Is Your Home a Healthy Home?

Is your home a healthy home?? by John K. Beaulieu

It's alarming but true - scientists and doctors have discovered that there is a connection between our health and the use of comming everyday household chemicals.  If yours is the typical home, you probably use dozens of cleaning and personal care products, purchased at the local grocery store, which contain chemical ingredients that could be harmful to your health and the health of your loved ones. 
Since World War II, ther ehas been a dramatic rise in the number of man-made chemicals we use in our homes.  The typical home now contains over sixty-three hazardous products that together contain hundreds of different chemicals.  At the same time there has been an equally dramatic rise in the incidence of certain chronic health problems.  Research indicates that it is more than coincidence that the dramatic rise in these various diseases has coincided with the increased use of hazardous, man-made chemicals in the home.

Have we always been this sick?
Around the turn of the century the cancer incidence rate was about one in fifty.  Today is the IS, one in three women and one in two men will suffer with cancer.  Cancer is the number two killer of adults and the leading cause of death from disease in children.
The incidence of central nervous system disorders like Alzheimer's and Mulitple Sclerosis increases annually.
Birth defects are ont he ise as well.  Over 150,000 babies are born with defects each uear for reasons unknown.  Another 500,000 babies are iscarried early in pregnancy each year with additional 24,000 miscarried late in prgnancy or stillborn.  Infertility is increasing and widespread with over 2 milion couples who want children and are unable to conceive.
Asthma was also once a very rare disease.  Now the condition is extremely common.  THe asthma rate has tripled in the last twenty years with over 30 million Americans currently afflicted.
Attention Deficit Disorder in adults and children is rising.  In 1993, 2 million children took the drug Ritalin so they could sit still long enough to learn.  In 1995, that figure doubled to approximately 4 million.  In 2000, 17 million prescriptions were written in the US for Ritalin and other drugs to treat ADD. 
You or someone you know has probably been touched in some way by one of these illnesses.  What could be causing these, and other health problems, to rise and afflict so many otherwise healthy people?  Although other factors are involved, more and more scientists are linking these ailments to long-term chemical exposure.  And, for most of us, our greatest exposure to chemicals is right in our own homes!  We breathe chemical vapors from household products to clean our homes or make our bodies clean and smell good; and we swallow small amounts of chemicals when we gargle, or when we eat food from dishes that have been cleaned with chemicals and still contain a thin residue.  The home is also where over 1.5 million young children are poisoned each year, and most of the time they are poisoned by a cleaning or personal care products.


Happily, there is a simple solution to the problem presented in this article.  Some conscientious companies now offer household products that are safer and more natural.  Most of these people-friendly and environmentally sensitive products work just as well or better than grocery store brands, and in many cases, actually cost less.  So, there's really no reason to risk your health, or the health of your loved ones any longer. 
If your home a healthy home?  Right now, it's probably not as healthy as it could be.  Keep reading posts to learn more!