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Top Tips

• Looking for a way to teach your children how to be socially conscience? The Kids Guide to Service Projects is a guide filled with over 500 community service ideas presented in a kid-friendly format.
• Selecting safe bath products for our kids is not an easy task these days. Most popular brands contain dangerous toxins such as 1, 4 dioxane and formaldehyde, which are known carcinogens and harsh on young skin. If looking for safer bath alternatives try these suggestions from Mom Goes Green.
• As we start pulling out festive decorations to show our holiday cheer, rather than buy new items why not try making your own. Planet Green shows how constructing your own decorations can make the holidays more personal and even start some new family traditions.
• Gift giving does not always have to include shopping at large impersonal retailers. The 2009 Fair Trade Gift Guide has wonderful socially responsible gift ideas. Feel good about giving and being socially responsible too.

Recent Research

• BPA linked to aggression in girls, now phthalate exposure linked to gender-altering play in boys. Research shows that fetal exposure to phthalates, solvents used to soften plastics, lessens masculine play interests. Researchers at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry found that boys with greater exposure to the solvent during fetal development were more interested in gender-neutral play. Future studies will be looking for a link between phthalates and their impacts on physiological factors like body build. This only adds insult to injury with recent news linking BPA to male sexual dysfunction.

• Toddlers and obese children are more apt to suffer blood-vessel damage from secondhand smoke leading to heart disease later in life. Researchers found that toddlers had a four times greater risk than adolescents with similar exposures, reason being that younger children spend more time in close proximity to smoking parents. Toddlers exposed to secondhand smoke were also found to have a reduced number of cells involved in repair and maintenance of a healthy blood vessel network. John Bauer, the study's co-lead investigator from Nationwide Children's Hospital & Research Institute at Ohio State University, states "This suggests that some aspects of adult heart disease may be initiated in early childhood, where prevention strategies may have great long-term impact."

Other News

• The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends against mammograms for women between the ages of 40 and 50. Additionally, they advise against self breast exams, stating that no evidence shows benefits. Dr. Diana Petitti, vice-chairman of the task force, states that increased screening creates false positives leading to further testing that are expensive and time-consuming. Doctors and breast cancer advocacy groups are concerned on how these new guidelines will affect public and private insurance coverage, whose decisions are often based. Eric Winer, chief scientific adviser of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and director of the Breast Oncology Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, states "women and their doctors have a right to make a decision about whether they should be screened. If they don't have financial coverage, then they don't have that right."

• Children’s toys sold with Barbie and Disney logos are turning up with lead contamination. The Center for Environmental Health tested approximately 250 products and 7 exceeded federal limitations. Both companies have stated the products were made or tested by third parties. Last year Mattel, the manufacturer of Barbie, was involved in a recall involving more than 2 million toys. Inez Tenenbaum, commission chairman of The Consumer Product Safety Commission, praised stricter laws against lead contamination for reducing the number of tainted toys this year.

• U.S. Department of Agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, vowed to try harder to alert affected schools of food-born illness. Vilsack admitted that communication between the FDA and the USDA are not as they should be and that schools have suffered in not receiving information quickly to prevent further illness. This comes after a report from USA Today stating that school districts know very little about the sources of the food they provide to children. Shockingly the same is true when government regulators are made aware of possible contamination. Between 1998 and 2007 over 20,000 children were sickened by food-born illness from school lunches.

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