Tag Archives: Products

Opportunity to Share Your Chemical and Fragrance Injury Stories

Posted on September 9, 2020 | Leave a comment

 

 Women’s Voices For the Earth  are offering  those of us who have been harmed by chemical exposures an opportunity to share our stories and experiences.

Has Your Health Been Harmed by Toxic Chemicals?
Share Your Story!

“When you share your experiences, it not only changes people who connect with your story, it also changes you. When people share their personal stories on a social issue, they become more invested in that issue because it is now theirs (Beautiful Rising.org). What’s more, it is contagious: Sharing leads to sharing leads to sharing and helps communities and individuals connect over similarities and differences.

We want to hear from you! Tell us, how have exposures to harmful chemicals impacted your health?

And if you are interested, WVE can also help you amplify your story in the media, or with policy and decision makers.”

Learn more here:
Continue reading →

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Posted in Environmental Health, Fragrance, Toxic Trespass

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When Being Quarantined or Isolated and Broke is “Normal”

Posted on September 5, 2020 | 1 comment

But Shouldn’t Have to Be

Guest Post by Joanne Cabe

I read a post from someone who was out of work and broke, who wrote that being quarantined and broke, or being an essential worker and working over time, isn’t normal for anyone.

I had to respond. I don’t know that it will do any good on people’s awareness, but this was my try for the day:

Continue reading →

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Posted in Accessibility, Air Quality, Environmental Health, Fragrance, Health

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The Courageous Canaries of MCS/ES (and mask) Awareness Month 2016

Posted on May 31, 2016 | 5 comments

2016 MCS-ES Awareness Month Compilation♥

Many thanks to the Courageous Canaries of MCS/ES (and mask)
Awareness Month 2016!

♥

Your courage, kindness, and willingness to share your photos and stories in the “What I Wear in Bad Air” series generated a lot of discussion in various support groups, and will benefit so many others who can see some of the options that are available, as worn by their peers, and that it’s more than ok to be visible. Continue reading →

5 Comments

Posted in Air Quality, Disability, Environmental Health, Environmental Sensitivities, Fashion, Fragrance, Human Rights

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Have Your Say for May by Mimi

Posted on May 8, 2015 | 2 comments

Mimi from Ontario, Canada has this to say to us:

I wish that you could accept that this is real and that your habits make me ill.

I wish you could understand how switching to fragrance-free products is such a small act that means a world of difference to me – literally.

It means being able to have a clear mind in order to work effectively and support myself, it means being able to receive hugs, it means not suffering every day.

Mimi

♥

2 Comments

Posted in Accessibility, Disability, Education, Fragrance, MCS/ES, Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, Support

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About Those Fragrance-Free Laundry Products

Posted on April 9, 2015 | 19 comments

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?

Continue reading →

19 Comments

Posted in Air Quality, Chemicals, Environment, Health, MCS/ES, Pollution, Public Health

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Video: A Family Learns About The Products They Buy

Posted on October 9, 2013 | 7 comments

Chemerical is a film about a regular family as they learn about what’s lurking in their products, struggle to come to terms with the new info, and then learn how to make safer changes in their lives.

“Chemerical” explores the life cycle of everyday household cleaners and hygiene products to prove that, thanks to our clean obsession, we are drowning in sea of toxicity.

The film is at once humorous, as we watch the Goode family try to turn a new leaf by creating and living in a toxic free home, and informative, as director Andrew Nisker works with many experts to give audiences the tools and inspiration to live toxic free.

Chemerical

Andrew Nisker weaves visits to the Environmental Health Clinic in Toronto,

Continue reading →

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Posted in Chemicals, Child Health, Environmental Health, Healthy Environment

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Endocrine disruptors – in fabric?

Posted on April 11, 2013 | Leave a comment

O Ecotextiles is a great blog to follow if you are interested in what’s happening in the textile world. Lots of excellent information about why those of us with MCS/ES and Fibromyalgia can have so much difficulty finding safe (non-toxic) clothing to wear, as well as safe beds and furniture to rest our weary bodies on.

Here’s their latest, a subject that is worth understanding, as endocrine disruptors are found in so many of our everyday products and materials, and our endocrine systems are responsible for regulating so much of our lives, processes that we seem to have taken for granted for far too long…

Endocrine disruptors – in fabric?.

