Household air and dust
What can we learn from air particles floating in our living rooms? What can dust teach us about our past—and our future? It turns out, even invisible specks of dust can reveal a great deal.
Silent Spring’s pioneering research was the first to show that consumer products are a major source of exposure to endocrine disrupting compounds—chemicals that mimic or interfere with the body’s hormones. Companies used to assert that the chemicals in their products would stay put. We now know that’s not the case; hormone disrupting chemicals can migrate out of products, accumulate in indoor air and dust, and enter our bodies. We continue to investigate what factors influence people’s exposures to indoor pollutants that affect health.
