Honey We're Killing the Kids

The other day we visited the recently remodeled home of an old college friend. The house is lovely and modern, like something out of Dwell magazine. As she walked us through the sunny, open floor plan she highlighted the low VOC paint, the environmentally sustainable cork floors, the whole-house water filtration system, and the earth-friendly carpeting. Then she reminded us of all the toxic chemicals in most retail baby products and gave us some free samples of Arbonne Baby Care. Convinced that my daily application of sunscreen, our VOC-emitting home and all that chlorinated water I've been drinking had already permanently damaged the baby, I purchased an additional $150 with of all-natural skin-care products hoping to fend off any further damage.

The next morning I pulled up Babble's main page to find this article on lead poisoning. Like the author of the piece, I assumed lead poisoning only happened to unsupervised children “gnawing on windowsills” in slummy apartment buildings. (and, of course, anyone who happens to buy toys made in China, which really, is just about anyone who buys toys) So now I was convinced that underneath my VOC-emitting Silver Sage walls a sinister layer of lead dust was accumulating, just waiting to off us all. I thought this news might finally cause that famous “nesting instinct” to kick in and I would get out my mop and buckets in a cleaning frenzy, but the information sheet on how to remove lead dust began with “PREGNANT WOMEN MUST NOT REMOVE LEAD DUST”, so I just stayed in front of the computer waiting for the next terrifying bit of information to come over the internet.

And I didn't have to wait long. I checked in on our neighborhood message board where I found a debate raging over whether or not petroleum based products (i.e. Vasoline) are causing irreversible damage to our kids. After doing a bit of my own research I concluded Vasoline is probably just fine, but I did spend about an hour on the Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep web site checking the safety rating of every cosmetic product I use. Most of them fell in the “moderate hazard” range, which was somewhat disconcerting because I actually do make an effort to use “safe” products, especially since I became pregnant.

I guess the point of all this is that even though I feel like a fairly well-informed, environmentally conscious consumer, there are still a ton of hazards that I hadn't considered and for a day or so I felt completely inadequate as a wife/mother/consumer/citizen. I can't rid my home of every possible toxin and even if I tried to I would probably end up introducing some new danger during my efforts. I know you can't believe everything you read on the internet and I know that the “natural products” industry has an interest in scaring us away from conventional products. At the same time there is compelling evidence that chemicals in many of the products we use may be causing developmental problems, fertility issues, allergies, etc. Am I just a big worrywart? Somehow I don't think my parents ever bothered with these sorts of things and they may have been better off for it.