Define Body and Mind has found a great presence in Houston by focusing on a healthy mind and a healthy body. They have found so much success with this focus that they are already expanding into a second location in River Oaks that is opening in October, after only opening the first location a year ago. Their interest in health and green design led them to work with us, and we are proud to be working with them and using finish products from New Living that are environmentally friendly and conducive to a healthy interior.
Define is being built out with the talents of Aj Smith from Forsite Studio, a New Living coworker. Here are some of their renderings.
Interesting to see them covering the earth... with their TOXIC paint.
In 2009 Shewin-Williams introduced a line of paints that “were designed and manufactured taking steps to reduce environmental impact.” Sherwin-Williams even went so far to make sure that the paints adhered to the “GreenSure” criteria – a list of various criteria that paints must meet to be green friendly. However, the “GreenSure” criteria wasn’t created by a third party of concerned environmental scientist, but Sherwin Williams themselves (likely their crafty marketing department). This is pretty odd considering that there are independent third party groups such as “GreenGaurd” and “GreenSeal” that have a set of criteria that is recognized as being truly green. One problem with Sherwin Williams’ “GreenSure” criteria, as Treeehugger noted, is that it allows high levels of dangerous VOCs – hundreds of times higher than those of “GreenGuard” or “GreenSeal,” While it’s great that Sherwin-Williams has decided to create a line of paints that is only slightly less likely to ruin the environment and slightly less likely to make the consumer sick, there is no justification for them to advertise their products that are filled with toxic chemicals as being “green.” This is a lame and transparent attempt to get health and Eco-conscious consumers to buy their product – to put it simply, they’re Greenwashing.
Their “GreenSure” label isn’t the only area where Sherwin-Williams is greenwashing, they are also doing it on their website and in their Corporate Social Responsibility Report. If one were to read the report – which in addition to talking about their “green” paints also discusses their green business practices and community involvement – one would believe that Sherwin-Williams is a company that is fully committed to the green movement and to making our world a healthier place. However, Sherwin-Williams fails to mention that they still sell and promote paints with high-levels of VOCs. As a business that is promoting itself as being green, they should make sure that ALL of their products are low and no VOC, not just a few. Additionally, the other coatings, stains, and supplies that they sell are not environmentally friendly. Furthermore, Sherwin Williams refuses to give out a list of all the chemicals used in their products, making it difficult for the consumer to check the safety of the product themselves. I poked around for some MSDS’s on their websites, and it was not as user friendly as others.
Although Shewin-Williams is doing a few things to make themselves greener – they are changing some of their companies policies and their “GreenSure” line of paints is sold in recycled containers – they are not as green as they claim to be and they are actively greenwashing. Rather than really caring about the environment, Sheriwn-Williams has designed a “green” program only to attract Eco-conscious consumers. While their pocketbook may be in the right place with this type of marketing, their heart certainly isn’t. Consumers that care about the environment owe it to themselves to ignore companies like Sherwin-Williams and make sure to do business with companies that are truly green and that really do care about the environment and the health of their customers.
If you missed the Safe Chemicals Act/TSCA Reform Panel Discussion on Wednesday here’s a link to the event. It was not only informative but also energizing. Seeing over 40 Houstonians come out to learn, ask questions, and debate this important legislation was really great.
First, watch the reaction that individuals from the audience had:
With some delay, below is the full version of the Panel Discussion. While the video may be a bit dim (it was a really sunny day) and hard to hear in some spots, the content is really great.
The panelist are seated (from left to right) Matthew Tejada (Air Alliance Houston), Sara Speer Selber (BuildClean), Anne Robertson (Healthy Child Healthy World), and Lora-Marie Bernard (US Green Building Council). Jennifer Touchet, of New Living, is the moderator.
I’m not an “overprotective” mom. I’m not a germophobe either. But right now, I’m on high alert for protecting the BLOOD of my 3 children from chemicals and I’m angry. I’m angry that I have to protect them from CHEMICALS at all. I’m angry that I haven’t had easy access to critical information about the products I have been using to feed them, clothe them, clean my home with or sleep on with them. I’m angry that my kids are getting poisoned even though I try my best to keep them safe and keep myself informed.
There is a glimmer of hope though, I believe, because information is getting out and mom’s are taking a stand and getting involved.
They are getting involved right now to help pass a new bill has been introduced in Congress called the Safe Chemicals Act of 2010 that could really make a difference in how we regulate the chemical industry.I am also hopeful because I know a lot more now thanks to groups like Healthy Child, Healthy World, Three Branches Healthy Living, New Living (of which I am partner) Air Alliance Houston, and more. I thought I was doing everything I could by giving birth to them naturally, breastfeeding, and eating a balanced diet. Little did I know……
Here’s the top 5 things I’m pissed about and I’m going to do something about it:
The BOTTLES I had to use when I had trouble with my milk production were likely leaching toxic chemicals like BPA and phthalates into the milk they were drinking. Read more.
The PJs they were sleeping in given to me by generous and loving friends and family members were treated with flame retardants that can get into their bloodstream and cause developmental problems. Read More.
