It May Be April Fool’s Day, But Toxins in Baby Bath are No Joke
It sounds incredible: probable human carcinogens like formaldehyde in children’s bubble bath. Yes, today is April Fool’s Day, but this is no joke. This is the sad reality of the state of our personal care products industry.
How did we get to this point? It’s a function of our regulatory system (or lack thereof as some might say). According to the non-profit Environmental Working Group, “The nation’s toxic chemical regulatory law, the Toxic Substances Control Act, is in drastic need of reform. Passed in 1976 and never amended since, TSCA is widely regarded as the weakest of all major environmental laws on the books today. When passed, the Act declared safe some 62,000 chemicals already on the market, even though there were little or no data to support this policy. Since that time another 20,000 chemicals have been put into commerce in the United States, also with little or no data to support their safety.”
And if this is news to you, you may be asking why you’re learning about this only now. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics just last month released its “No More Toxic Tub” report, which included lab results showing that personal care products are commonly contaminated with formaldehyde or 1,4-dioxane – and, in many cases, both. According to the report, “These two chemicals, linked to cancer and skin allergies, are anything but safe and gentle and are completely unregulated in children’s bath products.”
But you know what? This isn’t new news. It may be new to you because perhaps you’re a new parent who is just for the first time paying careful attention to what goes into the bath water with your baby. But the fact is, you can find reports like this one about 1,4 dioxane and formaldehyde dating back to 2007 – and I imagine, even earlier. (Updated 4/3: Here’s a link reporting that in 1982, “the industry-funded Cosmetic Ingredient Review panel noted that the cosmetic industry was aware of the problem of 1,4-dioxane in cosmetics and was making an effort to reduce or remove the impurity.” )
The makers of these products claim they are completely safe and meet all government requirements. J&J’s products are bearing the bulk of the criticism from today’s Green Moms Carnival because of J&J’s ill-timed “Big Bubblin Stars” video campaign. But the fact is, J&J does meet all US requirements. Levels of formaldehyde in the J&J products are even below EU levels, which is significant because many American consumers try to follow EU standards for personal care products because they believe them to be safer than the US standards.
But the issue is not J&J’s products alone. Why? We are exposed to thousands of personal care products over our lifetimes. If each one of these products leaches trace amounts of potentially toxic chemicals into our bodies – as tests like the EWG’s “Body Burden” test have shown – then the effect is a cumulative one. And when you’re talking about infants, small children, and young people in their reproductive years, the potential effects are really unknown. We do know that chemicals have been linked to cancers. We do know that we’ve seen a marked decrease in fertility in this country and an increasing number of reproductive diseases. Are they connected to repeated chemical exposures from birth on? I agree with Dr. Philip P. Landrigan, Professor and Chair of the Children’s Environmental Health Center at New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He says, “Children are not simply ‘little adults’. They are uniquely vulnerable to toxic exposures in the environment. Exposures in early life can affect human health over the entire life span. We need to find definitive answers about the relationship between toxic chemicals and health so we can protect our children now and in the future.”
In response to past criticism, J&J’s spokesperson Iris Grossman has said, “It’s important to stress that all our products are within the FDA limits.” But that’s just the problem. Are the FDA limits appropriate? Unfortunately, one of the legacies left us by the Bush Administration is the public’s fundamental distrust of our regulatory system. The public has just been burned too many times by lax oversight. Look at our financial markets. The SEC claims it wasn’t aware of the extensive use of derivatives in our secondary markets. Heck, I remember learning about derivatives way back in ’97 when I was at Georgetown’s Business School. No, I didn’t understand them, but I still remember scribbling this note: Derivatives: Stay Away!!! Then there’s the sad state of our food safety oversight. How many more people will have to die of salmonella before we get that under control? What about the lead in children’s toys? I shouldn’t have to cart my toys over to The Smart Mama for a thorough lead inspection.
