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Clean your house, kill your kid

Fruit-fasting-toxic

There are numerous studies showing how everyday household cleaners pose serious health risks. Are you sacrificing the long-term health of your family for the short-term germ? And what are the toxic top ten right under your roof?

The International Agency for Research on Cancer and the World Health Organization (WHO) have concluded that 80% of all cancers are atttributed to environmental carcinogens, other than genetic factors, including exposure to chemicals found in household cleaining products. http://www.who.int/genomics/public/geneticdiseases/en/index3.html  So why would there be so many different products on the shelves today, if they are linked to disease? There are a couple important factors to point out.

1. Manafacturers are not required to have their products tested for safety. Less than 10% of products have been tested for chronic mutagenic effects, and less than 20% tested for acute affects.An EPA study showed that 43% of all chemicals produced annually have no toxicicty data reported. http://www.epa.gov/hpv/pubs/general/hazchem.htm

2. Products are exempt from listing ingredients.  Under the 1960 Federal Hazardous Substances Labeling Act product manafacturers don't have to list all the ingredients on the package.  This also protects the manafacturers from getting the secret ingredients reproduced, falling within secret trade laws.

So what are the toxic top ten under your roof?

1. Dishwashing Detergent.

Combine the city water that contains fluoride, chlorine, CBPs with the petrochemicals, benzene and phosphates in the detergent- and turn them into a toxic gas bomb. Toxic vapors escape the machine at about 6 liters/air per minute. Toxic vapors cross the protective blood-brain barrier and deposit in your nervous system. This gaseous state is far more deadly than swallowing the detergent (which it also states harmful if swallowed on the label). Ever open the dishwasher door and take a deep breath in?

2. Oven Cleaners.

They contain lye, ammonia which leave residues in your oven, releasing toxicity into your food when cooking.

3. Laundry Detergent.

Your skin is the largest organ in your body, but also the thinnest. Residues on your clothes, sheets, etc. get easily absorbed into your skin and transported through the bloodstream. Common ingredient-benzene, a known cause to leukemia. Soft, snuggly, and corrosive.

4. Floor and Furniture Polish.

Petroleum distillates known to cause liver cancer.

5. Air Fresheners.

One of six categories of chemicals that should be given the highest priority for neurotoxicity. Those little Christmas trees in your car, the Glade spray over your kid on the floor. Yeah, but you smell righteous!

Car-air-freshener

6. Hard Surface Cleaners.

Clean the counters, leave a residue for your steak to sit on.

7. Antibacterial Soaps.

These not only kill the good bacteria (we'll get into later), but also the bad bacteria. This leaves your immune system defenseless to fight off those germs- causing way more harm than good. Commonly contain triclosan which is absorbed directly by the skin.

8. Dry Cleaning.

PERC (perchloroethylene) is a known carcinogen. Those dry-cleaned clothes off gas the chemicals into your home. According to the National Institute of Environmental Health "short-term exposure to PERC can cause adverse effects on the nervous system, long-term exposure can cause liver nad kidney damage."

9. Carpert and Upholstery Cleaners.

Buy a feed mouse from the pet store. Put it in a toilet paper roll tube, and block the mouse in there with pieces of your capet. If the mouse dies overnight, your carpet it toxic! PERC, flame retardants. Your kids, and pets are playing, licking, eating the carpet...and the chemicals.

10. Toilet Bowl Cleaners.

Hydrochloric acid is a highly corrosive irritant to the eyes and skin, respiratory tract and damages the kidneys and liver. Remember in chemistry class the professor said to NEVER touch the hydrochloric acid? I don't know about you, but no matter how hard I try my dog drinks from the toilet.

Dog-drinking-toilet

So what do you do? Keep following my posts!