My own BREASTMILK was probably laced with chemicals. In a study done in 2003 women from the U.S. had the highest concentration of FIRE RETARDANTS found in our breastmilk. It was 75 times the average found in European women’s breastmilk. Fire retardants effect human fertility among other things.
The PLAYGROUND. YES. The PLAYGROUND. Laced with pesticides, pressure-treated lumber that leaches arsenic, artificial playing fields made from crushed rubber tired that off-gas VOCs and the list goes on.
Why did those chemical companies get to DUMP THOSE CHEMICALS into everyday household products, into our COMMUNITIES into OUR KID’S BODIES?????? Why haven’t these products been tested or outlawed? Who is studying these chemicals? Who is regulating them? Who is protecting our kids?
The Safe Chemicals act of 2010 is one of the most groundbreaking pieces of legislation to be introduced in this session of congress, and we will be having a panel of nationwide experts leading the discussion surrounding this act in our Store next Wednesday, August 11th at Noon. Here is a summary of the act, although if you are really bored you can read the entire act here. Personally, we would reccomend just reading Infinite Jest instead.
Safe Chemicals Act of 2010
The Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 (TSCA) governs industrial chemicals. That antiquated laws’ provisions have not been amended since their adoption more than three decades ago – despite huge changes in chemical production and use and our state of knowledge about how chemicals can harm health or the environment.
TSCAalsoplacedsevereburdens on EPA’s ability to require safety testing or regulate achemical - burdens so onerous that over the past 30 years EPA has been able to require testing for only about 200 chemicals out of more than 80,000 on the EPA’s inventory. And TSCA has allowed EPA to regulate only limited uses of five chemicals. In 1989, EPA issued a regulation, ten years and tens of millions of dollars in the making, to ban most uses of the highly carcinogenic substance asbestos. The regulation was promptly challenged and ultimately tossed out by the courts, which ruled that EPA had not met its burden of proof under TSCA that asbestos poses an “unreasonable risk.” Since then, EPA has not tried again to regulate a chemical’s production or use.
The Government Accountability Office has issued several reports strongly criticizing the law, and, in January of 2009, placedTSCA on its list of “high risk” areas of the law.
The Safe Chemicals Act, introduced by Senator Lautenberg, would address each of the core failings of TSCA. In short, it would:
•Ensuring EPA will have information on chemical hazards, uses and exposures sufficient to judge a chemical’s safety. The bill requires manufacturers to develop and submit a minimum data set for each chemical they produce. It provides EPA with full authority to require any data beyond the minimum data set needed to determine safety of a chemical. While it ensures EPA can obtain data necessary to make a safety determination, the bill also contains numerous provisions to ensure that no duplicative or unnecessary testing occurs, and that data is submitted to EPA only at the time it is needed.
• Requiring EPA to use this information to categorize and prioritize chemicals, based on their hazard and exposure characteristics. EPA will identify and prioritize chemicals by their likely risk, based on anticipated use, production volume, toxicity, persistence, bioaccumulation, and other properties that indicate risk. Prioritizing chemicals based on risk focuses EPA’s resources on the chemicals most likely to cause harm, and allows the Agency to move quickly to manage risk for those chemicals.
• Ensuring that expedited action is taken to reduce the use of or exposures to chemicals of highest concern. In addition to setting up a system to evaluate the safety of all chemicals, the bill calls for EPA to act quickly on chemicals that clearly demonstrate high risk.
• Requiring all chemicals to be shown to be safe in order to remain in or enter commerce. The burden of proving safety rests on chemical manufacturers and users, not on government to show harm before it can act. All uses of a chemical must be identified, and the resulting aggregate exposure measured against a health-based safety standard set to protect both the general population and vulnerable subpopulations that may be more susceptible or more exposed to the chemical, such as children. If the safety standard is not met, the chemical cannot be marketed.
• Ensuring broad public, market and worker access to reliable chemical information. It establishes a public database that will house both chemical information submitted to EPA and decisions made by EPA about chemicals. It narrows the conditions under which data submitted by industry can be claimed to be confidential business information (CBI), while still ensuring appropriate protections for legitimate CBI. It provides access to CBI by workers and local, state, Tribal and (in some cases) foreign governments as long as they protect its confidentiality. Finally, EPA is to impose requirements to ensure that information developed and submitted by industry, and advice received from advisory committees convened by EPA, are reliable.
• Promoting innovation and the development and use of green chemistry and safer alternatives to chemicals of concern. The bill requires EPA to establish a program to develop market and other incentives for safer alternatives, and a research grant program targeted at priority hazardous chemicals for which alternatives do not presently exist. A network of research centers would be established to conduct green chemistry research and alternatives analyses, and to provide training, educational materials, and technical assistance to educational institutions, small businesses, government and non-governmental organizations. The bill also allows some new chemicals onto the market using an expedited process for reviewing safety.