Many will advocate for more regulation, such as the Kid Safe Chemical Act supported by the Environmental Working Group. But regulations don’t always work as intended. The CSPIA, enacted to prevent the sale of items containing lead, has inadvertently caused many small makers of children’s products to go out of business because they couldn’t afford to comply with the testing requirements imposed by the new law. Then there’s the response to the banking crisis. While the government was celebrating the passage of TARP, the bankers were celebrating the fact that the law didn’t require them to start lending again. How do I know that? I first learned about it at a Washington Christmas party, well before that scandal had finally hit the press. And now that spring is here? The credit markets still remain frozen.
So is The Kid Safe Chemical Act the answer? Will it cause more problems than it purports to solve? Will it inadvertently cause harm to the natural and organic purveyors, by causing them to comply with burdensome regulation, just like what happened when the USDA Organic regulation and the CSPIA was passed? I don’t know. I don’t claim to be a regulatory expert. But I do know something about marketing. And I know that the profit margins on personal care products – beauty products in particular – are incredibly high. It is a very lucrative business, and in most cases the biggest expense is not producing the product, it’s marketing. It’s paying for all the free samples and glossy magazine ads that personal care products companies routinely hand out.
Of course, it’s a different matter in the natural and organics market. There, the cost of all natural alternatives to synthetic chemical ingredients is high. And consequently, on a percentage basis, they spend less on marketing than companies like P&G or J&J.
As an MBA and a New Jersey native, I have very dear friends who have worked at leading personal care companies like J&J, Bristol Myers Squibb, and P&G. Of course they believe their products are safe and comply with US law. But that’s not the whole issue. Someone – either the personal care industry as a whole – or the US government – needs to take a closer look at the 82,000 chemicals used in our personal care products to assess the likelihood that they are contributing to our sky high cancer rates and the increasing incidence of reproductive abnormalities.
And as a former newspaper reporter, I know that there are two sides to every story. So I called J&J before publishing this blog post. I wanted to understand their stance on the Kid Safe Chemical Act and the possible adverse affects of long term exposure to the multitude of chemicals in our personal care products. Their spokesperson, Iris Grossman, could not respond to these questions, although she did offer to put me in touch with their “Mommy blogger” person. I pointed out to her that if she couldn’t answer my question, I didn’t think a “Mommy blogger” specialist could either. Then the shock set in. As a marketing and communications professional, I know that every company has a set of standard Q&As used to respond to the media. I asked her if this meant that NO ONE had ever asked these questions before:
– What is J&J’s stance on the Kid Safe Chemical Act?
– What does J&J think about the adverse affects of long term exposure to the thousands of chemicals used in personal care products?
– Is this issue even being discussed at the industry level, through groups like the Personal Products Council?
So what can you do? Here are a few choices:
1. Sign this petition in support of the Kid Safe Chemical Act.
2. Fill out this web form to contact J&J and tell them you want them to lead an industry-wide effort to overhaul the Toxic Substances Control Act. Or, leave a comment on the J&J blog.
3. Contact the Personal Care Products Council here and tell them you expect a better response to the EWG report than the one that their Chief Scientist gave US News & World Report. “These are issues that have been around for many, many years, so it’s not new news. The thing that impressed me was the low levels of dioxane that were found in these products, which indicates to me that the industry is doing its job in keeping this potential contaminant down to a low level.” (And yes, I’ve called the Personal Care Products Council and am just waiting for a call back).
4. Check the EWG’s Skin Deep data base to find safer alternatives to the products identified in the Campaign’s report.
5. Use fewer personal care products and try to find those with fewer, simpler ingredients.
6. Contact your Congressional representatives to let them know you support Kid Safe. Support is especially critical in Pennyslvania and California. This press release from Senator Lautenberg’s office includes good background information on the bill. If you or someone you know lives in PA, check out this link.
If you live in CA, check out this link.
What do you think? Please leave a comment and share. And if you want to talk about the issue, I’ll be on the radio today along with Jennifer Taggert, The Smart Mama, and Lisa Frack of the Environmental Working Group. You can listen to us here and call in with questions at (530) 265-9555.
Thanks for reading this far! This was a longer than usual post, but I felt I needed the space to make these arguments.
— Lynn
Copyright OrganicMania 2009
Filed under Green Cleaning Products, Green Ideas & Stuff, Green moms, Marketing, Organic Personal Care Products, Organic Product Needs, Product Recommendations | Wordpress Comments (17) |Getting Started with Seedlings: Make Your Own Recycled Starter Pack Containers
Success with eco-friendly seed pots!
