Community Corner

For Greener Planet, Start with Greener Home

The air in our homes can be filled with toxins from everyday consumer products. With so many organic alternatives available today, stock your cabinets with green cleaners, soaps and detergents.

With Earth Day upon us, you may be kicking yourself for not planting a tree, cleaning a stream or biking to work. But, really, if you want an environment to save, go no further than your front door.

As Towson author McKay Jenkins writes in his latest book, What’s Gotten Into Us: Staying Healthy in a Toxic World (Random House), “The EPA has warned that indoor air pollution can be two to ten times worse than outdoor pollution.”

To help make the world outside our homes greener, we might want to start inside our homes. The products in our basements, bathrooms, kitchens, closests and toy chests are spring-loaded with chemicals whose effects—especially in aggregate and over decades of exposure—are not fully known. With so many organic products on the market, it’s time to consider alternatives.

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Truth be told, this is a book that I sometimes wish I hadn’t read—just like one of Jenkins’ students at the University of Delaware whose “newfound awareness of toxins in the environment had left her craving ignorance, if only for a day or two.”

But one of the book’s greatest values—aside from its smelling salt effect—is that it’s crammed with easy-to-use solutions.

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We do, after all, have to brush our teeth, wash our hair, clean our floors, clothe our bodies and fill our bellies with something.

 

From What’s Gotten Into Us

Environment: Home

Rules of thumb: Don’t disguise smells. When it comes to “freshening” the air in your house, try doing it the old-fashioned way: open your windows.

Avoid: Synthetic potpourri; aerosolized indoor pesticides; synthetic carpet cleaning chemicals. What's wrong with air fresheners? Phthalates, neurotoxins. Those tiny aerosolized droplets can easily be absorbed into the skin and lungs.

Try: Boil cinnamon and cloves in a pan of water; place cedar blocks and sachets of dried flowers around the house; position pots of fragrant houseplants in the kitchen (they add a nice aroma and absorb airborne toxins); use vinegar and baking soda for cleaning. 

Other tips: Always remove your shoes when you walk in the front door; shoes track in an astonishing variety of toxins and bacteria.

 

Environment: Bathroom

Rules of thumb: Avoid using products made with ingredients you can't pronounce. Baby wipes, deodorants, shampoos, fragrances, hair gels, hair sprays and hand lotions can all contain hormone-disrupting phthalates. Cosmetics and personal care products contain a vast array of largely unregulated synthetic chemicals, from formaldehyde in baby soaps to lead in hair dyes to coal tar in dandruff shampoos and skin creams.

Avoid: Drain cleaners are among the most toxic of all household chemicals.

Try: For clogs, use a half cup of baking soda followed by a half cup of white vinegar. Better yet: use a plunger.

Other tips: Visit these sites for more solutions. Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep cosmetics database: www.cosmeticsdatabase.com. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics: www.safecosmetics.org. Tom’s of Maine makes plant-based toothpaste and other personal care products: www.tomsofmaine.com.

 

Environment: Clothes

Rules of thumb: Clothes labeled as permanent press may contain formaldehyde; other synthetic fibers may be treated with toxic stain-resistant or flame-retardant chemicals.

Avoid: The chemical “perc.” Also, for children’s pajamas, avoid synthetic materials treated with flame retardants.

Try: Dress kids in cotton. When shopping for clothes, look for items made from natural (and preferably organic) materials like cotton and wool. Wash new clothes before wearing them to reduce exposure to formaldehyde, often added to make clothing appear unwrinkled.

Other tips: When getting your clothes dry-cleaned, seek out organic cleaners that do not use perc.

 

Environment: Laundry Room

Rules of Thumb: Detergents are made with petroleum products and phthalate-laden fragrances. They also contain phosphates, which are harmful to waterways. Try plant-based detergents, and avoid dryer sheets.

Avoid: Fabric softeners can contain neurotoxins like isopropylbenzene and possible carcinogens like styrene; respiratory irritants like xylene and phenol; and phthalates. Dryer sheets contain a variety of toxic chemicals.

Try: Other nontoxic substances, such as washing soda (sodium bicarbonate) are good stain removers for clothes as well as for stains on other types of fabrics. Instead of chlorine bleach, try using an equal part of borax or washing soda for every part of laundry detergent you add to the wash. For stains, use borax, lemon juice, hydrogen peroxide or white vinegar.

Best tip: If your neighborhood prohibits hanging of laundry, work to change the rules. See laundrylist.org. Instead of dryer sheets, add a quarter cup of white vinegar or baking soda to the wash. For commercial products look for vegetable-based (frequently coconut oil) surfactants and softeners.


Environment: Kitchen

Rules of thumb: Gas stoves can be trouble without a ventilation hood that vents to the outside. Install carbon monoxide detectors and also have your furnace checked to make sure it vents properly to the outside of the house.

Avoid: Obviously, avoid products that say "danger," "poison," "harmful vapors" or "skin irritant." Avoid nonstick cookware, which is often made with Teflon chemicals. Instead, use stainless steel or cast iron and saute food in butter or olive oil. 

Try: "Solvent-free," "plant-based," "no phosphates" or "no petroleum" ingredients. Less toxic cleaning supplies can be bought at: Burt's Bees, burtsbees.com; Dr. Bronner's, drbronner.com; Ecover, ecover.com; Seventh Generation, seventhgeneration.com. Make your own cleaning products: a bucketful of hot water with a cup of white vinegar and a drop of dish liquid will get floors clean.

Other tips: Supplies for making cleaning products can be found at fromnaturewithlove.com and snowdriftfarm.com.  Also, nat-urstore.com makes biodegradable dinnerware and compostable garbage bags.

 

Environment: Toys

Rules of thumb: When shopping for toys, look for products made from wood. The same is true for furniture (especially material certified by the Forest Stewardship Council at fscus.org).

Avoid: Plastics, which can contain phthalates, especially for teething infants and young children.

Try: Buy toys from companies that boast about the ingredients in their toys—and back it up. Buy only watercolor paints, which typically release only low levels (or no) of volatile organic compounds.

Other tips: It’s not a toy, but kids love them anyway: lunch boxes. Avoid ones with the following recycling codes of 3, 6 and 7. Try www.reusablebags.com for nontoxic lunch boxes. Also try healthystuff.org and momsrising.org.

 

Environment: The Lawn

Rules of thumb: Synthetic pesticides have been linked to a variety of health problems, including cancer and developmental problems, and they have also begun to worry veterinarians, who are seeing more and more tumors in pets.

Avoid. Synthetic fertilizers. They can cause enormous ecological problems in watersheds like the Chesapeake Bay: When it rains, the fertilizer on thousands of lawns runs off into creeks, then into the bay, where it creates "algae blooms" (and then massive dead zones, where nothing—not fish or crabs or aquatic plants—can survive)

Try: Don't worry if your lawn has some clover in it; unlike grass, clover is actually a native plant, and it helps fix nitrogen in your soil, so you won't need as much fertilizer. Consider replacing some of your grass with native shrubs and flowers, which will not only be easier to tend but will attract butterflies and songbirds—many of which are suffering because lawns leave them so little to eat.

Others tips: For more on using native plants in your gardens, check out Doug Tallamy's terrific book Bringing Nature Home.


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