The Scary Truths About Asthma
Scientific American Magazine reported that a baby crawling on conventional carpet inhales the equivalent of 4 cigarettes a day. How can this be? There are thousands of products in today’s homes that are manufactured using toxic compounds and carpet is one of them. Furniture today is not typically built with solid wood it is mostly particle board which contains large amounts of glue. Paints, varnishes and stains also contain compounds that are dangerous for our lungs.
Have you ever walked into a new home and noticed the smell. What you smell is the off-gassing of chemicals from the carpets, paints and furniture. Even the lumber used for most floors is particle board which is assembled from glue and sawdust and it is off-gassing those chemicals into your home. All of these chemicals are called VOC’s (Volatile Organic Compounds). These toxic compounds are a group of three hazard levels™ in your home.
Tight Home Sickness
The largest challenge is that homes being built today are much tighter, therefore holding in the hazards in the home. This is referred to as sick house syndrome. So why has this become such an issue in the last 30 years? It started with the oil embargo 1973 which started a national energy conservation movement which included the tightening of our homes. This movement of conserving energy and tightening of homes has significantly affected our health. This is one of the leading causes of the increase in asthma within children over the last 30 years.
“It is estimated that the number of people with asthma will grow by more than 100 million by 2025.” World Health Organization 2007
“Prescription drugs represented the largest single direct medical expenditure related to asthma, over $6 billion.” American Lung Association 2007
The Allergy Analogy™
The Allergy Analogy™ is a great way to understand how the human body responds to the three hazard levels™. The corresponding images are a representation of the human immune system and how it works normally and then when exposed to toxic compounds resulting from a “Tight Home”.
If you think of a bucket partially filled with water with a drain on the bottom that allows 1 gallon of water out every minute and a faucet filling the bucket with one gallon of water entering every minute; how long would it take the bucket to overflow? Well, if one gallon is going in while one gallon is draining out the bucket will never overflow.
Now let’s take the same bucket and start filling it with 2 – 5 gallons every minute while the drain stays the same at draining one gallon out every minute. The bucket would quickly overflow since there is much more water going in than out.
Now think of the bucket as your body and the water going in as the three hazard levels™. The drain represents your immune system draining out the three hazard levels™ that we breathe. Our immune system is designed to handle outside air that is cleansed by Mother Nature’s and it can’t keep up with the 2 – 5 times more that is in our indoor air. As these three hazard levels™ build up in our body they overflow into our blood stream creating a chemical known as histamine. Histamines make you sneeze, hack, cough, cry and can cause headaches, skin rashes and other ailments while aggravating allergies and asthma. This is the natural effect of the body responding to the toxic compounds. So what happens next? You go the Doc or the pharmacy and take anti-histamines, which are only a band aid! They are not reducing the source of the toxins within your body.
So, you can help reduce the symptoms by using drugs and medication, yet when they wear off the bucket is still full. Or a better solution would be to control and remove the cause (the three hazard levels™) with the VitalAir Drug Free Solution products and keep the bucket empty in the first place!
If you have more questions regarding this topic just Ask The Expert!