Toxic Household Quiz

If you're interested in the effect of toxins in the home, and what you can do about them, you probably want to try the Toxic Household Quiz to see how much you know about what we're doing to our bodies, our family and our planet.

The fact is that we need to change what we're doing. Toxic cleaning product companies started reaching out to consumers with mass advertising in the 1950s and we bought into it. Now nearly every home has products with chemicals that are not tested for human safety, especially 1-3 generations down the road. Now we're seeing the effects of these chemicals on our children & children's children, and watching the decline of human health in the U.S. and other so-called advanced nations. And with the expansion of modernization programs into third-world countries we are ensuring that those giant chemical companies will bring their toxic products into all countries, to their benefit and the global environment's expense.

If you're already ready to change what you're doing, see: The Price of Clean-- and just answer that one question in the quiz.

Namaste!

Dishwasher concentrate powder is like a hundred tiny hands in the machine!

I'm not a big fan of electric dishwashers. Energy-star-water-conserving or not, if they don't clean the dishes, you have to hand-wash the dishes yourself.

We got a dishwasher when we moved in. My partner hates hand-washing the dishes. I don't like hand-washing dishes, but I like hand-washing them after wasting water and electricity in the dishwasher even more. So after 1-2 years of using the dishwasher it started to leave a film of icky white stuff on the dishes, especially the top of cups, and hardly cleaning the silverware. Nothing I wanted touching my or my children's food. So I end up hand-washing the dishes. Bummer.

My roommate, the anal one who does most of the cleaning and hand dish-washing, is of basically the same opinion I am. If you have to re-wash, pre-wash, soak, spit, rinse and shine by hand, why the heck are you using the electronic dishwasher in the first place?

My partner doggedly insists on using the dishwasher. Me and my roommate wash by hand. It's a neverending battle. He's probably right that the residue and water sitting in the machine does it no good, but running it just for the sake of running it isn't good either.

That experience was with typical bulk-store-bought Members' Mark (Sam's Club) detergent -- your results may vary, mine stank. I bought it figuring that at least if I had to buy evil chemical waste producing dishwashing detergent, I would buy it in bulk and save waste on the garbage end of the cycle. Does anyone want a nearly-full container of conventional powdered dishwashing detergent? I didn't think so.

I may have a complete change of heart about the electronic dish washer. You see, I got the terrific starter kit for the green household cleaning products (and blogged about said green cleaning kit), and it came with automatic dishwasher concentrate powder. My partner had the conventional stuff out ready to use it, but he didn't run the dishwasher last night. I thought to run it this morning, and looked at the detergent sitting on top of the dishwasher. No Way, I thought. I put that box of detergent away, and I ran the load of dishes with the new eco-friendly dishwasher powder. One scoop in each cup -- it's a small scoop -- 2 teaspoon scoop. So 4 teaspoons of concentrate went into the machine.



And nothing's wrong with the dishes. They're mostly dry, we air dry the dishes -- there's a couple drops of CLEAR water on the rim of the bowl.

They don't smell like a dirty swimming pool.

They shine.

There are no spots -- I'm not a spot hawk, so don't quote me on this one, but I don't see the streaks and spots I've been seeing from the conventional detergent.

Everything is clean.

Everything smells safe.

I'm amazed. It's like a hundred tiny fairies were at work in my dishwasher making everything perfect. I had to blog about it immediately and let you know. I'm tempted to wake said partner and roommate and rush them into the kitchen to show them. That's why I have to blog. :) They'd kill me.

I hate having to say it, but your results may vary. Maybe we didn't have oatmeal this week. I don't know, but I know this load of dishes came out exactly the way I want them to!

It's not REALLY clean if it makes your family sick

I guess I can say it until I'm blue in the face, but I'll say it again. We're intimately connected to our environment. Everything we put into our body, we are putting into our environment. Everything we put into our environment, we're putting into our body.

There's no way to escape this basic fact of nature.

It's true of toxic chemicals, from chemotherapy and household cleaning products (link to Household Products Database by the US National Institutes of Health) to the jet fuel used to get an airplane from one place to another. No matter how far away something is, it's in your environment -- indoor or outdoor -- and it will find you.

The flip side of this is that it doesn't matter who puts it into the environment. If industry does it, it still ends up in our bodies and homes. Neighbors. Friends, parents, children, government, someone on the other side of the planet. We are directly and indirectly responsible for each other's health and well-being.


So, let's start with an easy example. You use toxic household cleaners, and you clean your house. You wash some tile and bathroom cleaner down the sink, toilet, tub drain. It ends up in your cesspool, septic tank, etc. It leaches into the ground, even though it goes through a filtration process and could theoretically biodegrade. These toxic cleansers are not biodegradable, so they leech into the ground, and into the groundwater.

Many of us drink from this groundwater. Or at the very least, we wash our bodies with it. Our skin is our largest organ, and it DOES absorb chemicals. We think of it as a barrier, but it's a barrier that will allow things in. The same chemicals from cleaners with huge warnings on their labels are now in our bathwater. Maybe we drink that water. Maybe we cook with it. It probably isn't the chemicals I put into the water that I wash with. It's probably the neighbor's chemicals. Or someone across town. Or someone in the mountains. The basic point is that it's now in my water supply.

If we can convince our neighbors to change to natural biodegradable cleaning fluids, this wouldn't happen, or, assuming we can't convert everyone, at the very least it would be possible to lessen the impact of these chemicals on our bodies.


But what if we're cleaning with those chemicals. We may be poisoning our neighbors' groundwater, and we're certainly poisoning ourselves (link to a page by the National Organization for Women Foundation - stay at home moms & dads, and babies, beware!). Every spray, sprits, stream or the use of any product with fumes adds to the air pollutants in our homes. We breathe that air. Opening windows only helps a little, the fumes are there, we breathe them in, and it causes us to become sick -- either quickly, or a little at a time over a span of years.

What if we could change it? And still be clean and sanitary? Please join me in changing this. Once you've made the switch, tell your neighbors -- the life you may be saving could be your own. By purchasing environmentally-friendly, biodegradable, so safe you can let your baby and pets crawl on the floor, cleaning products you'll be making a change that makes sense (and cents, but I'll talk about packaging another time).