Our home is our castle and, for most of us, it is the biggest financial investment we will ever make.
· What if your home was making you sick or preventing your kids from reaching their full potential?
· What if you were inadvertently causing your family harm through the products you buy?
Okay, so you are aware of the problems with asbestos, lead paint and bisphenol-A in plastic baby bottles. What more can there be? Just take a look at the number of pages in this book and you’ll get a glimpse of the magnitude of the problem.
Despite the fact that we spend around 90% of our time inside a building1, the air within our homes can be more seriously polluted than the outdoor air in even the largest and most industrialized cities.2 In fact, breathing outdoor air in Australia kills more people than the road toll3,4 and indoor air is estimated to be at least five times more polluted than outdoor air! Remarkably, most of the air pollution in your home comes from the products you buy and use in your home: perfume, air fresheners, fly spray, personal care products like makeup and body washes, moth balls, pet flea powder, dry cleaned clothes, cleaning products, new furniture like sofas, smoking, burning incense and the list goes on and on.
Unlike a workplace which is governed by occupational, health and safety laws to protect workers from toxic exposure, many toxic chemicals can be purchased from your local supermarket or hardware store and brought into your home, and trade secrecy laws do not require manufacturers to disclose all of their ingredients, or to provide safety data sheets about the product’s toxicity, first aid recommendations or guidance on the use of personal protective equipment. For example, a simple search of ingredients in personal care products, will show you that most commercial shampoos, conditioners, body washes and creams contain ingredients that are skin irritants, which really begs the question, why do we refer to them as ‘skin care’. Even worse, why are some of these marketed as ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ when the industry definition of these terms varies significantly to the public’s perception?
By Nicole Bijlsma, ND, BHScAc(HONS), Grad Dip OHS,
Dip.Building Biology, PhD candidate