Learn where flame-retardant chemicals lurk, and find alternatives that will keep your home safe.

Frequent cleaning is your best defence against toxic flame-retardant chemicals.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—When Oregon elementary-school teacher Molly Grove heard an environmental scientist give a lecture on the environmental and health dangers of flame-retardant chemicals, she was alarmed. “This is a huge issue that people don't seem to know about, and it seems like a big problem, both for the environment and for people’s health,” she says. She decided to use this incidence of chemical pollution as a teaching tool for her math and science classes, and asked them to go home and take pictures of hang tags indicating that the furniture complied with a California law requiring that all upholstered furniture be fire resistant. Of her roughly 50 sixth-grade students, about 40 returned with photographs indicating that their furniture was flame resistant. “We don’t live in California,” she says. “So why is this here?”

The chemicals at issue are found in nearly everything made with polyurethane foam—upholstered furniture, baby strollers, car seats, pillows—and in electronics like TVs, computers, and cellphones. And scientists are very concerned that the most common class of flame retardants (polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs) are showing up in animal tissue as far away as the Arctic Circle. Tests from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that nearly all Americans have these chemicals in their bodies—because once you're exposed it takes years for the chemicals to get eliminated. Mothers even pass them along to their babies via breast milk.

THE DETAILS: These flame-retardant chemicals have been linked to a number of human health problems. The form of PBDE most commonly used in furniture was linked to altered fetal development, thyroid problems, infertility, as well as neurological problems in children, before those health concerns eventually led to a phase-out by U.S. foam manufacturers. Similarly, the primary PBDE used in electronics will be phased out over the next three years, since research has linked it to negative impacts on brain function and cancer risk.

Read on for ways to keep flame retardants out of your house.