Dan's Environmental Health Blog

Well, that was interesting to say the least. Shocked, really. I was as silent as the crowd was when he stated the blood for the 10 Americans were from fetuses. I expected the blood to be from middle age people on how the effects of living in our world harmed our body. How could we possibly be that polluted in our blood and birth healthy babies? And to hear some of the chemicals were banned nearly 30 years ago! Unreal. I really like the Care Act for the kids, it was absolutely needed. And to see the rates of poisoning go down after banning thinks like lead is great news. Like he said, we can’t live under rock. We need to clean up our world. Ban substances until proven safe. Cleaning up our world can make an impact.  

The products I chose are Resolve Carpet Foam Cleaner, because I used it last night, and Windex window cleaner as I tend to clean the windows once a month. My inclination says that Resolve foam cleaner is terrible for humans since it has the ability to clean stains. However, after looking at the product online it is actually quite OK. It has a health rating of one (which is slight) on a scale of one to five. It has a flammable rating of one on the same scale and a zero for chronic health hazard rating. It has a zero because it hasn’t been studied or is just that safe over time. There are no issues with skin, eye, lung, or ingestion; states no know significant effects or critical hazards. Honestly, I am shocked Resolve is not more hazardous and I will continue to use it. Windex, was surprisingly OK as well. It clearly states on the website, “ This product does not contain hazardous chemicals at or above a reportable level as defined by OSHA 29 CFR 1910.120 .” I feel much better a...

For my personal care product breakdown I chose to look more closely at my shaving cream and my face lotion. I wanted to pick personal products I use a majority of the week. Going in to the search of what is included in these products I was expecting a serious health hazard to be located based on what I had been reading. I was pleasantly surprised, in fact, relieved to know that at least one of the products I was using was generally safe. Almost every ingredient for both products contained some sort of evidence to support an allergy or toxicity and this was concerning.  The lotion I use, Aveeno, contained generally safe ingredients. There was one ingredient that got a moderate warning at level 5. This ingredient is Benzyl Alcohol. This serves as a preservative and is also naturally occurring. Allery/immunotoxicity is the main concern for this ingredient. For my Edge Shaving Cream, one ingredient registered as highly unsafe. It had a ranking of 7 on the unsafe scale. The ma...

In the home assessment, why did we want to know about the age of your home? ·      For a few reasons I suspect. Depending on the year of the home it will determine the type of material used when building the home. Materials used back in a certain date and time period may have been deemed safe then but with more sophisticated testing and years of data on people and health to date, it may now be unsafe. Specific examples would include lead paint, asbestos, ceiling and insulation material. Another reason to know the age of the house is that it could not have proper radon mitigation should radon levels be really high or built over an area approved in the past but is unsafe now. Or perhaps the house was approved to be built on polluted soil many years ago and is now unhealthy per new housing codes. Why would we want to know if someone lives in the basement?  ·      As a reason stated above, radon levels in the past may not be what the...

Looking around at my home, following our first course, I could not help but notice all the exposures we talked about. Chemical exposures seem to dominate my household. Deodorant, hairspray, lotions, shampoos, plastics and creams in the bathroom to Windex window cleaner, herbicides/pesticides, and carpet cleaner stain remover in the kitchen. Radiological exposures are just behind chemical exposures. This list at my home includes one wireless printer, wi-fi, TV, four computers, two phones, one I-pad, one microwave, and one propane space heater on the wall. We also have one UV light lamp for our tomato plants. I am almost sure this is not a good idea now since the UV light is most likely not controlled well enough. It is almost disheartening to know that the possibility that almost everything in this world could cause cancer. How do you live without exposing yourself to carcinogens?