Healthy Child Healthy World - Creating a Cleaner, Greener, Safer Home

About the Book

Chapter 1: Doing the Bump: Preparing for Baby

Having a baby? Detoxify your home!

Practice Safe Scents — Fragrance-free products can reduce your exposure to phthalates, harmful chemicals that aren’t listed on the label but often hidden in the word fragrance.

Chapter 2: Clean Up Time: Safe Suds and a Greener Clean

Learn the dirty truth about some traditional cleansers and find effective ways to keep a clean and toxic-free home.

De-mold safely. It's a myth that you need chlorinated bleaches, ammonia, or other chemically potent mold and mildew cleaners to obliterate spores. For problem areas, wear gloves and a face mask (spores can be inhaled) and use a stiff bristle brush or toothbrush, a non-ammonia detergent (such as borax, hydrogen peroxide, or tea tree oil), and hot water. Or spray with a solution of half a cup of vinegar to a cup of water.

Chapter 3: Clean Plate: Choosing, Eating, and Storing Healthier

Tips to take to the grocery store, including the best choices for fruits and vegetables, the safest fish, and the healthiest food for your kids.

Natural or All Natural. “Natural” just means that some ingredients are derived from nature. But that doesn’t preclude the presence of some highly unnatural additives and hormones.

Chapter 4: The Beauty Part: Natural Body Care

Hair and skin-care tips and recipes that are safe for both you and your unborn baby.

Skip the chemical baby wipes. Conventional wipes are often saturated with alcohol, fragrances, and other skin irritants. For the first few weeks use a water-saturated paper towel or cloth, eventually moving on to wipes that are unbleached and free of dyes and fragrances. Keep a pump thermos filled with warm water and a teaspoon of baking soda on hand as a convenient way to save time and water while cleaning.

Chapter 5: Child's Play: Healthier Toys, Gear, and Clothing

Don’t lose sleep over whether or not products you buy for your child are toxic. Learn to select healthy and safe toys.

Opt for clear silicone pacifiers over the yellow rubber ones, which may contain harmful chemicals.

Chapter 6: Splendor in the Grass: Healthier Gardens, Yards, and Outdoor Spaces

Keep the Garden green; safe alternatives to pesticides

Fifty percent of total lifetime pesticide exposure occurs during the first five years of one's life?

Chapter 7: Every Sip, and Breath, You Take: Clean Water & Air

Did you know indoor air has 2 to 5 times more pollutants than outdoor air? Learn ways to improve your indoor air quality since we spend 90% of our time inside!

Many homes built in the last twenty or more years are amazingly well sealed, trapping air pollutants and moisture indoors. Add to this the many chemical vapors that get stuck inside and pose respiratory risks – perfumes, air fresheners, carpet, etc. So open windows for at least five minutes a day (the more, the better), even if only a crack in the winter, to circulate air and let indoor pollutants out. On hot, humid days, however, close windows and use air conditioners to ventilate. (The benefit to individual health surely outweighs the environmental detriment)

Chapter 8: BFF: Raising a Green Pet

Tips to keep your pets healthy and safe, from natural pest products to green pet cleansers.

Afraid to have to put something on your pet’s skin that you’d need gloves to apply? Try anti-flea sachets. Fill envelopes with lavender, mint, rosemary, sweet woodruff, or cedar, and stuff them between couch cushions. Fleas hate the scents.

Chapter 9: Safe House: Healthy Home Improvement

Renovate Right!

If low-VOC paints are too pricey, at least go with a lighter shade of conventional: the darker the paint, the greater the VOC concentration.

Chapter 10: It's All Good: How to Grow Your Impact

How to take action outside and beyond the home

Start Small. Switching from conventional bedding, flooring, and furnishings on Monday to all-organic by Friday is laudable but unrealistic (or outside your budget). Set reasonable goals. Maybe start by swapping in organic sheets. See how they feel. Then maybe go for the organic mattress. Just as nothing slams the brakes on progress more than a sense that you’ve failed right at the start, nothing spurs progress like having milestones, no matter how small, that you’ve reached.

Glossary: Healthy Shopper Glossary

Endnotes

Download the PDF (118K)

Index

Foreword ...

by Meryl Streep

Introduction ...

