September 25, 2011

Are You Using These Toxic Cleaners In Your Home?

By: Selvin Flores

There are many cleaning and personal care products which contain harmful chemicals. These products are being used on a daily basis in every typical home. Studies have shown that the majority of these homes contain over 63 toxic products that together contain hundreds of chemicals. If they are not used with the greatest of caution, these chemicals have the potential to cause serious harm or even kill your children.

This is what happened to little Elizabeth Davis of Houston, Texas. When she was only one year old she crawled over to the dishwasher while her mother was unloading the dishes. She put her small fingers in the detergent dispensing cup and ate a finger full of wet undissolved commercial dish detergent. In minutes her face was red and blistered. Her tongue and the inside of her mouth were burned white. Luckily, she was rushed to a nearby hospital emergency room for quick medical attention. She recovered in a few days.

There is another documented case involving a 20 month old boy who suffered through many operations and had to be fed through tubes for five months. Once again, this tragedy was caused by dishwasher detergent. These are only 2 of the thousands of documented cases of children being exposed to and ingesting what most people consider common household products. In both cases the presence of these "common household products" in the home had terrible life-threatening consequences.

It is estimated that the US Poison Control Center has nearly 1.5 million reported cases of accidental ingestion of poisons every year. Sad to say, most of these cases were under 12 years of age.

Ingestion is only one of the three major ways that these toxic chemicals enter the body. These chemicals are even far more dangerous when they are inhaled because they go directly into the blood stream and can quickly affect the lungs, heart, brain, liver, and kidneys.

Have you ever wondered what the strong odor in the cleaners isle of your supermarket is?. That strong smell is caused by what industry experts describe as "out gassing". Out gassing is the vapors escaping from the "sealed" containers on the supermarket shelves. These vapors are extremely harmful to your health. Have you ever been literally driven out of your bathroom shower while using one of the most popular tile cleaners?. These types of cleaners must contain strong chemicals in order to do the job. They may get the job done but they put you at risk because of the strong vapors that are generated. By the time you have exited the bathroom, the toxic chemical vapors have entered your blood stream and are wrecking havoc with your health.

Do you know that one square centimeter of skin, which is about the size of a dime, contains 3 million cells and 4 yards of nerves? How do you think nicotine and hormone replacement patches work? The chemicals from the patch enter the body through the skin to do their work. This same absorption occurs every time a cleaning product touches your skin. If your baby happens to crawl across your nicely scrubbed kitchen floor, even after several days, the skin will pick up and absorb whatever toxic chemicals happen to be in the cleaner.

You can remove these toxic products from your home and start protecting your family. Start using non-toxic cleaners and other products in your home today.