Celebrating the Holidays

Reprinted with permission from Children’s Health Environmental Coalition (CHEC). CHEC is a national nonprofit organization working to educate parents and others about preventable health and environmental problems caused by exposure to toxic substances.

Happy Holidays
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Indulge in only the best food by going organic.Special occasions call for scrumptious goodies. But indulging doesn't have to mean sacrificing your family's health. This year, strive for very special holiday meals made of the freshest organic foods. Today, you can find organic ingredients for every type of celebratory food, from free-range turkey to a mouth-watering apple pie. Look for the USDA Organic seal to be sure that you are buying foods produced without synthetic pesticides, antibiotics, growth hormones, genetic engineering, irradiation and petroleum- or sewage sludge-based fertilizers.

Watch out for those brightly colored foods and candy! Holiday treats like candy canes and other goodies can be hard to resist. But many of our favorite sweet treats are full of artificial colors, flavors and preservatives, some of which have questionable safety records. Saccharin, for example, is known to cause cancer in laboratory animals.

Serve your child a well-balanced diet of whole foods and let your child indulge in moderate amounts of candy and other holiday treats.

To perfume the air with a holiday fragrance, simmer spices such as cinnamon sticks and whole cloves. Special scents create a festive holiday mood. However, scented candles, incense, air fresheners and other fragrance products are filled with chemical cocktails that can pollute indoor air, causing headaches, fatigue and other symptoms.

Scented candles tend to produce more black soot than nonscented candles. And some candles—particularly those made in foreign countries—are made with stiff, metal wicks, which often contain lead. When lit, these candles release lead dust. Both soot and lead can be inhaled or ingested by small children, which may lead to health problems. Soot contains suspected carcinogens and lead causes brain damage. For safer ways to fill your house with holiday scents, see How to Freshen Indoor Air.

Raid your kitchen pantry to make your house sparkle for holiday guests. Cleaning your house in preparation for guests is one holiday tradition no one cherishes. To make it less unpleasant to all concerned, use mild, nontoxic cleaners. Most cleaning can be accomplished with a few nontoxic items from your kitchen pantry such as baking soda, washing soda and vinegar (to name a few). These ingredients can even be used to polish the silver!

Be aware that holiday lights may contain lead. In many electronic products, wires and cords are coated with PVC plastic, which is where the lead is found. Lead is used in PVC wires and cords to make it more flexible and reduce the risk of fire. Lead is also used in many PVC products to stabilize the color.

The amount of lead in the lights and other consumer products may vary considerably and it is not clear if the amount of lead that is released poses a risk to human health. Some tests show that lead could come off in the hands. It's best not to let children handle the lights. The adult that does handle them should wash his or her hands immediately afterwards.

Retire that old, plastic tree. Plastic Christmas trees may appear to make environmental sense, because they can be used for many years. And about 20 million households put up a tree that is 9 years old or older. But old Christmas trees, which are made of PVC, are a potential health threat to children.

PVC has been dubbed the most toxic plastic. One reason is that PVC contains significant amounts of lead as a stabilizer. In 2002, Foundation E.A.R.T.H. discovered that as these plastic trees age, they release lead dust, which collects on tree branches and the floor beneath the tree. Most of the plastic trees come from China and they exceed U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recommendations for lead levels in consumer products. Lead is an extremely toxic heavy metal capable of producing long-term behavioral and brain damage, even at low doses.

To be extra safe, don't let your children touch or handle a plastic tree or crawl underneath it. Don't keep presents underneath it either, as they will collect any lead dust that falls. Better yet, purchase a fresh tree this year -- it's a renewable resource that can be recycled!.

This holiday season, burn a safer fire. As you cozy up to the fireplace this winter, remember that particles and gases from fires can make breathing difficult, especially for asthmatics. Make sure you ventilate well. Dry wood burns hotter and cleaner than "green" wood and hardwoods are better than coniferous trees, or evergreens. (That includes your Christmas tree, which is better off recycled.)
Note: Fires also emit carcinogens, so keep fires to a minimum.

Fresh air helps keep the holidays healthy. Even though it may be cold outside, remember to crack the windows a bit each day to let fresh air in and polluted air out. Chemicals, smoke and soot build up indoors if there's no place for them to go.

Give the gift of non-PVC toys. Polyvinyl chloride, also known as PVC or vinyl, is commonly used in teethers and soft squeeze toys for young children, beach balls, bath toys, dolls and other children's products. Health concerns for children who play with soft PVC toys center on toxic additives called phthalates (pronounced "tha-lates"). Phthalates are added to PVC to make it soft and flexible, but some phthalates have been linked to cancer, kidney and liver damage and harm to developing reproductive organs.

A voluntary industry ban on phthalates in toys for children under three has not been completely effective. Better alternatives include toys made of solid wood or non-PVC plastic.

Make holiday ornaments with homemade clay instead of polymer clays. Polymer clays are typically made of PVC, a plastic that contains phthalates which have been linked to cancer and reproductive effects. Luckily, there are brands made without PVC.

Protect more children -- give a gift membership in CHEC! CHEC wants to help all parents protect their children from environmental health threats. They do this by providing well-researched and timely solutions that are easily accessed on the Internet and in CHEC publications. Help them continue to do so by supporting CHEC through gift memberships. Recipients of $50 memberships will receive the new version of CHEC’s popular book, The Household Detective: Protecting Your Children From Toxins at Home, and a subscription to CHEC’s print newsletter, The CHEC Report. To sign up, visit their membership page.

Reprinted with permission by Children’s Health Environmental Coalition (CHEC). CHEC is a national nonprofit organization working to educate parents and others about preventable health and environmental problems caused by exposure to toxic substances. Visit CHEC at www.checnet.org