Phthalates....What's the big deal?
When I sat down with my coffee and began Shaklee University, I thought it would help educate me on the products I was selling.
What I didn't realize was it would educate me on life.
I got into Shaklee because I wanted to get healthy. After years and years of being obese, tired, cranky, depressed, sore, diagnosed with fibromyalgia, Benign Intercranial Hypertension and generally feeling like a hypochondriac.
I felt like SOMEWHERE in between my trip to Doctors, Chiropractors, Massage therapists, Physiotherapists, and Psychologists, I was missing something.
Turns out I was...
Did you know that we live in a TOXIC world? That every day we are breathing hundreds of chemicals? Did you know that we not only ingest chemicals, but we lather them on our skin?
When I really started to think about it, and research it, It was a HUGE wake-up call!
I have been reading the book "Green goes with Everything" by Sloan Barnett (who is also the wife of Roger Barnett, CEO of Shaklee) I would highly recommend it. In her book she writes"
"The total amount of chemicals and pollutants in one's body at any given time, is called one's "body burden." She had a lab in British Columbia - one of only four in the world, she writes, which does such testing - perform a body burden test on her and discovered that she had nearly four times the level of PCBs in her blood as the average U.S. level (even though PCBs, a probable carcinogen used in electrical devices, WERE BANNED 30 YEARS AGO!!!!), nearly twice as much triclosan - an antibacterial linked to thyroid problems, allergies and skin irritation - as the average U.S. level - and higher-than-average levels of organochlorine pesticides (used as insecticides and which can be possible hormone disruptors and neurotoxins).
She was stunned at the levels of chemicals in her blood and decided to make changes"
Seriously??? Chemicals that were BANNED 30 years ago, still in her blood at such dangerous levels...so scary!
So what exactly are Phthalates?
Phthalates are a class of widely used industrial compounds known technically as dialkyl or alkyl aryl esters of 1,2-benzenedicarboxylic acid. There are many phthalates with many uses, and just as many toxicological properties.
Phthalates crept into widespread use over the last several decades because of their many beneficial chemical properties. Now they are ubiquitous, not just in the products in which they are intentionally used, but also as contaminants in just about anything. About a billion pounds per year are produced worldwide.
Intentional uses of phthalates include softeners of plastics, oily substances in perfumes, additives to hairsprays, lubricants and wood finishers. That new car smell, which becomes especially pungent after the car has been sitting in the sun for a few hours, is partly the pungent odor of phthalates volatilizing from a hot plastic dashboard. In the evening's cool they then condense out of the inside air of the car to form an oily coating on the inside of the windshield.
What are the health concerns?
I am going to paraphrase here, so if you want to see the actual article I am using as a reference I will link to it at the end, but basically, in high doses they are proven to cause cancer in many forms, but the new studies show that even at low doses they are affecting our unborn babies while in utero. They have been proven to "Produce dramatic changes in male sexual characteristics"
One line in the article really stood out to me too, "DEHP's ability to exacerbate allergic reactions to an allergen, providing a possible clue as to why allergy rates have gone up so much in the developed world"
We all know these statistics, Cancer is at an all time high, infertility, allergies, athsma, but maybe you were like me and didn't realize WHY, or what you could do to change it.
Ive included some links here if you want to further research this yourself.
Phthlates and Parabens
The Problem with Phthalates
The article I quoted above
If I can help just one person become aware of the dangers we have lurking under our kitchen sink, in our shower, in our kitchen cabinets, than I will be happy.
We cannot change the world all at once. We cannot undo all that has been done, but we can make small changes that added together WILL impact the rest of the world, for our children, and theirs.
Have a great night.
Julie
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