Today my daughter told me that she had seen a nature doctor, who did some tests and told her that her body was less polluted than most, perhaps because she had grown up in France. This conclusion gave me pause when I realized the amounts of toxins the doctor must usually find because I did not do anything conscious to keep our diet toxin-free.
Are you aware exactly which ingredients are in the products you use and the packaged foods you eat? Read Judith Stock’s great post yesterday on this subject at Living Green, Living Well. If you want to take immediate action and stop using commercial toothpaste, visit Melanie McMinn’s Frugal Kiwi to learn how to make your own. And, finally, for those of you with kids, check out Christina Le Beau’s brand new blog Spoonfed: Raising Kids to Think About the Food They Eat.
Most recently I have been worrying about drinking water quality. Chicago reports DEET in its water supply. Officials in Amesbury expressed concern today about sodium fluoride from China, which dissolved so inefficiently that the town decided to stop using the remaining chemicals already purchased. 44 other Massachusetts communities use the same Chinese fluoride.
This month Silent Spring Institute will announce new research findings with regard to pharmaceuticals detected in pond water here on Cape Cod. In Yarmouth, the Board of Health is already studying the issue. (Read about it here.)
Is there fluoride in your town's water? Do you worry about the water you drink? Do you use a filter? Have you ever had your water analyzed to know what's in it besides H2O?
8 comments:
We saw the first Roundup commercial last night. People need to stop adding chemicals to their lawns and gardens. Especially on the Cape.
I'm sure you read the Times this morning about the meeting in Harwich.
Good work, all you Cape Codders. Keep it up.
I'd really hate to know about all the toxins in my body. It's scary. Living on the NE coast is probably one of the worst places to live (short of in LA) for that sort of thing, too. So even if I practice every healthy living tip, I'm still polluted. We use bottled water, but I'm not proud of that because of the other implications (pumping it in mass out of the ground, the pollution to transport it, etc). Tap water should just be safe. I mean, it should be!
That's very interesting about the findings in your daughter. It has to be due to the pre-packaged foods. I do worry about our water. However, it is well water and we haven't had it tested. Until we do and can afford a filter, we're leery of drinking it.
I worry about all of this, I fear. I am scared to have my children tested as I suspect they have high levels of toxins in them despite how much we try. The water in Ashland comes from a mountain spring and is delicious. And we use an under-the-sink water filter. But for some reason a lot of people in our town have high levels of lead in their bodies. Oy. I'm sooo glad that your daughter is more toxin-free than most. In America we are surrounded by poisons.
Oh, and I just made Frugal Kiwi's DIY laundry detergent. It was easy! It works great!! And it means that we are spending about .02 cents per load of laundry. Why oh why didn't we do this before?!
Sadly we can't get rid of all the scary chemicals that are in our bodies, but we can stop sticking them right in our mouths. Making your own basic products, soap, laundry detergent, deodorant, shampoo, etc allows you to know what you are putting in and on your body. Plus, it is cheap not to mention simpler and easier than you think.
I live in Marin County, famous for its "cancer cluster" and high rate of autism, yet no one ever seems to be able to figure out which, if any toxins responsible. I've been working to get plastics and teflon out of my cooking and am trying to eat closer to nature. but find it's such a big challenge given modern time constraints!
Bottled water that isn't tap water (because an awful lot of it is) undergoes less mandatory testing for contaminants than tap. Just something to know.
Something else to know: Brita filters are effective against many contaminants, but if the filter is not changed as often as it should be, then it is dumping those contaminants back in your drinking glass at higher concentrations that you'd ever have drunk them in the first place. I'd rather drink from the tap than from a Brita filter whose history I don't know.
I'm happy to report Sandwich doesn't fluoridate its water supply, and that our water tastes really, really good :).
We have a faucet filter, but I've just started looking into a whole-house unit. We're also participating in a study with our local water authority where we'll be collecting a tap sample once a month for six months. I'm very interested to see those results. Nice blog, Alexandra, and thanks so much for linking to my new blog!
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