Parents who use bleach to clean their homes may be exposing their children to greater risk of infections like tonsillitis and influenza.

The flu is 20 per cent more likely to strike children in homes where bleach was used to clean, while tonsillitis was 35 per cent more likely, a Belgian study reported.

“The high frequency of use of disinfecting cleaning products, caused by the erroneous belief, reinforced by advertising, that our homes should be free of microbes, makes the modest effects reported in our study of public health concern,” the research team said in a statement.

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The finding published published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine examined more than 9,000 schoolchildren between the ages of six and 12 in the Netherlands, Finland and Barcelona.

Parents completed a survey recording the number and frequency that their children had illnesses like the flu, tonsillitis and bronchitis in the previous 12 months.

They were then asked whether bleach was used to clean their homes at least once a week with the use being the most common in Spain (72 per cent of homes) versus Finland with the lowest (seven per cent).

Factoring in various influential factors like smoking in the home and levels of household mould, the researchers said overall the rate of single or recurrent infections was higher in children of bleach cleaned homes.

The authors said their results reflected the heightened of reoccurring bronchitis in school-age children reported in a Belgian cross-sectional study.

“Domestic cleaning involves exposure to a large variety of irritants and sensitising chemicals that are used following certain cleaning patterns,” the study said.

“Unfortunately, we did not have information on the use of other cleaning products and we cannot exclude the possibility that the observed results are due to the use of other irritants or to their combinations.”

—with AAP.