Your (Kids') Health is Your Wealth

Chapter 1 ... Doing the Bump: Preparing for Baby

Chapter 2 ... Clean Up Time: Safe Suds and a Greener Clean

Chapter 3 ... Clean Plate: Choosing, Eating, and Storing Healthier

Chapter 4 ... The Beauty Part: Natural Body Care

Chapter 5 ... Child's Play: Healthier Toys, Gear, and Clothing

Chapter 6 ... Splendor in the Grass: Healthier Gardens, Yards, and Outdoor Spaces

Chapter 7 ... Every Sip, and Breath, You Take: Clean Water & Air

Chapter 8 ... BFF: Raising a Green Pet

Chapter 9 ... Safe House: Healthy Home Improvement

Chapter 10 ... It's All Good: How to Grow Your Impact

Glossary ...

Healthy Shopper Glossary

Endnotes ...

Index ...

About the Author

As Seen in the Book: Notable Parents and Experts ...

Myra Goodman

If kids' first experiences with food are so amazing, they're going to love to eat fresh produce, then there's no more powerful way to do it than by growing it in or around your house.

Brooke Shields

I'm thrilled that my children began with organic food and therefore won't have to make that switch to it, as I did.

Michelle Obama

Less than four cents of every health-care dollar is spent on prevention and public health. Our health-care system has become a disease-care system, and the time for change is well overdue.

Dr. Harvey Karp

But unlike you and me, chemicals should never be considered innocent until proven guilty; in fact, we must consider them guilty until proven innocent! We must demand that industry prove a substance safe before it is allowed to be sold to millions.

Meryl Streep

Why is the truth like organic food? Because it's a little harder to find, and a little more expensive than the alternative, but as demand for it grows, the price you have to pay for it comes down...

Holly Robinson Peete

With natural products, I feel more comfortable about my kids doing their chores, letting them clean the sink or wipe down the counter.

Nell Newman

Things are different today from when I grew up, and it's a lot harder to get kids who are entrenched in their habits to go outside their comfort zones. But I really believe it's just a matter of exposing them early to where food comes from: a field, not a box; a tree, not a jar; a fish, not a stick

Jessica Capshaw

Over the years it's become very instinctive to eat more organic, to be more energy-conscious and know which beauty products and which plastics contain unwanted ingredients so that we don't use them.

Philip J. Landrigan, MD MSc

If a disease is made by human beings, we can prevent it.

Tobey Maguire and Jennifer Meyer

I drink a lot of bottled water, like, ten a day, and just recently we were like, okay, we've got to figure this out and get refillable glass or aluminum bottles.

Dr. Alan Greene

The food we eat, the products we put on our skin and use to clean our homes, the toys children play with and put in their mouths-- all of these and more can impact the short-term and long-term health of a child. A green pediatrician thinks about these issues.

Kate Hudson

I can do something — quite a lot, actually — about the products in my home. That requires my being as conscious about things as possible - what you put in and on your body.

David Orr

What can we do to improve parenting? Most important, we must protect children and childhood, which means changing our priorities. As a society, that means such things as fewer shopping malls and more parks; less television and more family time; fewer roads and more trails. It means no child left behind...in every way.

Erin Brockovich

I'm an advocate for common sense. If an exterminator uses a chemical that makes a spider drop dead right in front of you, what's its effect on a child?

Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson

Our kids grew up recycling. For them, it's ingrained, as normal as putting milk back in the refrigerator.

Gwyneth Paltrow

When I would read about what pesticides do to insects and small animals, I thought, Why would I expose my child to that? It didn't make sense.

Sandra Steingraber, PhD

The choice is clear: Our own breast milk is, hands down, the best food for your baby--far better than infant formula. This is the conclusion I reached after more than two years of studying data on the chemical contamination of breast milk.

Amy Brenneman

I drive a Prius, often with two kids in back. I laugh, thinking that everyone feels like they need a tank out here in LA to cart around two small people.

Peter L. Pfeiffer

When you open the door to your home, there's a vacuum effect: these airborne chemicals and hydrocarbons come rushing in -- especially when air ducts from air-conditioning and heating units aren't sealed tightly.

Sheryl Crow

Kids are so acutely aware and smart, they will be the ones to motivate us, their parents, to change.

Laura Dern

But what we do control is our home environment, which is an incredible gift. We can create a wonderful safe haven for our babies, even literally within just a few square inches.

Keri Russell

What's nice is that there's so much information out there now on how to make better choices, it's much easier to do all this stuff.

William McDonough

Our design assignment at this moment in our history could, perhaps, be summed up thus: Make a world where we love all the children of all species for all time. If that were the plan, then wed have no choice but to create a world that is delightfully diverse, economically equitable, ecologically sound, elegant and enjoyable.

Devra Davis, PhD, MPH

What I do find alarming is the volume of information that's been withheld from us, and how much we don't know because not enough study is being done on the controversial subjects. That's what people should be alarmed about, and what has to change.

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