Chemical Household Products Leads to Wheezing in Children Essay

The asthma symptoms have increased in recent years in the UK. This tread is in several developed countries. The increased use of domestic chemical products associate with persistent wheezing during early childhood but not with transient early wheeze or late-onset wheeze. The indoor environment also has played an enormous role in increasing this asthma problem as a result of many people spending most of their time indoor especially mothers and children. Other reasons resulting to this problem is exposure to specific compounds like diisocyanate, organic acid anhydrides styrene and hydroquinone and formaldehyde, a constituent of a large number of products owing to it bactericidal action, ubiquitous in indoor environments. It found in cleaning chemicals, cosmetics carpets, wallpaper, and furniture.

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A high level of formaldehyde is a potential upper respiratory irritant. A small school study found that children without a history of atopy, a new asthma diagnosis was more common where the higher concentration of formaldehyde and total mounds found in classroom air. Statistics from a community and occupational studies have shown formaldehyde continuously in association with allergic respiratory response and both acute and chronic health problem. The research suggests that prevalence of occupational asthma in women in specific occupations underestimated such that in Europe and USA, they have shown a rise in risk of asthma to individuals working as cleaners.

Other evidence gives support to a relationship between individual constituents of chemical household goods like volatile organic components and the risk of adverse respiratory symptoms. However, some evidence may be contradictory if there are uncertain exposure assessment and symptom registration, insufficient sample size, and inappropriate study design. A study done in Bristol-based health districts of the former county of Avon, UK, show that some variables are the potential association between wheezing and TCB. They include exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), maternal smoking during pregnancy, maternal history of asthma, maternal parity, crowding at home, sex of the study child, and contact with the domestic pets. Also, damp housing, maternal age at delivery, highest educational level of the mother, housing tenure, duration of breastfeeding, number of hours mother worked outside of a home, and season of return of chemical use questionnaire contributes to wheezing.

In the study to determine if a linear relationship with each wheezing pattern was appropriate, it discovered that for each wheezing pattern there was no evidence against the null hypothesis that the effect of the TCB score is linear. In the study of the effect of chemical household products on persistent wheezing in children, it shows that a persistent wheeze was more than twice likely to happen in children of women in the top decile of TCB score than in children of women in the bottom decile. A similar but non-significant effect was also noted for late-onset wheeze, but the proportion of children with transient early wheeze did not differ significantly when the top and bottom deciles of maternal TCB score compared. When analyses were repeated 11 times while removing one chemical at a time from the score, there was no significant change in a size of an effect. It suggests that no single product implicated in association with infant wheezing.

A study shows that frequent use of everyday household chemical goods in the prenatal period has a dose-dependence relationship with persistent wheeze in offspring. Late-onset wheeze may be more common to children whose mothers had a very high TCB score. In post hoc analysis a relationship between postnatal TCB exposure and wheezing phenotypes found that not only were TCB score correlated prenatally and postnatally but also a similar association between TCB score and persistent wheeze. Transient early wheeze and late-onset not related to postnatal TCB.

The study assumes that exposure in utero came primary from the women's use of chemicals and there was no attempt to quantify use in the proximity of pregnant woman by other household members during the study pregnancy. It also assumes that women with the history of asthma will not modify their exposure as a result of their condition (Millqvist et al., 1999)

Study to validate the subset of the ALSPAC population found a positive relationship between total levels of a volatile organic compound and self-reported use of air fresheners and aerosols and they affected the maternal and infant symptoms (Venn et al, 2003).

The positive relationship between chemical exposures and wheezing phenotypes in another study support an effect on the development of airway inflammation and asthma rather than a fundamental impact on airway development in utero. In this study, a strong correlation between prenatal and postnatal use of household cleaning products in this group and their association with persistent wheezing, it is conceivable that it represents postnatal exposure with the direct inflammatory insult to the airways rather than prenatal priming of airway inflammatory in response to postnatal exposures like airborne allergens (Smedje et al., 1997).

Conclusion

The findings conclude that children whose mothers make frequent use of domestic chemical products at the time of pregnancy will be likely to wheeze persistently during early childhood, independent of many other indoor air exposures and other potential factors.

References

Smedje, G., Norback, D., & Edling, C. (1997). Asthma among secondary schoolchildren in relation to the school environment. Clinical & Experimental Allergy, 27(11), 1270-1278.

Millqvist, E., Bengtsson, U., & Lowhagen, O. (1999). Provocations with perfume in the eyes induce airway symptoms in patients with sensory hyperreactivity. Allergy, 54(5), 495-499.

Venn, A. J., Cooper, M., Antoniak, M., Laughlin, C., Britton, J., & Lewis, S. A. (2003). Effects of volatile organic compounds, damp, and other environmental exposures in the home on wheezing illness in children. Thorax, 58(11), 955-960.