A COUNTRY doctor visiting a farmhouse in Norfolk 45 years ago with rats in the yard, cats in the kitchen and dogs all over the house might expect to find many diseases among the children, but asthma would not have been one of them.

Today, if he visits a trim house in the same village, with floors so clean that someone could eat off them, there is a very good chance that the call will be to see a child who is wheezing. One in seven children between the ages of 2 and 15 in Britain and one in 25 adults suffers from asthma.

As the cult of cleanliness has spread, so asthma has increased. Between 1982 and 1992, just about when the 20th-century reverence for hygiene was beginning to become the hallmark of good housekeeping and sound parenting, the incidence of asthma in children increased threefold.

Between 1990 and 1998 the number of children in Leicester with asthma doubled. A map of Europe shows that as urbanisation has spread eastwards and southwards from the north, so asthma has followed.

The assumption is that part of this change in the prevalence of asthma is because houses are so clean and children lack exposure to animals, so their immune systems are not primed with the necessary antigens in early life.

The recent research carried out by doctors from the University of Bristol adds a fascinating slant to these figures. They have indicated a clear connection between breathing problems in children and the use of household cleaners.

It is presumably a possibility that the known relationship between hyper-cleanliness and asthma is not only related to the child’s lack of exposure to antigens in their early years, but also to their exposure to carpet cleaners, window cleaners, aerosols, pesticides, insecticides, bleach and the contents of all the other bottles, jars and sprays that are kept beneath the kitchen sink.

Furthermore the modern child, instead of playing in some filthy yard behind the cottage or farmhouse with the family pets, now spends far more time indoors breathing in the cleansing chemicals that keep their immaculate house so clean.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• What makes the perfect mum?
• To keep me stress-free, no more awareness days, please
• What do lottery winners buy?