Washing dishes, showering ‘may be health hazard;

Press, 10 March 1987, Page 9

Washing dishes, showering ‘may be health hazard;

By

IRWIN ARIEFF

of Reuters through NZPA Washinton Showering, washing clothes, and doing the dishes may be hazardous to your health, a team of Government researchers has concluded in the United States. The researchers from the United States Environmental Protection Agency have found that people are exposed to potentially dangerous levels of chloroform, a suspected can-cer-causing agent, simply by taking a shower or being near a washing machine or a sink full of dirty dishes soaking in hot water. “The average house has four to five times as much chloroform in the air as there exists outdoors,” said the agency’s indoor air pollution expert, Mr Lance Wallace. While warning that cancer risk assessment is a tricky business, Mr Wallace believes the levels of chloroform present in the air in a typical house are a genuine health threat. "No-one knows how to calculate these risks precisely, but the data suggest there may be a couple hundred deaths a year in the United States due to the excess chloroform that you are breathing in your home,” Mr Wallace said. “This risk Is a lot less

than driving to work each day, but there is also something you can do about this risk,” he said. “You can simply open a window or turn on an exhaust fan when you take a shower, wash clothes or do the dishes.” Mr Wallace said researchers discovered nearly two decades ago that chloroform could be found in the drinking water of many American cities. The discovery led to passage of the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act, which set a ceiling on the amount of chloroform that could be present in drinking water. But it was only about two years ago that scientists discovered high levels of chloroform in the air inside homes as well as in the water, Mr Wallace said.

Subsequent research has found that the chloroform probably gets into the air by evaporation from the water used in showers, dish washing and clothes washing, he said.

“We didn’t see as much effect from baths,” Wallace said.

It gets into the water as

a by-product of chlorination, a common process in which chlorine is put into a city’s water supply to kill germs, and from common household products, the environment agency team has concluded. “Based on our latest research, we believe chloroform in the air comes principally from heated water, particularly when products containing bleach, such as laundry bleach or cleansing powder, are added to it,” Mr Wallace said. “We believe the chlorine in the bleach is reacting with the dirt in the clothes or on the sink or whatever and creating the chloroform on the spot,” he said. Mr Wallace said he hopes his research will encourage the Government to spend more of its resources studying indoor air pollution problems. “My guess is it will become a bigger issue as we realise that indoor air can be a more important source of pollution than outdoor air,” he said. “People spend 80 to 90 per cent of their time indoors,” he said.