part 1
I have a confession, which is definitely NOT going to come as a shock to many.... i am an HGTV junky. Since we moved into our house almost 4 years ago, we have redone the following: (feel free to skip this section if you want)
-new carpet throughout, retiled, gutted and redesigned our gorgeous bathroom with custom tile tub after we had already redone it partially, new backdoor after we had already put new molding up around the old one, gutted den, retiled, new insulation, recessed lighting, fan, surround sound wired, drywalled walls and ceiling, repainted the entire house, some rooms twice, took out the wall at the bottom of the stairs and made a custom bench with lifting top and storage and storage drawers underneath, redone and reorganized laundry room with all new shelving (but we do need to tile it), redone downstairs bathroom, repainted cabinets twice, new hardware, new counters/sink/range/hood/dishwasher, getting ready to scrape the ceiling and put in new lighting in the kitchen, new fans in 3 bedrooms, new railings for the staircase, stained deck, 2 new patios and a pathway between them, with a fence around the beautiful organic garden we put in too, new trellis, reorganized hall closets upstairs and downstairs, painted, tiled and new shelving
-there might be more, but i don't remember, and really i'm impressed if you made it this far down the list...
all of this to say, I remember when my dad was putting in the trellis and we were using "salt treated" wood, he said something about chemicals that were being used to treat the wood... as it is often my husband doing the wood working (my circular saw skills are only about par on a good day) i hadn't even thought about wood being treated with chemicals.
so then this morning, i, of course have HGTV on and they are demo-ing a deck. i'm thinking to myself, i sure hope they are going to re-purpose that wood, but as they are throwing it all away, the host of the show says basically under his breath "we have to get rid of all this wood because it's pre 2003 and was treated with arsenic"...YEP, YOU JUST READ THAT CORRECTLY... ARSENIC!!...WHAT!?!
i was dumbfounded...so i did what any normal person would do and googled it. what i found out shocked me, so i'll try to summarize:
Arsenic exposure can also lead to nerve damage, dizziness, numbness, immune diseases, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and changes in hormone function. Lung and bladder cancer are the two health effects most often related to exposure to CCA (chromated copper arsenate)-treated wood.
The worst part of this whole thing is that there were/are no regulations about labeling such wood, so we really don't know what was and wasn't treated as CCA wood was used from 1970 until 2003.... this means picnic benches, decks, railings, playset and more us and our kids are around, play on, have food sitting on, eat off of, etc... and when it rains and this stuff gets wet, the arsenic leaches off and onto the ground and then kids, pets, etc play on the ground and can get arsenic poisoning in this manner as well...
Yet another problem... there is still plenty of wood out there being sold that has arsenic in it, the manufacturers had tons of it and were not made to properly dispose of it, but rather just sell it until it's gone... this is crazy to me!
Here's a great passage from an amazing website that really explains why kids are at such risk for housing/building related hazards:
Although housing-related health hazards are a concern for people of every age group, young children are at special risk from health hazards in their homes. Young children spend the vast majority of their time in the home and they are most vulnerable biologically. Children’s bodies take in proportionately greater amounts of environmental toxins than adults, and their rapidly developing organs are especially vulnerable to pollutants. Since children naturally crawl and play on the floor, they are in direct contact with areas where contaminants accumulate, and they are likely to ingest those contaminants through their normal hand-to-mouth behavior and play.
http://www.afhh.org/ahh/ahh_main.htm
i will continue this
on another note... today is my daughter's first birthday :) Happy first birthday, joey!!!
ps, sorry but no pictures :( iphoto is not being cooperative :(
Thanks so much for that informative post! I have been thinking so much about babies and children taking in too many toxins lately. Mainly because there have been 10 unexplained infant deaths on Fort Bragg in the past 3 years. Two in the same house just a few months apart. (Here's the Army Times article: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/09/ap-fort-bragg-infant-deaths-090210/)
ReplyDeleteThey are saying it might be due to Chinese dry wall. Our windows have been open trying to air out the house ever since I read about this. It is so scary to think you could be endangering your child by something like dry wall?!!
amy- that's awful! i tried to read the article but it said it had gone awol... typical military... email it to me if you can!!
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