The 2500 natural, thrifty and resourceful remedies, tips and tricks promise to have more bearing on our future health than ever before.
Alarming medical and scientific facts and statistics published especially over the last decade, make it very hard to ignore the potential harm which can be done to the bodies of all humans, (especially the unborn fetus and children,) and pets by chemical cleaners and pesticides where we live.
In 2002 U.S. poison control centers reported approximately 2.3 million poisonings, of which 90% occurred in the home involved common household items and pesticides. The World Health Organization estimates thatover 68,000 people will be poisoned by pesticide chemicals today!
Cancer strikes nearly one in every two men, and one in every three women?
Dr. Samuel Epstein,M.D., professor emeritus of environmental medicine at the University Of Illinois School Of Public Health, who is also chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition reveals a startling upward spiraling trend in the incidence of major diseases especially cancer. He also rules out smoking or genetics as the cause of the increase toepidemic proportions over recent decades. He is particularly concerned about the very risky use of toxic chemical cleaners and pesticides applied in our homes and gardens.
Are we sacrificing our long term health for the instant gratification of a quick toxic chemical fix and a few dead bugs? According to Dr. Epstein:
- Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma increased 100%.
- Brain cancer increased 80 to 90%.
- Breast cancer increased 60 to 65%.
- Testicular cancer between the ages of 28-35 increased 300%.
- Childhood cancers increased 40-50%.
- Dogs have a five times greater risk of getting canine lymphoma if they wear collars containing carcinogenic chemicals.
Is it possible these above chemical pesticide statistics and our regular, even frivolous home use of such detrimental contaminants can be related to these dramatic incidences over the last few decades regarding these non-smoking cancers?
Health starts at home. Illness and disease also start at home. Fortunately, the solution also starts at home with hundreds of tips found in this easy to use indexed home companion. You will find everything from grandma’s old wisdom to newer research tips such as least-toxic ways to keep your kitchen sponge and counter-tops free of germs.
Chapter One comes to the rescue with hundreds of natural solutions, and alternatives to chemical poisons which can be made quickly and easily from inexpensive ingredients (even food items) already found in most pantries and gardens. It’s much more rewarding, satisfying and comforting to know you are doing something for the betterment of health in the home. Forget the poisons. We don’t need them when we have at our finger tips recipes for least-toxic or non-toxic cleaners, polishes, stain removers, soft scrubs, mold retardants, deodorizers, and plant tonics. All the tips are simple, cheap and healthier ways to breeze through almost any household chore and challenge.
Chapter Two reveals over 100 money saving tips for least-toxic cleaners and pesticides, and ways to save energy, time and resources on utilities, clothing, shopping, food, appliances and motoring.
Chapter Three offers hundreds of least-toxic ways to maintain and treat the garden and lawn including: safe and effective tricks to eliminate pests, fertilize plants, make compost, care for seeds, seedlings, soil, bulbs, flowers, weeds, lawns and trees, plus hundreds of other nifty and thrifty ideas to simply satisfy most gardening needs the healthier way.
Chapter Four provides some rather alarming medical and scientific facts and statistics along with many website addresses for your own further research. This information is rather a wake up call to protect our health from preventable diseases, debilities and deformities caused by toxic home and garden chemicals, particularly pesticides. This is especially important to know, not only during pregnancy, but even before conception when planning a family.
Chapter Five, a Resource Directory identifies over 50 retail supplier contacts, including websites to obtain safer alternative products or services for our home, garden, children and pets.
The rest of this Introduction is a further explanation of Chapter Four which should be of great interest to any parent, animal owner, health minded home maker and even medical professionals. It is hoped this knowledge will serve as a motivator for a much needed change, albeit a life-saving one.
These are facts the chemical industry doesn’t want you to know. There is a seriously valid reason why professional pesticide chemical operators (PCOs) are required by law in most states to wear protective clothing and masks, pass tests, and follow strict procedures and guidelines. They are protecting themselves and their families from certain health risks, while the companies protect themselves from liability. Chemical companies face a high risk, knowing exposure to toxic chemicals commonly used in the home and garden make their employees and their families vulnerable to disease, disability, deformity, and death. However, this book provides hundreds of safer and effective remedies that can be used in our homes and gardens, where we need to know for certain that we are safe.
A 1990 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study found that concentrations of chemicals were generally higher indoors than outdoors. Diseases are much more likely to start in the home especially where toxic chemicals are used for four reasons:
- Home is where we spend a large concentration of our time.
- Limited ventilation indoors.
- Chemical breakdown processes are slower indoors.
- Repeated use indoors causes a toxic buildup over many years.
