Barbara,

Have worked with formaldehyde in residential exposures for 18-months now.

Let me start by indicating that I’ve been investigating residential exposure issues with my better half for 18-months. Linda, has a Masters in Public Health from UC Berkeley and is a CIH, Certified Industrial Hygienist. CIH is a very small group of people (about 6,000 worldwide) that specialize in measuring things. The vast majority of Linda’s work is for industry as the name indicates. Linda works most with extremely toxic gases like arsene. It was Feb 2009 when she got a call from a desperate mom wanting to know what was maker her son sick. She was able to pin the illness on the house because when he left town for a socer game he would improve only to get worse upon returning home. Shortly after that another mom called wanting to test for formaldehyde. Her 3 year-old son was sick and she got sick any night she spent a lot of time in her son’s room. Turned out the new captian’s bed was off gassing formaldehyde at 1,000 ppb. For a CIH the ceiling for the work place is 300 ppb for only 15 minutes and standard practice would require controls to be in place at 150 ppb.

The few symptoms you shared could be associated with formaldehyde exposure as you indicated. I suspect that you are exposed at home. However, our experience would indicate that the sources are not the personal care products, but more likely the home building materials or the personal property in the home.

If you happen to be close the the San Jose Bay Area, we would be happy to identify the formaldehyde source in your home at no charge. We have two Interscan direct reading formaldehyde meters that can detect formaldehyde in air down to 10 ppb and up to 1,000. We have found excessive formaldehyde in nearly every home we have visited. The California Air Resources Board’s report published December 15, 2009 states:

“Nearly all homes (98%) had formaldehyde concentrations that exceeded guidelines for cancer and chronic irritation…”

Turns out that the typical home tested had 4 times the State’s recommended concentration for residential exposure. Here are the URL’s

Summary: http://www.arb.ca.gov/research/apr/past/04-310exec_sum.pdf

Report: http://www.arb.ca.gov/research/apr/past/04-310.pdf

Researcher’s PowerPoint: http://iee-sf.com/resources/pdf/ResidentialVentilation.pdf

The most common issues are fiberglass wall insulation, laminate flooring, closet organizers, fuzzy hangers, molding (base & crown), interior doors, cabinets, unfinished press-board often used for backs of desks, dressers, bookcases, etc and bottoms of drawers. You can read some of the things we discovered http://www.examiner.com/x-5101-San-Jose-Environmental-Health-Examiner~topic112494-formaldehyde?selstate=topcat#breadcrumb

Assuming you are not local, I’d like to work with you remotely in documenting your own exposure. The first step would be to order a passive ACS formaldehyde badge for $39 including lab analysis.
http://acsbadge.com/formaldehyde.shtml

When the badge arrives you will want to wait for a warmer day as formaldehyde is very temperature sensitive. Close all windows and exterior doors by 8 AM. Start the test around noon. I would test for 24-hours plus until about 4:30 PM. Modify this time so that you can get the badge shipped back for lab analysis before the cutoff time for the daily pickup. The concentration of formaldehyde varies significantly throughout the day. The longer the exposure the more accurate the reading. However, you cannot exceed 48-hours and the peak concentrations are in the late afternoon. This time period gives you 2 afternoons but not two nights yielding a worst case reading, which is what you want while trouble shooting.

You will want to test in the room that you spend the most time (likely the bedroom) or if there is a room where you feel worse and spend a lot of time you may want to test that room instead. It is a time weighted issue and you spend 8 hours in the bedroom so that is often the room to test. If you normally have windows opened, you may want to sleep in a different room of the house and close of the bedroom.

While you are waiting to do the test and get the results open the windows and get as much outside air into the home constantly. The air in the home is always more polluted than the air outside. The one exception would be if there was a short term release of pollutants outside nearby. But remember to close up for the actual test.

Also reflect back on anything that has changed up to 18-months prior to your symptoms. This could be re-arranging furniture, new to your home furniture, drapes, bedspreads, cloths, decorator knick knacks, paintings, double pane windows, weather stripping, insulation, just about any change. Linda & I are starting to get good at spotting potential high sources. Some general rules are the higher the gloss, the more expensive, and the cuter something is the more likely it is a significant formaldehyde source.

Once you find out exactly how bad your home is there are relatively low cost ways to address the issue. Gastec makes color change tubes that are in boxes of 10 for $80 but require a $400 hand pump. Unfortunately, we have had many examples of their passive tubes of yielding an artificially low reading so we can only recommend the use of the pump. We might be able to lend you the pump. Also there are chemical filters. However, this is a last line of defense as there is no indication when the filter is saturated and the gas still passes from the source to the filter and if you breath that air you are still exposed.

Even though we have tested our house and we have made changes to the point that we cannot detect formaldehyde, we still set up a room to just sleep in. It only has a real wood bed frame and a natural latex materesse with cotton beding and no bedspread. Dresser, clothes etc are all kept in another room. The bedroom is simply for sleep. The windows are opened all day with a hepa air filter and electric blanket for warmth during the winter. We do this because formaldehyde is simply one of many toxic gases that is common in homes today. We use formaldehyde to indicate the need to ventilate more.

One local family added 24×7 forced air ventilation in their home along with remediating the significant sources we identified. Our initial testing was in the winter when the home (especially the formaldehyde resin fiberglass wall insulation) was much cooler. Their improvements did make a significant difference (150 ppb down to 40 ppb) but indicates that they have more work to do. This client is a chemist and the mistake he made was he failed to take into consideration as the room air concentration decreases, the formaldehyde off gasses from the sources at an increasing rate. The good news is even thought the concentrations are not as low as excpected the mom, daughter and kitten have all been symptom free as a result the drop in formaldehyde along with any other toxins.

We also did a trip to Southern CA because a group of 6 neighbors in a 2006 subdivision were all experiencing symptoms to different degrees. They paid are travel and hotel costs. We are intentionally not charging for this residential work as the Formaldehyde Council has accussed us of having a financial conflict of interst.

It will take time, but I think together we can work through the numerous issues.

Here is are journal article Linda had published in Feb 2010
http://www.aihasynergist-digital.org/aihasynergist/201002?pg=32

Linda also presented data in Denver in May. Those presentation should be available electroncially in the not distant future. One was on the ‘green’ homes having higher formaldehyde than conventional homes.

I’ll be happy to answer your questions.