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Each year over one million children are accidentally poisoned in their homes; more than 250,000 of these victims are hospitalized.  Three thousand children require intensive care; dozens die.  Thousands of children and adults are permanently disfigured or injured each year through contact with chemicals found in household products.  The most common substance to poison these children? Your household cleaner.  After Katrina, there were hundreds of thousands of chemicals running in the floodwaters throughout our streets that started in homes, under the sink. Many of these cleaning products (even some now packaged “green”) are represented to be safe.  However, this list of five products (that may be under your sink) have warning labels that don’t  tell you the complete story:

1. Air Freshener (Aerosol) ~ WARNING: can cause mild irritation to lungs and eyes; ACTUAL: contains butane, propane, ammonia, phenol, formaldehyde.  Harms include cancer, central nervous system (CNS) damage, liver damage, and tumors. Perhaps that soy candle is a better idea after all?

2. All-Purposed Cleaner ~ WARNING: mild-to-moderate damage to eyes, dizzyness, weakness; ACTUAL: ammonia, 2-butoxyethanol, and phenol. Linked to cancer, reproductive disorder, kidney and liver damage, chronic lung irritation. Isn’t this what SDT is spraying over the streets in the morning?

3. Window Cleaner ~ WARNING: mild irritation and damage to eyes, fumes can be irritating to lungs, can irritate skin; ACTUAL: ammonia and 2-butoxyethanol. Linked to reproductive disorders, kidney and liver damage, bone marrow damage, and tumors. Ah-ha! No wonder those two crows are laughing up in the trees!

4. Deoderant (Aerosol) ~ WARNING: highly flamable propellants, vapors can irritate eyes and lungs; ACTUAL: propane, butane, formaldehyde, ammonia. Can cause cancer, vapors cause CNS depression, damages to the lungs, liver, kidneys and heart. This one is for the guys, as it seems their favorite form of deoderant is in a can.

5. Furniture Polish ~ WARNING: contact with skin can dissolve vital skin oils and cause severe dermititis, and permanent damage to the eyes; ACTUAL: phenol, petroleum distillates, heavy naptha (WTF?). Repeated exposure is linked to cancer, birth defects, heart, liver, kidney and CNS damage.

Chronic Childhood Illness is on a Dramatic Rise ~ these shocking statistics, linked to environmental issues, should alert everyone to Healthcare Reform to protect your children’s generation, as well as our own:

• The incidence of cancer in children jumped 26% between 1975 and 1998
• The incidence of testicular cancer in young men has increased by 60% and the incidence of hypospadias (abnormal positioning of the opening of the urethra on the penis) in newborn boys doubled from 1968 to 1993
• The percentage of U.S. children with asthma doubled from 3.6% to 7.5% between 1980 and 1995. In 2001, 8.7% (6.3 million) of all U.S. children had asthma
• It is estimated that nearly 12 million U.S. children (17%) under the age of 18 suffer from one or more learning, developmental, or behavioral disabilities
• Autism in the U.S. doubled between 1966 and 1997
• In 1997 to 2000, 6.7% of children ages 5 to 17 were reported to have been diagnosed with ADHD
• One million children in the US exceed 10 ug/dl blood lead level exposure that affects behavior and cognition and 36% of those children are African-American and live in inner cities.

Read the complete report from the Institute for Children’s Environmental Health here.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 16th, 2009 at 6:56 pm and is filed under Green House. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.