‘Don’t be a lab rat.’
That’s the sage advice from the City of Sydney in another of their ‘Green Villages’ animations. The statement makes reference to the amount of chemicals we regularly expose ourselves to in our own homes. Check out the video below.
Hmm. Don’t be a lab rat.
Chemicals and toxicity weren’t things I thought a great deal about until a few months ago when I watched a Jared Diamond TED talk and he named ‘toxicity’ as one of the 5 greatest threats to our civilisation. This piqued my interest and led me down a path of inquiry.
In December, during a GreenUps presentation by Julian Lee (of Food Connect Sydney) he recounted working at a conventional farm (that is, a non-organic or chemical farm) where he was required by law to don heavy-duty protective clothing, gloves and a mask in order to handle the chemicals that were used to spray food crops. I quickly became alarmed by this insight into the type of chemicals we ingest.
This led me on to research pesticides in Australia (did you know there are 17 chemicals in common use in Oz which are banned everywhere else in the world?)
Then I attended a talk by an expert who advises the EU on the regulation of pesticides and genetically modified (GM) crops, Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini. This opened up another scary can of knowledge worms including these stats:
- In 60 years, 200,000 chemicals have been authorised to spread in the world – by 8 major companies
- 50 pesticides will be found in any kg of any form of life (including DDT which has been banned for decades and formaldehyde!)
The most dangerous problems with these pollutants are:
- The combination of chemicals
- The bioaccumulation in people and other life forms over years and decades
These ‘dangerous problems’, (like.. oh.. cancer, deformity, fertility and organ damage) have been tested on actual lab rats. They haven’t yet been tested thoroughly or over long periods of time, and these ‘problems’ are already apparent.
Don’t be a lab rat!
Chemicals can linger in our environment and eventually make their way into our bodies. Without even knowing it, and despite our best efforts, we come in contact with these pollutants everyday — in our water, soil, air, food, and manufactured products. Many industrial contaminants can be measured in our tissues and blood. Traces of these chemicals have even been found in the blood of Inuit in northern Canada, although they live thousands of kilometers away from the original sources.
Kristan Aronson, PhD, The David Suzuki Foundation
So it’s no exaggeration to say that we are exposed to a ‘toxic cocktail’ of chemicals at all times, the effects of which are unknown. While food is one alarming area of their reach, so are chemicals in home – which WE put there. As the above animation clocks: ‘it’s like we’re conducting one big chemical experiment in our home’.
But there is another way!
The City of Sydney’s ‘Green Villages’ guys are running natural cleaning workshop with Shannon Lush on 21 May 2012.
They have also created this easy, practical guide to DIY natural cleaning – and it all involves products you can find in your cupboard at home. And.. they work.
So let’s start the chemical clean-up close to home. Click on the images below for a closer look at the guide.
The gorgeous Green Villages animations you’ve been seeing on Sustahood were created by Digital Eskimo who are a digital agency doing good.
So, instead of making ads for chemical cleaning products, they’re using their powers (ie. their incredible creative talent) for good, to inform people about greening their lifestyles. How about that?!