Freeing yourself from oil is a downright impossible task in modern America. You could put solar panels on your roof, bring tote bags to the grocery store, and drive an electric vehicle, but try as you might, your home would still be brimming with products derived from fossil fuels.
Roughly 9 out of every 10 things in a typical home have some kind of chemical basis in petroleum, according to John Warner, an inventor who co-founded the field of “green chemistry.” It’s easy to miss all these innocent-looking items, because they’re hiding in plain sight.
After World War II, a budding industry fueled by petroleum rapidly expanded — and the products hardly resembled crude oil. They were Tupperware containers, nylon stockings, and Tide laundry detergent. Chemical companies called these synthetic items “miracle” products that would revolutionize home living, promising comfort and convenience.
For oil companies, the home was a new frontier. In an alphabet-themed advertising campaign from Shell in 1956, “H” was for Home; the company pointed out that oil research helped with everything from quick-drying paints and no-polish floor tiles to weather-defying asphalt-shingled roofs.
People usually think that dependence on fossil fuels is about what we burn: the gasoline that makes cars hum, the gas flame beneath a pot of stew. But it’s also about the less obvious petrochemical products originally made from what’s left after gasoline and diesel are separated out. Even as clean energy takes off, oil majors are planning to pump more oil than ever, driven by demand for petrochemicals and plastic. As the International Energy Agency explained in 2023, “the steady pace of growth for petrochemicals will not relent.”
Take a tour of our model home to learn how fossil fuels have taken over our living spaces. It’s unsettling evidence that what Shell said in that ad 70 years ago still holds true: “In many ways, your home is a house that oil built.”
The Living Room
The cushy polyurethane foam that fills couches is made from two main ingredients typically derived from fossil fuels — polyols and isocyanates. Invented in Germany in 1937, polyurethane foam came to the United States in the 1950s, and it quickly spread from sofas to car seats. Couches are also often also wrapped in polyester, a fabric made from plastic (either from crude oil or PET bottles) that’s been extruded into tiny threads.
Just hope they don’t catch fire. “Most modern couches are basically blocks of gasoline,” the journalist Zoë Schlanger wrote during the Los Angeles fires in 2025. Polyurethane foam releases potentially deadly hydrogen-cyanide gas when it burns, and during those blazes, the smoke from smoldering homes was so toxic that firefighters had to stay back.
Early on, it became clear that fire safety was one of the major problems of filling homes with products made of hydrocarbons. In the 1970s, manufacturers began adding flame retardants into furniture foam, children’s pajamas, and other items to slow ignition. But those flame retardants caused a health hazard as they crept into house dust and into our bodies, raising risks of cancer and exposing us to endocrine disruptors.
Vinyl isn’t just for record collectors; it might also be on your floor. Vinyl flooring took off in the 1950s and ’60s, overtaking linoleum flooring, and became wildly popular in the form of planks that mimicked wood floors but didn’t require all the maintenance. The problem is, vinyl can emit harmful compounds such as phthalates, which experts warn are linked to conditions like asthma and can harm reproductive health and child development.
Often called PVC, short for polyvinyl chloride, vinyl is made from processing natural gas or petroleum to make ethylene, then combining that with the element chlorine. The vinyl chloride used to produce PVC is a known human carcinogen, and workers who are exposed can develop liver cancer and other health problems.
The Bathroom
Until the 1960s, a typical bathroom featured an enameled cast iron bathtub surrounded by ceramic tiles. And then tubs made of fiberglass — glass strands embedded in a plastic resin — showed up. Ceramic tiles were soon replaced by plastic laminates, also derived from petrochemicals. In the 1980s, tubs made of acrylic — a type of plastic made from fossil fuels — became popular, and it remains the top tub material today.
After stepping into that tub, you’re basically bathing in petroleum. In the shower, you might use a loofah made from plastics (like polyethylene) and lather up with shampoo and soap containing ingredients fashioned from fossil fuels. Push aside a polyester shower curtain and step onto a plush microfiber bathmat, made from a blend of polyester and other plastics.
