I don’t know about you but the continual onslaught of news about our myriad exposures to toxins can make me feel kind of crazy. Last week it was carcinogenic cellphones. Two months ago it was hormone disruptors in supposedly safe BPA-free plastic… I sometimes feel that the only solution is to isolate my family in a hermetically sealed box, or at least throw out everything we own and start over. Only those aren’t real solutions, are they?
Although exposure to toxins in the environment does pose risks to our health, small changes can make a big difference. Yes, it’s true! A few simple adjustments in our daily habits and choices can dramatically reduce exposure to toxins. This is especially true in our homes, which is where we spend the majority of our time and have the most control. Here are some tips to help you get started.
Leave Your Shoes at the Door
An astonishing 60% of house dust originates outdoors, and much of it is tracked in on our feet. Studies have shown that house dust contains many hazardous chemicals including lead, arsenic & even DDT, a pesticide which was banned in 1972. Because smaller particles of dust tend to stay attached to your shoes, you can take a big bite out of your home’s toxic dust burden simply by leaving your shoes at the door.
Keep It Clean
Even if we could stop all outdoor dust at the door, we’d still have to deal with the dust that originates inside. This dust also contains hazardous substances, including brominated flame retardants (BFRs), which are found in a wide variety of household goods including furniture and electronics. Healthy Child, Healthy World recommends regular dusting and vacuuming (preferably with a HEPA filter) to capture BFRs. Of course, regular cleaning also helps pick up other unwanted and potentially unhealthy dust particles, including pollen and dust mites that are a trigger for allergy and asthma sufferers.
Use Your Kitchen & Bath Fans
Our kitchen and bath fans aren’t there just to get rid of bad smells. Their primary job is to evacuate hazardous emissions such as carbon monoxide and sulfur oxide, which are released by all combustion appliances, and water vapor, which we produce when we cook, shower, etc. Water vapor sounds harmless but especially in a small, enclosed space like a bathroom it can be a breeding ground for mold. We can mitigate these hazards simply by using our fans (just make sure they are vented to the outside–not, say, to the inside of your attic, in which case they’re simply transferring emissions from one part of your house to another). To learn more check out the Homeowner’s Guide to Ventilation, published by the New York Energy Research and Development Authority.
Pass on Pesticides & Herbicides
One of the first commitments I made when I embarked on my own green living journey was to stop using pesticides and herbicides on my lawn: that was four years ago and I’ve never looked back. Now I’m working on eliminating all pesticides from my home (I still use pesticides to kill the mice that find their way into my basement through my field stone foundation every winter). It is true that some pests, such as mice and termites, which are hazardous to your health and/or damaging to your home, may need to be treated with pesticides. But in many cases there are equally effective, safer alternatives. Beyond Pesticides is an excellent resource if you are ready to take this step. My favorite section of their site is their Alternatives Fact Sheets, which offer recommendations for effective, least toxic control for a wide range of pests.
You Are What You Eat
Last but not least, our food choices have a profound impact on our exposure to toxins. There are great tools and resources our there to help us make safer choices and–here’s the good news–studies show that these choices do make a difference. Choosing organic produce, for example, has been shown to lower the levels of pesticides in our bodies. Here is where I’d recommend you start:
- Avoid produce with high residues of pesticides. This is easier than it sounds thanks to the Environmental Working Group, which every year publishes a list of the “Dirty Dozen” fruits and vegetables with the highest residues of pesticides and the “Clean Fifteen” fruits and vegetables with the lowest residues.
- Avoid food packaged in plastic that has been shown to leach potentially unsafe compounds. Plastic containers have a number on the bottom inside a triangular recycling symbol. 2, 4 & 5 are widely recognized to be safe. There are concerns about the safety of 1, 3, 6 & 7. To learn more Healthy Child, Healthy World has published a plastic safety guide.
- Choose meat and dairy products from animals that have not been treated with growth hormones or antibiotics. Look for USDA certified organic, or products that you can be reasonably certain are hormone and antibiotic free (either because they are labeled or because you buy from a trusted source).
- Limit your consumption of canned food, which almost always contains BPA in its liners. Choose frozen instead, or look for food packaged in glass or aseptic cartons. There are also a few companies offering BPA-free cans (such as Eden).
Given the ubiquity of potentially harmful substances in our environment, it can sometimes feel impossible to protect yourself. But please don’t despair! The small steps that we take over time add up. And every step we take makes a difference.
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I was recently been invited to provide green parenting workshops for Warmlines. Based in Newton, Warmlines provides educational programs and consulting services for parents and educators related to the health, wellness and education of children. I drafted the following green parenting tips for Warmlines’s website, but also wanted to share them here. Enjoy!