It is a myth to believe that if we don’t touch or drink from a bottle of chemical cleaner or pesticide we will not absorb poisons into our bodies. There are dozens of ways in which we come into contact with poisons becoming contaminated. Once contact is made, chemical pesticides can enter the body in any of the three following ways, (all of which make us more vulnerable to the presumed “safety” of our own homes):
1) Absorption through the skin.
2) Inhalation into the lungs.
3) Ingestion into the stomach.
We play on the floor with our children and pet our animals, whose fur may or may not have been treated. Moreover, pets are indiscriminant as to where they play, roll, walk, and sleep regarding chemically treated areas both inside and outside the home. They pick up and carry toxins on their fur which they then ingest by licking while grooming. They track invisible and odorless chemical poisons into the house, which become deposited into carpets, furniture and clothing. Dangerous toxins are then transferred to adults and children through exposed skin areas, through contact with contaminated shoes, clothing and bedding etc. Further, we spread toxins from unwashed hands in our mouths, prepare food, or hug our children. We also catch whiffs of wind drift from our neighbors’ pesticides. The fact that most chemical poisons are not easily noticeable does not mean they don’t lurk in our homes and bodies already at accumulating levels of toxicity.
Due to the fact that pests develop resistance over time to chemicals, new stronger chemical pesticides increasingly invade the market, most of which have never been tested by the EPA. It is no surprise many diseases like various types of cancers are increasing at the same time. Most of us ignore the warnings, turning our backs in the hope we don’t become one of these rather grave statistics, or we are simply naïve to the detrimental effects really going on, that is, until it affects ourselves personally, or a loved one in the form of receiving a dreaded diagnosis and unwelcome news from the doctor after suffering some ailment.
While Tui was researching and writing this book, she received a letter from a doctor in San Antonio whose beloved dog had died from long term exposure to pesticide poisons in his house. The dog had routinely been eating snails which slithered across his floor towards water in the bathroom, after finding a way through a hole in his cupboard under the kitchen sink. An autopsy revealed the dog died of chemical pesticide poisoning. Soon the doctor himself fell ill from a disabling and debilitating tremulous nervous system disease which affected his practice. Hair analysis and chemical body burden testing revealed that he too was suffering from toxic chemical exposure that had unknowingly accumulated over time in his body. He believed he inhaled pesticide fumes from the storage cupboard, in part, due to his habit of leaving the door ajar.
The following are some more concerning, (rather hair and eyebrow raising) news clips which are further expanded in Chapter Four:
The Grand Rapids Press shockingly revealed in a March 2001 article entitled: Federal Study to Measure Pollution in People, that babies have detectable levels of poison in their blood streams from the time of birth, and by adulthood, our bodies have accumulated a scientific estimate of at least 500 chemicals!
Dr. Philip Landrigan for Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, who pioneers in the emerging field of children’s environmental health, revealed that over 50 years ago, most major children’s illnesses were infectious diseases. Today, cancer has become the leading killer of children in the United States. Children of pregnant mothers who were exposed to flea and tick products, and other home and garden pesticides, had significantly increased risks of brain and kidney tumors, acute leukemia, non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and other birth defects.
The American Cancer Society revealed children exposed to household insecticides are 3 to 7 times more likely to develop Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. Further, the risk of Lymphoblastic Lymphoma is increased by 12.5 times, compared with children who have not been exposed to household chemical pesticides.
Indeed, Scottish scientists found that pregnant women exposed to certain pesticides, were ten times more likely to have a baby with leukemia than mothers who were not exposed! Pesticide flea treatments on pets can expose a young child to as much as 500 times the safe exposure limit for a neurotoxic pesticide!
Dr. Marion Moses, author of the book Designer Poisons, declares there is no young person alive today born without some exposure in the womb to synthetic chemicals, which can disrupt development. She also revealed lawn sprays can cause a four-fold increase in cancer in children.
The Lymphoma Foundation of America (LFA) in May 2001 revealed mounting evidence that pesticides are a cause of lymphoma, (a cancer of the immune system). Lymphoma is now regarded as the second fastest rising cancer in USA. Having increased dramatically, the LFA now calls it an epidemic striking both adults and children, with men being at the highest risk.
The Hamilton Spectator in April 2004 revealed in an article entitled: Cut Pesticide Use – Doctors warn of links to deadly diseases but findings disputed by chemical industry group: Ontario family doctors issued a warning after a major study found that the use of common pesticides were strongly linked to many deadly and debilitating diseases Further, children and unborn fetuses exposed by their parents’ association with agricultural, occupational, indoor and outdoor lawn and garden pesticides are subject to greater risk.
In April 2001, several New York medical academies jointly hosted a training session for physicians due to recent scientific evidence which urgently needed to be addressed. Alarm bells warned: 90% of children carry detectable urinary residues of a pesticide that can harm brain development! Asthma is another leading childhood illness, which is also caused by environmental and household chemicals.
