Then there are a couple of websites that are not remotely funny:
http://www.safemilk.org/
http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/
http://www.notjustaprettyface.org/
The long and short is that even when we are doing our best – breastfeeding, buying best quality products and using what are advertised as baby-safe products – we are poisoning our children from day one. Our breast milk is toxic because of all the toxins we unwittingly put into our own bodies; the bottles we then use, once the breast milk has dried up, are made of plastics that leach chemicals into the formula milk; and the wonderful top-quality baby products seem to be a marketing scam as they too are hazardous to both baby and the environment. You just have to do a search on the cosmetics database (see above) to see that even kid’s toothpastes are more hazardous than the adult variety. And it seems that the harmful effect of the sun on our children’s skin is way less when weighed up against the toxins that are put into the sun creams we slather all over our children’s faces and bodies before we let them out of the house.
A woman once told me that if I use a certain brand of shampoo, I should only use the same brand conditioner as they have been specifically designed to work together. This might have been something she learned at beauty school or just plain common sense, but the implications are only now becoming clear. If you use two different brands and each brand has a toxic chemical in it, there is no telling how those chemicals will react together. Scary stuff, huh?
Call me paranoid, but I’m beginning to feel surrounded by poisons. I even read about a court case lodged by an employee at L’Oreal accusing the brand of using carcinogenic chemicals in products they slap that pink ribbon on. They almost got away with it too!
I revert to an earlier post where I wrote about massaging my baby with organic sesame oil from head to toe for the first months of his life instead of bathing him and exposing him to harsh bath products. I didn’t know it then, but my maternal instinct (the one I thought had totally escaped me) was already seeping into me. I use an organic product on his skin and I use the same brand of household cleaners to avoid the chemicals in the home, which find their way into our bodies. The product name is Enchantrix – it is a South African product but there is an equivalent in Europe called Ecover. There are good products out there but you have to be vigilant and not accept what you’re told until you do the research. Just when we thought the tough part was over … we need to work harder. We just do.
