Make Up Danger for Pregnant Women December 19, 2008

This article talks about France intending to label cosmetics according to their safety for pregnant women. 

This is in response to a study published by Imperial College London. The study revealed that pregnant women who experienced higher than normal hairspray exposure had double the likelihood of giving birth to babies with hypospadias, which is a reproductive development condition.

For more on this topic check out the link:

http://greenqueen.mionegroup.com/en/news;jsessionid=130039796241399C33B3D227339E3004

‘Hey Ya’ Charlie Brown Style December 18, 2008

YouTube – Charlie Brown Christmas

Green Cleaning Tip – Baking Soda Cleans Stained Coffee Mugs June 3, 2008

My green cleaning tip for the week is using baking soda to clean stained coffee mugs.

In my home we drink a lot of English tea in white mugs.  Our mugs become stained from the tea.  Before I learned about the danger of toxins in my cleaning products I used to bleach my mugs.  Yuck!!!  Not anymore.

Now I clean my mugs with baking soda and water.  The water is key here.  It activates the baking soda.  Baking soda is alkaline and tea and coffee are acid.  Therefore, when you put just a 1/4 of a teaspoon to 1/2 a teaspoon of baking soda in a stained coffee mug and add water the alkaline baking soda begins to neutralize the acids in the coffee or tea stain and the voila the stain melts off of the mug and you are left with sparkling white, yellow or what ever color mug you have.

I accidently discovered this trick when I was brushing my teeth with baking soda to whiten them.  I put some baking soda into a coffee mug.  I put my wet toothbrush into the baking soda in the mug.  When the water form the toothbrush dripped into the baking soda I noticed the tea dissolve into the water baking soda mixture.

There truly are no mistakes.

To remove coffee from clothing try applying peroxide to the stain before you wash the clothing.

Some Children’s Bath Products Hazardous, Groups Say March 22, 2007

Reprinted. By Carlene Olsen, Cox News Service/New York Times News Service

Dallas Morning News
February 9, 2007

WASHINGTON – Some children’s bath products contain a suspected cancer-causing chemical in amounts that reach or exceed recommended limits, environmental groups charged Thursday.

Johnson and Johnson, Disney, Kimberly-Clark, and Gerber are among the makers of 15 children’s products that contain 1,4-dioxane, David Steinman, head of the environmental publishing company Freedom Press, said at a news conference.

The petroleum-derived chemical is classified by the Environmental Protection Agency as a probable human carcinogen, and the National Toxicology Program considers it a known animal carcinogen, according to the Environmental Working Group, which also took part in the news conference.

In 2000, the Food and Drug Administration recommended that cosmetic companies limit the concentration of 1,4-dioxane in products to 10 parts per million. But the FDA does not regulate cosmetics, leaving companies to monitor the safety of their products on a voluntary basis.

Steinman said a study he commissioned from the West Coast Analytical Service lab in Santa Fe Springs, Calif., showed that Hello Kitty Bubble Bath, made by Kid Care, contained 12.3 ppm of 1,4-dioxane. Johnson’s Kids Shampoo Watermelon Explosion, made by Johnson and Johnson, contained the maximum recommended level of 10 ppm, he said.

In addition, two adult shampoos tested by the lab found twice the recommended level of the chemical, he said.

The Environmental Working Group, meanwhile, said it had conducted a computerized assessment of ingredients in 15,000 cosmetics and other personal care products which shows that 1,4-dioxane may be present in 57 percent of all baby soaps.

Iris Grossman, director of communications at Johnson and Johnson, said, “It’s important to stress that all our products are within the FDA limits.”

The chemical is typically a manufacturing by-product, which companies are not required to list on labels along with ingredients, said Grossman. “And our suppliers guarantee that (levels) are within the FDA limit,” she said.

At the news conference, medical experts said that bath products could be linked to other children’s health problems.

Research suggests a link between ingredients in common bath products and early puberty development in children, said Devra(cq) Davis, director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.

Children’s fast-paced growth rate and porous skin increases their susceptibility to toxins that can enter the bloodstream through the skin’s surface, Davis said.

Jeanne Rizzo, executive director of the Breast Cancer Fund, said that “an increased risk of breast cancer is linked to toxic exposure that occurs in the most vulnerable period of our lives.”

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HEALTH: Organic Diets Keep Kids Pesticide Free March 14, 2007

If you have children this is a must read. It is reprinted from The Washington Times.9/03/2006 at http://washtimes.com/upi/20060222-044543-1356r.htm

