May 3rd, 2012

We usually watch out for snakes in the garden. You don’t want to be caught unaware.

It turns out that the same could be said for your garden hose, which could be a snake in the grass when it comes to chemical pollution. Like most real snakes, it’s probably not mortally dangerous. But you need to know more about it, especially if you’re using your hose as a drinking spigot or to water an edible garden.

Healthy Stuff.org, known for testing common kids’ toys for lead, cadmium and other pollution, recently tested 179 garden products, including two types of garden hoses and four types of garden work gloves, for chemical contaminants and toxic metals.

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January 20th, 2012

Phthalates, chemicals commonly found in synthetic fragrances, body lotions and pliable plastic products, have been viewed with suspicion in recent years because they’ve been shown to act as endocrine disruptors.

Researchers at the Children’s Environmental Health Center at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York who decided to look more closely at the effects of phthalates have found an association with obesity in young children.

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March 30th, 2011

You are what you eat. But according to a new study, you also are what your food was wrapped or packed in, at least to a small degree.

And if that food was enclosed in plastic or plastic resin-lined cans, it could be having an effect on your health.

Researchers investigating whether the endocrine-disrupting plastic chemicals BPA (bisphenol A) and DEHP migrate from food packaging into humans have found evidence that they do.

The study, by researchers from the Silent Spring Institute, the Breast Cancer Fund and Vassar College, sampled the urine of 20 participants in 2010, testing the levels of BPA and DEHP while the study subjects ate a regular diet containing canned and packaged foods, and then again when the study group was placed on a fresh food diet.

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January 14th, 2011

Dr. Sarah Janssen, NRDC scientist

January is National Birth Defects Prevention month and while we have made great strides in raising awareness about the importance of folate and prenatal vitamins in early pregnancy, there are a number of birth defects which continue to rise which have been suspected of being caused by exposure to environmental chemicals.

A new study published today confirms that pregnant women carry multiple chemicals in their bodies that can be passed onto their fetus, putting them at risk for birth defects and health problems later in life. The study was conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco and was published in the scientific journal, Environmental Health Perspectives.

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November 29th, 2010

Ready to abandon all those preservatives, petroleum byproducts, antibacterials and mystery chemicals in scented lotions and beauty products?

We are too. Here are a few tips for holiday shoppers that include some of the purest baby lotions, fun beauty kits for teens and eco-friendly skin smoothers for women.

We’ll start with Abe’s Market in Chicago (and online) because it sells many products that harken back to when formulas were simpler.

Mayron's Goods were developed by Melanie and David Mayron.

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July 22nd, 2010

Phthalates, the substance used to make plastic pliable, has again been linked to health problems in infants. The most fragile newborns, those in neonatal intensive care, have a greater exposure to the manmade chemicals because it is in the tubes used to keep them alive, according to the report in August’s issue of Pediatric Research journal.

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February 17th, 2010

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

Concerned about all those dangerous household chemicals you keep hearing about: BPA, phthalates and pesticides with cryptic names like 2,4-Dioxane?

We’ve found just the book for you.

Slow Death By Rubber Duck:The Secret Danger of Everyday Things (Counterpoint, 2009. U.S. $25) will take you on a chilling, but informative ride through our chemically enhanced consumer product world. Starting with your kid’s Rubber Duck, which contains five chemicals of concern, imagine what the rest of the household contains.

Frankly, I worried that this cleverly titled book about the dangerous additives lurking in our house dust, furniture, hand soaps and Teflon pans would be just that, an inspired title followed by surface information. But I was quickly relieved of that concern. Co-authors Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie are not just scratching the stick-resistant surface here.

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February 17th, 2010

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

Having just read and reviewed Slow Death By Rubber Duck, I had a few questions for co-author Rick Smith, head of Environmental Defence Canada.

And since his book was costing me — some $120 for a new set of stainless steel cookware to replace my stick-free, Teflon-coated set — I thought he owed me some answers.

We chatted earlier this week, while he took advantage of Family Day in Canada, visiting a playground with his young boys, a strong impetus behind his work to educate the public about harmful environmental and household toxic chemicals. The younger generation, he worried, has an even higher ‘body burden’ of chemicals than we adults grew up with.

In the book, he and co-author Bruce Lourie, an environmental consultant, test common toxics to find out how they get from consumer goods and food into our bodies. In fact, they ingest or expose themselves to these chemicals to chart the effects.

The basic idea: Since many of these toxic ingredients have been shown in lab experiments to act as endocrine disruptors and cancer triggers figuring out how to limit or reduce our exposure could have positive health effects, for kids and adults.

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January 12th, 2010

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

The last time I picked up some “natural” hand soap, I got burned. It turned out to be natural in only the most nominal way. It had a couple herbal ingredients, but these were far outnumbered by a fleet of synthetic preservatives and unpronounceable components that included parabens.

Solutions have been coming. Many health conscious cosmetic companies are offering new, non-toxic hand soaps (see this list at Skin Deep) for those of us getting away from discredited antibacterial formulas and other unnecessary additives.

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May 22nd, 2009

From Green Right Now Reports:

As toxicologists see it, our chemical world is neither as dangerous as portrayed by the mainstream media and environmental groups, nor as safe as the American Chemistry Council and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) would have us believe.

That’s according to a survey of 937 members of the Society of Toxicology in early 2009. The survey, released Thursday, was administered by Harris Interactive and conducted by the nonprofit Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) and Center for Health and Risk Communication at George Mason University.

“This survey suggests that the public doesn’t get a full and balanced picture of chemical risk,” said Dr. Robert Lichter, the survey director.

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April 7th, 2009

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

Today we’re all about fragrances. I’ve been sampling some lovely new perfumes from the Demeter Fragrance Library, a homegrown company that has long been making mostly natural colognes and is now dipping into what it hopes will be a strong market for natural perfumes. It’s a pricier proposition and the company has teased the numbers enough to bring natural scents to mainstream consumers.

These new Vintage Naturals are surprisingly good smelling stuff — you really can whiff the difference. With these, a rose is a rose; lavender is lavender. Each of the five scents has a true high note composed by Mother Nature, blended with undertones, also all from natural essential oils. Mimosa is accompanied by Ylang Ylang; Patchouli is spiced with orange and cardamom, and Lavender with orange, lemon and galbanum. They’re earthy, but feminine (and available this month at Sephora and online at Demeter).

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April 7th, 2009

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

If you’ve been looking for a fragrance that’s true to nature’s aromas and also free of toxic phthalates and preservatives and dyes, get ready for an April treat.

Demeter Fragrance Library of New York is debuting a line of eau de parfums at Sephora this month called Vintage Naturals that aims to deliver quality natural fragrances at an affordable price.

If you’ve ever wondered why wonderful natural fragrances are so hard to find, or afford, listen to Demeter’s CEO Mark Crames.

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