The Importance of Going Green!

Everyone wants to to the best for themselves and their families.  As with all changes, it needs to begin at how.  For "Going Green" it is ever so important that we start and help those that mean the most to us.
We often do not appreciate how important making the right decision can be.  We all know the importance of having a clean house, but using non-toxic environmentally safe cleaning products is even MORE critical. When you use a toxic cleaning product in your home, you introduce chemicals whose residue lingers and exposes all who come in contact.  These toxins build up in your home and can cause or promote serious ailments that are rarely ever traced back to the source.
Let's Examine the Facts:
Cleaning products were responsible for nearly 10 percent of all toxic exposures reported to U.S. Poison Control Centers in 2000, accounting for 206,636 calls. Of these, nearly two-thirds involved children under six, who can swallow or spill cleaners stored or left open inside the home.
Over 150 chemicals found in the home are connected to allergies, birth defects, cancer and psychological disorders [Source: Consumer Protection Agency (CPA)]
50% of all illness is due to poor indoor air quality [Source: 1989 State of Massachusetts Study]
Some products release contaminants into the air right away, others do so gradually over a period of time.  Some stay in the air up to a year.  These contaminants, found in many household and personal care products can cause dizziness, nausea, allergic reactions, eye/skin/respiratory tract irritations and some cause cancer [Source: American Lung Association]
When combined, chemicals are even more dangerous. Deadly fumes result from mixing ammonia with bleach (both found in many household products) creating lethal "mustard gas"! [Source: U.S. Government, E.P.A]
Have you read the labels of Cleaning Products? Labels are required to provide hazard symbols like “poison” and “flammable.” They also have to give information about first aid treatments for those ingredients. But there’s no requirement to list other chemicals that could cause long-term health effects - and no warnings that say anything like “may cause respiratory problems."
The air inside the typical home is on average 2-5 times more polluted than the air just outside-and in extreme cases 100 times more contaminated-largely because of household cleaners. [Source: U.S. Government, E.P.A]
That 6 out of every 100 janitors in Washington state have lost time from their jobs as a result of injuries linked to toxic cleaning products, particularly glass and toilet cleaners and degreasers. [Source: The Janitorial Products Pollution Prevention Project]
Study of contaminants in U.S. stream water, 69 percent of streams sampled contained persistent detergent metabolites, and 66 percent contained disinfectants. [Source: 2002 U.S. Geological Survey]
The average American uses 40 lbs of unsafe household cleaners each year (multiply that by 245 million Americans) [Source:The Clean Water Fund ]
 
There are 3 groups of people are primarily affected by indoor chemical concentrations because they spend more time indoors and their immune systems are weaker:
                                           Children
Young children are especially vulnerable, partly because of exposure. Everything goes in their mouths and they virtually live on the floor. And young kids are more sensitive because they are still developing the basic body systems: the brain, internal organs, respiratory and immune systems are not fully developed until adolescence. Children are more susceptible to toxins then adults. Kids receive proportionately larger doses of environmental toxins than adults Many are fatal. Approximately 70% of all poisoning accidents occur in children between the ages of one and five. Almost all childhood poisonings are caused by unsafe storage and handling of household cleaning products and medicines.
                                            Women
Pregnant Women - Imaging the impact the cleaning products you are using each day are having on your unborn child!  The unborn child is most susceptible to chemicals.  Everything you breath, everything you touch and everything you can smell has an impact on your unborn child!  With childhood asthma increasing by over 400% and with the number of reported cases of autism increased dramatically in the 1990s and early 2000s can you afford to take the risk?
Women who work in the home have a 54% higher death rate from cancer than women who work outside of the home [Source: 17- year EPA study]
In one decade, there has been a 42% increase in asthma (29% for men, 82% for women).  The higher rate for women is believed to be due to women's longer exposure times to household chemicals [Source: Center for Disease Control]
                                            Seniors
Seniors are also at risk. With increasing age, people become more vulnerable to the harmful effects of environmental chemicals due to the deterioration of physiological and biochemical processes, which include certain age-related biochemical, morphological and functional changes associated with the nervous system. For example, the elderly are likely to suffer more than younger people from exposure to carbon disulfide and to certain pesticides and chemicals. [Source: 1988 EPA, 5-year study]