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29Aug

Back 2 school special: avoiding toxin-laced school supplies

by: Adria categories:Apparel, Kids 2 comments

I don’t know about you, but I was always a chewer. Whether I was 5 years old or 15, I always ended up gnawing on my erasers/pencils/necklace charms, you name it, while daydreaming or stressing out in class. Not like some kids who nearly ate the things like apples but, no doubt, enough to take in a dose of whatever toxins were in there. And trust me, there were plenty.

California’s Center for Health, Environment and Justice recently sampled 20 vinyl backpacks, lunch bags, 3-ring binders, rain boots and rain coats for their report Hidden Hazards: Toxic Chemicals Inside Children’s Vinyl Back-to-School Supplies and the news wasn’t good.  Turns out 75% of the vinyl school supplies contained hormone-disrupting phthalates at levels that would be illegal in children’s toys. Alarming numbers. Time to tell our MPs to extend phthalate regs so they apply to school supplies.

If you’re looking to avoid the dodgy onslaught of plastics in school supplies, stay away from PVC/vinyl like the plague. It’s often shiny and a little squishy (since it’s been softened with phthalates). Buffalo Natur offers up all kinds of cool stuff from colourful jute backpacks/lunch bags/laptop sleeves to recycled erasers/calculators/coloured pencils, a lot of which are available from Grassroots and a you’ll find a little at Canadian Tire (Buffalo Natur says you’ll soon be able to shop on their site too, so check back in a few weeks). For younger kids, Skip Hop school bags aren’t made of natural or recycled fibres but they are ridiculously cute and BPA-, phthalate-, and PVC-free since they’re made of nylon (see the store locator). Older students can find all sorts of cool back packs made  out of recycled fibres via Onsight Equipment, House of Marley, and from Mountainsmith (via Amazon).

For more tips on going back to school the eco way, check out this Canadian Press article with me and my pal Gill Deacon – hot off the presses.

 

07May

Why so many parabens still in 2012, Body Shop?

by: Adria categories:Bodycare 5 comments

With less than a week to get your butt in gear for Mother’s Day, a lot of people will be popping into their local Body Shop looking for prezzies. Actually, the Body Shop was the first store I ever turned to for stuff that wasn’t tested on animals and I loved their banana shampoo because it was loaded with, well, bananas. As I say in Ecoholic Body: The Body Shop was a pioneer in profiling fair-trade ingredients, it banned phthalates and musks from scents in 2009 and it finally came out with its first certified-organic skin care line, Nutriganics that same year. All good things, except they still rely on too many -eth sudsers linked to carcinogenic 1,4-dioxane (like sodium laureth sulphate) and one thing I didn’t mention in Ecoholic Body – they’ve still got far too many products that are dripping in hormone-disrupting parabens, including their bestselling Satsuma Shower Gel/Body Lotion, Super Volume Mascara, Arber Aftershave Balm, Lip & Cheek Stain, Camomile Gentle Eye Makeup Remover, Shimmer Cubes, Eye Colour, All in One Face Base, and my old fave, Banana Shampoo. Most contain not 1 but 5 parabens.

Of course, industry maintains they’re safe but even mainstream drugstore brands are ousting parabens en masse. Super star Denmark’s banned butyl and propyl parabens from bodycare products aimed at kids under 3. And this time last year, France’s National Assembly passed a bill that aimed to ban the use of endocrine disruptors such as phthalates and parabens from consumer products (still waiting to see if anything comes of it. Any word, France?). Shame Canadian MPs haven’t followed suit. If you’re shopping at the Body Shop this mother’s day or any day, make sure you double check the ingredients before you pull out your wallet.

Satsuma Shower Gel:

Water, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Glycerin, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Cocamide DEA, Coco-Glucoside, PEG-40 Hydrogenated Castor Oil, Benzyl Alcohol, Fragrance, Phenoxyethanol, Glycine Soja (Soybean) Oil, Citrus Nobilis, Methylparaben, PEG-55 Propylene Glycol Oleate, Propylene Glycol, Benzophenone-4, Limonene, Hexyl Cinnamal, Disodium EDTA, Citral, Butylparaben, Ethylparaben, Isobutylparaben, Propylparaben, Citrus Reticulata (Satsuma) Oil, Linalool, Citrus Aurantium Dulcis (Orange) Oil, Citronellol, Geraniol, Orange 4, Yellow 6.

*red ingredients are on the Ecoholic Mean 15 list of ingredients to avoid (download the wallet-sized guide here).

26Apr

Phthalates in my probiotics? Parabens in my pain killers?

by: Adria categories:Column, Health Comments Off

What's in my probiotics

After my article on the hidden toxins in everyday things for NOW’s green issue, I got a lot of reader mail asking me what drugs I was talking about when I mentioned that some pharmaceuticals contained hormone disrupting phthalates and parabens. Figured it was time to expand on the topic with a whole column of it’s own. Thanks to recent study that outed meds that contain dodgy phthalates, I got to name names and mention specific over and behind the counter drugs that contain the stuff. But what really floored me was something we didn’t have room to mention in the column — an earlier documented report of a man that had gotten his body checked for toxins at a Boston fertility clinic because he and his wife were having trouble conceiving. The clinic found his levels of harmful DBP phthalate (a reproductive toxin) were off the charts -  at 17,000 parts per billion when most of our phthalate levels are at about 46ppb. Turns out they traced it back to the DBP phthalates in his Asacol prescription. Asacol now cautions against using the drug during pregnancy, but how many women took the drug while pregnant before that warning was slapped on the medication?

Also, I couldn’t believe that some of the probiotics that I’ve personally taken in the past were listed as containing DEP (diethyl phthalate, a phthalate of lesser concern but still inconclusively tied to lowered sperm counts, etc), even though some of them didn’t mention it on the label. Nature’s Way says that they used to contain trace DEP but I’m still waiting for confirmation on whether they’ve reformulated. Advanced Naturals maintains they’re aqueous enteric coating is totally phthalate-free. All very interesting food for thought. Anyway, here’s that link again to the actual report - click on the tables (1,2,3) if you want to see what meds and supplements tested positive. Off to Montreal/Ottawa/Kingston now for a few days! Be good!