Poisonous Smells, Yummy Smells, Frankenstein and the Tower of Babel
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) just announced that phthlates (pronounced “thah-lates”) are bad for you and tells parents to avoid them.
Phthalates are widely used chemicals that recent studies suggest may have toxic effects on the developing endocrine and reproductive systems. A new study found evidence that infants may be absorbing these chemicals through commonly used baby products. (Read the rest.)
In the study conducted, phthalate levels were highest, and most disturbing, in infants 8 months and younger. Their immature immune systems and rapid organ development make phthalates a major concern. According to the AAP, parents of infants as well as young children should limit their use of lotions and powders in general, and scale back on baby shampoo. But that’s not the only place your baby is likely to be exposed. Anything that contains artificial fragrance is likely to use phthalates - baby wipes, diaper creams, toothpastes, baby washes, laundry products, etc. When shopping for these products, look for the fragrance-free versions, as they’re less likely to contain phthalates.
For more info, see the Baby Center article on phthlates.
I was happy to see that the products I use every day, Burt’s Bees, Tom’s of Maine and Earth Mama Angel Baby, are safe to use. (Click here to see hundreds of companies that are also safe to buy from.)
Lush is one of the “safe” companies and I’m so glad because it’s one of my favourites. They have bath bombs that are beautifully and wonderfully made and smell heavenly, and jiggly soap that looks like jello, and massage bars that look like heart-shaped candles with sparkles in them which melt when you rub it on your skin and then you smell nice and get all sparkly. And I love sparkles. Oooooh, this is the perfect time to start using Lush ’cause there is one down the street from my parents’ house. Yay! The closest one by my house is almost 4 hours away. Where is the closest one to you?
Rinah loves to brush her teeth and gets excited about sucking all the toothpaste off her toothbrush every night. She is using Tom’s of Maine’s Silly Strawberry. And whenever she needs a bath or a butt wash after a poopy diaper, I use Angel Baby Shampoo & Body Wash (thank you, Aunt Kathy!!) to keep her little butt silky soft. It foams nicely and smells wonderful. Wow. I just checked Amazon and it sells them for a discount so I’m going to start buying them online instead of paying full price at our local store.
The synthetic fragrances don’t smell anywhere near as nice as the real thing anyway. I remember feeling extremely nauseated by a cheap perfume someone gave me as a present in my mid-teens. Then, I discovered essential oils and fell in love with them. I made my own facial sprays, room fresheners, mouthwash, and lotions for myself and my family. I haven’t done that the last couple years and I really want to get back into it. Someday, I want to make everything we use myself … soap, creams, candles, and perfumes. I can dream, can’t I?
The only thing that I don’t like is the natural deodorant. I can’t find one that works. Or maybe I just stink too much. I wish I could go to Thailand again for a couple weeks. Fasting for a week, doing 3 or 4 hours of yoga, and an hour and a half of massage every day cleaned me out so well I had no body odor or back pain for a few months after I got back. Then I got married and got pregnant. End of radiantly healthy story and return to chronic back pain and body odor.
The phthalates with all their poisons remind me of Frankenstein and the Tower of Babel. Instead of remembering that we are God’s image and worshipping Him with what He gave us, men try to make their own version and claim the glory for themselves to their own destruction … and ours. It’s kinda like worshipping Him with praise songs where you repeat 2 lines 20 times instead of singing the Psalms.
I’m not saying that we should get rid of labs and research and scientists. I just wish the scientists would worshipfully work with creation instead creating their own poisonous versions of what God has already made for us to use. C’mon! Make perfumes with essential oils instead of synthetic fragrances! I love my perfumes, but I know they have all kinds of stuff in them that’s bad for my babies.
What is the cost of making everything so cheaply so people can buy cartloads of cheap crap at WalMart? American people are disgustingly obese and sick. Why not eat less food that’s good instead of a ton of bad food? They drive everywhere anyway so it’s not like they need all those calories. Any given day I leave the house, I see more obese people in a few hours than I see in a whole year in Tokyo … and Tokyo has 200 times the population of the Tri Cities.
