Prevention :: Environmental Economy Chemicals Essays

Prevention Prevention entails keeping all cleaning agents, gasoline, paints, glues, thinners, and other household products in locked or inaccessible cabinets. These products should never be used in closed spaces, and areas should be extensively aired out after product use. Even with adequate room ventilation, it is probably prudent to avoid exposing children altogether (see case 4, below). Tell parents to avoid bringing children to nail salons and to keep children out of newly remodeled rooms that may be off-gassing solvents from carpet and wallpaper glues. Dry-cleaning should be aired out in the yard or an open garage for one day before being brought into the house, and car windows should be open when transporting freshly dry-cleaned clothes. w). As in the home, art supplies used at school should be nontoxic. "Acceptable Children's Art and Craft Materials," a list of 2,500 nontoxic art materials, is available from the California Department of Health Services.34 Clinicians must be alert to pare nts who might be exposing their children to solvents in the home though a number of hobbies, including silk-screening, furniture restoration, model building, and illegal drug labs (an increasing problem in certain communities).35 Finally, children should be screened during the well-child interview for any drug abuse, including the use of "legal" substances such as solvents. The best way to dispose of solvents is to use them up as intended. Otherwise, solvents should be treated as hazardous waste and disposed through a licensed hazardous waste handler.36 † The interesting thing about this advice to try to avoid any contact with chemicals in our life is that it is impossible. If a breast fed baby is not able to avoid toxins, none of us are. For a day, I made a point to read the labels of products I used and food I ate. I found that most of the ingredients I could not pronounce and had no idea why it was in the product or what it did. I also learned that most of what I use and consume contains either high fructose corn syrup or sodium laureth sulfate or sodium lauryl sulfate. I do not think that is necessarily good but I only hope it isn’t really bad. From Now with Bill Moyers, transcript: MOYERS: Of the 3000 or so high production volume chemicals in use in this country today only 43% have been even minimally tested. Only about 10 percent have been thoroughly tested to examine their potential effects on body part was getting set up on that day of development.