(PUPO)^ DANIELEHRENWORTH;^ (BUCKET)^ISTOCK.COM/AYDINMUTLUP.S. You can reach
me at [email protected].F
or a country with so much space
to roam, we sure spend a lot of
our lives indoors—up to 90 per
cent, according to recent studies. For a
large portion of that time, we stay safely
in our own homes—or at least we think
we’re safe there. It turns out that indoor
air can be up to five times more pol-
luted than outdoor air, especially if you
have an older furnace and poor venti-
lation, or live with a smoker. There’s
even a term for houses that shorten
our lifespan: “sick-building syndrome.”
My own home—a victim of many
amateur renos over its hundred-
plus years—is the definition of a
fixer-upper. When my kid started
crawling, then walking and then
scaling everything in sight, I
worried about crumbling
plaster and wobbly rail-
ings. I’ve now learned that
I should have been paying
as much attention to the
mould lurking in our bath-
room, the volatile com-
pounds released by our
deodorant and shampoo,and our kitchen sponges, which har-
bour 82 billion bacteria per cubic inch.
Those are some of the mildly panic-
inducing facts you’ll discover in this
issue’s cover story, “The 2020 Home
Safety Checklist” (page 28). The fea-
ture was written by Rebecca Philps, a
new contributor toReader’s Digest,
who interviewed the country’s leading
experts in public health and safety. She
has two young boys of her own, and
her research left her spooked. “This
story made me realize how terrible I
am at cleaning,” she told me.
Luckily for us, all is not lost.
Rebecca provides easy, proven tips
to make your home safer, health-
ier and ultimately happier.A Real Spring
Clean
reader’s digest
4 april 2020
EDITOR’S LETTER