Oh, and don’t forget toothbrushes have plastic handles and nylon bristles, contact lenses are made of plastic polymers, and many types of makeup contain products derived from petroleum.
The Kitchen
Early refrigerators were so dangerous — cooling foods with toxic and flammable gases like ammonia, methyl chloride, and sulfur dioxide — some people had to put them in their backyards. (And let’s not even talk about those gas-powered fridges). Frigidaire, General Motors, and DuPont worked to find a safer method, and in 1930, the “miracle compound” Freon was introduced commercially. It was the name for chlorofluorocarbon refrigerants, called CFCs, another class of compound made from hydrocarbons. Almost half a century later, scientists discovered CFCs were destroying the ozone layer, and manufacturers in the 1990s switched to hydrofluorocarbons — which turned out to be a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Countries have been successfully phasing it out over the past decade.
Fridges are often filled with rigid polyurethane foam, lined with polystyrene plastic (a stiff resin made from liquid hydrocarbons), and painted with polyester coatings. Thermoplastic polyurethane, which is heat-resistant, is wrapped around wiring and tubing. And then there’s the food inside the fridge: Common food dyes are petroleum-based, along with many preservatives. Chemicals from your plastic-wrapped cheese and ground beef can also migrate into your dinner.
Laminate countertops weren’t originally invented for kitchens, but to replace the mineral mica in electrical insulation — that’s how the company Formica got its name. Formica shifted from making industrial products to household ones by 1930. Made of layers of synthetic resins fused with paper, laminate countertops were marketed as colorful, durable, and “cigarette-proof” once the company added a layer of metal foil. But, like other composite wood products, they expose people to formaldehyde, a known carcinogen. Enormously popular in midcentury kitchens, laminate countertops have faded in popularity, though they are still common in older homes. Today, the most common countertop material is engineered quartz — “engineered” with crushed quartz and resins such as polyester.
The Bedroom
Before they were filled with polyurethane foam — the same plush material inside couches — mattresses were stuffed with materials like horsehair and cotton or natural latex foam made from sap harvested from rubber trees. Polyurethane mattresses turned popular in the 1960s, offering improved comfort and cheaper prices. Memory foam, another type of polyurethane foam invented by a NASA scientist for airplane seats in the 1960s to improve crash protection, didn’t start taking off in mattresses and pillows until the 1990s. More than 50,000 mattresses are tossed in the United States every day — you’ve probably seen some dumped in parks and street corners — and because they are made from so many different materials, they can be difficult to recycle.
In 1938, DuPont introduced nylon, which it stressed was derived solely from air, water, and … coal. All natural! (It can be made from other fossil fuels today.) DuPont promised that nylon would have many “uses in the world of tomorrow,” including nylon yarn that could make “fine hosiery of extreme sheerness.” Polyester, also touted as a “miracle” fiber, didn’t take off until the 1960s, but it flooded the market so quickly that one anthropologist wrote it turned from “treasure to trash.”
Synthetic fibers like polyester and nylon make up nearly 70 percent of all textile production today. They break down very slowly in the environment, fragmenting into microplastics that can persist for generations. A single load of laundry filled with polyester clothes can release several million microfibers, making laundry one of the top sources of microplastic pollution.
Carpet has been made from many materials, including acrylic, nylon, and polyester. Synthetic carpets were sold as inexpensive, durable, and easy to maintain — phrases that should begin to sound familiar by now. The backing and adhesive used to attach the fiber are, of course, also often manufactured with crude oil and gas.
Carpets are also a surprising source of microplastic pollution in homes, though perhaps less surprising once you realize we’re stomping around on synthetic fibers all the time. Carpeted spaces have been found to have higher levels of microplastics in house dust and in the air compared to ones without. Microplastics slough off from all the various plastic things around us into the air we breathe, and have been found in almost every major organ. The long-term health consequences of this exposure are not yet well understood, but concerns are rising, especially as these particles can be laced with flame retardants and other classes of plastics additives that may be more harmful than the plastic itself.