By CHRISTINE DELL’AMORE, UPI Consumer Health Correspondent, 22 Feb 06 Children who switched their diets for only a few days to organic foods dramatically and immediately lowered the amount of toxic pesticides in their bodies, researchers report. Lead author Chensheng Lu of Emory University found that when kids eat organic foods, pesticides in their body plummet to undetectable levels — even when following the diet for only five days. “An organic diet does provide protective measures for pesticide exposure in kids,” said Lu, who presented his research at a panel at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in St. Louis. His study appeared in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. Lu designed a novel intervention study by substituting organic foods into the diets of 23 elementary school children in the Seattle area. All the kids, who were aged 3 to 11, had metabolites — or evidence of pesticides — in their urine at the study’s start. But as soon as they began eating organic foods, the concentration of metabolites dropped to essentially zero. Once they returned to their conventional diet, the pesticides levels bounced back up. Lu said he is confident that the pesticide reductions can be attributed to the kids’ diet, because the particular class of pesticides studied, called organophosphorus pesticides, or OPs, are not found in households. The kids ingested these pesticides from eating conventional foods, and not from playing in grass treated with chemicals, for example. Lu and Fenske claim the health risks to children are still uncertain, although Lu points out that there’s no getting around the fact a pesticide is a neurotoxin. Since the chemicals disrupt enzymes in the brain which govern communication, exposure to pesticides could damage a child’s brain. These chemicals are developed, after all, to kill bugs by paralyzing or over-exciting their neurological systems. “In terms of the impact of these low levels of chemicals on a regular basis in a developing organism — and that’s what a child’s neurological system is — this is extremely important that we try to understand this,” Fenske said. The Environmental Protection Agency warns children may be sensitive to pesticides because their excretory systems are not developed enough to excrete pesticides, and that in relation to their body weight, kids eat and drink more than adults. Currently, researchers are studying whether conditions like attention deficit disorder, lowered IQs, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease can be linked to early exposure to pesticides. Children are most vulnerable to pesticides from formation of the fetus up to 2 years of age. Charles Benbrook, the chief scientist of The Organic Center, a Rhode Island-based nonprofit encouraging the widespread adoption of organic foods and processes, says there’s enough consensus to act now to rid agriculture of pesticides. He mentioned the work of Robin Whyatt at Columbia University with pregnant women in New York. Whyatt found that birth weight and birth length is lower in children whose mothers were exposed to pesticides. Benbrook said he was amazed at how fast and how significantly the urinary metabolites fell in Lu’s study participants. Full article at http://washtimes.com/upi/20060222-044543-1356r.htm

 

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Organic Air Purifiers – Cheap and Natural Filters that Improve Indoor Air Quality February 26, 2007

Tip! Bananas: Non-organic bananas from Central and South America are produced using benomyl (linked to birth defects) and chloropyrifos (neurotoxin).

NATURAL AIR FILTERS

Plants are the original organic air purifiers! In our constant societal quest for newer, faster, and better technologies we seem to often overlook time-tested and common sense solutions to some of our basic needs. In our fast paced society we are more likely to shell out hundreds of dollars on a quick fix to our problems that to step back and examine each situation in a broader context.

The equatorial rainforests of our planet are the living and organic air filtration systems for our Earth’s atmosphere. Without this delicate biological air purification system our global ecological systems would slowly deteriorate over time. You can harness the same natural benefits of biological air filtration on a much smaller scale by introducing plants into your indoor living space.

 

INDOOR AIR POLLUTION RISKS

With the rise in the amount of time most people now spend within indoor air environments it has become even more important to understand the threats and risks of prolonged exposure to indoor air pollution. Our indoor environments are littered with chemicals, compounds, and poisons that are continuously breaking down at a chemical level and “off-gassing” their irritants and by-products into the air we breathe.

Examples of common indoor pollutants include cigarette smoke, building materials, floor coverings, paints, adhesives and other sources. The situation becomes worse in office buildings with lots of other sources of pollutants. Tools such as printers, fax machines, photocopiers, paper and pressboard furniture emit different types of harmful contaminants. Those include ammonia, benzene, xylene, toluene, trichloroethylene, formaldehyde, etc. Regular exposure these contaminants leads to different types of disorders such as breathing problems, headaches, burning eyes and throat, lethargy and other allergy-like symptoms.

Tip! Join a food cooperative. A food co-op is kind of a buyers club for affordable, fresh, local organic and natural products.

PLANTS CAN HELP

The most natural way to fight indoor air pollution is to use plants. Besides brightening up a room, they have real benefits in improving the indoor air quality. They absorb various toxic emissions from the synthetic materials such as carpeting, paint and furniture. As a result, we can have cleaner and more pure air to breathe inside our homes or offices. NASA scientists have found out that indoor plants can extract volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) from the air. They contain toxic vapors such as ammonia, benzene, xylene, toluene, trichloroethylene, formaldehyde, etc. Plants break down the chemicals after absorbing them into their leaves. They absorb the chemicals through stomata, the microscopic openings in the leaves. Then the toxins reach the root zone where the root microbes of the plants biodegrade the pollutants. The plants use these biodegraded pollutants as food.

Tip! Strawberries: 500 pounds of pesticide an acre is sprayed on non-organic strawberries.

However, you need to remember that some houseplants can be poisonous to your health. Therefore, you need to be very careful while choosing plants for your home or office. Read more on which plants are good organic air purifiers.

AIR FILTRATION SYSTEMS CAN SUPPLEMENT PLANTS

Depending on the amount of indoor air space you have the number of plants required to filter your air may be impractical and take up too much of your living space. This is where it may make sense to research and find a decent air purification system that suits your indoor environment and help your plants with some of the air filtration duties. There are many types, styles and models to choose from so we encourage you to do your research and compare them carefully.

Tip! Failing to plan – Planning is crucial to a successful organic veggie garden. You need to consider the aspect of your plot/s.

About the Author S.A. Smith is a freelance writer, contributor, and editor of the Air Purifiers Review information portal.

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