Not Just a Pretty Face – The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry, by Stacy Malkan

Reviewed By Fran Maclure The Compact for Safe Cosmetics has been around for a few years now, writes author Stacy Malkan. This voluntary Compact simply asks cosmetic and personal care product companies to sign a pledge to replace hazardous chemicals with safer alternatives within a span of three years. Yet unknown to many consumers, the multinationals L’Oreal, Revlon, Estee Lauder and Avon whose products contain carcinogens, pesticides, reproductive toxins, endocrine disruptors, plasticizers, degreasers and surfactants refuse to do the right thing and sign the Compact.

There are hundreds of studies showing that the epidemic of breast cancer in North America is linked to these toxins by their very presence in our everyday lives. What does this mean for consumers and how can we fight back? One way is through the power of purchasing – read labels, choose safer products by going to www.safecosmetics.org and becoming an informed consumer.

In August this year, Stacy Malkan also hosted a coast-to-coast webinar on the issues she writes about in her book. She stressed that the $250 billion dollar cosmetic industry should own up to their responsibility to consumers. In the meantime, there are many things we can do differently. Stacy urged activist groups to connect the dots using the power of politics and activism. In other words, push our elected representatives to do the right thing! As she put it so aptly, we deserve safe products in every store, in every salon, and in every community. “Cosmetics should be safe enough to eat,” says Horst Rechelbacher, creator of a company called Intelligent Nutrients. His motto? If you wouldn’t put it in your body, why would you put it on your body.  Amen!

Slow Death by Rubber Duck, by Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie

Reviewed by Naomi Higenbottam Do you ever wonder how the toxic chemicals found in products we use in our daily lives affect our health? In this eye opening book, authors Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie spend 4 days ingesting and inhaling countless chemicals to help answer that question.

Slow Death by Rubber Duck takes a look at the toxic chemicals that we allow into our environment and how they are polluting people from all walks of life. Many people think of pollution as car exhaust or factory smoke but this book demonstrates that a whole world of toxic chemicals are hiding out in seemingly harmless places. Baby bottles. Furniture. Deodorants. Children’s clothing. Cooking pots. T.V.s. It’s a never ending and scary list. These toxins make their way into our bodies through our food, air and water.

Rick and Bruce spend four days in a room testing their body’s levels before and after exposure for toxic chemicals and hormone disruptors such as mercury, bisphenol A, phalathes, triclosan, PCBs and PBDEs. Many of these chemicals are derivatives of Benzene, a toxic chemical found in coal, natural gas and crude oil. It was startling to learn that so many products contain ingredients made from oil. The natural gas and oil we rely on to run our cars and heat our homes is destroying our health and our environment. There are no laws to protect us from the wealthy oil companies that have always put profit before public health. There is a lack of regulation which allows these companies to use these chemicals for more and more products, without proper labelling and without proper testing for health risks. Throughout the book, the authors discuss the long list of health effects linked to toxic chemical exposure including cancer, birth defects, respiratory illness and neurodevelopment disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

It is not all bad news. There is positive change happening. The authors give the readers hope that we can do something! People are becoming more aware of these toxic chemicals that are residing in our bodies and becoming more concerned with their long term effects on their health. This increased public awareness is quickly bringing the issue of toxic chemicals up the public’s priority list. Efforts have been made to ban the sale of children’s products that contain toxic chemicals. The book concludes with examples of how simple changes in consumer’s choices can detox their lives and how the average citizen can help to advocate for public policy change so that there will be laws that protect us from these chemicals and protect out environment.

Organic Housekeeping, by Ellen Sandbeck

Reviewed by Marcia Wallace This is the book that got me to throw out all the household toxins in my home. For years I was getting increasingly concerned about the environmental causes of health problems, but felt paralyzed to act. I decided to do something within my own home - surely I could make a few modest changes that would make a difference? And it started by changing the definition of clean I had grown up with. As Ellen writes: “There is no such thing as cleaner than clean. A clean surface is just the surface, with nothing else on it; a lingering fragrance, no matter how sweet and pleasant, signals that a chemical has been left behind.”

