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Is Our Home A Safe Place
for Our Family?

Our homes can be the safest place for our families to spend time. But are they?

Everything smells of lemon, pine and bleach. Unfortunately, you may have just made your family's environment less healthy.

Think of it this way. You wouldn’t let your kids play with toxic chemicals, so why would you let your baby crawl over a floor that’s just been cleaned with toxic chemicals? These are much more dangerous than the spill you just wiped up.

How dangerous can cleaning products be? You can’t see any harmful chemicals. We buy them at our favorite grocery store! How can they sell them to us if they're harmful to our health?

Consider these statistics.

• Over 90% of poison exposures happen at home.

• Common chlorine bleach is the #1 household chemical involved in poisoning.

• Organic pollutants, found in many common cleaners and even air fresheners, are found at levels 2 to 5 times higher inside your home than out.

• A person who spends 15 minutes cleaning scale off shower walls could inhale three times the “acute one-hour exposure limit” for glycol ether-containing products set by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

• Common cleaners give off fumes that can potentially increase the risk of kids developing asthma, the most common chronic childhood disease.

• 1 in 13 school-aged children has asthma. Rates in children under five have increased more than 160% from 1980 – 1994.

• Children are highly vulnerable to chemical toxicants. Pound for pound of body weight, children drink more water, eat more food, and breathe more air than adults. The implication of this is that children will have substantially heavier exposures than adults to any toxicants that are present in water, food, or air.

• If your house is anything like the average U.S. home, you generate more than 20 pounds of household hazardous waste each year (the Environmental Protection Agency designates toilet cleaners, tub and tile cleaners, oven cleaners, and bleach as hazardous waste).

To find out what specific chemicals are residing under your sink in the brands you use, go to the National Institutes of Health Library.

Or search by chemical ingredients and discover what chemicals are contained in your household products. The information may shock you.

What do I look for in safe cleaning products?

What chemicals are in my cleaning products and what are the health risks?

Our Parent's Page offers you a chance to contribute your thoughts and ideas for others to read. Just fill out the short form and include a picture if you like.

We'd love to hear from you!
Share Your Ideas With Us !

Sustainable Building Practices for Your Home!

For information on sustainable building practices for green building projects of all types and sizes, a good source is Halcyon Environmental - Green Building Consulting. From your business to your home, Halcyon Environmental will help with anything from energy conservation to LEED certification.

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