We’re spending a lot of time indoors here in the dead of winter. Still, you find yourself coughing, sneezing, and constantly wiping your nose, but with no reason to believe you’ve gone anywhere where you could catch a cold. Your bathroom could be making you sick not only by way of encroaching mold colonies, but by the products you use to keep your bathroom clean and dry. Here’s what you may need to look out for in the event that your sickness is coming from inside the house.
Off-Gassing Curtain Liners
With all the water in motion throughout the bathroom, your shower curtain probably doesn’t attract much attention as a potential source of illness. But your curtain’s liner, which keeps spraying water from pooling on the floor, could be giving you some breathing problems, especially if it’s a fresh one. Many shower curtain liners on the market are made of polyvinyl chloride, or PVC. You know PVC best as a popular building material, particularly as an affordable and durable replacement for copper piping. But a thin application of PVC in concert with the heat and humidity that go with most showering can release volatile organic compounds from the product in a process known as “off-gassing.” Inhalation of these gases can cause headaches, nausea, and sinus inflammation. If you notice these symptoms in the wake of hanging a new curtain liner, consider replacing it with a non-toxic alternative, or by properly laundering and airing out the plastic so that it releases its compounds outside of a confined and humid space.
Mold
This one is much more obvious. You don’t need to stare straight at a black blotch on the wall to have a mold problem in the bathroom. Mold spores are omnipresent in even well-filtered air, and the bathroom’s nooks and crannies combine with high ambient humidity to foster mold growth in that space. Keep an eye out for the telltale symptoms of a mold allergy: watery eyes, nasal congestion, and frequent coughing and sneezing. You should also protect against mold by giving it fewer places to hide—fix-up the bathtub to seal the seams and keep mold out, scrub the hard-to-reach areas of the bathroom regularly, and run your exhaust fan after showers to dehumidify the space.
Harmful Chemicals
Rigorously cleaning the bathroom is a necessary step against fighting the scourge of mold growth, but even some of the cleaning products you employ in that fight may be part of how your bathroom could be making you sick. Some of the chemicals in those products can irritate the respiratory system in a similar manner to mold itself. If you find yourself developing allergic reactions from the products you’ve been using, explore organic or even homemade alternatives, which are readily available and often easy and affordable to produce on your own.
