In the name of good karma

I promise you, I am not a paid spokesperson for this brand.....but I had to write to tell you about a new nail polish remover I just ordered and it is absolutely fabulous. I don't usually get excited about things this mundane, but you must understand that I had pretty much stopped getting manicures and pedicures because the remover literally makes me gag and cough, not to mention, riles up my asthma.
(Here comes the pitch), Karma Organics Nail Polish Remover worked just as well as any other I'd tried, but what really separates it from the pack is the fact that it is completely non-toxic and infused with soybean oil that really seems to condition the nails rather than strip them. The version I ordered is scented with lavender and it is truly hard to believe it's remover and not just aromatherapy oil. Honestly, if someone entered your bathroom and you told them you'd just given yourself a manicure, they'd never believe you because the smell is so spa-like. Gone are the icky fumes of yore and the myth that a remover must have a strong, noxious odor in order to be effective.
I have yet to try any of Karma's accompanying nail polishes, but judging from the site, the colors are rich and radiant and similar to any I'd find in a regular marketplace (again, minus the yucky stuff). The only major difference, other than a lack of chemicals, is the price tag. Cheap, it ain't. But hey, it's still easier on the wallet than having your nails professionally done. At $12 for a 4 oz bottle of the remover, I'll use it sparingly. Here's a link to their site if you'd like to check it out for yourself. (if I were a savvy about this blog-thing, I'd insert a photo here, but alas, I still have much to learn).

http://store.karmaorganicspa.com/nail-polish.html

Lead in paint, jewelry and now....juice?

The gasoline you put in your car may be unleaded, but don't assume that glass of juice you sip with breakfast is lead-free. A particularly alarming report on NPR yesterday cited a California environmental group's study that found lead in a wide array of juices and fruit snacks sold nationwide. Brands found to contain the dangerous mineral included such popular names as Welch's, Minute Maid, Gerber, Hansen's, Del Monte and Dole (for the complete list, go to http://www.envirolaw.org/documents/ProductsTestedforLeadFINAL.pdf)

And don't assume that just because you buy organic, you're out of the woods. Many organic labels like Earth's Best, O Organics and 365 Everyday Value from Whole Foods were also affected. I printed the entire list out and it's five pages long. In many cases, a single serving or juice box was found to exceed federal limits for kids. (FDA, are you listening?) The American Academy of Pediatrics has long stated that NO amount of lead is safe for children.

I have two questions.....

1 -- Why has this story not gotten more play on the news?
2 -- Where is this lead coming from?

Is it possible that the soil used to grow these fruits is infected with it? Or, perhaps the machinery used in the manufacturing process has contaminated the products? Thankfully, my own kids don't drink a lot of juice, but I know that's not the norm. Much of the juice in this study is specifically marketed to children -- even infants. As you probably know, lead is especially dangerous for little ones who tend to absorb more of the metal than adults. Since lead poisoning often shows no immediate symptoms but the toxin can be stored in the blood, bones and organs for an extended period of time, the danger is often silent and progressive. The litany of related problems can include memory issues, poor cognitive skills, language impairment, decrease in fine-motor skills, trouble paying attention and an overall loss of IQ points.

It used to be that we only worried about pervasive lead exposure for kids who lived in houses built prior to the 1970s. Then came reports of lead popping up in the paint on toys and in metal used for cheap jewelry. Now it's apparently slipping into the most vulnerable in the population on a daily basis in their very own sippy cups. I thought BPA was my biggest worry with regard to my kid's thermos choices...now I find that the very thing we are giving our children to nourish their bodies could be causing irreparable harm? And here I was feeling so virtuous that I feed my kids fruits and veggies and forgo sugary staples like soda and Kool-Aid.

I don't mean to be picky, but I'll take my drinks without the added lead, thank you. Stay tuned for more on this as more details trickle out.

