Candles and Incense sources of Indoor Air Pollution

They look nice and they smell even better, but unfortunately most of them are made of toxic ingredients and when you light them, they diffuse all these toxic ingredients inside your house.

Harmful VOCs

Most commercial candles are full of toxic ingredients that many times they don’t even write on the package like Paraffin, Acetone, Trichlorofluoromethane, Carbon Disulfide, 2-Butanone, Trichloroethane, Trichloroethene, Carbon Tetrachloride, Tetrachloroethene, Chlorobenzene, Ethylbenzene, Styrene, Xylene, Phenol, Cresol and Cyclopentene. Most of them are VOCs and the majority of the AQI monitors with VOC sensor will recognize the toxins in the air. Now, when paraffin burned releases toluene and benzene which are highly toxic and carcinogens (these fumes are the same as when diesel is burnt).

“Safer options”

Candles made of 100% Pure beeswax. This kind of candles are unscented, but you can buy or add your personal scents like cinnamon or cloves which work perfect in winter seasons and give a warmness in the room especially when we don’t ventilate the room often due to cold outside. The scents have to be 100% pure organic essential oils.

There are also some claims that beeswax candles emit negative ions, which reduce positively charged ions in the air. The air inside the house has a higher concentration of positive ions which make dust/pollen/mold move around the house easier and the positive ions are created by the electrical devices or by friction or by the A/C systems.

Conclusions

Conventional or beeswax candles will reduce the amount of Oxygen O2 inside a room in case your house is tidy closed like in winter season and will increase the amount of Carbon Dioxide CO2, so I wouldn’t recommend burning candles. Find alternative and healthy options to aromatise a room like boiling water with cinnamon, cloves, orange and lemon peels.

On the next post I will conduct and experiment to see how much CO2 is produced by burning some candles inside a room.