Dear Debra, After a weekend of blustery weather from the outer bands of hurricane Dennis, I'm happy that the sun is shining today and I can plug in my computer and send you this newsletter! Debra :-)
HEALTH, HOME & HABITAT ~ 12 July 2005
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AT HOME WITH DEBRA: What I Wear I was raised to be pretty fashion-conscious by a mother who worked in the fashion industry in New York. But today, I'm more comfortable wearing natural fibers in styles that express my own personality and values. In this next installment of my ongoing "At Home With Debra" series, find out what I wear and why.
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Innovative New Cleaning Products for Home and Pet Every once in a while I come across a company whose products just make me say "Yes! Yes! Yes!" These companies completely redesign products from the viewpoint of the environment and come up with things that are new and different. TotalEClean is one such company. Two women who obviously love the Earth, have designed nature-respectful, cruelty-free, plant-based cleaning solutions and packaged them in ergonomically-correct useful fiber-based tools. Dishwashing soap, for example, comes in a biodegradable plant-fiber scrubber instead of a plastic bottle. Herbal pet shampoo comes in a vegetable-fiber brush for easy application. Laundry soap comes premeasured in little cotton bags. All are packaged in simple cellophane that will easily biodegrade in your compost pile along with whatever is leftover of the product at the end of its useful life. TotalEClean Cleaning Products for the Home... TotalEClean Pet Care Products...
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Medical Tests Without a Prescription Have you ever wanted to take a medical test but didn't want to go to the doctor, or didn't have the money to pay for an office visit in addition to the test, or don't have a medical doctor? Now you can get the same medical tests that doctors order without a prescription. Medical tests can help you be healthier by giving you information about your body that can only come from a laboratory analysis of your blood. These services allow you to order your own tests online and then go to a local lab to have your blood drawn. Forty-eight hours later, you can log-in and get your results on-line.
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DEBRA'S LIST: new website links I added a lot of new links this week. Here are just a few
Household Products Database
Eco-Labels
Earth Footwear
Organic Bouquet
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Q & A: Types of Wood Flooring We want to replace carpeting in our daughter's bedroom. She is chemically sensitive and so we were comparing prefinished wood flooring with laminate wood flooring. At our local Lowe's store we saw Bruce wood floor and a Pergo laminate. Is the laminate more toxic than the wood? We hope to use a kind that needs neither gluing or nailing. The laminate is thicker for about the same price. Would it be more toxic? We have also found an engineered hardwood Bruce flooring that does not require nailing or gluing. Since it is engineered, does that present any outgassing problems? Also if it requires laying foam underneath, would that present a challenge to the chemically sensitive since it would be sealed under the flooring? R. W.
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Q & A: Fear of Toxics and Budget Considerations My husband and I have been furniture shopping for a new sofa. I have read the information about brominated flame retardants and the other harmful chemicals used in upholstery. I researched the sofas on Debra's List, but they are so expensive! They are beyond my budget and I must tiptoe around my husband, who thinks I have taken this toxic stuff too far and I'm just scaring myself. I just tried to tell him about the danger of microwaves and we got into this whole argument. He says he refuses to live his life in fear. Do you have any advice for me on trying to remove toxins from my house but at the same time not letting it consume me? I am afraid of everything now.
C. S.
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Q & A: Are Raid® Earth Options insecticides safe to use? I've been seeing advertisements for Raid®'s new Earth Options insecticides. The label says the active ingredients are plant-based, but are they really safe to use?
L. L.
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Q & A: Is Modal® a natural fiber? I was shopping at Bed Bath & Beyond the other day and noticed they had a lot of bed and bath linens made from a fabric called Modal¨. The label says it's a natural fiber, but is it really?
D. L.
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The new, revised, edition of
Home Safe Home
is now available
in bookstores nationwide.
Home Safe Home tells what toxic chemicals are generally found in specific household products of all types, and safe solutions you can buy or make at home. It's different from other books on toxic chemicals because the focus really is what you can do to protect yourself and your family and create a healthy home. I bring over twenty years of research and personal real-life experience to this book. * 10 Simple, Inexpensive Things You Can Do To Reduce Household Toxics * How Toxic is Your Home? Quiz (excerpt from the book)
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Debra's List
~
100s of links
to 1000s of nontoxic, natural & earthwise
products * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * |
