Wellness Journalism: The Toxicity of Our City- Part II

After a long day, you finally get home. Time to relax, take a shower, and wash the wear and tear of the day from your body, right? Er—no, actually, because you are in fact washing your body with toxic chemicals. Whoops.

If you are shopping at a popular venue such as CVS, Vons, Bath and Body Works, or Target, almost every product on the shelf contains chemicals that your body cannot recognize or use in any helpful way. The body will never grow accustomed, immune, or otherwise impervious to them because they are completely foreign. Instead, the body must suffer the taxing effects of such chemical slatherings. For example, Herbal Essences tries to look natural, but flip it over and read the ingredients—then tell me whether you think “Methylisothiazolinone” actually qualifies.

Unless you’ve already made the switch to truly natural products, I gaurantee that something you are applying to yourself contains harmful elements. Here are some of the most common:

• Sodium Laureth Sulfate (SLES) and Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS) irritate the skin in concentrations of as little as 0.5%, according to the American Toxicology Report. When the concentrations in soaps and shampoos exceed 10-30%, SLES and SLS cause severe skin irritation and corrosion. These compounds are added to soaps, shampoos, detergents and even toothpaste because they are a known foaming agent, and we like bubbles. But in clinical studies, SLES and SLS are linked to direct damage to the hair follicle, skin damage, permanent eye damage in children, and liver toxicity. The FDA reports that shampoos with SLES and SLS cause eye irritation, scalp irritation, and swelling of the hands, face, and armpit. These chemicals are also listed as: lauryl ether sulfate, sodium salt, or polyethylene glycol.

• Phthalates, found in synthetic fragrances, are endocrine disrupters that have been linked to developmental and reproductive toxicity, and immune system and organ damage. If a product’s list contains the word fragrance (rather than pure essential oils), that product probably contains phthalates.

• Propylene glycol is linked to cancer, developmental and reproductive toxicity, allergies, and skin irritation. It is often found in lotions, creams, cleansers, shampoos, conditioners, and deodorants. It may also be listed as: 1,2-dihydroxypropane, 2-hydroxypropanol, methylethyl glycol, 1,2-propanediol, or propane-1,2-diol.

• Parabens, used as preservatives in a wide variety of body care products, are linked to cancer, developmental toxicity, and reproductive damage. They may also be listed as: 4-hydroxy-benzoic acid, p-carboxyphenol,or p-salicyclic acid.

• Mineral Oil is a petroleum derivative that has been linked to cancer, organ system toxicity, and immunotoxicity. It is also listed as paraffin and petrolatum.

• Oxybenzone, widely used in sunscreens, is linked to endocrine disruption, reproductive damage, allergies, and cell damage. It may also be listed as: benzophenome-3, 2-benzoyl-5-methoxyphenol, or phenylmethanone.

Happily, nobody is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to buy popular, commercialized product brands. You can choose to buy natural and organic products at your neighborhood health food store. Websites such as The Green Guide and Green Home provide lots of product information for home and body. Retrofit your world!

Wellness Journalism: The Toxicity of Our City- Part I

Building us up, or tearing us down?

We know that much of the food pumped into our stomachs is nasty business (high fructose corn syrup, anyone?). That’s just the beginning. It’s ironic, but even our best doctors practice medicine in buildings that are hazardous to our health.

Many commonly used building materials contain chemicals linked to cancer, respiratory problems, hormone interference, and reproductive or developmental harm. While the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has registered more than 80,000 chemicals for use, and identified 16,000 of them as chemicals of concern, they have only subjected 250 to mandatory hazard testing and only restricted five chemicals.

Here’s a potent example: Polyvinyl chloride (PVC). It’s the most widely used plastic polymer in the United States, with 14 billion pounds produced every year, and the building industry has its hands on more than 75% of it. The trouble with PVC and other chlorinated plastics (found in pipes, weather stripping, walls, gaskets, window treatments, wiring, flooring, and furniture, to name a few) is that the chlorine content produces dioxins. Note the root, di-, as in, this stuff will kill you—dioxins contain some of the most potent carcinogens known to humanity. Furthermore, dioxins are members of an insidious family of compounds known as Persistent Bioaccumulative Toxicants. This means they don’t go away just because we ignore it; rather, they fester in living organisms via air, soil, water, and food. These toxins are stored in fatty tissue, increasing their concentrations by orders of magnitude as they move up the food chain to humans at the top, becoming most concentrated in mothers’ milk. Delicious.

Now let’s look at another gross offender, Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). These particles become gas at room temperatures, and as a result tend to evaporate from a building product into the air and down into your lungs. A commonly used compound that behaves in this manner is formaldehyde, which damages your liver, kidney, and nervous system, and increases cancer risk. You can find VOCs in the carpet, fabrics, paints, and varnishes—basically everything that you come into contact with.

Thankfully, in this era of environmental renaissance, companies are employing all sorts of technologies to reduce or eliminate the presence of toxic materials in constructing our world. There are many certification systems in place for builders who want a green sticker on their project, and anybody walking into a Home Depot can choose between poisonous and non-poisonous paint varieties. Educate yourself, and recognize the efforts of sustainable developers!



As if discussing poisonous buildings isn’t enough excitement, in the next blog I’m going to talk about the products you use in your home and on your body. Stay tuned.

Wellness Journalism: Critically Impacted

Treat your environment the way you would want to be treated.

Let none of us remain ignorant to the impact of the environment on human beings, nor the impact of human beings on the environment. We can no longer afford it.

Everything we do is done in the environment, and everything we do has an impact on the environment. We have changed the face of the planet, people. We have carved the terrain and molded it to our liking, and disliking. We have polluted our air and our oceans, run entire animal species into extinction, and even altered the climate.

Our lifestyle requires the burning of fossil fuels (non-renewable resources that alter our atmosphere) to produce energy. Out of the many causes of global warming, climate science writer Derek Markham describes the top three:

• Methane emissions
• Releases of carbon dioxide from both fossil fuel burning power plants and transportation
• Deforestation

Methane is naturally released when we alter the earth’s surface. Needless to say, we are famous for this type of altercation: coal mining, agriculture, landfills, construction. The increased population in recent decades has caused a spike in methane released into the air.

Starting about ten years after the industrial revolution, measurements of carbon dioxide percentages in the earth’s atmosphere began to rise exponentially. With our fancy factories and classy cars, we add more energy to our environment in the form of increased greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide emissions. The rise in human use of electricity and other energy consuming power sources has a direct correlation to the rise in carbon dioxide levels.

Deforestation is another cause of increasing carbon dioxide concentrations. Trees are important because they decrease the amount of carbon dioxide and increase the amount of oxygen in the air through the brilliance of photosynthesis. In sharp contrast, our ignorance has caused the number of trees throughout the world to plummet in the past few hundred years. Whether for paper, lumber, or clearing land in general, we have been cutting down the trees. As a result, the pollution we generate from factories and power plants has an even greater affect on the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

As methane and carbon dioxide in our atmosphere increase, so do the temperature and toxicity on the planet. We are really stepping on our own feet in a tragic, very pathetic sort of way.

The world is wide, but it is made up of individual inches—of which you impact many. Stand up! What you do or don’t do to contribute to your environment makes a critical difference. In spite of the fact that human activity on earth has taken on parasitic proportions, we are designed to have a symbiotic relationship…we are meant to honor and care for each other. It is not too late. Reduce your carbon footprint, and take steps to leave a positive impression on the planet! This month's LiveWell blogs will help.

Wellness to the rescue...

Wellness Journalism: Environ-mental?

The habits of modern civilization have emphasized the individual as being separate and disconnected from our environment. This makes it easier to plunder, control, exploit. We take what we want, and throw away the rest.

But when we don’t consider the environment, we neglect our very selves.

The first thing to understand about environmental wellness is that you are a product of your environment.

As a culture we seem to recognize that children need a healthy, positive environment in order to thrive. Yet we forget to create that same environment for ourselves, and wonder why we are miserable. We don’t realize the impact of the environment on our well-being. Instead, we ignore the environment but take ourselves personally. We make ourselves sick.

I once lived in a house with a roommate whose mother, for reasons of her own, decided that I was trans-gender. This would have been fine with me, really, but she made a point to throw comments in my direction that were specifically intended to be hurtful. “You’ve got broad shoulders like a man,” she would say to me in the kitchen while I poured my cereal. Another time, as I was walking past her room, she called after me, “Super-Freak!” This environment was clearly quite toxic.

My friend Melanie works in a restaurant where the cook spends all day stressed out, yelling at everybody, and the walls are coated in lead-based paint.

Then there's the DMV.

I daresay that most of us have been exposed to dysfunctional dynamics: hostility in the home, workplace or schoolyard, or chemically toxic, polluted environments where health is not at hand. It’s hard to feel good when your space is messy or disorganized, in a material or emotional sense. The immediate environment has a tremendous impact on well-being: we literally absorb the energy of our surroundings. It is our responsibility to plant ourselves in an environment that offers the necessary nutrients for growth. Ultimately, our environment determines whether we whither or thrive.

A solid understanding and appreciation of environmental impact on your life empowers you to spend your energy in the most efficient way possible. There may be aspects of your environment you cannot change, but there are many you can.

In a healthy environment, you can make a real living.

FitLife Fest!

UCSD Recreation and FitLife present:

Free Classes!
Free Massage!
Free Food!
Drawings, Demos, and Giveaways!

Spice up your Spring Quarter at these amazing wellness events!

March 31, 12-2 pm at the Main Gym
and April 1, 4-6 pm at RIMAC

Pilates, Cycling, Stretching, Zumba, Kickboxing, Yoga, and more!

Check out the flyer for specific schedules.

Therapy Fluffies!