Incredibly 72 percent of our toxic chemical exposure is from our homes (USEPA). Most of us have way too much stuff and unfortunately much of it is toxic. It’s hard to get away from chemicals our consumer society and finding alternatives is often a challenge many of us face – even for the most caring and conscious consumer.
In our daily-use products there are tens of thousands potentially toxic chemicals and incredibly most have not been properly tested for human safety. Research is clearly showing that continued exposure to these are linked to chronic disease, sensitivities and allergies, breast milk contamination, endocrine disruption, early onset-puberty (6 years earlier than in the mid 1800s), serious soil, air and water pollution – just to name a few. Children are more susceptible than adults.
Did you know that indoor air pollution is ranked as one of the top five risks to public health. In How Toxic is Your Home, Griffith University tells us that indoor air pollution can be 2-5 times higher than air pollution outside – this is alarming considering that most Australians typically spend 90% of their time indoors.
Detox your home: Room by Room
I’m currently going thoroughly room by room to detox my home. I considered myself to be an aware consumer, but I still am being surprised by things lurking in the fine-print, or tucked in back corners. Detoxing is a liberating process in so many ways.
It can seem overwhelming, but I’m taking a methodical step-by step detox process and writing this up, along with simple and affordable ways to best replace the toxic stuff. To help share this with others, I am preparing a short course and book: Detox Your Home: Room by Room and it will be ready in a couple of months.
The best way to hear about it’s launch is here on my blog and through my fortnightly newsletter (you can sign up at the top of the sidebar). I do hope you will join me on this journey and we can share stories of how to make a positive change to detox our homes – our bodies and environment too.
I’m doing this because I really think there’s no point having healthy food and healthy lifestyle if the stuff we surround yourself in is toxic – for example, the things we keep our food in, the things we drink from, the things we cook on, the things we put on our skin, the things we wear, the things we sleep on, the things we sit on, the things we work at, even the things use to blow our noses…. We are surrounded by toxicity daily – it’s not good for us, it’s not good for our children, it’s not good for the planet – and it most probably wasn’t good either for the people who made it. Whatever level you want to look at it, it’s not good.
I care what impact my choices are having on my health, my family and all life, and I believe that …
We can change this!
I like what Annie Leonard said at the end of the 2007 movie, the Story of Stuff…
It didn’t just happen.
People created it.
We are people too.
We are people too.
Let’s create something new.
The Story of Stuff encourages us to choose less stuff, more joy. Great advice!
Tomorrow (March 1, 2017), a new episode from the Story of Stuff series will be released – the Story of Microfibres. It’s a big story. More than 60% of the clothes we wear are made from synthetic fabrics which shed microfibres that cannot be filtered by our current waste systems and end up in the ocean.
I wrote a little about microplastics and the impact of our clothing industry a few months ago: http://our-permaculture-life.blogspot.com/2016/09/did-you-know-our-clothes-are-poisoning.html It’s a huge issue, particularly considering how much of it our society buys and throws away each year. Shifting this pattern requires a shift in what we value – the latest new thing, or the health of people and the planet.
Please take a look at this new Story of Stuff film and I highly recommend watching (or rewatching) the other films in this series that have been produced since 2007. To make it easy, I have linked to some of them below. If you want find out more and see what resources are available, check out their website: http://storyofstuff.org/
New movie March 2017
http://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-stuff/ (2007) 20 mins
http://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-bottled-water/ (2010) 8 mins
http://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-cosmetics/ (2010) 8 mins
http://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-electronics/ (2011) 8 mins
http://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-broke/ (2011) 8 mins
http://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-change/ (2011) 6 mins
http://storyofstuff.org/movies/the-story-of-solutions/ (2013) 9 mins
Confronting! …..and here was me just worrying about 'that' plastics cupboard – so much more.