(Here's a guest post from Women's Voices for the Earth about how to have a non-toxic new school year. Thanks for these timely tips for safer and greener homes and schools)
Going back to school also means a return to the heavy use of disinfectants and anti-bacterials in the classroom! But your life doesn’t have to be overrun with nasty chemicals like Triclosan and chlorine bleach. Here are some tips on how to stay clean and healthy while avoiding harsh chemicals that are particularly harmful to children. Courtesy of Women’s Voices for the Earth, a women-centered environmental health nonprofit.
Tips for the home:
Kitchen:
· Clean your sinks and counters without unnecessary exposure to disinfectants, try a creamy soft scrub made with baking soda, castile soap, and vegetable glycerin. Baking soda is great for neutralizing acid, and cleaning stainless steel and porcelain.
· For tough cleaning jobs, spray the surface first with vinegar, which will eliminate 90-98% of bacteria. Vinegar is safe enough to eat, making it a good choice for everyday cleaning!
Bathroom:
· Instead of using a tablespoon full of bleach to clean your toilet bowl, sprinkle the bowl with baking soda, drizzle with vinegar, let sit for 30 minutes, and scrub with a toilet brush. Vinegar not only deodorizes, it’s highly acidic, making it effective at destroying bacteria. Baking soda also deodorizes in addition to cleaning and polishing porcelain.
Baby’s Room:
· Wash your baby’s bottle with soap and water instead of soaking it with bleach; soap and water is still the best way to get rid of germs, and won’t leave a bleach residue on a bottle lid that regularly goes into your baby’s mouth.
· Don’t keep disinfectant wipes near the changing table; you don’t want to confuse them with your baby wipes when you’re changing diapers! Instead, keep a spray bottle of full of half vinegar, half water, and few drops of essential oil for quick clean-up jobs. The vinegar deodorizes, and is just as effective as commercial disinfectant cleaners in reducing microbes on a surface. Essential oils have natural anti-bacterial properties, not to mention give your baby’s room a pleasant (and non-toxic!) smell.
Laundry Room:
· Ditch the bleach for whitening your laundry and try a ½ cup of borax (a naturally occurring powdered substance) instead. Borax’s chemicals properties make it not only a good bleaching agent, but a great cleaner and freshener, too.
*These and other recipes available as part of WVE’s Green Cleaning Party Kit, at www.womenandenvironment.org/greencleaning.
Tips for moms who’d like to take action in their children’s schools to reduce exposure to toxic chemicals:
· Ask the school to use Green Seal-certified cleaning products
· Ask the school to discontinue use of products that contain triclosan (found on the product label)
· In addition to green products, ask the school to adopt green cleaning procedures, such as minimizing volatile organic compounds by spraying the cloth instead of the surface to be cleaned, or vacuuming after dusting (chemicals tend to build up in dust).
· Send your child to school with their own safe hand sanitizer, such as products made by CleanWell, a company that uses Thyme oil instead of harsh pesticides
Research continues to mount that exposure to pesticides is linked to serious health problems (see “Study: Home Pesticides Linked to Childhood Cancer” in the Seattle Post Intelligencer). It’s important to reduce your child’s exposure where you can—especially because children are more vulnerable to toxic chemical exposure because their organs and immune systems are still developing.
If you like, WVE can put you in touch with forward-thinking green companies that are pioneering anti-bacterial cleaners that don’t contain the harsh chemicals identified in WVE’s report.
Find WVE’s report on the dangers of overusing disinfectants, Room-By-Room chart for reducing exposure in the home, the Disinfectants Horror Show (animated YouTube video), and other resources at:
