With spring right around the corner, it’s the perfect time to rid your home of any potentially toxic domestic traps. Drs. Mehmet Oz and Michael Roizen, of the YOU series of books, have your detox plan for spring. Reduce your risk of illness and improve your quality of life with these tips.

1. Use products that protect your pillows and mattresses from dust mites. Their excrement—which totals 2 pounds every two years in pillows—can lead directly to asthma. You can obtain 1-micron filter sheets and pillowcases that let the air in but keep the micro dust of the animals out. Or just change your pillows.
2. Get a do-it-yourself home-testing kit, and check your basement for radon and mold this week. Both have proven dangers, and you’ll never know unless you look.
3. Leave your shoes at the front door. You track in toxins like lawn-care pesticides, which can get trapped in the carpet and contaminate children. It’s an old practice and it works.
   
4. Don’t microwave plastic; you’ll get small amounts of the phthalates in your food when you heat it. Cover food with ceramic, glass, paper towels or wax paper instead.