Green This! Volume 1: Greening Your Cleaning

Chapter 1
A New Meaning of Clean

Our Most Precious Natural Resource
We all want the best for our children -- the best schools, the best doctors, the best foods. But often, we give little thought to the environment where our children live, and the quality of the air they breathe. Some of us smoke with our children sitting right next to us. We bring home dinner from a fast food restaurant because it's cheap, or zap leftover lasagna in the microwave because it's convenient. We spray pesticides on the lawns where our children play, and set off roach bombs in the rooms where they sleep. We use chlorine bleach, and ammonia, and dozens of other toxic chemicals to clean the clothes our children wear, and the plates they eat off, and the carpets they lounge on to watch TV.
We make these compromises every day, not because we don't care about our children -- on the contrary. More than anything, we want our homes to be clean and sanitary, safe havens where our children can thrive. We compromise because we're busy and exhausted and overcommitted. Taking constant shortcuts seems the only way to manage our hectic lives.
But the time has come to slow down and start paying more attention -- our children's futures depend on it. We live in a world polluted by toxins. We're exposed to pesticides and carcinogens in the foods we eat and the clothes we wear; in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the substances we use to clean our houses. The deadly chemical cocktail building up in our bodies is causing us great harm, manifesting itself in everything from asthma to cancer. Toxins are ravaging our lives -- and even more so the lives of our children. Because they are smaller and still developing, they are far more vulnerable than we are to toxic exposures, yet they are assaulted at identical levels.
Now, as a result, their health is suffering. In the United States, childhood cancers, now the leading cause of death by disease for children between the ages of one and nineteen, increased by approximately 21 percent between 1975 and 1998. Certain other cancers -- brain tumors, leukemia, acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), and central nervous system malignancies -- are growing even faster, at rates of about 30 percent over the last two decades. The National Cancer Institute estimates that these rates will continue to grow an additional one percent every year. And that's just the beginning. Over the past decade, we've seen a sixfold increase in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). An appalling American diet has produced an obesity epidemic, and diabetes is at nearly epidemic proportions as well. Childhood asthma is the leading cause of emergency room visits and absenteeism in schools. Rates of autism are rising fast, and rheumatoid arthritis has become the third-most-common chronic childhood disorder. Premature births, problems conceiving, and birth defects are all on the rise.
It's no secret that environmental factors contribute to many of these extremely serious health issues. But even as our bodies rebel against toxins, we continue exposing ourselves to them recklessly, without pausing to consider how our snap decisions might affect our health, or the health of future generations. Most of us feel helpless when confronted with these terrifying realities. We shrug off the health crisis our kids are facing as beyond our individual control.
I'm here to tell you that we can take action to improve this situation, and it's much easier than you might think. As consumers, we have the power to control the level of toxins that enter our homes. With a little knowledge, we can give our families a much healthier life.
Rethinking how we clean our homes is, to me, the most logical place to begin this process. After all, unlike so many other modern conveniences, we don't use chemical cleaning products to save time or money. We use them because our mothers used them --