And to update a previous posting of mine, you may be interested to note that Tylenol has now expanded their recall of over the counter meds. This time, a different batch of extra strength Tylenol and Benadryl were pulled due to a moldy smell that has been linked to nausea and stomach pains. For details on the latest recall from Johnson & Johnson (their third in 8 months), go to http://www.mcneilproductrecall.com/page.jhtml?id=/include/news_june.inc

With relatives like these, who needs enemies?

So, yes, I've been away for a while...not that there has been any shortage of things I wanted to write about -- it's just that somehow, life got in the way.

But fear no more -- I'm back and as paranoid as ever!

Today, I'm in a tizzy over a little company you may have heard of called Johnson & Johnson. Now, they bill themselves as "a family company," but I ask you, would anyone in your family knowingly give you something that might endanger your health? (if so, you have bigger problems that probably deserve more paranoia than my blog can supply).

The recall of various kids medicines including Motrin, Tylenol and Benadryl is now old news, having been pulled from shelves months ago with the original recall happening last July. But today, details emerged that are even more disturbing to me than the original recall notice. Allegedly, prior to the public recall, the company issued a "phantom recall," hiring another company to have employees pose as consumers and attempt to purchase the tainted medication before the issue was made known to the masses. This is wrong on so many levels I don't even know where to begin. I mean, it's not as if we're talking about a bake sale and a mom who tries to pass off store-bought goodies as homemade. This is medication we're talking about -- medication designed specifically for children, nonetheless. To attempt to evade a recall by such deceptive practice is totally unspeakable. Who knows how many additional bottles of questionable medicines were purchased during the time in which J&J knowingly deceived consumers by leaving it on the shelf rather than issuing an immediate recall.

Legislators are now investigation the company's motive and whether or not they sought to preserve their reputation at the expense of responsibility and safety to consumers. Well, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck.....?

If this is not enough to drive you to purchase generic over-the-counter meds, I don't know what will. The latest recall from J&J covers more than 40 medications that make up 70 percent of the pediatric market. I know my own medicine cabinet was filled with them.

Johnson & Johnson -- a family company? I think not.

Minivan Meltdown

So, today, beleaguered auto-maker, Toyota, recalled more than half-a-million Sienna minivans due to a potentially faulty cable issue. My husband owns a Prius (which I love) and I sort of feel like poor Toyota is like the former prom king who grows up, gets fat and nobody wants to date them anymore. Are their glory days over?


Can I just say, I drive a mini-van and I love it. I never thought I'd say such a thing and I admit I got a little teary when my husband and I decided to trade my sporty little red Accord in for my Odyssey. But nearly six years later, I can honestly say, it's the best car I've ever owned. And just to prove I'm not ashamed of my mom-ified set of wheels, my brother gave me  a t-shirt that states, "I'm too sexy for my minivan." I often wear it to the gym with pride.


While I love my mommy-mobile, I can't say the same for everyone else on the road. Today, in fact, I was parked outside of Old Navy here in suburban Atlanta and when I returned to my car, some lovely passerby had left a hastily scribbled note on my windshield that read:


"You give mini-van drivers a bad name! Learn how to park or buy a smaller car! I couldn't get in my car thru the driver's side b/c of you! Had to crawl through. You are a jerk!!!"


After reading this heart-warming note, I checked to see if I was, in fact, badly parked. Lo and behold, not only was I aligned straight, my wheels were not even touching the line on either side. I have no idea what this person was talking about and perhaps they parked closely on my side and were unable to get into their own car after I arrived. Or maybe they were just having an exceedingly bad day and decided to take it out on a random mommy driver.


In either case, the note shook me up slightly and reminded me the importance and blessing of cutting people slack. I mean, there are earthquakes going on almost daily now, teens are becoming fatal victims to schoolyard bullies, volcanos are erupting, people are losing their jobs and pensions, etc, etc.


So, unless your life is just so horrendously awful, learn from this stranger's behavior and please think twice before lashing out over something as meaningless as a badly parked car. I mean, life IS short. Perhaps mouthing off to me gave this person a little lift or somehow improved their day, but I doubt it. More likely, this is an angry individual who is unhappy and couldn't help but try to bring someone else down with them.


