Most people don’t realize just how many pollutants are swirling around indoors, where they typically spend most of their time.
For example, many of the products we use for cleaning and freshening our homes, schools and workplaces are adding invisible toxins to the air.
“The smell of fresh is not a smell,” says Anne Hicks, a paediatric pulmonary specialist at the University of Alberta.
“If you can smell it, there’s a chemical in the air that’s getting up your nose. So all of that is air pollution, whether it smells good or bad,” she says.
“Indoor air pollution is huge, and it’s a relatively unknown frontier, because even my next-door neighbour’s house has a different air pollution fingerprint than my house would have,” Dr Hicks says.
