OUR BODIES ARE EXPOSED TO HUNDREDS OF TOXINS EACH DAY. THESE TOXINS ARE MAKING US SICK, FAT AND TIRED.
There are over 80,000 toxins present in our air, food and water. The Center for Disease Control reveals the presence of over 219 toxic chemicals within our own bodies. With more than 200 pollutants in tap water supplies across the country; thousands of chemicals in cosmetics and personal care products; 470 industrial chemicals and pesticides in human tissues; and an average of 200 pollutants in each of 10 babies tested at the moment of birth, it appears virtually everything we come into contact with has some effect on our wellbeing. The long term effects can be life threatening.
The chemicals and pollutants that invade our home and environment are more harmful than you know specifically the chemical ingredients that sneak in through the products we buy are particularly troubling. We rub them on our skin, eat them, and spray them in our homes. The unfortunate fact is that chemical additives make manufacturing easier and cheaper, and make many a product more appealing to the consumer. Synthetic chemicals make lipsticks last longer, keep food fresh, and make cleaning products fragrant.
But it’s primarily those same chemicals that star in study after study as allergens, carcinogens, and endocrine disrupters, to name just a few of their roles. Over the years there has been a number of standout toxins that at one time were thought to be perfectly safe. From DDT to PBCs, the chemical industry released compounds first and discovered damaging health effects later. Regulators have long allowed for a standard of innocent until proven guilty, and this standard continues today. Only a quarter of the 82,000 chemicals in use in the U.S. have ever been tested for toxicity.
Aside from the more well known toxins such as lead, pesticides, herbicides, and arsenic, we tend to over look or not pay much attention to everyday consumer products that can surprisingly cause just as much damage to our bodies; increasing the risk of cancers, pre-mature aging, inflammation, and weight gain just to name a few.
Three everyday products that are highly toxic
Perfume
If you’ve never thought very much about perfume, you might think little more than how lovely it smells. Modern perfumes are almost always made from synthetic chemicals that are most commonly synthesized from petroleum distillates. There is nothing natural about it.
In the late 19th century, the first synthetic fragrance was created (from coal-tar) in a lab. Expensive raw natural materials that had been used to create luxury perfumes were now swapped in the lab with waste byproducts of the industrial revolution. Nowadays, 95 percent of the fragrance chemicals used in perfume are derived from petroleum, many of them quite toxic. A 1991 study by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that numerous potentially hazardous chemicals are commonly used in fragrance, including acetone, benzaldehyde, benzyl acetate, benzyl alcohol, camphor, ethanol, ethyl acetate, limonene, linalool and methylene chloride.
According to Material Data Safety Sheets, these chemicals – when inhaled – can cause central nervous system disorders, dizziness, nausea, slurred speech, drowsiness, irritation to the mouth, throat, eyes, skin, and lungs, kidney damage, headache, respiratory failure, ataxia, and fatigue, among other things. The FDA reports that fragrances are responsible for 30 percent of all allergic reactions.
Air fresheners, including “all-natural” and “unscented”
About 80 percent of all adult Americans have purchased some type of air care product (candles, sprays, plug-ins, room fresheners, potpourri, air fresheners, air purifiers, etc) in the past year.
The problem is, much like personal fragrance, scents for the home are not distilled essences of said scent. Glade and Air Wick rely on a cocktail of compounds such as formaldehyde, aerosol propellant, petroleum distillates, p-dichlorobenzene, terpenes, benzene, styrene, phthalates, and toluene, phosphates, chlorine bleach and ammonia.
Study after study have found disruptive effects due to the use of air fresheners. The disturbing part, though, is that the air freshener industry is minimally regulated and manufacturers are not required to meet standards specific to their product, especially in terms of labeling. So, for instance, when the Natural Resources Defense Council tested 14 different brands of common household air fresheners, they found that 12 contained the hormone-disrupting chemicals known as phthalates. The products that tested positive included ones marketed as “all-natural” and “unscented.”
Canned food, including organic items
Ever since the early 19th century, people have been relying on canned food as a convenient method of food preservation, and for this reason canning has been highly valuable. But in the 1950s, can manufacturers began using bisphenol A (BPA), a plastic and resin ingredient, to line metal food and drink cans – and it’s become one of the more controversial chemicals in town.
The heavily produced industrial compound has been in the news a lot over the years. When the Centers for Disease and Prevention (CDC) did an analysis of BPA exposure, the agency detected it in 92.6 percent of the people sampled, and noted that, “many Americans are exposed to bisphenol A at levels above the current safety threshold set by the EPA based upon decades-old data.”
More than 100 peer-reviewed studies have found BPA, which acts as a synthetic estrogen, to be toxic at low doses. As Nicholas D. Kristof points out in an op-ed in the New York Times, scientists have linked it to everything from breast cancer to obesity, from attention deficit disorder to genital abnormalities in boys and girls alike.
Consumer Reports’ latest tests of canned foods including soups, juice, tuna, and green beans found that all of the 19 name-brand foods tested contain some BPA. The canned organic foods they tested did not always have lower BPA levels than nonorganic brands of similar foods analyzed. They even found the chemical in some canned products that were labeled “BPA-free.” They report that a 165-pound adult eating one serving of canned green beans from the test sample could ingest about 80 times more BPA than their experts’ recommended upper daily limit. Children eating multiple servings per day of canned foods with BPA levels comparable to the ones they found in some tested products could get a dose of BPA approaching levels that have caused adverse effects in several animal studies.
It is virtually impossible to avoid the thousands of toxins that our bodies are exposed to each day. Thankfully there are ways that we can detoxify our bodies and live a cleaner healthier life style. Learn more about a health and wellness program that can detoxify your body at a cellular level- The result: weight loss, increased energy and sharper focus.