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Just bought new house or planning to buy one? Planning to buy new furniture? Had oil paint walls? Did they come with fire-resistant label? Did they come with almost VOC free label?
If yes, read on.
Furniture, textiles, electronics, and insulation – they are treated with flame retardant chemicals. Your glossy expensive furniture come with Lower IQs, Hyperactivity in Children.
Solution?
• Do not paint your bedroom (Bedroom because you spend most inactive time there. Preferably entire home) with oil paint. Go with simple lime based white-wash
• Children room should not be dump yard of electronic toys
• Wear cotton clothes (at least for children) (if possible colored with natural colors )
• Use cotton white curtains
• Less is beautiful. Minimal furniture with minimum use of flame retardant chemicals
Difficult solutions, right? We are so modern that it is now difficult to live simple life 🙂 Take care (Y) as much you can.
Research Article
Flame Retardants Linked to Lower IQs, Hyperactivity in Children
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/flame-retardants-linked-lower-iq-hyperactivitiy-children/
Almost a decade after manufacturers stopped using certain chemical flame retardants in furniture foam and carpet padding, many of the compoundsstill lurk in homes. New work to be presented today reaffirms that the chemicals may also still be hurting young children who were exposed before they were born.
Researchers investigating the health impacts of prenatal exposure to flame retardants collected blood samples from 309 pregnant women early in their second trimester. Spikes in the levels of one class of flame retardant, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) correlated with behavior and cognition difficulties during early childhood.
The researchers tracked children through the first five years of their lives, looking at a battery of tests for IQ and behavior. They found that children of mothers who had high PBDE levels during their second trimester showed cognition deficits when the children were five years old as well as higher rates of hyperactivity at ages two to five. If the mother’s blood had a 10-fold increase in PBDEs, the average five-year-old had about a four-point IQ deficit. “A four-point IQ difference in an individual child may not be perceivable in…ordinary life. However, in a population, if many children are affected, the social and economic impact can be huge due to the shift of IQ distribution and productivity,” says lead author Aimin Chen, an assistant professor of environmental health at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. The findings, based on women and children from Cincinnati, will be presented May 6 at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Washington, D.C. The unpublished results have been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal, but the paper has not yet been accepted.
