{"id":477988,"date":"2024-01-05T07:01:56","date_gmt":"2024-01-05T12:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/cleaning-toxins-from-your-home-after-a-wildfire-experts-offer-tips-drugs-com-mednews\/"},"modified":"2024-01-06T05:58:02","modified_gmt":"2024-01-06T10:58:02","slug":"cleaning-toxins-from-your-home-after-a-wildfire-experts-offer-tips-drugs-com-mednews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/cleaning-toxins-from-your-home-after-a-wildfire-experts-offer-tips-drugs-com-mednews\/","title":{"rendered":"Cleaning Toxins From Your Home After a Wildfire: Experts Offer Tips – Drugs.com MedNews","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"
Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm<\/a>. Last updated on Jan 5, 2024.<\/span><\/p>\n By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter<\/p>\n FRIDAY, Jan. 5, 2023 — It\u2019s easy to see the immediate health hazards of wildfire smoke, as people struggle to breathe through a sooty haze.<\/p>\n But a new study finds that harmful chemicals found in wildfire smoke can linger in a person\u2019s home for weeks after the immediate threat has passed, posing a continuing health threat.<\/p>\n The chemicals — compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) — are highly toxic and can be found in household air filters, glass surfaces and cotton cloth more than a month later, researchers report.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are associated with a wide variety of long-term adverse health consequences like cancer, potential complications in pregnancy and lung disease,\u201d said researcher Elliott Gall<\/a>, an associate professor of mechanical and materials engineering at Portland State University in Oregon.<\/p>\n \u201cIf these compounds are depositing or sticking onto surfaces, there are different routes of exposure people should be aware of,\u201d Gall added in a university news release.<\/p>\n There\u2019s lots of good advice out there on what to do during a wildfire, researchers noted — close windows and doors, run an air purifier, wear a mask.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s not much to guide people on how to best clean up afterward, researchers said.<\/p>\n For this study, Gall and his team looked at how PAHs stuck to glass, cotton and air filters during a four-month span.<\/p>\n They found it took 37 days for PAHs to decrease by 74% for air filters, 81% for cotton and 88% for glass — potentially harming the health of a home\u2019s inhabitants by prolonging their exposure to the chemicals.<\/p>\n However, targeted cleaning proved effective in quickly ridding a home of PAHs that linger long after a wildfire has passed, the researchers said.<\/p>\n Laundering cotton materials just once after smoke exposure lowered PAHs by 80%, and using commercial glass cleaners on windows or cups reduced PAH levels between 60% and 70%.<\/p>\n Air filters should simply be replaced, since they can\u2019t be cleaned, Gall added.<\/p>\n Future studies will focus on other materials and surfaces common in homes, as well as specific cleaning techniques and household cleaning solutions available to average folks, researchers said.<\/p>\n The findings were published recently in the journal ACS ES&T Engineering<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n Disclaimer:<\/strong> Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.<\/p>\n \u00a9 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Posted January 2024<\/p>\n Whatever your topic of interest, subscribe to our newsletters<\/a> to get the best of Drugs.com in your inbox.<\/p>\n Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm. Last updated on Jan 5, 2024. By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter FRIDAY, Jan. 5, 2023 — It\u2019s easy to see the immediate health hazards of wildfire smoke, as people struggle to breathe through a sooty haze. But a new study finds that harmful chemicals found in wildfire smoke can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false,"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"html"}]},"author":2,"featured_media":477991,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"acf":[],"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"link","format":"url"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477988"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477988"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":477990,"href":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477988\/revisions\/477990"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Sources<\/h2>\n
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