Tips for Avoiding Environmental Pollutants
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
How much of your day is spent indoors? Inside your own home? If you’re like most Americans, you spend up to 90 percent of your life in an enclosed, indoor location – and more than half of that inside your own home. Strangely enough, our concern for environmental health doesn’t always translate into a concern for a healthy indoor environment in addition to a healthy outdoor environment.
Springs Natural Medicine offers environmental pollutant assessments and testing at our Colorado Springs office.
Cleaners, polishes, and pesticides are significant sources of toxics in the home. When these must be brought into your home, be sure to use and dispose of them according to directions on the label. Chemicals in cleaners and polishes are often a mixture of complex, unnamed compounds. Some contain strong acids (drain cleaners) or bases (oven cleaners). Others may contain petroleum distillates known as “grease cutters.”
Avoid detergents with mercury, phosphates, and heavy metals, such as arsenic and zinc, which can cause persistent problems in both indoor and outdoor environments. As with personal care products, unless you’ve already made the switch to naturally-derived, nontoxic products for housekeeping, the products you’re using are toxic. Your skin and lungs absorb those toxins.
The next time you run out of one product or another, whether it’s floor cleaner, window cleaner or bathroom cleaner, replace it with something less harmful. The replacement could be something very simple such as white vinegar or baking soda, available at any grocery store.
BATHROOM
- For tile and bathroom fixtures, use baking soda dissolved in water, applied on a damp cloth.
- For cleaning your toilet bowl, use baking soda and vinegar or lemon juice and borax. Cola that has gone flat can be poured in the bowl, left to sit for one hour, brushed, and flushed.
- Pour boiling water directly down your kitchen drain, not into the basin, twice weekly to prevent clogs. Use a drain trap/strainer to catch food or hair.
- To clear a clogged drain, use a metal snake or plunger.
KITCHEN
- Clean your oven often with baking soda (mix three tablespoons soda with one cup warm water). Rub gently with steel wool. Use oven liners or tinfoil to catch spills. Sprinkle salt on spills while oven is still warm. When the oven cools, scrape and wipe the area clean. Borax is also a good grease cutter.
- Mop with one cup of white vinegar mixed with two gallons of water to remove dull, greasy film. Add a small amount of skim milk to the rinse water. This will shine the floor.
LAUNDRY AND FURNITURE
- Use dry bleach, borax, or washing soda to whiten clothes. Chlorine bleach gives off toxic fumes that are irritating to the eyes, nose, throat, and lungs. Bleach also burns the skin. Never combine bleach and ammonia together, as they produce a toxic gas.
- To clean windows, apply vinegar and water (two teaspoons vinegar to one quart water), squeegee off, and dry with a soft cloth or newspaper.
- Club soda works well as a stain remover, as does a solution of water and vinegar (1/4 cup each).
- Combining 6 tablespoons of mild soap flakes, 1 pint of boiling water, and 2 teaspoons of household ammonia can make upholstery shampoo. Mix and whip the mixture with a beater. Brush only the foam into the soiled upholstery. Be sure to wash kitchen utensils completely after use.
- Polish furniture with one teaspoon lemon oil or almond oil dissolved in one pint of baby oil. Wash wood furniture with oil soap or Castile soap and water.
- For spots, use club soda to remove fruit juice, tea, gravy, ketchup, and mud; cold water immediately for blood; lemon juice for ink, and perspiration; beaten egg whites for spots on leather.
- Use the oil from crushed walnuts to conceal nicks and scratches.
SHOE AND METAL POLISH
- Avoid shoe polishes that contain trichloroethylene, methylene chloride, or nitrobenzene. Instead, rub shoes with lemon juice and buff with soft cloth.
- Metal Polish (Aluminum, Brass, Copper, Silver): Soak silver in one quart of boiling water with one teaspoon baking soda or cream of tartar, one teaspoon salt, and a piece of aluminum foil. Polish with toothpaste and rinse. Pour lemon juice or vinegar and salt over copper and rub. For brass, use one-half teaspoon salt and one-half cup white vinegar with enough flour to make a paste — let it sit 25 minutes to 1 hour. Wipe clean. Soak aluminum in one quart boiling water with two teaspoons cream of tartar.
INSECTICIDES
- For an effective insect spray, blend six cloves of crushed garlic, one minced onion, one tablespoon dried hot pepper and one teaspoon pure soap in four quarts hot water. Let the mix sit one to two days and then strain it before using.
- To control roaches, place bay leaves around cracks in the room. Set out a dish of equal parts baking soda and powdered sugar or equal parts of oatmeal flour and plaster of Paris, or chopped bay leaves and cucumber skins, or crushed tobacco and water.
- As for ants, pour a line of cream of tartar, red chili powder, paprika, or dried peppermint leaves at point of entry.
- To control fleas, give your pets brewer’s yeast, garlic tablets, or vitamin B and wash them regularly in herbal baths prepared with fennel, rue, or rosemary to repel fleas from animals.
- Cedar chips, newspaper, and dried lavender are good substitutes for mothballs.
Resources
www.anr.state.vt.us/ecosolutions
www.detox.org
Pearson, David. The Natural House Book.