What does “going green” have to do with parenting? A lot it turns out! Green living isn’t just good for the earth. It’s also good for our health and well-being. When we take steps to reduce our environmental impact, we are also creating a world that is better for our children and our children’s children. By parenting green we are promoting our children’s long-term health, conserving natural resources on which their future well-being depends, and modeling environmental stewardship. Here are some tips to help you get started:
1. Feed Your Children Real Food. Teaching our children to eat right is one of the most challenging aspects of parenting, but it is also one of the most important. We can’t control what our kids will eat. But we can consistently offer them a variety of high-quality, whole foods; we can limit their consumption of junk food; and we can minimize their exposure to pesticides and other chemicals in food. With patience and persistence we can instill healthy eating habits in our children.
2. Connect with Nature. Whether it’s in your own backyard or in a local conservation area, get outside and starting exploring the natural world with your kids. Help them to notice the plants, trees and wildlife around them. Teach them that all living things are interconnected, that, we too, are a part of nature, and that it is in our interest to protect and preserve natural resources.
3. Use Your Own Two Feet. We’ve gotten so used to driving, that we often do so when it would be easier and more enjoyable to bike or walk—not to mention cheaper and healthier! Depending on how old your kids are, they can walk or bike with you, or ride in a stroller or carriage. My kids and I walk 20 minutes to school many days of the week, and I am not exaggerating when I say that it’s one of the most enjoyable parts of our day.
4. Waste not, Want Not. Reduce, reuse, recycle are quintessential green practices with which kids often strongly identify. Reusing and recycling are especially great ways to foster environmental awareness in kids; even at age three, children can begin to help with recycling. Once recycling is well established, consider introducing composting.
5. Practice Conscious Consumption. There’s a reason why “reduce” is the 1st of the 3Rs. The less we buy, the less we consume, the less trash we generate. Unfortunately, reducing consumption is easier said than done. It’s our job as parents to put reasonable limits on our children’s wants and to help them understand that buying more stuff isn’t what life is all about. We can also shop mindfully, seeking out locally made and highly durable products, and visiting second hand stores.
6. Better Safe than Sorry. Many products we use in our homes, including household cleaners, cosmetics and lawn care products contain synthetic chemicals. While the majority of these are considered safe, many have not been adequately tested for long-term health impacts. The precautionary principle suggests that we give preference to safe, non-toxic products whenever possible. To learn more about how to avoid toxins in consumer products visit The Environmental Working Group and Healthy Child, Healthy World.
7. Get Involved. Join your school’s green team. Get involved in your local farm. Participate in an outdoor clean-up project. By getting involved in efforts to green your community, you are teaching your kids that many other people share commitment to the environment, and that they have the power to effect broader change.
8. Be the Change. Model the values you are trying to instill in your children, but be honest too. It isn’t always easy being green. Share your struggles with your kids and invite their input. Keep working at it as a family. Together you can make changes that will help create a greener & healthier home, and a better world.
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That time of year has come again: school supply shopping. My daughter and I had plenty of company doing our back to school shopping this afternoon. It seemed as if everyone in my city had descended on Staples!
So there we were along with dozens of others picking out markers, pencils, glue and folders and I found myself wondering: Are these products safe? And how would I know?
A little research confirmed my suspicions that back-to-school supplies–like many consumer goods–are chock full of industrial compounds. Products like markers, crayons, notebooks and lunchboxes contain chemicals that have been associated with a range of diseases including allergies, asthma, cancer and behavioral disorders.
Chemical reform legislation that is making its way through Congress will hopefully change this, and put the burden on industry to prove that chemicals are safe before they go to market, as well as pull those suspected or known to be hazardous.
But in the meantime, I return to my original question: how are we to know which markers, notebooks, and lunchboxes are safe?
Fortunately, there are some great resources we can turn to for help answering this question:
The Environmental Working Group has put together a series of Healthy Home Tips to help families choose safe, non-toxic products. Their Back to School Guide offers great tips for how to keep toxins out of your kids’ schools supplies.
The Center for Health, Environment and Justice has also created a guide focused on avoiding PVC. PVC is one of the most toxic plastics and yet is found in a wide variety of consumer goods, including those designed for children. Examples include backpacks, lunchboxes, and three ring binder. You can download CHEJ’s guide by clicking here and find out more about PVC by clicking here.
But what about school lunches? Plastics, pesticides, additives in processed food–these can also expose our kids to unhealthy chemicals. Fortunately, Healthy Child, Healthy World has created a handy pocket guide to help you make safer food & food storage choices.
Happy & healthy shopping!
Post updated August 28, 2011
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It seems that everywhere we go our kids are being tempted by–even bombarded with–opportunities to consume excessive amounts of sweeteners, salt and bad fats (partially hydrogenated or hydrogenated oil). Unfortunately sweeteners, salt and bad fat aren’t the only things we need to watch out for in junk food. There are a host of chemicals added to processed food–either to extend shelf life, to “enhance” flavor or to make the food more visually appealing–that make them even more unhealthy. For example, several chemical food dyes have been linked to hyperactivity in children.
