4 ms·

Why do you believe ammonia/chemical based cleaners are not harmful when inhaled from normal day to day use? I say that as someone who majored in human bio and

• drewbuschhorn 9y ago
  I'd assume because our bodies have a pretty big buffer store to avoid pH effects, and most ammonia based derivatives would be concentrated in the external mucus membranes not the lungs, at least that's most inhaled acids work, I'm not really a bases guy. I mean if you're inhaling anything with benzene rings on a regular basis, you should really wear a mask and so not do that, but inhaling 2x your daily dose of surfactant once a week is probably fine for the home cleaner. Skip the BBQ that weekend and it probably balances out.
• refurb 9y ago
  Ammonia is such a strong irritant you'd never be able to inhale enough (willingly) to cause systemic toxicity. We also have a lot of info around the effects of ammonia. The body is very good at eliminating it. Heck, doctor's use ammonium chloride to acidify a patients urine. Could you inhale enough to irritate your lungs? Sure. But it's not going to cancer or something.
  • st26 9y ago
    Could you inhale enough to irritate your lungs? Sure. But it's not going to cancer or something. I think we're assuming here that it's something like asbestos lung cancer. Asbestos is not a poison, just an irritant. Presumably nobody is getting poisoned here; chronic irritation is triggering problems.
    • refurb 9y ago
      Asbestos is more than an irritant. The toxicity and resulting cancer is due to the small particle size and the iron atoms in the asbestos that catalyze the formation of reactive oxygen species that damage the cell and can cause mutations. I guess my point is that there is no mechanism by which ammonia could cause something like this. It's a simple molecule that pretty much causes irritation due to it's alkaline properties.
      • st26 9y ago
        Thanks, I hadn't heard they finally figured out why/how asbestos was causing cancer.
      • nonbel 9y ago
        If you believe cancer is due to the accumulation of mutations, and the ammonia/whatever is killing cells (thus increasing the turnover), then it will increase the chances of cancer simply because there are more divisions in the tissue. This follows pretty simply from the idea that cancer is caused by accumulating mutations (which you seem to believe), so why do you say "no mechanism"?
        • refurb 9y ago
          The reason is because ammonia has been around a long time, lots of studies of that its effect on biological systems have been done and it naturally occurs in human blood albeit at low concentrations. Your point about higher turnover of cells aligns with the idea of more cell division and thus higher chance of mutation. However, just because a chemical causes irritation doesn't mean it increases cell turnover. Also, turnover alone doesn't necessarily drive mutations and scientists don't really know why. Retinol A, rapidly increase skin cell turnover and is used to treat acne, but I've never heard of a mutation risk associated with it.
          • nonbel 9y ago
            > "Retinol A, rapidly increase skin cell turnover but I've never heard of a mutation risk associated with it." Interesting, do you have a source you like for this? This would indicate major problems with that model.
• briandear 9y ago
  “Can only imagine..” Imagine all you want, but imagining isn’t data.
  • sizzle 9y ago
    Yes and correlation =/ causation despite how my brain rationalizes things. If we are talking scientific method, then my hypothesis is that inhaling ammonia frequently will result in adverse health effects. Feel free to test this out and prove otherwise.