Perhaps, like me, you’ve made the decision to try your hand at raising plants from seed this spring – only to discover that your eco-friendly plans go awry when you realize you have no containers on hand! A quick trip to my storage area didn’t turn up much, so I reached out to my bloggy friend Jess of The Green Phone Booth (and formerly of Surely You Nest), hoping we might be able to stage one of our rare reunions so that I could pick up some cast-off seed starter pots.
A died-in-the-wool Earth Mother who was raised by a Green Mom before they called themselves Green Moms, Jess went one better on me. She had no cast-offs to share, but she did share some of her gardening wisdom. She suggested toilet paper, egg shells, or newspapers. And knowing full well that those suggestions would leave me flummoxed, she helpfully pointed me to this great post from Planet Green, which suggests whipping up planting pots from egg cartons, yogurt containers, newspaper and toilet paper rolls.
The egg cartons seemed easiest to me – I’ve got plenty on hand and frankly, as I’m not really the artsy-crafty type, I found the instructions for the toilet paper and newspaper options a bit too complex.
Turns out fellow Green Mom Jenn Savedge, aka The Green Parent, is also a fan of egg cartons for seedlings, as she explains here. Here’s what works for me, based on tips from all three of these fabulous green women – JessTrev, Jenn Savedge and Jasmin Malik Chui.
1. Figure out how many seedlings you’re going to start, and make sure you have enough egg cartons and egg shells on hand.
2. Yes, as Jenn points out, you’ll want to wash those eggshells first with a gentle cleanser and water. I’m using the produce rinse for this job too!
3. Take a pin and poke a tiny hole in the bottom of each egg shell.
4. Fill with soil (hopefully organic compost from your compost bin), and drop several seeds inside.
5. Voila – once the seeds have sprouted, you can take the eggshells and the cardboard egg carton holders and plant them directly in the ground!
Not only is this a great project for home, but think about all those other times when you’re asked to come up with a craft project for the kids. This is a great spring craft project for school, scouting, or Sunday School. Works for me!
— Lynn
Note: As you can see, I updated this post with a pic of my successful seedlings sitting besides some newspaper pots I purchased at my CSA!
Copyright OrganicMania 2009
Filed under Easy Green Weekend Projects, Food, Green Ideas & Stuff | Wordpress Comments (9) |Made with Love: A Video Tribute to the @GreenMoms Community
Many thanks to fellow Green Mom Anna Hackman of Green-Talk who felt moved to put together this tribute video to the Twittering women of The Green Moms Carnival in honor of our winning the Shorty Award for Best Green Content on Twitter.
The video is 5 1/2 minutes long and provides an introduction to 15 of the 30-odd women behind the Green Moms Carnival. Among us are authors, environmental activists, Moms taking a break from the workforce, businesswomen, marketing consultants, LEED-certified attorneys, green building experts, entrepreneurs, educators, and more. We are Moms and we are “Mothers of the Earth” — no children of our own, but a responsiblity to everyone’s children to leave the Earth a better place for future generations.
Anna is a LEED certified attorney – she’s not a marketing or video whiz, but she took it upon herself to create and execute this video. What you’ll see is proof of an enormous amount of goodwill towards the Green Moms community and all we have accomplished and hope to accomplish in our fight to leave a better Earth for future generations.
Thank you, Anna, thank you for your hard work, kind words, and thanks to all the other women of the Green Moms Carnival, and thanks to those who support, inspire, and encourage us in our work.
— Lynn
Copyright 2009 OrganicMania
Filed under Blog, Green Moms Carnival Home Page & Calendar | Wordpress Comments (2) |In DC or San Francisco? Check out GreenFest, Fun for the Whole Family!
Today was a day when being a Mom interfered with being a Green Mom, and unfortunately I missed the GreenFest remarks of fellow Green Mom Jenn Savedge, author of The Green Parent.
But when I finally arrived at GreenFest, DH and two munchkins in tow, I had so much fun that we shut the place down. Literally. We were the last attendees to leave the show floor- an hour after closing time!
