How Mopping can create indoor air pollution?

While browsing the internet on Google, research studies were found by me on recent environmental Scientists that ask for caution to the general public about harmful tiny particles also known as aerosols that found during Lab experimenting indoor cleaning mopping with cleaning products scented with pine and citrus solvents.

Click here to listen to this article.🎧

Man and woman cleaning house

Researchers while describing these scented cleaning products so lethal that they can generate dangerous airborne particles when they expose to ozone. These aerosols in the shape of tiny hazardous particles could result in health risks to cleaners whether domestic or commercial, also pollute the indoor air environment.

Nicola Carslaw from the University of York even said that she became surprised to see such mopping produces unhealthy aerosols the same way as compared to the outside environment, for example, pollution caused during traffic congestion.

Glenn Morrison, another environmental scientist from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, also said that even though most of us are unaware actually but the fact is that most of the hazardous particles formed while cleaning the floor through mopping. Even the indoor environment of schools, colleges, universities, private or public places, offices, etc. could be more pollutant than the outdoor environment.

Anybody could suffer from asthma or health-related issues during breathing in an indoor environment due to the presence of unhealthy air particles that come as a result when the gas stove is turned on or cooking meals or during burning cigars, cigarettes, or candles.

These tiny hazardous particles react with ozone in the air when indoor air pollution develops as a result of mopping the floor or cleaning including personal care products due to the presence of fragrances containing volatile chemical organic properties.

Asthma

One perturbing molecule called limonene is found in the lemon-scented furniture polish generally used households or businesses in taking out oil and grease from affected surfaces and started chemical reaction when comes in direct contact with the outdoor pollutant ozone.

It is disheartening to note that when ozone passes through the buildings, it tends to a reaction with limonene and other same molecules such as monoterpenes, which also transforms into hazardous substances - alcohols and peroxides - and causes further increase into airborne particles.

These tiny air particles or aerosols could enter deep into human lungs and expose them to problems like asthma and to heart patients' heart attacks and strokes.

To bring their observation close to reality, researchers decided to experiment effects of airborne reactions while mopping the floor into their laboratory, for this purpose, they filled their room with 50 cubic meters of air volume equivalent to half the size of a semitrailer container, which took around 12 - 14 minutes while mopping the floor, they used a terpene based cleaner and monitored the entire cleaning activity by installing state of the art scientific instruments.

Woman Mopping the floor

According to co-author Philip Stevens, an atmospheric chemist at Indiana University, Bloomington, it was the first kind of scientific experiment to see the whole chemical reaction where they had waited to see molecules and particles for the next 90 minutes duration time.

During their observation, researchers accumulated scientific data and measured small air particles using standard computer models to find out the common answer to how many quantities of aerosols a cleaner could during mopping inhale?

On average, a human being could breathe in about 1 billion to 10 billion nanoparticles every minute, according to the statistics published in Science Advances, and in this way, we can compare breathing numbers to any congested vehicular city traffic from a normal European or American state.

Environmental scientists also unearthed short-term molecules also known as radicals similar to hydroxyl and hydroperoxyl that causes immediate chemical reactions could not only in the outdoor environment but indoors also during particles formation. In most of the study cases, the ventilation in building in both residential and commercial was not found often adequate to eradicate fully harmful effects of ozone from the outdoors despite its capacity in getting rid of aerosols in an indoor environment.

According to Brandon Boor, co-author and a civil engineer at Purdue University, the harmful adverse hazardous air particles effects could be minimized by installing carbon air filters thus ventilation system could be forgone.  He also recommends giving up using cleaning products that contain limonene or terpenes.