Eco Hazards In Your Home

When you hear the term “eco hazards” you may think of vast oil spills, radioactive leaks or pandemic diseases spread by poor ecological standards.  But the fact is that eco hazards exist within most of our homes. Granted, they are on a much smaller scale; but the constant exposure to them can cause us weakening health and a lower quality of life.

Since 1950, at least 70,000 new chemical compounds have been invented and dispersed into our environment. Only a fraction of these have been tested for human toxicity. We are, by default, conducting a massive clinical toxicology trial, and our children and their children are the experimental animals. [Source: Herbert L. Needleman, M.D., Philip J. Landrigan, M.D., Raising Children Toxic Free]

This is an astounding realization when you consider the correlating rise in all types of cancer, asthma and allergies, mental illness, and birth defects that have occurred alongside the common use of these chemicals in the American Household.

Common, everyday items like cleaning products, health and beauty products, and outdoor lawn & garden products all contain ridiculously high levels of chemicals that are clinically known to cause health problems.  Consider these sobering statistics from a U.S. House of Representatives Report published in 1989:

Liquid dish soap is the leading cause of poisonings in the home for children under the age of six (over 2.1 million accidental poisonings per year). Most brands of liquid dish soap contain Formaldehyde and ammonia.

Of the chemicals found in personal care products: 884 are toxic, 146 cause tumors, 218 cause reproductive complications, 778 cause acute toxicity, 314 cause biological mutations, 376 cause skin and eye irritations.
 
You will find chlorine bleach, ammonia, hydrochloric acid, formaldehyde and phenol in everything from dish washing detergent and furniture polish to shampoo and laundry detergent.  The impacts of these chemicals are multi-faceted.

First, your family is directly affected by the chemicals they come into contact with.  If they touch these products with their bare skin, it will enter their blood stream in concentrated levels. However, even if you rinse your clothing or dishes—residues remain and trace amounts are ingested or absorbed.  Over time these can build up in the blood stream and vital organs contributing to the breakdown of your body’s cellular function and systems.

The second way we are affected is that chemicals are washed down the drain after we clean our sinks and toilets, wash our sheets and fertilize our lawns.  Those chemicals do not simply disappear.  They collect in community water supplies, polluting the land, plants and animals that depend on it for survival.  Over time, ecosystems are altered by the constant barrage of chemicals pouring into them. 

So you see, fighting for the environment doesn’t necessarily mean joining Greenpeace, strapping yourself to a tree or contributing thousands to an eco-charity (although those are all admirable).  You can help protect the environment every single day without leaving home: by refusing to use toxic chemicals for your household needs; and by using safe alternatives—either commercial or made at home.