The first thing you’ll notice about GreenFest is the food. There are so many free snack samples, your head will spin. It was fun to try the new products being launched. (Amy’s Organics new gummy bunnies were a big hit with the kids!)
And as far as kids go, this show has them covered. There is an amazing Kids Zone complete with a mobile rainforest, courtesy of Discovery Creek, DC’s outdoor kids museum. They’ve got games for the kids and free Organic Valley milk samples right there too! And yes, there are plenty of vendors with “green toys.” Big Boy found something he calls “Green Pokemon” and was over the moon. (More on that in a future post!)
I enjoyed learning about new eco-friendly businesses and charities, and bumping into many of my Twitter buddies, Green Mom Blogging friends, and business colleagues.
And after hanging out with the kids and the Green Moms proved too much for DH? Why, he simply sampled the beverages at the Organic Beer and Wine pavilion!
If you’re in DC, head on over to the Convention Center tomorrow. And if you’re in San Francisco, you’re in luck because the festival hits your city next week.
There’s so much more I could say – I’ve got a lot of fodder for future posts. Or check out my tweets from the show at http://twitter.com/organicmania.
Have fun!
Lynn
Copyright 2008 OrganicMania
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Filed under Uncategorized | Wordpress Comments (2) |Online Environmental Activism? We’re Just Getting Started!
It’s the day after the election, and I figured by now I’d be exhausted from staying up so late watching the returns. Or perhaps I’d be practicing the remarks I’m making on Green PR at DC’s PRSA meeting tomorrow.
But no.
Barack Obama is not the only one who immediately turned his attention to setting the agenda for his administration. My group of green online activist friends is already planning how to best advance the green agenda in the next administration.
This morning I received an email from Big Green Purse author Diane MacEachern, who has become a good bloggy friend since her interview on OrganicMania. Diane was reaching out to all of the Green Moms Carnival participants to invite us to participate in a new online forum she created called “The Prevention Agenda.”
Diane is hoping to create an agenda (or series of agendas) focused on preventing environmental and human health threats, rather than just cleaning up after them. As she says, “My hope is that the forum will help create a groundswell of support for changing our approach to threats to human health and the environment. Hopefully, response to the forum will be strong enough to lead to a series of Prevention Agendas on specific topics that can be presented to the Obama administration before the inauguration.”
I immediately jumped online and registered (Member #1), posing a question about one of my main concerns: the chemical soup of ingredients that are allowed in our personal care products. You can read and respond to my question here.
The emails started flying. The Green Moms are charged up. You ain’t seen nothing yet!
Come check it out The Prevention Agenda. Because as the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
What do you think about this? Leave a comment and share!
— Lynn
Copyright 2008 OrganicMania
Filed under Blog, Cancer, Consulting Business, Green Ideas & Stuff, Green moms, Green Moms Carnival Home Page & Calendar | Wordpress Comments (4) |BlogHERs, Green Moms, and Film
People who know me “in the real world” know I’m not shy. You can still tell that I was the girl voted “most talkative” in my high school class! Yet when it comes to the blogosphere, I haven’t always been my normal gregarious self. I’ve been ribbed about not having a picture up on Twitter, and for trying to pass myself off as Catherine Zeta Jones here on OrganicMania.
There’s something special about connecting with other like-minded souls though the power of our words. When I read blogs, I think about the blogger’s sentiments. I don’t look at someone who may or may not share my race, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, or age.
Yet as I prepared for BlogHER DC and my first face-to-face meeting with some of my Green Mom’s Carnival friends, I reverted to the old stereotype that I poked fun of in this post, BlogHERs Worrying About What to Wear. Of course, I had more to worry about than just meeting a bunch of cybersisters for the first time – I was also self-conscious about appearing on camera for noted documentary film maker Min Sook Lee’s upcoming film.
I couldn’t avoid the camera this time. This was something different – something worth doing. Min Sook is trying to raise awareness of the toxic products marketed to the most innocent among us – our babies.