The best way to reduce your intake of chemical additives is to eat as much whole food as possible, such as fruits, vegetables and whole grains. And make sure you read the ingredient lists of all processed food you buy–the shorter the list, and the more ingredients you recognize on it, the better. Finally, check out the report, “Chem Cuisine,” published by the Center for Science in the Public Interest and try to avoid additives considered to be unsafe.
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You’ve transitioned to BPA-free baby bottles and water bottles. But did you know that canned food liners also contain BPA? Last year, Globe and Mail tests of canned food revealed disconcerting results: BPA concentrations in tomato sauce were 18.2 parts per billion, 6.2 ppb in kid’s ravoli, and 14.1 ppb in tomato juice. These numbers may not seem high, but scientists are concerned that concentrations of even 1/2 part per trillion may be enough for this estrogen-like chemical to disrupt our endocrine system–the effects of which are not pretty. BPA exposure has been linked to many different diseases including breast cancer, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease (to name just a few). And scientists continue to discover more health impacts all the time .
What is a consumer to do? As a green lifestyle consultant my advice (and my own practice) is to choose fresh, dried, and frozen food over canned food (for example, I soak my own beans whenever I can). When I do need to buy preserved food, I either choose canned food from Eden Foods and Trader Joes, which use BPA-free can liners or I choose food preserved in glass jars (although food preserved in glass jars may also be tainted with BPA that has migrated from their metal lids, albeit at much lower levels).
Clearly we consumers will not be able to solve this problem by simply “voting with our pocketbooks”–although this is certainly an important and powerful tool. We need our government to at the very least regulate BPA, and ideally ban it (which Japan has done) rather than continue to regurgitate industry greenwashing (click here to read the FDA’s position on BPA).
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If you aren’t already using mineral sunscreens, you might want to consider making the switch this summer season. Mineral sunscreens protect from the sun by physically blocking UV rays from reaching your skin (hence the white tint that they leave on your skin). Chemical sunscreens, on the other hand, work by chemically absorbing UV rays once they reach your skin. Research has shown that several of these chemicals research have estrogenic effects, potentially disrupting users’ hormone systems. Chemical sunscreens also frequently contain a host of other potentially harmful ingredients, including parabens, phthalate laden chemical fragrances, and urea preservatives.
The Green Guide’s Sunscreen Buyers Guide offers more information about the problems with chemical sunscreens as well as product recommendations for mineral sunscreen (I personally use Alba Botanica Fragrance-Free Mineral Sunscreen, available at Whole Foods). Maybe the white tint that mineral sunscreens leave on your skin isn’t so bad after all…
Another good resource is the Environmental Working Group’s 2009 Safe Sunscreen Guide (updated 7/13/09).
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Do you ever think about how much trash is generated by the ziploc baggies and poland spring waters we send our children to school with each day? There are greener, healthier alternatives. Instead of plastic baggies, use washable, plastic containers. According to The Green Guide, any plastic container with the numbers 2, 4, or 5 on the bottom is safe to use for food. Instead of disposable water bottles, use sturdy reusable ones, like the aluminum Sigg, the Stainless Steel Klean Kanteen, or a safe, reusable plastic bottle (look for a bottle with the numbers 2, 4, or 5 on the bottom; if the bottle has a 7 on it, make sure it is also labeled BPA-free). Reusable bags is a fantastic website that sells lots of safe, reusable lunch systems and water bottles.
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Buying organic seems like a no-brainer: who wants to eat food grown with potentially harmful synthetic chemicals? But organic food sometimes isn’t available or affordable. When organic isn’t an option, look for fruits and vegetables that have low pesticide levels, like bananas, peas and corn, and avoid those that don’t, like apples, peppers and grapes.
Hungry for more? Check out Food News, the Environmental Working Group’s smart produce shopping guide.
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If you’ve been following BPA stories (for example: this one and this one), you have probably stopped drinking and eating out of polycarbonate plastic. Unfortunately, polycarbonate isn’t the only plastic that has been shown to leach potentially harmful chemicals into food and drinks. When buying reusable plastic containers, look for those labeled with the numbers 2, 4 or a 5 on the bottom. Plastic labeled with a 1 is considered safe for single-use only. Check out the green guide for more information on plastic safety.
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Leave Your Shoes at the Door
Pass on Pesticides & Herbicides
I thought that you might be interested in this link from Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families. It lists information about some school supplies, including paint.
http://www.saferchemicals.org/resources/chemicals/heavy_metal.html
Comment by Katherine Friedrich — February 1, 2011 @ 10:43 am