EWG Healthy Home Tips

Today my EWG (Enviromental Working Group) newsletter arrived in my mailbox. EWG is our watchdog in the United States, pushing to ban harmful plastics and working towards safe cosmetics. Although working in the United States, EWG has an impact on Canadians, their neighbours to the North, as a lot of cosmetics arrive on our doorstep from the U.S. I believe that the toxins in our products, the harmful plastics and our love affair with oil have contributed to the situation we are now facing, our own demise. For now, all I can do as one person is to pass the word...

Next time you head to buy your personal care products, read the labels. Besides avoiding parabens, other preservatives should be avoided to:

•DMDM hydantoin
•Imidsazolidinyl urea
•Methylchloroisothiazolinone
•Methylisothiazolinone
•Triclosan
•Triclocarban
•Triethanolamine (or “TEA”)

Also look for words with "PEG" or “-eth” in them such as: sodium laureth sulfate. Fragrance, FD&C, or D&C are also not friendly to our human systems.

EWG has a wallet sized list to carry when you go shopping at: http://www.ewg.org/files/EWG_cosmeticsguide.pdf

The next step is to sign petitions and keep pushing for safer products for ourselves and our children.