I am really enjoying the fact I can walk 2 minutes to the 7-Eleven here (or almost anywhere else) and buy yummy fast food and snacks with no preservatives and food colouring and artificial junk. I got a couple more weeks of bliss and we’re back to wandering the organic aisles at Fred Meyer, lamenting the high prices and the lack of variety in healthy food.
That picture of the triangular thingy is an onigiri with karashi mentaiko in it which I have craved EVERY DAY of both pregnancies and am eating EVERY DAY while I’m here.
“Poisonous Smells, Yummy Smells, Frankenstein and the Tower of Babel” has been splattered on 13 times.
Yeah, me, too. I enjoy the cloth diapers and I just wash her with water and the foamy thing which doesn’t have soap in it so it doesn’t dry her skin out. One of my friends is making cute cloth wipes for her next baby to use instead of the disposable baby wipes.
People are probably fatter in your area because your area is less wealthy. Fastfood is cheap food and when money is tight, sometimes fastfood is the way to go. Obesity is a disease we give to the poor.
In Orange County, there are certainly fat people. but not that many. Most people down here eat well, taking large meals made with premium products. They also have a greater tendency toward working out - which they might not have to do so much if they took slightly smaller meals made with premium products.
Also, from what I can tell, Whitey metabolizes differently from Asians. So some difference in weight, height, muscle, and fat should be expected. Not that this difference should account for obesity, but it is perhaps one indicator of why Northern Europeans have more meat on their bones.
Hmm . . . phthalates . . . now there’s a Satanic consonant cluster if I ever heard one. Compounds so dangerous, just saying them gives you a speech impediment.
Oooh, I’ve never heard of Lush, but I looked at the website and now I’m all intrigued. Apparently we have one in Orlando, but it’s on the other side of town - probably a good thing since their stuff is flipping expensive. Considering how rarely I have ever actually /used up/ a container of lotion/wash/whatever from Bath & Bodyworks or some such, though, I’d probably still get my money’s worth.
Seth: Obesity does seem to be a much bigger problem among the poor and middle class than the rich, but nonetheless, there is an “obesity epidemic” in America. I don’t know about fast food being cheap. It costs me more money to buy fast food than to go to the grocery store and cook a “real” meal.
Dawn: I used to like Bath and Bodyworks a lot and I still like some of their fragrances, but Lush is so totally worth it. It’s not like I take long luxurious baths every day anyway … I think I have used on average 2 bath bombs a year since I got married. :)
Fast food is definitely not cheap. I think what the wealthy are able to afford as opposed to the middle class and poor is ready made, fast and convenient foods that contain fresh and whole foods. Now purchasing the ingredients yourself and putting together the food on your own is at least as cheap if not more as the fast food alternative but it lacks the convenience of a drive through. And for Americans where typically both parents are working and they’ve got a 30 minute lunch or an hour at the most they are going to run and grab something because they didn’t spend all night putting something fresh and healthy together. And their children are in daycare getting the “healthy” recommended foods that the state regulates (which is actually quite appallingly not healthy foods) and will soon move on to public school and eat public school lunches which really aren’t any better than eating at a local fast food chain. Or they will bring a sack lunch of peanut butter with hydrogenated oils and corn syrup and add some dyed jelly with more corn syrup on their bleached white bread and chug that down with a ultra pasteurized (and dyed) chocolate milk which will go nicely with their processed cookies (with corn syrup and dyes) and if their lucky their mom will have thrown in some carrot sticks, which hopefully the child will eat considering the carrots don’t contain corn syrup.
I’m not sure what our country should do to turn this around. I’m all for capitalism but frankly I wish that fast food was made to be more cost prohibitive and that our food system was regulated to ban or minimize the amount of corn syrup and artificial ingredients allowed in food.
But really it doesn’t matter because the general American public doesn’t care. They don’t care what is in their food as long as it tastes good. The rest of us in the minority will continue running up and down the internet streets and posting to our blogs about the dangers of this and that and everyone will smile and nod or roll their eyes and continue about their typical American lives.
How’s that for pessimism.
P.S. I hate phthalates.
> The phthalates with all their poisons remind me of Frankenstein and the Tower of Babel. Instead of remembering that we are God’s image and worshipping Him with what He gave us, men try to make their own version and claim the glory for themselves to their own destruction … and ours.