A National Post 2004 article entitled: Pesticide Poisoning Passes To Grandchildren, quoted the warnings of researcher Dr. Margaret Sanborn of The Ontario College of Family Physicians, who said, “The devastating effects of pesticide poisons are making their way into the genetics of our grandchildren”. She concluded: “An even extremely low pesticide exposure level to humans is very, very serious”.
A Washington Post front page article, which appeared on September 6th 2006, entitled: Male Bass Across Region Found To Be Bearing Eggs, announced that abnormal male fish, had developed immature eggs inside their sex organs. This raises alarms about such polluting chemicals that have the ability to change the hormone system of not only insects, but also of animals, birds and humans.
Although not enough is known yet about the effects on species by hormone mimicking chemical pollutants, they have been blamed for a whole host of problems in animals. Scientists have identified a large array of these contaminants including “human estrogen from processed sewage, animal estrogen from farm manure, some pesticides and additives to soap” according to the Washington Post. However, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials admitted not a single chemical had been tested, despite being assigned in 1996 by Congress to research this endocrine disruptor problem more than 10 years ago.
While water safety officials are demanding more certainty about such pollutants and their effects on our health, we cannot afford to wait for scientists or the EPA to do decades more research before we discover our hormones have already gone haywire and we are headed for disease, or have already been afflicted. While we may have no choice what is in our water supply, we can certainly avoid bringing these same chemical disruptors home in our shopping bags, and we can at least take control on our own end, to protect our health by not spreading them further around our home and garden.
When the facts and statistics elucidated in this Introduction and Chapter Four are so deeply concerning, why haven’t we heard more from our own doctors about the health threats we face through toxic contamination in our homes and gardens, especially caused by chemical pesticides? Embarrassingly, many of the author’s peers, doctors and nurses in the medical profession, are generally not well informed on these statistical, medical and scientific facts regarding the effects of routine and accumulated exposure to common household cleaners, chemicals and pesticides.
More alarmingly, most medical professionals never receive associated training as a requirement before graduation. Indeed the author Tui Rose, a registered nurse for nearly 40 years, never received even one day, nor even one hour of training on the short and long term hazards and effects of chemical pesticide toxins and safer alternatives!
A warning about FOOD POISONING caused by disease causing bacteria in kitchen sponges, rags, sinks and countertops: Sciencenews.org in September 1996, reported European studies found 86% of Salmonella infection outbreaks occurred in the home, indicating that there is a greater chance of getting this illness inside your own kitchen than eating outside. Surprisingly, University of Arizona scientists in Tuscon found more killer causing E.coli bacteria in kitchens than bathrooms! Dish sponges and rags spread bacteria such as E.coli, Salmonella, Pseudomonas, and Staphylococcus all over the kitchen including in stainless steel sinks and on countertops. However, safer natural disinfectants and antibacterial agents such as in this book have been discovered to provide an effective alternative solution to using harmful chemicals to help eliminate such health hazards borne at home.
Gastroenteritis is frequently caused by Salmonella, Shigella, or E.coli in the home kitchen. There have been reports of food poisoning Shigella bacteria on cantaloupe and Salmonella on raw vegetables, and even organic foods fertilized with manure (fecal matter). E.coli usually spread via raw beef or feces has also contaminated white radish sprouts fertilized with manure. E.coli and many other microbes are not easily rinsed off in tap water. High temperatures through adequate cooking kills bacteria. However, foods such as lettuce, sprouts, tomatoes, strawberries, and root vegetables, etc., that are to be eaten raw, require an effective and healthy alternative solution such as the alternating vinegar and 3% hydrogen peroxide spray method found under Fruit & Vegetable Wash in Chapter One.
The Sciencenews.org also revealed that University of Nebraska food scientist Susan Sumner, found farm and garden vegetables bear far more harmful bacteria than red meat due to contamination with manure fertilizers. After Sumner discovered that a simple, common and convenient chlorine-free disinfectant method decontaminated bacteria on raw meat as well as fresh fruit and vegetables, she then developed her anti-bacterial treatment for restaurants. The 3% hydrogen peroxide doesn’t leave any lingering flavor and the vinegar is hard to detect on most produce except a trace may be tasted on lettuce, which isn’t a problem if you like vinaigrette dressing.
Indeed this information was a wake up call to the author as she did her research. Now with this book of least-toxic remedies you have a starting place to do something about it. Home is the one place in the world where we all want to be safe from any kind of danger.
These simple and safer alternative solutions will never go out of date. Enjoy the 2500 practical home and garden tips and choices. Not only will you save money, time, energy and resources, you will also save your sanity and enjoy better health! |