The main structure of the book is based on different rooms of the house - the bathroom, the bedroom, the kitchen - with tips and advice on what works best for the types of housekeeping you'll need in each area of the house. And her advice goes way beyond cleaners. She writes about everything from avoiding toxic materials in the products we buy, to how to prevent stains and address odours, to fire prevention and much more.

Ellen calls herself the “nontoxic avenger” and her message is simple. Change starts at home, and you can learn to live in a cleaner, healthier, economical way. Her book isn’t what I expected. Although she’s motivated by removing the toxins around us, she starts the book with advice on how to de-clutter your life and be more organized. It’s an accessible start to the kind of book best suited for that person that has been moved by the issues, but can’t respond to being told that everything they do wrong, everything they use is toxic. Reading Organic Housekeeping is like be held by the hand by a big sister - “see, its not that hard!”

Living Downstream, by Sandra Steingraber

Living Downstream: An Ecologist's Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment, by Sandra SteingraberReviewed by Marie Lorenzo

I loved reading this book. I have to admit a penchant, as I am a popular science writing junkie and would ask for the latest Stephen J. Gould for birthdays. And as is often said about her, this woman can write science really well. Of course, she is, after all, also a poet. Nonetheless, impressively, Steingraber seems to know exactly the right moment to pause the science to inject the passion, and the personal.

Because after all, as she strains to remind us, what statistics never reveal is that the experience of cancer, and all disease, is at bottom inescapably personal. To this end, she puts forward her own story, a very young victim of bladder cancer, now under control, but never quite behind her. But Steingraber doesn't stop there; she goes beyond the intimately personal to the personal experience of everyone who has faced cancer, and others who fear they may. She sets out to chronicle the data, focusing on several key chemicals likely to be carcinogens or associated with carcinogens, such as PCBs, atrazine and chlorine. She organizes the story along huge life lines, such as water, earth, fire, time, space, but also, war, animals, silence – always interjecting the personal stories along the way.

She reveals her evident sensitivity to the working people who are exposed to carcinogens at their workplaces, but also in their neighbourhoods by virtue of their ghettoization. And her sensitivity to the farmers who are increasingly hard-pressed to make a living yet are the first target of toxins, and first target of regulators and critics, too.

I read the first edition and the second edition (Da Capo Press, 2010) in quick succession: they are approximately 13 years apart, and yet there are those moments where your heart sinks as you realize how long the evidence has been around and how little progress has been made! The result is a great book that has been truly updated, as Steingraber skillfully inserts passages to re-date herself as well as the data in light of time passed. She equips the reader-would-be activist with both negative and positive data, evidence of the potential for changes, and stories of where change is happening. It is chock-full of information and evidence, but also plenty of hope.

And finally, she makes a plea for cancer survivors to take up this struggle. What struggle? you may ask. This is the end goal of the book: there is a struggle to be waged out there. The cancer will not stop increasing until we put our foot down, it will not stop until people cry out, enough!; it will not stop until there is REFUSAL. In Steingraber poetry, “It is time to play the Save the World Symphony. You're not required to play a solo, but you are required to know what your instrument is and play it as well as you can.”

“From the right to know and the duty to inquire flows the obligation to act.”

The Complete Natural Medicine Guide to Women's Health, by Sat Dharam Kaur, N.D

Reviewed by Lindsay Gladkowski This helpful book functions as a mindful guide to nurturing our minds and bodies to the cyclical nature of our health and all of its natural turns and twists. It is constantly flying off my bookshelf to share insight with friends and family who are motivated to learn more about their own health. It is perfect for individuals at each and every life stage as it is a reminder to take every life stage in stride and to see our health in continuous cycles.

Sat Dharam Kaur's expertise is empowering, reader friendly and encourages us to be our own health advocates. She provides us with a comprehensive overview of steps we can take to make ourselves more mindful, prevention focused and holistically driven self-caretakers. This book not only looks at ways of cleansing and rejuvenation (by allowing our bodies to get in synch with the change of seasons) but looks at very practical ways to make food our medicine. This book is fitting into our current change of seasons as her fall program, starting September 23rd, encourages us to release physical and emotional baggage and prepare for a season of introspection.