She first spoke to Sommer Poquette aka Green & Clean Mom about her film project, and Sommer suggested that Min fly to DC’s BlogHER conference to meet several of the other “Green Moms Carnival” Moms. Although we email each other on a near-daily basis, it was the first time we had all met each other – Jenn Savedge of The Green Parent, Jennifer Taggert, aka SmartMama, Diane MacEachern of Big Green Purse fame, Jess, formerly of SurelyYouNest and late of Green Phone Booth, and Sommer.
So I put aside my fears and put on my lead-free lipstick and marched out to the conference. We enjoyed BlogHER and met up for dinner afterwards, joined by C. Levine of FoodieTots.
It was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve had in my journey as a mother. These women are so bright, and so committed to making a difference and to empowering other women to make the right decisions for the health of their children.
And as I looked around the BlogHER conference room at all the women I didn’t know, I smiled at a few of the BlogHERs. As I looked at their faces, I wondered about what was going on inside their heads. What words of wisdom would pour out of their blogs the next day as they reflected on BlogHER?
In some sense, I wish I hadn’t been so preoccupied with Min and the cameras – I missed much of the conference as Min filmed The Smart Mama testing Big Boy’s toys for lead. (Be sure to read Jess’s great post about what turned up in the lead testing). But next year, there will be another BlogHER. The opportunity to be a part of Min’s film and to connect with these very special “Green Moms” was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Just one more example of how blogging truly has changed my life.
— Lynn
Copyright 2008 OrganicMania
Filed under Green moms, Parenting | Wordpress Comments (10) |Green Moms Carnival on Monday!
Tomorrow be sure to head on over to Green Bean Dreams to read a compendium of some of the best green bloggers talking about how to fight holiday commercialism. Curious to know more about the Green Moms Carnival? Read on or get the full scoop at the Green Moms Carnival Home Page.
It all started when I wondered why Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop had a list of top green blogs that did not include Green Mom bloggers. After all, Moms not only control the household purse strings, but we’re largely responsible for raising the next generation and influencing their adoption of green, eco-friendly habits.
I put together a list of what I considered to be the top Green Mom blogs, using Technorati’s “Magic Middle” ranking as a guideline. Next, I proposed that Alltop launch a new category – Green Moms. Alltop accepted all of us and added us to green.alltop.com
Then I set about contacting the Moms. Some I knew well, but a few were new to me. We started an email list and had a great time emailing back and forth. Then Alana of GrayMatters mentioned that it would be a shame to lose contact, and that we should think of a joint project. That’s when I proposed the Green Moms Carnival…and we were off and running. Very soon we added what I dubbed “Mothers of the Earth” – some other fantastic green women bloggers who are not Moms. And as soon as we publicized the carnival, we received submissions from “fans of Moms” and “sons of Moms” so we included them too!
Who are the Green Moms of the Green Moms Carnival?
- Best of Mother Earth
- Big Green Purse
- Crunchy Chicken
- Eco ‘Burban
- Enviromom
- Fake Plastic Fish
- Going Green
- Gray Matters
- Green and Clean Mom
- Green Bean Dreams
- Green Style Mom
- Green Talk
- In Women We Trust
- La Marguerite
- Mindful Momma
- Organic Mania
- Surely You Nest
- The Green Parent
- The Not Quite Crunchy Parent
- The Smart Mama
Curious to know more about the Green Moms Carnival? You can learn everything about how to participate at the Green Moms Carnival Home Page. Please spread the word or join in!
— Lynn
Copyright OrganicMania 2008
Filed under Green moms, Green Moms Carnival Home Page & Calendar | Wordpress Comment (1) |The Night Time Trash People
We all know kids rebel. As a Green Mom, I’d like to believe that my children will absorb at least some of our family’s eco-friendly habits. But sometimes I worry that my green parenting practices might lead my eldest son to rebel like Alex P. Keaton.
So you can imagine how I felt when I overheard this conversation between Big Boy and his cousin, as my DH, his brother, the wives and kids enjoyed a picnic dinner at DC’s Southwest waterfront.
Big Boy: “There’s a lot of trash around here.”
Bigger Boy Cousin: “Let’s pick it up!”
Big Boy: “Awesome, dude. Let’s be the Night Time Trash People. We’ll run around picking up trash.”
