Is Your Home a Healthy Home?

Is your home a healthy home?

Here are some interesting facts about the personal care and household cleaning products we have always used in our homes. If we thought about them at all, we probably assumed that they were safe for us. I know I did. However that is not the case for many of those products. It turns out that the government has only limited power to regulate manufacturers, or require testing of their products. For example:

· If a product kills 50% or less of the lab animals used for testing through ingestion or inhalation, it can still receive the federal regulatory designation of “non-toxic.” *

· Only approximately 30% of the 17,000 chemicals that appear in common household products have been adequately tested for their negative effects on our health. Less than 10% of those have been tested for their effect on the nervous system; and nearly nothing is known about the combined effects of these chemicals when taken into our bodies by inhalation or physical contact. **

· There are no laws that require manufacturers to list the exact ingredients on the package label. This is primarily due to corporate need to prevent anyone from copying their formulas. ***

The definition of “personal care product” as used below refers to just about anything we use to clean our bodies or make ourselves look or smell good. The closest thing to a regulatory agency for the personal care industry is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and their power is extremely limited. Here are some unsettling facts regarding personal care products:

· The FDA cannot regulate a personal care product until after it is released into the marketplace.

· The FDA cannot require companies to do safety testing on their personal care products before they are sold to the public.

· The FDA cannot require recalls of harmful personal care products from the marketplace. ****

· The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) analyzed 2,983 chemicals used in personal care products. The results were as follows:

o 884 of the chemicals were toxic

o 314 caused biological mutation

o 218 caused reproductive complications

o 778 caused acute toxicity

o 148 caused tumors

o 376 caused skin and eye irritations *****

Here is a 10 minute video from the Canadian Broadcasting Association contains some interesting information dramatizing our naiveté of the toxins in our homes and the damage they can cause: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upxVNgjER0s

Why am I telling you about these issues? For ourselves and for our children we need to think about the products that we use to clean our homes and our bodies. It is not enough for us to know that there are problems; we also need to know that there are solutions. For example there is an Idaho based company that makes more than 300 products that are safe for you and safe for our environment. Check them out here.

Whether you make your own products, or buy expensive products from your local health foods store, or opt for the simple choice we offer you, please seriously consider converting your home to products made with natural ingredients that are not harmful to you or to the environment and that really do what you want them to do. There are many websites devoted to this subject that you can check out. There are also many sites with recipes and instructions for making your own household products. A word of warning though, some of those recipes contain some very dangerous chemicals and you will need protective gear to make them up. One chemical commonly used in making soap is lye. This is a very dangerous chemical that can cause blindness and severe burns. I have chosen to let a company with a great reputation for safety, do the formulating and I enjoy knowing that I am using products that are safe and will not harm me or my family. As we grow ever more mindful of the world around us and how different things can affect us, it is nice to know that we have the ability and resources to make choices for ourselves that will help our planet and our families and friends!

*Doris Rapp, Is This Your Child’s World?

**World Resources Institute, The 1994 Information Please Environmental Almanac

***Debra Lynn Dadd, Home Safe Home (Tarcher-Putnam, 1997)

****United States Food and Drug Administration, FDA Authority Over Cosmetics (Office of Cosmetics Fact Sheet, 1995)

*****Judith Berns, “The Cosmetic Cover-up,” Human Ecologist 43 (Fall 1989)

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