Healthy Actions, Continued

This week we’ll talk about some more Healthy Actions – simple things you and your family can do to reduce contact with arsenic and lead – and other chemicals – in dirt. Last week we covered taking off shoes in the house, washing hands with plenty of soap and water, and eating a healthy diet. This week we’ll go over a couple of cleaning tips, and next week we’ll move outside the house.

*Mop, Dust, and Vacuum People and pets track in dirt or it can enter your home in the form of small dust particles through windows and doors. Dust and dirt settles on carpeting, throw rugs, curtains, and upholstered furniture, as well as windowsills and bookcases. If you’ve established a shoes-off policy, you are ahead of the game here, as you’re definitely stopping a lot of dust and dirt at your door. I can attest from personal experience, though, that even with shoes off you’ve probably still got a lot of dust hanging around the house! Weekly vacuuming with a HEPA-filtered vacuum or extra thick vacuum bags will keep dust levels down in your home. The Dirt Alert program used to recommend vacuuming a few times a week, and if you are one of the lucky ones who manages to do that, kudos! Once a week is much more realistic – though even that can be a struggle if you’ve got a kiddo, like I do, who’s still so bothered by the noise of the vacuum that the weekly task involves having him away from the house or, more recently, the use of a stocking cap and tissues wadded up over his ears. Mopping and dusting are also important tasks, but make sure you always use a damp-mop or a damp dusting cloth. Feather type dusters and dry cloths send more dust out in the air to land somewhere else than they pick up. If you live in the Soil Safety Project Area send me an email at dirtalert@tpchd.org and I’ll send you one of the Dirt Alert Program’s great reusable damp dusting cloths – quite like the Sham-Wow, according to several infomercial watchers I’ve talked to!

One more very important thing to note about dust in your home – by reducing the contact your children have with house dust, you’re not only reducing their exposure to arsenic and lead, but to loads of other chemicals that collect in house dust – toxic flame retardants from furniture and electronics, and pesticides to name a couple. If you’ve got kiddos crawling or playing on the floor, getting dust onto their hands, putting their hands in their mouths…best to keep the dust to a minimum and wash hands often to keep chemicals out of their little bodies.

*Keep Pets Clean Pets walk, roll, and lie down in dirt and soil. When pets come into the house, their fur and paws bring in soil and dust too. Pup can’t kick his shoes off at the door! Brush and bathe your pet regularly and wipe off all excess dirt and mud before your pet comes into the home. It might sound silly, but I’ve got a coworker whose dog knows when he comes inside to stop on the interior doormat, lift his front paws to be wiped, then his back paws. This works best, admittedly, when you’ve got older kiddos who are also well-trained that this needs to happen when pup comes inside, but it doesn’t add a whole lot of extra work, or laundry, to the day. It’s also a good idea to restrict your pet to parts of your home that are free of carpeting and upholstery, and to give pets their own bed in your home.

Next week we’ll move out into the yard. Talk to you then!