Toxic Nation

I’ve just finished reading Slow Death By Rubber Duck. Now, I thought I was pretty well informed about all of the bad stuff that we breath, absorb, and ingest. This book made me feel like I know nothing about the ways in which we come in contact with them, and what these things do in our bodies. And it’s all much worse than I thought. I do as much as I can to protect my body, and my kids from harmful chemicals. I feed them organic food as much as I can, we use natural cleaners in our home, don’t use smelly SLS filled shampoos and soaps. I buy second-hand a lot – I figure by the time we get things the chemical residue has been washed off, and (in the case of furniture) the worst of the off-gassing is over. This book has made me realize it’s much worse than I thought, and I feel kinda helpless.

I’m not going to change the things that I already do- I have to keep believing that every little bit helps. But we can’t for example, not ingest chemicals in our water. We can’t avoid BPA- even if we rid all plastics from our home. One source is public drinking water. Another- receipts. All those shiny paper receipts transfer BPA to your skin and is absorbed easily. I just bought a large box of recycled printer paper, thinking I was doing something good. Apparently recycled paper is really high in BPA because it’s largely made from newspaper---- newspaper ink is high in- yah, BPA.

It really gets me that I’ve been avoiding fleece PJ’s for my kids- except for Carters. Carter’s pj’s are not treated with fire-retardant chemicals. Yay! Right? Well…… they fail to explain that fleece is polyester and polyester is a sythetic material that has the chemicals bonded right into it. So no need for additional treatment! I like the "polyester is naturally flame resistant" part of their explanation (click here for the whole thing). There is nothing "natural" about polyester. I’m going to make an effort from here on out to only buy natural fiber clothing and bedding.

I could really go on and on and give an entire book synopsis. If you’re interested, read the book yourself. It’s very interesting material and the authors have a great sense of humour. But if you’re like me and try to do everything you can to protect yourself from the bad stuff- you might end up a bit depressed. They end the book by saying we have to make changes on a large scale- doing your personal bit by protecting yourself and your family just isn’t enough. That bit wasn’t exactly inspiring (I don’t have a whole lotta faith in humanity) but it made me feel better. We’re all in this together, on this planet, and everyone is responsible for making things better, doing things right. Rates of disease, especially cancer is just going to keep increasing until we make big changes. We’ll all realize that eventually, won’t we?