Bathroom as one of the most important parts of the house, often becomes a source of danger. A room covered with a tile can undermine your health in 3 ways: here you can get physical trauma, chemical poisoning or even a chronic illness.
But this is not the reason to give up hygiene. Making a room less “harmful” isn’t so difficult.
Physical Hazard
Typically, the bathroom floor is tiled. When water hits, it turns into a skating rink. By tradition, the bath itself is enameled. This coating looks very impressive, it doesn’t wear off for 30 years and all these years remains extremely slippery (even if it’s dry).
All this creates ideal conditions for falling and getting numerous injuries, fractures and tremors. Especially slippery surfaces are dangerous for:
- Children under 5 years. First, babies are still very poorly controlling the balance, and secondly, they don’t yet have the instinct of self-preservation, and when falling, they won’t even try to grab hold of anything;
- Women after 50-55 years. Age and hormonal changes in the female body, peculiar to this period, make the bones extremely fragile. After a half-century anniversary, it’s easy to get a broken leg even with a slight impact.
What to do?
- To make the bath and the floor in it more stable, you need special rugs, which can be placed not only on the floor, but also in the bath itself. For this, there are rugs equipped with suckers, which firmly fix their position.
- Don’t like the rug? Then attach an anti-slip tape to the bottom of the tub. Just remember that these tapes must necessarily be on a rubberized basis, otherwise they will quickly settle in various microorganisms.
- To all of the above, you’ll definitely need grab bars and safety rails (we have a great guide to read). Such bars don’t violate the aesthetic impression of the bathroom and always at your disposal.
- In addition, bathing chairs are something that must be available in any bathroom, whose owners care about safety. Check our comprehensive guide on the best shower seats and transfer benches here.
The surface of the bath itself can be covered with acrylic. This will increase its durability and eliminate any slip. If you decide to change the floor in the bathroom, don’t be flattered by the cold beauty of the glazed tile, because this is the most “slippery type” of the coating. Give preference to frosted ceramic granite. It’s very difficult to lose balance on it even if it gets wet.
Chemical Hazard
Usually the bathroom is small in size and, as a rule, poorly ventilated. In this regard, the use and storage of chemical cleaning agents in it leads to the fact that the atmosphere of the room is quickly filled with harmful toxic substances. And they not only provoke poisoning, but they can accumulate in our body, leading to oncological and chronic diseases.
What to do?
- To minimize the damage to cleaning products, don’t buy something that has a strong smell, contains aggressive solvents, chlorine and ammonia.
- Make sure that the package of the product contains the inscription “non-toxic”. During cleaning, you can wear a respiratory mask, and then don’t forget to ventilate the room.
- By the way, the threat to health is created not only by means of cleaning, but also shower curtains, as well as air fresheners. Curtains made of PVC are especially dangerous. This compound releases into the air volatile organic substances, which adversely affect the nervous system and can cause cancer. It’s better to replace such curtains with more eco-friendly ones after reading our guide.
- As part of unnatural air fresheners and aerosols, there are substances that irritate lung tissue, provoke a headache and dull the sense of smell. Abandon them, replacing with flowers or scented candles.
Biological Hazard
In the bathroom, there are ideal conditions for the growth and development of fungus and mold. The lack of normal ventilation, old pipes and high humidity lead to the fact that you are having unexpected neighbors. There are more than 100,000 kinds of fungi that can exist in the bathroom.
Fungi and mold are terrible not only from an aesthetic point of view. The danger to our health isn’t the mold itself, but millions of spores that it spills out into the surrounding space.
We inhale them with air – so they find themselves in the respiratory and circulatory system. A healthy immune system successfully resists them. If immunity is weakened, then black mold can cause bronchial asthma, allergic sinusitis, bronchopulmonary aspergillosis (often leads to death) and other diseases.
What to do?
The fungus must be removed. To eliminate the enemy completely, repair is needed, during which professionals will treat the premises with a special preparation.
If the repair isn’t included in your plans, treat the damaged surfaces with a hot strong solution of soda and washing powder (a spoonful of powder, a packet of soda to a bucket of water).
This composition creates an alkaline environment from which the fungus dies. Unfortunately, spores of fungi can hide deep under the tile, and after a while the mold will regenerate. To prevent this from happening, do the treatment every 1-2 months.
That’s it, take care of yourself and the health of your loved ones!