The Structure
You’re not just sitting on, bathing in, and wearing products derived from oil and gas — your house is also coated in them. Take paint: The chemical company Rohm and Haas had churned out Plexiglas for airplanes and military vehicles during World War II, but it needed to find a new outlet for acrylics once the war ended. It landed on acrylic emulsion paints — containing solvents, additives, and fossil fuel-derived acrylic binders that hold the pigment together. Wallpaper is commonly coated in PVC; the walls of homes are filled with insulation, often made from fiberglass or petroleum-derived foams.
Shingles are typically fiberglass mats coated in asphalt (which contains bitumen, a petroleum byproduct). Vinyl siding, which emerged in the 1950s, promised homeowners easy maintenance, eliminating the need to paint or stain their wood siding. In 2002, it became the subject of the documentary Blue Vinyl, in which the filmmaker Judith Helfand followed the PVC supply chain all around the world after her parents put blue vinyl siding on their house. “Vinyl,” she says in the film, “turns out to be one of the most environmentally hazardous consumer products on Earth.” Her parents tore off the vinyl siding and replaced it with expensive reclaimed wood; then they moved into a retirement community with vinyl siding.
Fossil fuels became part of our homes, then they became part of us: The flame retardants in couches and the hormone-disrupting phthalates in vinyl floors have been found in most Americans’ blood and urine.
Beyond the health risks in homes, there are other reasons to stop using fossil fuels as the basis of everything. Petrochemical production is dangerous for the people who live near these operations, such as in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. The process of “steam cracking” — turning petroleum and natural gas liquids into ethylene, propylene, and other chemical building blocks — accounts for almost a fifth of the carbon dioxide emissions from the chemical industry. And scientists are still learning about the consequences of all these synthetic chemicals mixing in the environment.
“We don’t understand all the combined risks yet,” said Rebecca Altman, an environmental sociologist at Brown University who studies plastics and petrochemistry.
Those who have tried to rid their lives of plastic have failed, and they’re usually not even considering the broader array of petroleum products. “This is beyond the capacity of any one individual to buy their way out of,” Altman said. Similar to how living in most parts of the U.S. means you need a car to get around, the proliferation of petroleum products requires big-picture changes. Countries have been working to negotiate a global plastics treaty that could begin to address some of these problems, restricting plastic production and the use of hazardous chemicals.
Just because something is fashioned out of fossil fuels doesn’t mean it’s automatically dangerous for your health; everything, after all, is made of chemicals. What people should be calling for is not plastic-free or chemical-free, but hazardous-free, said John Warner, the co-founder of the field of green chemistry, which is focused on designing products that reduce or eliminate hazardous substances.
It’s certainly possible to build a modern world from different materials. “For every product made from petroleum, something can be made from a bio-based material that is renewable, low energy, nontoxic,” Warner said. The solution isn’t just making products out of natural materials, but making the chemical building blocks for safer substances. For example, the company Tidal Vision uses chitin from seashells to form chitosan, an ingredient in many industrial products that are traditionally made from petroleum, from water treatment and agriculture chemicals to replacements for flame retardants in textiles.
Regulations could also help keep people safe, but sometimes one class of chemicals gets banned, only for another class to come in that’s just as harmful, a phenomenon known as “regrettable substitution.” Warner thinks regulators should instead focus on making products pass tests for toxicity.
A world built on greener materials also requires chemists to consider toxics as part of their education. “The field of chemistry and material science never took this as part of our job,” he said. Only a small percentage of chemists are focused on making things nonhazardous. Warner offered a comparison: Imagine if a baker made beautiful cakes that just happened to kill someone every once in a while. Logically, we should expect every baker — and chemist — to make “cakes” that won’t poison us, not just some of them.
Photography and prop design by Jesse Nichols.
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