Anti-Aging Choices and Healthy Homes

Asthma was once a very rare disease.  Now the condition is extremely common. The Asthma rate has tripled in the last twenty years with nearly 20 to 30 million Americans currently afflicted.5 Childhood asthma has increased by more than 40% since 1980. 6 Asthma deaths in children and young people increased by a dramatic 118% between 1980 and 1993.7

Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) in adults and children is also rising. In 1993, 4.5 million children took the drug Ritalin so they could sit still long enough to learn. By 1998, 11.4 million children were being drugged with this powerful narcotic.8

These statistics show that the overall health of our children is declining. Illnesses that didn't even exist when I was a child are now common. They are now so widespread that almost everyone knows a family with a child who suffers from asthma, cancer, learning disabilities, ADD, behavior disorders, or a rheumatoid disease. Could these illnesses be related to toxic chemical exposure?

Although other factors are involved, more and more scientists are linking these ailments to long-term chemical exposure, This rise in childhood diseases has been so dramatic that children's environmental health issues have now been recognized by Congress and federal agencies. In November 1996, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that for the first time children would be considered in all EPA risk-assessment and standard-setting procedures. In April, 1997, President Clinton signed Executive Order #13045 on Children's Environmental Health and Safety requiring federal agencies to include children and their unique susceptibilities in standard-setting procedures.

Doctors now stress that early detection and removal of children from toxic exposures in their homes and schools are critical to successfully prevent or treat these illnesses. These doctors, scientists, and government agencies are all concerned about the health consequences of children being exposed to toxic chemicals. Shouldn't you be concerned, too?

Our Children are the guinea pigs for a dangerous experiment

According to Herbert L. Needleman, M.D., and Philip J. Landrigan, M. D. in their book Raising Children Toxic Free, "Since 1950, at least 70,000 new chemical compounds have been invented and dispersed into our environment through new consumer commodities, industrial products, and food. Only a fraction of these have been tested for human toxicity. We are, by default, conducting a massive clinical toxicological trial. And our children and their children are the experimental animals."

I don't think you would voluntarily take your children down to a laboratory and offer them as experimental subjects for toxic chemical testing. Yet that is exactly what is going on today, when we purchase many household products.

Your home is the #1 source of toxic chemicals

Because we spend 805 to 90% of our time indoors, and most of that at home, our own home is where we are most likely to be exposed to toxic chemicals.¹ This is especially true for young children, who spend even more time indoors than adults and older children.

Why are our homes so toxic? In the last two decades -- the same period during which childhood illness has increased -- there has been an alarming increase of toxic chemicals in household products, and for the first time we have been sealing our homes for energy efficiency. Weather-stripping and caulking do an excellent job of keeping the air you have heated or cooled inside your home. But the lack of openings for air to escape also traps chemical air pollutants, resulting in a greater concentration of pollutants indoors than out. EPS studies found that even in urban areas with high levels of industrial pollution the concentration of toxic chemicals was higher indoors than outdoors -- in some cases ten, twenty, thirty, and even up to seventy times higher indoors.!9

In 1987, the EPA undertook an ambitious program to identify and compare the urgency of environmental problems. The idea was that, with limited resources, the agency should be focusing on those pollutants that pose the greatest risk to society. among the top hazards were those found indoors, including exposure to cleaning products.9

Another study, conducted over a fifteen-year period, found that women who worked at home had a 54% higher death rate from cancer than women who had jobs away from home. The study concluded that the increased death rate was due to daily exposure to the hazardous chemicals found in ordinary household products.10 Obviously, the children in these homes were exposed to the same chemicals, with even greater risk for illness.

The Good News

Fortunately, for very toxic product there is a safe alternative available. There are a number of conscientious companies now offering household products that are safer and more natural. They work just as well or better than supermarket brands, and in many cases actually cost less. So, there's really no reason to risk the health of your children any longer.

Change your Brand of Products!

Protect your family!

  Click Here for a list of safe, effective products!

1. We're Poisoning Our Children Without Knowing It!

2. Toxic Chemicals and the Human Body

3. Why Children are at Higher Risk

4. How Toxic Chemicals affect the Health of Children

5. How Safe are Household Products?

6. The Happy Ending

RESOURCES

1.  World Resources Institute, The 1994 Information Place Environmental Almanac (Houghton-Mifflin1994)

2.  Paula DiPerna, "Environmental Hazards to Children" (Public Affairs Pamphlets, 1981).

3.  H. Needleman & P. Landrigan, "Raising Children Toxic-Free" (Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux, 1994)

4.  Doris Rapp, M. D., "Is This Your Child's World?" (Bantam Books, 1996)

5.  Mary Ellen Fise, Indoor Air Quality (Consumer Federation of America, 1997).

6.  Woodruff T, Grillo J, Schoendorf K. "The Relationship Between Selected Causes of Postneonatal Infant Mortality and Particulate Air Pollution in the united States." Environmental Health Perspectives, June 1997; 105(6).

7.  "Environmental Health Threats to Children", EPA 175-F-96-001, September 1996

8. "Your Children and Ritalin," The Detroit News (March 8, 1998)

9.  Lance A. Wallace, The Total Exposure Assessment Methodology (TEAM) Study:  Summary and Analysis, Volume 1. Washington, DC. EPA, 1987.

10.  Nancy Sokol Green, "Poisoning Our Children" (The Nobel Press, 1991)

11.  Echobichon DJ and Stevens DD. "Perinatal Development of Human Blood Esterases." Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics 1973;14:41-47.

12.  Landrigan PJ, Carlson JE, Bearer CF, Crammer JS, Bullard RD, Etzel RA, Groopman J, McLachlan JA, Perea FP, Reigart JR, Robison L, Schell L, Suk WA. "Children's Health and the Environment:  A New Agenda for Prevention Research." Environmental Health Perspectives 106 Supplement 3:787-794 (June 1998)

13.  Bearer CF. "Environmental Health Hazards:  How Children Are Different From Adults." Future of Children, Summer/Fall 1995;5(2):11-26

14.  Landrigan PJ and Carlson JE. "Environmental Policy and Children's Health." Future of Children, Summer/Fall 1995;5(2): 34-52

15.  Mindy Pennybacker and Aisha Ikramuddin, "Mothers & Others for a Livable Planet Guide to Natural Baby Care" (John Wiley & Sons, 1999)

16.  National Center for Health Statistics, 1997

17.  http://www.checnet.org

18.  John Harte, Toxics A to Z (University of California Press 1991)

19.  Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility, In Harm's Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development

20.  Dr. Doris Rapp, "Is This Your Child?"

21.  N. Ashford and C. Miller, Chemical Exposures, Low Levels and high Stakes (van Nostrand Reinhold, 1991)

22.  Sherry Rogers, Chemical Sensitivity (Keats Publishing, Inc 1994)

23.  Theo Colborn, J. P. Myers and Dianne Dumanoski, Our Stolen Future (Viking Penguin, 1996)

24.  http://www.birthdefects.org/absracts/edcs.html

25.  Judith Burns, "The Cosmetic Cover-up," Human Ecologist (Fall 1989)

26.  Debra Lynn Dadd, Home Safe Home

27.  The National Safe Kids Campaign, Poisoning.