Alternet currently has a story on Hurricane Katrina refugees being poisoned by formaldehyde in their temporary trailer homes: Dying for a Home: Toxic Trailers Are Making Katrina Refugees Ill. In the past 2 years, I’ve become really interested in the topic of indoor air pollution and toxins in consumer products. It was mostly by accident (stumbling across a library book on chemical household hazards) but it wasn’t too long before I found people and online communities exploring and researching the hidden dangers I was reading about.

For details on what formaldehyde does to humans and living things, definitely give the above Alternet link a read. Overexposure symptoms include breathing difficulties, itchy skin, watery eyes, asthma, and over the long-term, possibly cancer. Formaldehyde gets me especially worried because it’s so easily found, unlabelled, in so many consumer products, including products that either rub against our skin (in clothing, bed sheets, sometimes cosmetics) or that out-gas into our indoor air for decades (in veneer, MDF, and pressed wood furniture). I kind of remember growing up in a flat where half of the furniture was veneer; our current US apartment has 3-quarters of its furniture veneer, something I’m not happy about. I’d love our next home in Singapore to be veneer-free, if not formaldehyde-free.

I see a few ways to do this, even if the basic strategy is to go for furniture that is free of veneer, MDF, and pressed wood:

  1. Going for all-wood secondhand/antique furniture to lessen my environmental impact (and hopefully not items that have been newly lacquered with something toxic).
  2. If I need to purchase new furniture, to get it from a company that is environmentally and socially responsible. A European-based manufacturer is usually a good start.
  3. Making sure to avoid fabric that is labelled “wrinkle-free,” “stain-resistant,” “flame-retardant” or all of the above. To wash all and any new fabric with baking soda and maybe white vinegar.
  4. Keeping plants around the home to purify the air.

Not to commit an injustice to all veneer furniture, I decided to look up IKEA’s stance on formaldehyde (since Singapore now has TWO IKEA outlets – and the US does not have enough!): IKEA’s Environmental and Social Reports. Good news – while IKEA furniture is not completely free of formaldehyde, they are using the strictest standards that exist on the planet to limit its presence in their products. Not perfect perhaps, but a smart shopper can definitely avoid it completely if they want. I suppose if it can’t be avoided completely, the levels of formaldehyde are “safe” and can be further managed with indoor plants.

(Though to be frank, IKEA’s veneer shelves do tend to sag under medium weight, so if one can afford it, or if one definitely wants to avoid saggy shelves, it’s worth it paying more for real wood. Perhaps to assuage your conscience, buy secondhand furniture, or plant some trees!)

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