As part of National Poison Prevention Week, health officials are warning
parents to keep their children away from household poisons. That's good
advice, of course, but sadly very little attention is paid to
slow-acting poisons and toxic chemicals found in personal care products
that slowly (but surely) kill both parents and children by the millions.
I'm talking about the toxic chemicals found in everyday household
products that, when absorbed through the skin (as practically all
chemicals are), lead directly to
liver toxicity, nervous system
disorders, and
cancer. Let's take a look at the list:
The bathroom
is one of the most toxic rooms in the house for most American families.
People use deodorants containing aluminum (Alzheimer's disease),
shampoos containing harsh solvents (liver toxicity), toothpaste
containing non-organic fluoride (osteoporosis), mouthwash with aspartame
(brain tumors) or saccharin (cancer), and to top it off, most people
slap on a dab of perfume or cologne containing highly toxic
cancer-causing chemicals. In a laboratory analysis, one popular perfume
was found to contain more than forty chemicals classified as hazardous
to the liver, and yet the FDA still does not require perfume
manufacturers to warn consumers about the toxic chemicals found in their
products.
And the bathroom is only the beginning: the laundry room
is also highly toxic, containing the same chemical perfumes in both the
laundry detergent and especially the dryer sheets. Dryer sheets coat all
your clothes with a layer of toxic chemicals. When you wear those
clothes, your body moisture causes those chemicals to come into contact
with your skin and be absorbed directly into your bloodstream. It's an
easy way to poison your system with cancer-causing chemicals.
The
kitchen is also highly toxic: consumers purchase antibacterial soap
products made with a potent nerve chemical similar to agent orange --
that's what kills the bacteria. They also use automatic dishwashing
detergent containing yet more chemicals and toxic fragrance compounds
that coat the plates, glasses and silverware with a thin layer of
cancer-causing chemicals. Subsequently, families then eat off those
dishes and ingest the chemicals.
In the yard, people use horrific
quantities of pesticides and herbicides with seemingly no care
whatsoever about the health consequences of doing so. I had a neighbor
once who couldn't stand the moles tunneling through his back yard, so he
coated his entire yard with a chemical (purchased at a local home & lawn
store) that would poison and kill all the worms. With the worms gone,
the moles had to look for food somewhere else. In the mind of my
neighbor, he solved the problem! Of course, he was oblivious to the fact
that he wiped out the all-important biodiversity of his lawn and would
thereafter be dependent on a long list of chemicals to battle one lawn
disease after another, arising from the fact that all the worms were
dead. (Your lawn needs worms to be healthy.)
Some people just don't
get it. They think chemicals solve these problems, and they have
absolutely no regard for nature. You see the same thing in organized
medicine, of course, where doctors and pharmaceutical companies push
chemicals onto patients in much the same way that my neighbor used
chemicals to kill all the worms in his lawn. Yes, you could say the ploy
"worked" in one sense, but only in a very narrow-minded, short-term way.
Modern medicine operates with much the same mindset. I've always said
that if modern medicine were responsible for treating lawns, they would
diagnose a shortage of water as "yellow grass disease" and prescribe
"green lawn paint" at $100 / gallon to make the lawn look greener.
But getting back to household poisons: the most dangerous poisons are
not the ones labeled as such. Most people aren't even aware that their
perfumes and colognes are poisons. They have no clue that most
deodorants cause Alzheimer's disease. They're not even aware that dryer
sheets coat their clothes in a thin layer of chemicals that promote
liver cancer. So they keep buying and using all these products, day
after day, oblivious to the reality. Product manufacturers, meanwhile,
absolutely deny the health consequences of their products. They
acknowledge that the chemicals are present, but they claim the skin
doesn't absorb them. That's nonsense, of couse: the skin absorbs
practically all chemicals. That's why the "patch" medicines work in the
first place: the medicine is absorbed through the skin.
Spread the
word. Send a friend this article and let them know to avoid these
products. Here's what to use instead: for deodorant, make your own with
50% baking soda mixed with 50% corn starch. It won't stop the sweating,
but it will stop the odor unless you follow a terrible diet, in which
case you will need to probably stop eating red meat and drinking cow's
milk before the stink will subside. For soap in the shower, use Dr.
Bronner's soaps (find them at health food stores). For laundry detergent
and automatic dishwasher soap, buy Seventh Generation products at a
health food store. Make sure you buy all these as "fragrance free"
products. Fragrance is the source of many toxic chemicals. You'll want
to avoid fragrance at all costs. For perfumes and colognes, you'll have
to buy natural products made exclusively with essential oils, not
artificial chemicals. These can be very, very expensive. So you might
consider just wearing no perfumes at all. I'm sure everyone around you
will greatly appreciate it anyway, since most people put on far too
much fragrance as their senses are dulled to the smell of their
selected fragrance.
Fragrance actually dulls the mind and the
senses, by the way. That's a completely different topic, but the short
version is that if you wear perfume and use fragrance in your laundry,
your mind is dulled. By using only fragrance-free products, you will
literally become more intelligent. No kidding.
About the author: Mike Adams is an award-winning journalist and holistic nutritionist with a mission to teach personal and planetary health to the public He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In mid 2010, Adams produced NaturalNews.TV, a natural health video sharing website offering user-generated videos on nutrition, green living, fitness and more. He's also the CEO of a highly successful email newsletter software company that develops software used to send permission email campaigns to subscribers. Adams is currently the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit, and regularly pursues cycling, nature photography, Capoeira and Pilates. He's also author a large number of health books offered by Truth Publishing and is the creator of numerous reference website including NaturalPedia.com and the free downloadable Honest Food Guide. His websites also include the free reference sites HerbReference.com and HealingFoodReference.com. Adams believes in free speech, free access to nutritional supplements and the innate healing ability of the human body. Known by his callsign, the 'Health Ranger,' Adams posts his missions statements, health statistics and health photos at www.HealthRanger.org
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Monday, May 17, 2004
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