Cleaning products that are more toxic when inhaled than ingested

A new study carried out by researchers at the University of California Davis (USA) has revealed that Inhaling chemicals used in disinfectants and cleaning products, known as quaternary ammonium compounds, could be much more harmful than ingesting them.

The research, carried out in mice, has detected lung lesions significant with levels of exposure to quaternary ammonium compounds in blood similar to those observed in humans.

The results, published in Environmental Science and Technologythey propose Questions about whether air exposure from disinfectant sprays and cleaning products could contribute to respiratory illnesses such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

“The surprising result of this study was that these compounds, when inhaled, caused 100 times more lung damage and 100 times more fatality compared to oral ingestion“said lead author Gino Cortopassi, a biochemist and pharmacologist at the UC Davis Weill School of Veterinary Medicine.

Quaternary ammonium compounds have been widely used as disinfectants since the 1940s. While they are not very volatile, meaning they do not generate vapors themselves, they are commonly used in disinfectant sprays, which can be inhaled. These compounds are also found in some herbicides, eye sanitizers, nasal sprays, mouthwashes, dryer sheets, and fabric softeners.

While it was previously believed that these compounds did not reach the bloodstream, in 2021 Cortopassi and his colleagues found that 80 percent of study participants had detectable concentrations of quaternary ammonium compounds in their blood.

They also observed that those Participants with the highest total levels of quaternary ammonium compounds in their blood had the lowest levels of energy in their mitochondria, the parts of cells that produce energy. Since quaternary ammonium compounds do not penetrate the skin or intestine well, researchers thought that inhalation of quaternary ammonium compounds could explain why these chemicals appeared in human blood.

Link to human exposure

The new study reveals that when mice inhale doses of quaternary ammonium compounds that damage their lungs, The amount of these chemicals that reaches your blood is similar to that found in human blood.. This suggests that inhalation of these chemicals – such as those present in aerosol cleaners – could be one of the ways they enter the human body.

“We have to ask ourselves if we really want to have all these disinfectant sprays based on quaternary ammonium compounds in the environmentgiven its proven pulmonary toxicity in mice,” highlighted Cortopassi. The study was funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health.