Tag Archives: carcinogens

Show You Care, Clear the Air!

Apparently fragranced items (including toys) are  top sellers as Christmas gifts (and for other occasions). Unless you have told everyone you know NOT to get you anything fragranced, there’s a high likelihood that you’ve recently received something aromatic, something that you may or may not understand the consequences of having and using.

Most people have no idea that these and other products that stink contain harmful chemicals that damage our health (as well as the health of future generations). We don’t know because these ingredients are secret (unlabeled), unregulated, and we have not been educated.

For those of you who are beginning to understand there’s a problem,  and having been the unfortunate recipient of a toxic gift from a well-meaning friend or family member, but have wondered what exactly you can do about it (other than thinking of regifting it * please don’t), here is an up and coming post-gift-giving-receiving activity you can take to let vendors and manufacturers know you won’t accept their toxic secrets!

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Chimneys Puffing Fragranced Smoke

Did you know they add fragrance chemicals to fire-starters and logs now???

Dashing through the snow
Coughing all the way
Over fields we go
On a frosty winter’s day

No fresh air to breathe
Chimneys puffing smoke
Pine and fragranced fireplace logs
Are ruining the day Continue reading

About Those Fragrance-Free Laundry Products

Some of us have gone to great lengths to encourage others to use fragrance-free products, especially for laundry, as many of the chemicals in fragrances cause such  disabling effects for us.

Not only that, but fragranced laundry products pollute entire neighbourhoods with hazardous chemicals when pumped out of dryer vents (which were designed to emit moisture, not toxic chemicals), meaning that we (and others with asthma, migraines, COPD, etc) can’t sit or work outside in our gardens, open our windows for fresh air, or go for walks safely when other people are doing laundry with regular commercial  products (and when are they not?), because we could be felled at any time from the emissions.

Much to our chagrin, many of us have discovered that some fragrance-free products can also make us dizzy, cause breathing difficulties like asthma, create cognitive confusion and memory problems, give us headaches, chemical hangovers, and more.

This has caused all kinds of difficulties, not just for us, but for the people who switched products only to discover that their efforts were not “good enough” for us.

“Can’t they EVER be happy?  Why are they still complaining?”

Anne Steinemann’s recently published research regarding VOCs emitted from regular personal care, cleaning, and laundry products, (the popular ones used by most people in the “developed” world) sheds some much needed light on the problems.

So what did she find?

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