Let’s not forget about phtalates. Read this article. I am always glad when these things make it into the mainstream news. Maybe little by little people will take notice and actually do the obvious, like, uh, if the house smells bad, get rid of the source of the odor. Wow. Major brain workout… I like the ground coffee beans trick. For me, this should be an easy one with all the fresh brewed coffee I drink every day.
To completely eradicate VOCs is a tough task, though it can be done. At least a drastic reduction is feasible when you are really motivated. Having children in the house can provide quite a powerful motivation.
Think of this: a child breathes 3 times as quickly as an adult - whatever contaminents are present in the air will be absorbed into the child’s lungs much more quickly than into an adult’s.
A child’s metabolic rate is also faster.
A child’s immune system is still in development until the age of 12.
Toxins are attracted to certain “materials” like fat. The brain, including the growing brain of a child, is very fatty, and contains a vast blood supply both of which are perfect vehicles for toxic chemicals.
Our family likes to recycle. It has become second nature to us. But not only do we try to re-use our own stuff, we also like to buy used things at garage sales, flea markets, vintage clothing stores. And sometimes a neighbor will offer us a piece of furniture too good to refuse. Why not accept a perfectly good leather couch, rather than having it go out on the curb?
So we lugged this beautiful black leather couch into our house, and for a moment I was confused. It smelled like someone had taken an air freshener can and emptied the whole thing right onto its seat.
Naturally, I didn’t say anything while the former owner who had helped us move it was still standing there, but afterwards I scratched my head. “What’s this awful smell?” I asked.
“Mommy, their whole house smells like that,” said my eight-year-old daughter. “It’s all right, don’t worry about it.”
She already felt it coming. I was going to object to this couch being in the house, or at least rip open all the windows and blow fans day and night. (Opening windows in Florida when it’s 90 degrees outside is NOT helping anything in the way of refreshing the air, by the way.)
I was bothered by the smell, though it wasn’t quite awful. It was actually sort of pleasant, a flowery kind of smell that was only overpowering because there was so much of it…
But my fear of VOCs carried the day. VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) are chemical compounds that are released into the air in the form of particles that can be readily inhaled. When released outside they damage the ozone layer. Inside the home or work place they basically damage whoever is there.
Supposedly indoor air is more polluted than outdoor air by about 70%. And where do children these days spend most of their time? Inside, playing on computers, watching videos, doing home work. Gone are the days where kids would play hopscotch and Indians, gone the day where a mother could open the door on a summer morning and say, “Okay kids, see you at lunch time,” and off they went with the neighborhood gang.
All that has changed. Fear, the reality of a lack of safety in the streets, plus the lure of all our electronic wonders in the home, have altered the way kids live their childhood.
So therefore we need to take action and make sure that the home is the safest place they could be, and not a place where they are actually made sick.
Tomorrow, more on VOCs and what to do about them.
Finally a study has come out that unequivocally links kids’ hyperactivity to preservatives in food and drink. It was published in the journal “The Lancet:”
“The Lancet study is the first to nail down a link between artificial ingredients and hyperactivity, though the connection has long been suspected and was the basis for the Feingold Diet, which eliminates all artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners and preservatives and was popularized in the 1970s as a treatment for ADHD. Though such a diet alone is not a proven treatment for ADHD, some clinicians routinely advise parents of kids with ADHD to stick with a more natural diet.” I’m not maniacal about it, but I tell parents that your kid will do better if they are on a diet that is free of additives and junk food,” says psychiatrist Edward Hallowell, author a several books on ADHD. “I urge them to eat whole foods; they’ll be healthier anyway.”
Read the whole article here.
I actually have a copy of the Feingold diet. Like all diet changes, it is challenging to cut out perservatives and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and so forth. Especially HFCS — it is ubiquetous in prepared foods! You’ll find it even in pickles!
Incidentally - if you want to lose weight, you should avoid these 3 ingredients in the first 5 ingredients of anything you eat: refinded sugar, enriched, bleached or refined flour, and high-fructose corn syrup. This according to the team of experts Miachel F. Roisden, and Mehmet C. Oz, both of them physicians, and authors of the YOU series of books, in this case “YOU on a Diet.” (Highly recommended!)
Well, China has done it again. It has gone and betrayed consumers worldwide with their practice of subcontracting to companies that have no qualms using inferior products, such as lead-tained paint.
I looked at Mattel’s product list of toys they are pulling off the shelves (explore the Mattel site, there are more product lists of recalled toys) and I was saddened that these joyfully innocent and playful toys harbored this harmful substance. Really, it was the innocence of them that almost brought me to tears. While I searched my mind if my own children had held any of those little figures in their hands - almost impossible, if not in our house, then at play group or friends’ houses - I was struck how treacherous childhood is, and always was, of course, except these days we are so much more aware…
Besides the emotional, ruffled Mama-Bear protective side of the issue that anyone can relate to, there is also the political side of this matter the outrageousness of which has so far been largely swept under the rug.
Read this article in Slate and see if it gets your blood boiling like it did mine. And ask yourself, where are our elected officials when they are not rubbing cops’ ankles in public restrooms or ordering Madame services to get their buttocks slapped at a thousand dollars a pop.