Or, maybe they were ticked off that their Sienna was just recalled.


(for more information on that recall, go to  www.toyota.com/recall)

Excuse me while I climb up here on my soap box

In my house, we wash our hands a lot. I could get a headache just trying to count the number of times I clean myself up after taking out the garbage, changing a dirty diaper, filling up with gas, handling food, going to the bathroom, working out at the gym, etc, etc. You get the idea.

But there is one thing you won't find at my house: antibacterial soap. Though I used to swoon at the delicious scents I bought by the dozen at Bath & Body Works, I later learned that antibacterial soaps contain a chemical called triclosan, which is actually a pesticide. While the jury is still out on just how risky this agent may be, the potential harm it causes is even more serious for children. Use of antibiotic products may also be contributing to the rise of so-called super-bugs -- germs that, ironically, grow resistant to antibiotics merely because  they mutate and grow stronger in order to survive among so many chemicals (like triclosan) designed to get rid of them. These mighty scourges just don't want to leave -- sort of like Kato Kaelin after the OJ Simpson trial.

Thankfully, the FDA announced today that it is re-evaluating the safety of triclosan and one U.S. Representative (Edward Markey, D-MA) lauded the decision and vowed to pursue the study of similar chemicals found in everyday products that may also pose a higher risk to kids.

The move is a step in the right direction. In the meantime, take a tip from your great-grandmother and give those hands a good scrubbing with plain ole' soap and water. It's safe, effective and often cheaper than those antibacterial versions. At our house, we swear by Method and Cleanwell soaps. In fact, Cleanwell's products employ the use of the botanical thyme, which is a natural disinfectant with major germ fighting properties. In the shower, the gels made by Shikai and Kiss My Face work wonders, with nary a chemical in sight.

I should point out that the FDA, while pledging to conduct more research on the matter, defended the continued use of triclosan because human studies are inconclusive. However, animal studies show that the chemical can alter the regulation of hormones.

And if I'm going to bug my kids to wash their hands, the least I can do is make sure all that washing isn't doing more harm than good.

Receipt Deceit?

So, today a friend asked if I'd heard that BPA is now found on cash register receipts? If you're reading this blog, I'm going to assume you know what BPA is and not go into a lot of detail on that. But, in a nutshell, for those new to this "paranoid" stuff, BPA (bisphenol-A) is a chemical found in many plastics that has been linked to cancer and endocrine disruption. It's found in everything from the linings of canned food, to baby toys and teethers and even in drinking water. Most of the earth's population has some level of BPA in their bloodstream and the question now is, how much is too much? The EPA is currently examining that and BPA was removed from baby bottles last year in the US. But my thoughts are that if an item is of questionable safety and there is a known safe alternative (glass or BPA-free plastic), why not use that whenever possible?

I'd not heard about this receipt link, so I decided to check it out and guess what....it's true! That being said, the research I found to support this link was all traced back to one scientist in particular and the journalist in me is a little skeptical about attributing something so newsworthy to only one source. Apparently, this "news" came out last year but received very little play. I'm also a tiny bit bothered by the fact that this information has yet to be published formally. It would seem to me that if the data is true, a credible scientist would be chomping at the bit to get this out to the masses. So, for now, I will take it with a grain of salt because receipts are not exactly something one can avoid in this day and age.

But for a moment, let's just assume this is something we ought to be mildly concerned about. (or at the very least - aware of.)

Again, if you breath and function in society today, it's virtually impossible to avoid amassing a collection of  paper receipts, even among the greenest of people who try to avoid excessive paper consumption. This new BPA danger was first raised by an organic chemist named John C. Warner, who found that copyless carbon paper used by most credit card machines and thermal imaging paper used in most cash registers, utilize a thin layer of BPA in order to create images. The papers don't look any different from those that don't contain the chemical and apparently, tests show that the vast majority of receipts tested positive for BPA.

