Cleaning products and indoor air fresheners create a pleasant odor and also have a flip-side and might just spike the indoor aerosol levels. It has been discovered that air fresheners and cleaning products forma secondary organic aerosols (SOA’s).
Secondary aerosols are microscopic particles which are created when ozone reacts with organic gases such as limonene. These are some of the same chemical reactions that occur is a result of smog and ozone in the atmosphere and imagine them happening at your home.
“SOAs can come from ozone reactions with numerous sources, especially with compounds called terpenes that produce the scents we associate with cleaners, pine, lavender and oranges,” said Michael Waring, assistant professor in the college of engineering at the Philadelphia based Drexel University in the US.
They were able to simulate limonene being added to the environment in pulses the way it would be introduced indoors when spraying indoors when spraying a limonene containing cleaning product. . “We found that one of the biggest factors contributing to SOA formation by limonene ozonolysis was the air exchange rate,” Waring added.
The necessity of the research was to understand health impacts on people who use a significant amount of cleaning products. What you can do is to reduce aerosols is the use unscented cleaners and open your doors and windows while cleaning and this is important. This helps condition the air better reducing the limonene concentration and lessens SOA formation.
Than using chemical cleaners, it is a wise to use herbal cleaning products which have made from plant extracts. There are many that you can use in the market but a few are approved by the concerned authorities. Out of the very few, Herbal Strategi has a range which you can choose from and this is tried and tested and recommended by scientists.