Now, we see the other poisons in our houses.

What are the poisons expected in our houses?

These poisons are the substances in our building materials, furniture, soap, cosmetics, substances used to clean the house, disinfections solutions, electronic articles, vessels made up of aluminium, nickel jewellery and nicotine due to smoking. Pesticides are also used in the household to kill mosquitoes or cockroaches. The following substances are mostly used:

Asbestos - mixed with plastic to strengthen them and also mixed with cement to prevent fire spreading. Lung cancer is seen normally after 45 years. All the asbestos buildings are being demolished now in Germany.

Formaldehyde - paints, tobacco smoke and few other plastic products contain formaldehyde. When enough contact is there, irritation of mucus, headache and allergy are possible.

Isothiocyanate - it is present in polyester covering of the floor and polyurethane foam. Strong inhalation leads to irritation of the eyes and isothiocyanate asthma.
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Solvents - solvents are necessary for the production of gum, paints, artificial leather, cleaning solution for the house and industry etc. Contact or breathing the vapour brings health problems.

Ozone - nowadays it comes from laser printers and Xerox copying machines and can make irritation of the eyes.

Phenols - present in paints and may affect liver and kidney.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons - found in tobacco smoke, fried meats and chimney smoke of industries or burning wastes can cause cancer.

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) - floor spreads and foams contain this. They (don’t forget PCBs are a group of 209 organochlorine chemicals) are present in the white paper it is formed during the bleaching process with chlorine. Chlorine is also used to bleach the sanitary napkins for women and these PCBs too. A longer contact with PCBs may spoil the liver.

Organochlorine compounds as pesticides, fungicides etc.

Leather covered furniture – leather tanning is carried out using more than 40 different chemicals and other treatments. Even nowadays pentachlorophenol is used in leather tanning in several countries. The allowed amount is 5 mg/kg. But in several cases it exceeded this limit and persons who have problem with detoxification become sick and this is an environmental illness.

Case study: One of my colleagues bought a new leather sofa set and was very happy. In the weekend she invited her friend and her husband for coffee and cake in the afternoon. All were sitting in the sofa for more than three hours. The visiting woman was not feeling well. She had skin reaction, headache and other neurological problems. She went to the doctor and the problems were still there. Then they came to me and after a personal talk with that woman I ordered the estimation of Pentachlorophenol in her blood. It was 5 times more than the reference value. The owner of the sofa had very low pentachlorophenol in her blood. I have asked the colleague to rub some cotton wool strongly on the side of the sofa and bring it to me. We analysed this and also found very high amount of pentachlorophenol. The sofas were produced in a foreign country. The furniture shop has taken back the sofas and she could select a different one. This is possible in Germany even today.

But the important thing what we must learn from this is, 4 persons were sitting on the sofas. Only one became sick and all the others were not affected. Only in that woman the detoxification system was not working properly and so the problem of excretion from the body and the environmental sickness.

If there is any unexplainable sickness always think about the environmental factors also.

Think of the old North Arcot district with all its leather tanning industries where even the tender coconuts had all these environmental poisons long ago.

Apart from these, metals like aluminium, cadmium, lead, nickel, palladium and others are in our house. Have you seen small children standing in front of the window and licking the painted wood? These paints contain many metals including lead. The taste of the lead is sweet and so the children like this taste. Be careful and intervene immediately in such conditions. Lead is not dangerous to adults, but it makes children bad in their brain work, thus bad ranks in the school. WHO has studied with tens of thousands school going children and have proved it very clearly. This means as long as we are healthy and our detoxification system is working properly, there will be no problem for us. When there is disorder in our detoxification system or we fail to support our system with proper food then, we have really a problem. Individual food is very important here.

Can I do anything to reduce these environmental pollutants in the house?

Don't use too many chemicals and solvents.
Yes, you can do a lot. You can aerate the house by opening the windows regularly. With a wet cloth you can clean the floors to minimise the fine dust particles. Vacuum cleaning will not help because it will scatter the fine dust more.

But, once your house is contaminated with some chemical poison there is no chance to clean it because of the equilibrium between the walls and the air. In that case an expert must renew the walls to remove the poisons.

Why is vacuum cleaning not advisable?

When you do vacuum cleaning there should be no children in that room in order to avoid exposition from dust, excrements of small insects, bacteria and viruses. Small children are normally about 60 to 80 cm tall and in this height also the fine dust and others are scattered. The small children who then get all the dust and poisons excessively become sick. This is one of the reasons of your child’s allergy and other environmental sickness. The enemies of our health are everywhere.

Is there any relationship between dress and environmental poisons?

The colour in our dress may contain azo-dyes which are considered cancerous. If we sweat very much, then the possibility is more to get these substances in our body. Salicylic acid, formaldehyde, metal salts, particularly lead, chromium, nickel and sulphonamide are used to conserve the textiles against insects as well as to give good colours. These could bring contact allergies. The alternative is paraffin emulsion but prolonged contact may cause skin irritation.

Costly wool carpets are soaked in pesticide solution before it is sold. Never buy these.

How did the human beings select their food in the past when they had no chance to analyse?

It was not easy for them to select the correct food, but they observed everything very keenly and carefully. In course of time, sometimes they took years or decades to arrive to the correct conclusion.

In my observation I have seen one thing very carefully when my mother or sister put the mustard seeds in the hot oil, it bursted out and spreaded everywhere, but I could never get an explanation for that. When I came to Germany I had seen that they ate mustard sauce, mild, middle, hot or sweet with grilled pork or meat or sausages. When they ate sausages either in the home or outside, mustard paste was taken in enough quantity. I started to think about our bursting mustard. I found later the reason that mustard neutralises the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) released when fat is burnt at high temperature. It is produced when from the grilled pork the fat drops in the fire, it burns there and produces the PAHs. This happened in a different way in our frying pan but the result was always the same.

The substance which neutralised the poisons was present inside the mustard. They made it a paste and we allowed it to burst, the purpose was same, if we do not break it, the mustard seeds will be excreted along with the faecal waste without being digested. I asked several old Germans to have an explanation for this. The oldest, 96 years old, told me that he had been eating mustard paste since his childhood. Look, how intelligent were our forefathers. They have think and observe much and now we need not think – the industry and others are thinking for us – and we become sick without knowing why. Ask always why and try to find out the answer also.

Why does new furniture smell bad?

Many chemicals are used to impregnate the furniture. The paints or varnish used contain organic solvents which are also dangerous for us. The new ones must be kept open for several days before we use it.

Here I want to give one more good tip. It is applicable to new cars also. Do not close all the windows and sit there with air-conditioner on. You get all the poisons from the new plastic products there. Drive for few months with open windows.