naturalnews.com printable article

Originally published May 17 2004

Highly toxic chemicals are found in laundry detergents, dryer sheets, deodorants, perfumes, soaps and other household products

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

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.


REVIEW TYPE



All content posted on this site is commentary or opinion and is protected under Free Speech. Truth Publishing LLC takes sole responsibility for all content. Truth Publishing sells no hard products and earns no money from the recommendation of products. NaturalNews.com is presented for educational and commentary purposes only and should not be construed as professional advice from any licensed practitioner. Truth Publishing assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material. For the full terms of usage of this material, visit www.NaturalNews.com/terms.shtml