Chemicals EVERYWHERE! crosspost in Health

[chrisnjeri]

I'm feeling overwhelmed.  I have been paying careful attention to the foods we eat and the chemicals we put in and on our bodies, and I do everything I can to buy whole, natural foods even though we really don't have the money.  Now I find out that our carseat probably has dangerously high levels of bromine in it.  What the h***?  I feel like we can not get away from toxics.  I don't want my little girl getting sick from this stuff, or starting puberty at 8 years old. 

I feel like people (my family) think I'm crazy for being so scared of this stuff - after all, why would they sell it if  it wasn't safe, right?  Right now, I feel very jaded and angry and scared because we can't seem to get away from it.  BPA in our soup cans?  How do I take my baby anywhere in a toxic carseat without feeling like I am causing her permanent danger?

Does anyone else feel like this?  How do you cope on VERY little money (I can't just go out and buy a safer carseat)?  Anyone just think I AM going overboard and just need to chill?

[wake_up]

Originally Posted by chrisnjeri 

Anyone just think I AM going overboard and just need to chill?

I think you've answered yourself well here. 

The world is never going to be perfectly safe or clean, it never has been.  It'll be ok.

A large part of the health and well-being we can provide in our children's immediate environment is a relaxed, confident, loving parent!  Do what you can and let the rest go, with joy. 

[chrisnjeri]

Thanks, wake_up.  You're so right about having a relaxed, confident parent.  That is very important.  I just don't want to be part of the 'ignorance is bliss' atmosphere I see in so many people around me in regards to the new and 'improved' of everyday stuff.  

So...how do I keep myself informed and confident that I will do what I can, and let go of the rest without feeling defeated?  I am truly having a hard time finding this balance.  I realize that the world will never be perfectly safe, nor do I expect it to be.  But isn't it enough without adding toxic substances to our food and making the steps we DO take to be safe even more harmful because we don't know that it's harmful?

As you can see, I'm pretty frustrated.  So, how do you find this balance? 

[DahliaRW]

Well, for one your child is not eating the car seat, so that makes it less important than buying good quality food, imo.

[meemee]

by realising that there is more about which you dont even know yet. 

by understanding you cant avoid it all - so you do the best that you can at the moment. 

there are chemicals everywhere so when you have limited money you do what you can. 

put a towel on your carseat.

what i do is not buy stuff i cant afford instead of buying crappy inferior quality.

i do almost no processed food. i look do simple natural ablutions care products. 

you have an infant. it is natural to be freaked out. as new mothers we all are. 

but honestly stop reading so much. sometimes ignorance is bliss. you are getting waaay into minute stuff. 

in a sense arent we putting the toxins in our food? we have not been able to raise a powerful enough political voice to make this stop. but the fight has started. and people are becoming more informed. however its a long battle ahead.

when you have been conditioned into believing that being an earning member of the world is important, working 40 hours a week is important even at the cost of cooking your own meals and sitting down to eat. when you buy that quick frozen dinner full of crap (because life is so hard) you have v. little choice. 

its one reason many mamas have given up reading the newspaper. i did when dd was little because mama hormones made me feel the world was not a safe place and there could be predators and killers just round the corner. it was turning me into a person i iddnt want to be so i stopped reading the newspaper. 

if you focus on any one topic of what's happening to the earth around us - it looks really really bad and extremely depressive. are you going to give in with that lost feeling that you cant do nothing and let the depression swallow you up, or are you going to stand up and put up your own little fight.

at times like this i remember this paragraph i read. i cant remember where i read it - i believe it was a black politician from Oakland, CA quoting MLK  (or it could be the politicians own view) who said. it isnt leaders who win movements. civil rights was not just MLK. but it is about the people before who sacrificed so much and suffered such great hardship to allow the movement and MLK to be sucessful. afterall it was all those local farmers writing and complaining to rachel carson and her decision to write the book A silent spring and stand up and take it to congress did we even know about the harmful DDT and finally led to the Environtmental law. 

maybe the world you seek will happen when when your baby is an adult. 

and also btw - be careful about the sites you read. there are many fearmongering scientific looking sites out there. 

today it is bromine. so you safe up money and buy another car seat that you have been told is safe and then you find out the one you have been using has toxic levels of something else. 

my grandmother grew up playing with mercury on her hand. they'd play with little balls on the palms of their bare  hand. 

[crunchynerd]

Originally Posted by DahliaRW 

Well, for one your child is not eating the car seat, so that makes it less important than buying good quality food, imo.

Naturally we don't eat carseats, though babies and toddlers do mouth things, plus put hands and feet in mouths that were touching things... but the toxics in the fabrics and foams get into our bodies primarily through offgassing and then, when it's a bit older, the breakdown of dust from the foam. The flame retardant chemicals in sofas, mattresses, and carseats, are carried on dust they emit as they break down, as well as through direct contact. It is something to consider, but if you can't change the carseat you have, there is the option of going ahead and voiding the warranty and taking off the cover it came with, and using a lambskin or something else. Simply placing a towel under the child also voids the warranty, but won't do much except possibly provide a little skin-contact protection, but does nothing about the offgassing and the toxin-carrying dust emission being breathed. This would be far more of an issue if you drive around in a sealed up car, or your car gets really hot inside and then you get in before airing it out properly first. 

I sympathize on the feelings you get, trying your best and realizing that you CANNOT protect your child from everything out there, even when it comes to simple things like purchases. My kids have food allergies, and if they had been born a couple of decades earlier, likely would not have had. Red 40 now gives my DS1 a scald-like rash, so I have ditched everything with artificial food colors, which in the USA is very hard.., and in the UK would be quite easy, since they are banned there. Makes me wonder, if it's too unhealthy to be allowable by law for British kids, why is it good enough still for American kids? Since Kellog and every other brand, has the same foods there as here, only made with natural food colors instead, why can't they extend us the same courtesy? Sodium and Potassium Benzoate (the preservative you see in everything here from sodas to pancake syrup to cold cereals)? Too carcinogenic to be legal there, but here, it's in EVERYTHING. Lovely, right?

The long and short of it is, I too quit reading the paper, and started watching news again on Roku, but am thinking of giving up the habit...yes it makes me feel informed, but what a stressful way to start the day, with the latest string of horrors and atrocities I can do nothing about. As for trying to do best by your kids, trying to protect them the best you can when you know that there's no true escape for anyone from the ambient air, water, soil, and ocean pollution, from the increasingly inescapable EMF pollution, frrom GMOs and increasing unpredictable random violent crime or sociopaths with guns who plan to take out as many innocent people as possible before suiciding? 

I took comfort and inspiration from a Mother Goose rhyme:

"For every evil under the sun,

There is remedy, or there is none.

If there be one, seek til you find it.

If there be none, never mind it."

Broad brush strokes. Try to identify what the largest threats are to their health, and eliminate or reduce whatever you can from that category. Anything that is relatively miniscule, let it go if it's at all difficult or too expensive.

I have learned to love an old poster I saw once featuring Homer Simpson looking glazed and it read "Beer...now there's a temporary solution!"