical), and EDTA (made from formaldehyde and cyanide). On the sheetrock is housepaint, containing more toxic chemicals. There's carpeting, containing natural and synthetic fibers, including polypropylene, nylon, and other versions of plastic. Then there's siding, which is usually either stucco, a mixture of cement and plaster, or siding, which is usually made of synthetic materials. Of course, the newest siding is insulated, and contains polystyrene foam. And then there's shingles, which are either concrete or plastic, waterproofed red clay, or asphalt, made of fiberglass. And then there's all the stuff that's IN your house...at least half of which is made of plastic.
Can you imagine what we are breathing when we go outside today? It's not just ash from burning trees. It's ash from burning plastic. You might as well light up and smoke a carton of cigarettes.
So the best thing to do today, especially if you have children, or if your immune system is compromised for any reason, is to hop on an airplane and fly up to rural Oregon. Failing that, please stay inside, drink plenty of water, and keep your doors and windows closed until the skies clear, which should be sometime in the next 3 days. And let's all send good energy to our planet—the environmental impact of this catastrophe will probably be felt for a long time.

http://www.quantumlinkwellness.com