Har?
I mean…*yeah*. Darn’ scientists trying to steal the glory. I wish they’d stop making plastic, too. Don’t they know that’s what God made wood for?
Wow, Matt. Way to make an argument and make friends!
Plastics aren’t necessarily bad. Phthalates are.
Plastics are frequently made with phthalates. That was kind of my point.
In all honesty, no offense was (or is) intended, but when you start talking generally about how synthetic products are man’s evil attempt to one-up God, you are being silly. I thought to reply in kind.
Aside from that, the entire worry rests (as far as I can tell, granting that I didn’t research the issue at all beyond the first two pages of Google) on a single study which, if true, only demonstrates the presence of phthalates (a frequent component of plastics, hence my satire) in baby urine. For every link you can dig up claiming that phthalates are the next great threat to civilization, I can dig one up claiming the opposite, and both of them will claim some “indisputable evidence” to support their side. Such is the nature of sensationalist medicine and activism, and that’s why neither is to be particularly trusted. You say the pro-phthalates are corporate shills, I say the anti-phthalates are granola-bar hippie freaks. Tempers flare. Dirt is scuffed up in the opponents’ general direction. A certain steely squint appears in the eye. Promising friendships are mercilessly snuffed out by callous individuals on blogs! The old story.
Seriously, if you want to be worried about stuff on this level, don’t let me throw a wet blanket on the party. There are certainly plenty of opportunities in the world today, and plenty of people who will help it along. Personally, if I get in the mood to worry about something, I’ll probably just fall back on the asbestos pipe insulation in the basement. Or my phthalate-infested CPVC/PEX water supply system, pumping water out onto my phthalate-contaminated vinyl shower curtain. Or sheesh, forget that! Around here you can worry about single-shelled tanks and cesium in the water supply! Yes, I really am just that shallow and apathetic. All is vanity.
Getting back to the original point, forgive my inability to pass up the opportunity for a witty and cynical remark. It’s a fault of mine.
Cordially, and in only the best of humor,
Matt
There is a pretty good book out there on the effect of corn subsidies on our food and what we eat, called “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” Worth a read.
I’ve done some research on phthalates myself. The truth is . . . if you want to find a study that labels ANYTHING has dangerous or harmful, you will be able to find it.
There remains only a single study of the “effects” of phthalates in people, using an extremely limited test sample of subjects, and concluded only that phthalates were present in the urine of these subjects. The harmfulness of the substance wasn’t drawn from the study, but was simply inferred.
Multiple other studies show phthalates to be completely benign. Yes, they enter the system, but they are flushed right through and have no buildup in any part of the body. That’s why it’s present in the urine. It would be much more cause for alarm if phthalates were being absorbed but were NOT found in any natural waste products.
In this case, I think this study is a result of a bunch of pure naturalists with overactive imaginations and an axe to grind with the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries.
Oh, should have added one more thing. Phthalates are not used in order to save money. They are used because they are superior fixatives for fragrances. I might add that the synthetic fragrances used in place of essential oils because of cost have no negative studies attached to them that I am aware of. Often such synthetics are simply synthesized versions, identical to the molecules that are found naturally in the essential oils. They are not poisonous in any sense (unless the original molecule in the EO is poisonous as well).
Also, some EOs can be harmful in their naturally occurring form. Bergamot EO, for example, causes acute photo sensitivity in skin, making one more susceptible to sunburn. The synthetic reproduces the scent molecules without the phototoxic side effects. In other words, essential oils like Bergamot are much more harmful to you and your babies than their synthetic equivalents.
I don’t think we can equate the use of “synthetics” with Babel-like rebellion against God either. After all, what is a “synthetic” anyway? It’s simply a produce of naturally occurring chemical reactions that are perfectly harmonious with the order of God’s creation.
emethhesed
emeth.hesed
Rita Joiner | 5:46 AM, Thursday, March 20, 2008
Ever since I’ve heard about the soaps most of Jubilee’s baths have just been water. Since she has so little hair, and wants to play in the bath for a long time, it seems to leave her nice a clean. But bleh. I did use mainstream baby shampoo before that. Makes me especially glad about cloth diapering.