IN THIS ISSUE:
WHEN's 2011 Cancer Prevention Challenge
Exposure: Environmental Links to Breast Cancer - Film Screening
Healthier Environments for Newcomer Women and Families
Community Environment Days with the City of Toronto
WHAT'S NEW?
As signs of spring come into bloom, May is also a time across Canada to raise awareness about the environmental causes of Asthma. Did you know that 3 million people in Canada suffer from Asthma? At least 12 percent of Canadian children suffer from Asthma. And the trend is not encouraging - the numbers of those with Asthma have been increasing in the last 20 years world wide (more Asthma facts).
Take Action for Prevention! Here are just a few ideas:
Download WHEN's Air Quality Action Guide: Let's Clean Up the Air Around Our Kids' Schools!, and get active in your community. This guide is packed with lots of information and practical tips that you can implement today to improve local air quality.
Get a group together and screen the film, Toxic Trespass. Its a compelling documentary about the toxic burden that even children are exposed to. The filmmaker takes us on a journey to Windsor and Sarnia where residents are faced with an alarming cluster of environmental health concerns, and introduces us to the local activists that are taking positive action for change.
Visit Asthma Society of Canada's website. Learn how you can better control Asthma if you or someone you love has it, and how to use the Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) to inform your choices.
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!”