According to a study, cleaning agent bleach could lead to increased risk of flu, tonsillitis and other infections in children. According to researchers, there are millions of homes in the US that use bleach or products containing it on regular basis and this could adversely affect children.

According to the researchers, "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 study, led by Casas of the Center for Environment and Health at KU Leuven in Leuven, the Netherlands, studied over 9,000 children, aged 6 to 12, in the Netherlands, Spain and Finland.

Those parents, who used bleach at least once a week for cleaning purposes, their children were at higher risk of getting respiratory and other types of infections. It was particularly found by Casas and colleagues that there had been a 20% higher risk of the flu in these children at least once in the previous year, a 35% higher risk of repeated tonsillitis and an 18% higher risk for any repeated infection.

According to the study authors, the lining of children's lungs could be adversely affected by airborne components of bleach and similar products, leading to inflammation and infections could occur easily. A per the team, bleach could suppress the immune system in some way and could lead to increased risk.

The American Cleaning Institute (ACI) said in a statement that as there was no data presented on the children's actual exposure to bleach, the authors are just hypothesizing. As per the group, cleaning household surfaces with bleach can help protect people from bacterial infection.