Laughing, screaming noise, as two six-year-olds and a nine-year-old run around picking up trash.
On the walk back to metro, Bigger Boy Cousin says, ”You know, there’s too much trash in the world and it’s really bad for the environment.”
Big Boy: “Yeah, because it weighs so much, it could like split the Earth in half. Then the continents would just split down the middle with a big crack.”
Bigger Boy Cousin: “Yeah, and then the world would heat up too much and there would be no oxygen and we would just vaporize and die.”
Big Boy: “Yeah, then we’d just float around like floating skeletons like aliens or something. Cool. We’d all be alien floating skeletons.”
At this point, I made a mental note to make sure that we weren’t terrorizing the kids with overheard tales of looming eco-tragedies.
The next morning, Big Boy informed me that he needed to make posters telling people to recycle. He wants to hang them on trees all around the neighborhood.
I wondered about the wisdom of hanging posters from trees. But off he ran, soon to come back with 60 copies expertly run off on my office printer. NOT double-sided. I took a deep breath, and decided his heart was in the right place.
And we’re off to hang posters. Anyone need about forty extras?
— Lynn
Copyright 2008 OrganicMania
Filed under Green Ideas & Stuff, Green moms | Wordpress Comments (2) |Dealing with the Schools: Coping as a Green Mom
It’s not often that I’m taken by surprise, since I tend to research issues to death. But want to know the reason there have been so few posts of late? It’s this back to school thing. I honestly thought that my life would get easier when my son started first grade at the local public school. Instead, I feel like I have another job.
Between morning melt downs, afternoon crying fits, folders stuffed full of papers to be reviewed by a responsible parental unit, and my continued Green Mom Culture Shock at the many environmentally unfriendly practices common to one of the most progressive school systems in the country – well, I’ve been exhausted!
For nearly a year now, but never more so than since the launch of the Green Moms Carnival, I’ve enjoyed the company of a like-minded sisterhood of Green Moms. These sympathetic souls include Green Moms with college-age kids– La Marguerite, Karen Hanrahan, Anna from GreenTalk and Diane MacEachern – as well as many with elementary school age kids like my Big Boy – the Not Quite Crunchy Parent, Surely You Nest, Sommer from Green and Clean Mom and even a few like me, still dealing with diapers – Alana from Gray Matters holding the honor of having the youngest baby among us.
Between the Green Moms in the blogosphere, the Green Parents who find their way to leave wonderful comments on OrganicMania, and my growing list of wonderful green clients, I thought that Green was everywhere.
Well, Green is not everywhere. So here I am, trying to figure which issue to address first. The mandatory plastic ziplock bags? The throw-away Styrofoam trays? The forced bussing past shuttered schools? The high fructose corn syrup laden lollypops handed out by my son’s math teacher? The cheap plastic crap toys given as rewards for good behavior? The environmentally unfriendly school fundraisers?
Hey Green Moms, how are you doing in week three of back-to-school? And have you been successful in “taking on” any of the environmentally unfriendly practices at your local schools?
And, yes, I am co-chairing the school’s Green Committee, so my question is serious. For those of you who have been successful at bringing about change, what’s worked? And what hasn’t worked?
— Lynn
Filed under Green moms, Green Schools | Wordpress Comments (8) |Green Mom Culture Shock: Back to School
As a seasoned mother of a six-year-old and a nearly two-year-old, I thought I was past the point where much could shock me. But then school started.
And suddenly I went from the friendly confines of the Green Mom blogosphere to the public school system, where teachers routinely send home “supply lists” containing environmentally unfriendly items such as (gasp) plastic ziplock bags and Purell hand sanitizer (2 bottles, please!), where students use thousands of styrofoam lunch trays each day, and where fossil fuels are burned sending children to school on buses that drive past shuttered schools near the bus stops.
I feel like a creature in a strange land.
How’s it going in your world?
— Lynn
Correction: This post originally stated that the styrofoam trays were thrown away. That is incorrect. They are re-used and then after they break are sent to the incinerator.
Filed under Green Ideas & Stuff, Green moms, Green Schools | Wordpress Comments (17) |
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