The most frightening aspect of this to me (again, if the study is to be believed), is that the BPA contained in these receipts is of a free-form that directly contaminates anything it touches, rather than leaching due to heat or prolonged contact, as in the controversy over baby bottles. That means that every time my kids go riffling through my wallet and find receipts, they walk away with BPA on their hands, which is then transferred to everything they touch. Warner argues that since BPA mimics estrogen and estrogen can easily be absorbed into the skin (think of those birth control patches), wouldn't it stand to reason that BPA on receipts can similarly sink into our skin on a daily basis from these ever present papers?

I already try to avoid receipts whenever possible, not because of BPA, but because it's less for me to recycle. I no longer request receipts when I take money out at an ATM or fill up my car at the gas station. I found that those just ended up junking up my purse or diaper bag and in the end, weren't really necessary. But, I do tend to hang onto store receipts indefinitely since you never know when you may need to return an item.

So, what to do?

For now, I file this away in my "potential stuff to worry about but that I can't really do much about" file and go on with life. But perhaps I'll think twice before I let my kids play with something as harmless as a little piece of paper.

The Age of Innocence

Lately, my 5 year old has been asking a lot of questions about earthquakes -- what are they? Why do they happen? How do they cause people to die? We make a point of not watching the news in front of the kids, but still, they are aware of major events that take place in the world because they hear snippits of our conversations and catch glimpses of the paper as it sits on the breakfast table.

I've never been a fan of lying to children, though I have been known to "lie by omission" in choosing what to discuss with my daughter. I want her to know that life can be tough and that there are those who will experience devastating traumas (like earthquakes) that aren't part of her daily existence. But at the same time, I do feel she's entitled to keep some of that short-lived innocence she now possesses. When I was her age, my grandfather died and I remember not really grasping what had happened and not being allowed to go to his funeral. My daughter is growing up in a different era and already knows more about things like death, illness and world tragedies than I ever knew at such a young age. I'm not sure if this is due more to the fact that she's a child of the 21st century, or the fact that I lived at a time where parents found it easier to shield their children from such unpleasantness.

I see value in both schools of thought and I would never share anything with my children that I thought was unnecessarily frightening or completely age inappropriate. When we discuss death, we don't talk about burial (there is no need for her to know about that part of the process yet -- I personally don't even love to think about it), but rather, the potential survival of the soul, and the memories that outlive us, even after our bodies no longer function. She thinks that only old people die and I have yet to correct her because I don't want her worrying about her own mortality before she even starts Kindergarten. For the most part, this hasn't been a problem -- except for the time that we called my 92-year-old grandmother to wish her a happy birthday and this was the message that Eva left on her machine:

"Hi Nana Bea. Happy Birthday. I hope you don't die soon cause I know you're really old now. Bye!"

Eeeek!

So, where do you draw the line? My kids are too young to have heard about 9-11 yet, but I know that day is coming and I'm not sure exactly how to explain that one to them. I'd venture to say that discussing events like that never even entered my parents' realm of thought. Thankfully, I have some time to mull it over. I can't imagine what the kids who saw it happen live must have felt or how it has effected them in the grand scheme of things.

Here in Atlanta, there is an exhibit celebrating the life of the late Princess Diana. Eva saw a poster promoting it the other day and asked me about her. I told her that Diana was a real live princess who lived in London. Eva asked if she still lived there and I told her no, that sadly she'd died in a car accident.  She followed with her normal questions: How did the accident happen? Where was she when it happened? Did she die right away? How did the accident kill her? I answered all of them as best I could without going into unnecessarily gruesome detail. Then she asked how old Princess Diana was when she died. I know the answer to this because truth be told, it freaks me out a little bit that she was actually younger than I am now. But Eva knows how old I am and I saw no need to scare her so I told her I didn't know. Should I have been more honest? Maybe. But I believe my daughter is still at an age where her princess fantasies deserve to be kept intact, even if they are just make-believe.