A big thank you to Patty and Leigh Anne who founded O Ecotextiles in 2004 and keep us so well informed.

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Posted in chemicals in clothing, Environmental Health, Fashion, Pollution

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There’s WHAT in my Baking Soda?

Posted on March 27, 2013 | 54 comments

Fragrance chemicals….

Yes, I said it… There are fragrance chemicals in much of the baking soda sold now… Even in the baking soda you bake with. Unless you are extremely lucky… and there’s no rhyme or reason as to when it might be fragrance free, because no-one who might know will tell as to why there are any problems with it in the first place.

For months now, I haven’t been able to get any baking soda that isn’t fragrance (or otherwise) pre-contaminated… and I use it instead of soap products, which I don’t tolerate, to clean me, my teeth, my clothes and everything else that needs cleaning… Because my body doesn’t tolerate soap, even organic olive oil soap, probably because there’s something about modern lye that doesn’t agree with me…

If I lived in a cave, it might not matter, but I’m stuck here in the suburbs, and despite being housebound, there are people who make assumptions on my rare appearances outdoors, like when I have to go to the recycling and garbage bins… And I am just well enough to notice, and to care… And it just doesn’t feel good physically, or emotionally…

P1400358

My local Bulk Barn store owner picking up 50 lbs of fragrance contaminated baking soda during a February snowstorm

The most recent Arm and Hammer bulk sample, was even worse than the previous one, although the type of contamination is different…
The owner/manager says he took the sample from a brand new bag he just cut open and used the jar I had given him when he picked up the 50 lbs of fragrance contaminated baking soda I’d purchased in December. He was even so kind as to deliver the jar full.

Arm and Hammer is saying there is no way their stuff is contaminated before it goes in the bag, Bulk Barn won’t tell me who the middle man is, and the bags are really unlikely to pick up contamination during the time between anyway – but I’ve had fragrance contamination on the INSIDE of the bag, when the outside had no fragrance residue.

Continue reading →

54 Comments

Posted in Baking Soda, Environmental Sensitivities, Food, Fragrance, Multiple Chemical Sensitivities

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Detox Fashion (thank you Greenpeace)

Posted on December 13, 2012 | 6 comments

Greenpeace is running an excellent campaign to detox the fashion industry. Sadly, textiles these days are full of toxic chemicals, chemicals which are harming the health and environment everywhere in their life-cycle, where they are made, and where they are used.

This video shows a bit of the background:

You might wonder why water pollution in China is a problem for us?

from: How to get rid of chemicals in fabrics. (Hint: trick question.)

http://oecotextiles.wordpress.com/2010/11/10/how-to-get-rid-of-chemicals-in-fabrics-hint-trick-question/

“How do these chemicals get into our bodies from the textiles?  Your skin is the largest organ of your body, and it’s highly permeable.  So skin absorption is one route; another is through inhalation of the chemicals (if they are the type that evaporate – and if they do evaporate, each chemical has a different rate of evaporation, from minutes or hours to weeks or years) and a third route:  Think of microscopic particles of fabric that abrade each time we use a towel, sit on a sofa, put on our clothes.  These microscopic particles fly into the air and then we breathe them in or ingest them.  Or they  fall into the dust of our homes, where people and pets, especially crawling children and pets, continue to breathe or ingest them.”

Going after  manufacturers to detox their practices is a logical step.

And it’s working:

Levi’s shapes up to become a Detox leader
http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/Blog/levis-shapes-up-to-become-a-detox-leader/blog/43437/

read more here:

Toxic Threads – Product Testing Results
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/toxics/water/detox/Toxic-Threads/

And if you can’t wait that long for safer clothing, you can check the list of safeR options listed in the “CHEMICAL-FREE CLOTHING (WE WISH)” tab at the top of the page here and then work on detoxing those at home using decontamination protocols found here: https://seriouslysensitivetopollution.wordpress.com/2012/09/08/laundry-decontamination-protocols/

P.S.

I forgot to mention that if you are trying to get toxic chemicals out of your clothing, using conventional, everyday laundry products isn’t going to get you non-toxic clothes… Not when the laundry products themselves are full of toxic chemicals: https://seriouslysensitivetopollution.wordpress.com/2012/04/03/toxic-chemicals-in-everyday-laundry-products/

 

6 Comments

Posted in Chemical Free Clothing, Environment, Products

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