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Top Tips

• Here are 25 tips for improving your home’s air quality, from choosing the right paint to cleaning your air conditioner.

• A disturbing fact: bottled water companies have no FDA restrictions dictating what information they have to disclose about their product. Good thing the Environmental Working Group just came out with their bottled water scorecard. The only brand to get an A? Filtered tap water.

• A video and instructions on how to make your own carbonated drinks. This means soda without BPA, corn syrup, waste, or corporate bottling companies.

• Hand me downs may be healthier for your baby. Second had products like cribs and toys will have had more time to lose all of those dangerous toxins that are emitted by brand new paints, glues, and flame retardants, and used clothes will have been washed enough to be free of chemicals obtained during textile manufacturing.

Recent Research

• New studies show that giving children common allergenic foods at a young age may help prevent those allergies from ever developing. Children who had eaten peanut snacks by the time they were nine months old were 10 times less likely to develop an allergy to the nut.

• Evidence shows that the infamous pesticide DDT may be contributing to the ever-increasing incidence of diabetes. This is a new addition to a collection of research linking environmental contaminants and diabetes. This study and others like it will help shift the focus of diabetes prevention from diet and exercise to protecting oneself from common toxins. The Smart Mama offers simple advice for reducing pesticide exposure: remove your shoes upon entering your home, our shoes are covered in banned toxins.

Other News

• California’s Prop. 65, a measure used by regulators to identify toxins that can cause birth defects, will not include BPA. The physicians compiling the bill decided that more evidence showing the clear link between BPA and ill health in humans, and not just rodents, is necessary for BPA’s inclusion on the list. This decision will prevent BPA warning labels from being added to food, and goes against measures already passed in Minnesota and Connecticut, which have banned BPA from being used in baby bottles.

• Wal-Mart has decided to launch a new eco-friendly labeling system, which will give each of its products a rating based on its sustainability. The retailer plans to use this new system to require its suppliers to comply with certain sustainability standards. Wal-Mart’s chief merchandising officer says his hope is that one-day sustainability tags will be just as common and used in much the same way as nutritional labels.

• A known carcinogen may be replacing the pesticide presently used on strawberries in California. Politicians are reportedly “circumventing the scientific process” in supporting the switch, as the decision may be made before the Department of Pesticide Regulation has had a chance to conduct their own safety examinations. The new chemical, methyl iodide, is so toxic that scientists won’t handle it without a ventilation hood, gloves, and special equipment. If the switch is made, unshielded farm workers and residents downwind of the crops will be breathing up to 100 times more of the toxin than deemed acceptable.

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