By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
Concerned about all those dangerous household chemicals you keep hearing about: BPA, phthalates and pesticides with cryptic names like 2,4-Dioxane?
We’ve found just the book for you.
Slow Death By Rubber Duck:The Secret Danger of Everyday Things (Counterpoint, 2009. U.S. $25) will take you on a chilling, but informative ride through our chemically enhanced consumer product world. Starting with your kid’s Rubber Duck, which contains five chemicals of concern, imagine what the rest of the household contains.
Frankly, I worried that this cleverly titled book about the dangerous additives lurking in our house dust, furniture, hand soaps and Teflon pans would be just that, an inspired title followed by surface information. But I was quickly relieved of that concern. Co-authors Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie are not just scratching the stick-resistant surface here.
Dr. Smith, executive director of Environmental Defence Canada, and Lourie, a longtime environmental adviser to governments and corporations, look at how dangerous chemicals got into our products — because they were invented! and people wanted eggs that slipped off pans before we knew much about the chemistry of those pans, and manufacturers wanted to protect us from flaming couches by dousing them with flame retardants, now linked to increased cancer risks and neuro-motor deficits in children. And, well, there’s a story behind every chemical load in every product. The takeaway: Often these added chemicals are needless, or of dubious added value.
Perhaps more importantly, Smith and Lourie looked at how toxic ingredients leap from consumer goods into our bodies. Despite the reassurances of manufacturers that PBDEs (flame retardants), Teflon and Bisphenol A remain locked into their respective products, scientific studies have revealed that PBDEs turn up in household dust; Teflon fumes can fry not only eggs but the lungs of pet birds and BPA, as you’ve likely heard, leaches from polycarbonate plastic containers, getting into food and drinks. (and it’s in the resin lining food cans everywhere.)
Our Rubber Duck guides don’t just recite that science, or take it on faith, they test it. Smith and Lourie become the guinea pigs for their inquiry, exposing themselves systematically to common problem ingredients and then having their urine and blood tested to see whether their levels of contamination increased.
For instance, Smith tested his levels of phthalates, a plastics-additive found in toys and dozens of body products, before and after exposing himself to a pre-selected list of highly scented deodorants, toiletries, dish soap and an air fresheners containing phthalates.
His levels of one type of phthalate, DEPs (diethyl phthalates, which turn up in the body as MEPs, monoethyl phthalates, and which have been linked to male reproductive problems) shot through the roof.
“It worked all right,” Smith writes. “I was actually shocked at the results…And my little experiment showed how amazingly easy it is to dramatically crank up levels of MEP after a simple change in toiletries for two days. Who knew that conditioning your hair could be hazardous to your health?”
Of course, the upside is, if you can make the levels of chemicals in your body go up, you can also make them go down, in many cases, as the authors also demonstrate.
I don’t want to spoil other outcomes here, but let’s just say, Smith and Lourie’s findings ranged from interesting to hair-raising. Their escapades with phthalates, flame retardants, BPA, Teflon, mercury, anti-microbials and pesticides, were at turns humorous and dismaying. It left me riveted. I grew so fond of this book, I threw over my usual fiction for several nights running to curl up with the adventures of these chemical detectives.
And while I was provided a free review copy of the book, that will hardly cover the cost of the stainless steel pans I’ll now be buying to replace my non-stick set. Hmmpff!
Copyright © 2010 Green Right Now | Distributed by GRN Network