Toxic chemicals may be lurking in home products, study finds

Are there toxins lurking in your home? The HealthyStuff.org website just released a list of home improvement products they say contain chemicals linked to serious health conditions such as asthma, cancer, birth defects, reproductive problems and liver toxicity.

HealthyStuff.org, an offshoot of Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Ecology Center (a nonprofit environmental organization), tested 3,300 home improvement products, including 1,016 flooring samples and 2,312 wallpaper samples using a portable X-ray Fluorescence analyzer. The site posted caveats saying the products tested didn’t represent all flooring and wallpaper products on the market, and that detecting the presence of a chemical doesn’t mean exposure occurred.

The researchers found that 15% of the vinyl flooring products tested had one or more hazardous chemicals at detectable levels, and about 8% of the non-vinyl flooring had the same. And 5% of all flooring samples tested had detectable levels of lead. Products with the highest percent of lead were vinyl sheet flooring and vinyl tile flooring.

Flooring samples also showed the presence of phthalates, chemicals added to plastic to make them more flexible and durable. Those chemicals have also been linked with endocrine system disruption.

Almost all of the wallpaper samples tested (96%) contained polyvinyl chloride coatings. Among wallpaper samples, 18% had detectable cadmium levels (more than 40 parts per million) and 13% had levels greater than 100 ppm. All of these wallpapers with cadmium had a vinyl coating.

Another caveat: While the X-ray Fluoresence analyzer is used by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration, HealthyStuff.org said in a news release that it has limitations: “...the products we tested are made of many different types of materials, in some cases even within the same product. The presence of materials may interfere with the analyzer’s ability to quantify the elements accurately.”

Lead researcher and HealthyStuff.org founder Jeff Gearhart said in the release, “Our testing shows that toxic chemicals show up everywhere in home improvement products. If we don’t want these chemicals in our toys, we certainly don’t want them in our floors.”

-- Jeannine Stein / Los Angeles Times