FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

How Carcinogens Travel from Your Comfy-Ass Couch to Your Bloodstream

Couch, I love you and I hate you.

I have a love-hate relationship with my couch, as perhaps you do too. I enjoy nothing more than stretching out on my lumpy 70s relic of a sofa when it's time to chill. When I actually have something to do, however, things can take a dark turn. I just can't quit you, couch.

The "hate" side of this delicately balanced relationship with my couch just got a little weight added to it. New research by scientists at the Silent Spring Institute, published today in Environmental Science and Technology, found that the chemicals used in flame retardant compounds can make their way from a couch's fibres to a person's bloodstream in notably high concentrations via dust particles. This is pretty bad because they can cause cancer.

Advertisement

"Once in dust, people, especially children who put a lot of things in their mouth and crawl on the floor, ingest [it]. Some of these chemicals are more volatile and may also escape into the indoor air and be inhaled," Robin Dodson, one of the researchers, wrote me in an email.

"Exposure to these chemicals has been associated with cancer, neurotoxicity and reproductive harm," she continued.

Image: Steven Leggett/Flickr

The flame retardant compounds found in couches are generally additive in the manufacturing process, as opposed to chemically bound. Because of this, they can easily make their way off of furniture and into the air.

In the process of excreting these compounds, the body produces metabolites that can be detected in urine. The presence of these metabolites is what the Silent Spring researchers tested for in their study. According to their results, high concentrations of dangerous chemicals—including one that was removed from kid's pajamas in the 70s—were found in the subjects, which correlated with high levels of the compounds in dust in their homes.

The use of flame retardant chemicals in furniture has become a contentious issue as of late for two main reasons. The first is that studies have found that they don't really work, mostly because most furniture doesn't contain enough of the stuff to actually be effective. The second is that the chemicals can eventually prove harmful. In response to these findings, California passed legislation in 2013 to phase flame retardants out of furniture.

According to Dodson, buying furniture without flame retardant chemicals in it is your best bet to avoid ingesting dust containing carcinogens. But that's not the only solution available to consumers.

"People can also try to keep dust levels low in their homes since this is a major route of exposure," Dodson wrote. "For example, vacuuming frequently with a vacuum fitted with a HEPA filter and using damp mops and cloths. Also, especially for children, hand washing has shown to reduce exposures to chemicals found in house dust."

And here we arrive back at the original dilemma facing people as in love with their couch as I am: to dust away the chemicals emanating from my comfy-ass sofa, I have to get off of it first.