Locating Chemical Pollutants

• 1
  Chemical pollutants often come from everyday home cleaning products.Woman cleaning the house. image by maron from Fotolia.com
  
  Identify each of the places where household cleaning chemicals are kept (for example, under the kitchen sink, under the bathroom sink, in the broom closet, in the garage and in storage sheds). Use a notepad to list each of these places; use separate pages and list in single column so that you have plenty of room to make notes in the opposite column on what you find in each place.
  
  
• 2). Write down the products in each place that you've noted. Under the product name, list the contents of the product. The most dangerous chemicals are not always at the top, but they are usually listed among the "active ingredients." If there is a danger warning, be sure to write that under the product name.
  
  
• 3
  Toxic chemicals are often used to clean bathrooms.bathroom loo 5 image by chrisharvey from Fotolia.com
  
  Write down the rooms in your house on separate pages in your notepad; include garages, storage sheds and garden sheds, even if these are not connected to your house.
  
  
• 4). List everything you find in the rooms on each of the pages set up in Step 3, and record what they are made with. In the kitchen, include pots and pans, the coffeemaker and the food processor. In the bedrooms, look at the labels on mattresses; in the living room, look at couch and chair tags. If an item does not have a tag, make a note of it so that you can follow up later.
  
  
• 5). Look up all the chemicals you have found in a chemical dictionary. In the column opposite the ingredients, write chemicals you suspect to be pollutants from what you find in the dictionary. Highlight the stand-alone chemicals that are suspicious.
  
  
• 6). Use the colored markers to mark chemicals or products in one color if you use them in close proximity. For example, if you use a product containing bleach on the toilet and a product containing ammonia on the bathroom floor, mark them both in blue.
  
  
• 7). Use the markers again to match the chemical product with the furniture, flooring, and so on that you use the product on; for example, couch material and fabric cleaner can be underlined in green. If you want to include another product, such as pet odor eliminator sprayed on a couch, mark it in the same color that you did the couch and fabric cleaner.
  
  

Eradicating Chemical Pollutants

• 1). Separate items according to color on a new page. Either note the color or write the items or chemicals in that color so that you can refer back to the chemical combination in your Internet search.
  
  
• 2). Use the Internet to research the toxicity of each chemical or combination that you have noted. For furniture, go to the manufacturer website to get cleaning instructions and gain further insight. Sometimes our own cleaning habits cause chemical pollution that would not otherwise be a problem, and sometimes the product simply should not be in a home. Make a note of the manufacturers' recommendations.
  
  
• 3). Put a check mark beside each chemical or combination of chemicals that you need to get rid of. Go back to the Internet to research alternative methods of accomplishing the same thing (cleaning the couch, for example) in a chemically neutral manner.