The Safe Chemicals Act of 2010 is a long-overdue modernization of the Toxic
Substances Control Act. It address the problems with TSCA that have been identified by the Government Accountability Office and other experts and industry leaders that have testified in Senator Lautenberg’s Subcommittee on Superfund, Toxics, and Environmental Health over the past year. The bill comports with principles for TSCA reform issued by the Obama Administration, the American Chemistry Council, and the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families Coalition.
Maintaining a healthy home is about more than just you and your family, it’s also about the people who work in your home as well. Both housekeepers and house-painters are affected by the chemicals in the products used on our homes – and they usually suffer the worst of it. While we may never have to smell the strong toxic chemicals or suffer from the dizziness and headaches associated with conventional paints and cleaning products, the people who work on our homes certainly do, and it’s affecting their health and their livelihood. Joseph Avelar, owner of Avelar Quality Painting who uses New Living’s NO VOC paints for his jobs, says that “Just because we are painters and we’re around paint all day doesn’t mean we like the smell or the health hazards that come with it.”
Since 1989 the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has found that for painters there is “sufficient evidence for the carcinogenicity of occupational exposure…” The occupation of painter is one of the few jobs that is listed by the IARC as having an occupational risk for cancer. Painters are also at a high risk for skin irritations, headaches, and can develop problems with their nervous system. The chemicals in paint can cause respiratory illnesses that lead to a build up of fluid in the lungs and chronic bronchitis. Further, VOCs in paints (and related paint products such as thinners) can cause liver and stomach damage to painters. The effect that doing their job and making money to support themselves and their families has on their health is a travesty, particularly because it doesn’t have to be that way.
For housekeepers, house cleaners, and maids, there are high rates of illness among them and their children. House cleaners typically suffer from high rates of asthma and other respiratory problems because of the toxic chemicals in the cleaning products they use. Cleaning workers suffer from more heart attacks and early death due to motor neuron diseases than any other profession. They’re also at risk for cancer and frequently experience chemical burns and skin irritations associated with cleaning products. The chemicals involved in the work housekeeper’s do also affects the health of their children. Woman cleaning workers are twice as likely as other female workers to suffer from pre-term delivery and stillbirths while male workers have an increased risk of children who are born with birth defects and down syndrome. Although we may not have to smell or deal with the chemicals that are used to clean our homes directly, those who do face imposing and irreversible problems when it comes to their health.
We should always strive to provide a safe environment for everyone in our lives, including those who work for us. For our painters, we can always make sure we buy paints that have no VOCs – they’re non-toxic, have a low odor, and don’t contain harmful chemicals. For those who clean our homes and spend their days directly inhaling toxic chemical fumes, we should purchase green cleaning products made from natural ingredients and that either have a natural scent or no scent at all. All of these products are provisions we can take now – allowing us to be healthy and caring employers that provide a safe and ultimately happy environment for those who help us out so much in our daily lives.
Wondering what all the hubbub over the Safe Chemicals Act is about? Want to learn more about how this legislation and further regulation of toxic chemicals will effect YOU? Interested in hearing experts and activist discuss the bill and answer YOUR questions? Then join New Living Health for a panel discussion on the Safe Chemicals Act of 2010 on August 11th at Noon. We’ve got four fascinating panelists lined up who all have an interesting, and slightly different take, on what exactly this act means for Houston and our nation.
As the committee hearing and debate goes on this summer over the Safe Chemicals Act of 2010 even more information has come out about the links between the chemicals in our homes and the danger it poses to our health. This serves as an urgent reminder that consumers need the Safe Chemicals Act of 2010 to help protect them.
In mid-June, multiple national news outlets reported on a new study published by Environmental Health Perspectives that found further links connecting PBDEs – a common chemical used as a flame retardants in carpets, mattresses, couches, and electronics - to problems with the thyroid hormone in pregnant women. The study, which looked at 270 pregnant women, found that women with higher levels of PBDEs in their bodies had lower levels of the thyroid stimulating hormone in their bodies by anywhere from 10.9 to 18.7%. These levels meet the definition for sub-clinical hyperthyroidism – indicating an early stage of thyroid malfunction. When the thyroid malfunctions (know as clinical hyperthyroidism) pregnant woman can possibly have children with birth defects, suffer from in-uterine growth problems, experience miscarriages, or have stillbirths.
What’s most shocking about the study, researchers note, is that the levels of PBDEs that were tested in women and caused sub-clinical hyperthyroidism is fairly typical among American women. These are risk that most American woman – who are exposed to products like conventional mattresses, carpets, foam couches, and electronics – face. This is due in large part to antiquated flame retardant regulations, most companies refusal to use non-toxic alternatives in products that we use, and poor regulation of toxic chemicals by federal agencies. Matthew S. Tejada, the executive director of Air Alliance Houston*, believes that these types of discoveries about how our home environment effects our health aren’t going to end. He says “On the health perspective, the horror story is only going to get worse. The deeper we dig as more research is done, we are only going to find [out] more about the nasty impacts of what we buy.”
As more studies like this one are released and as we discover more about the dangerous chemicals in products we use everyday, it’s becoming increasingly clear that we need regulations to protect us as consumers so that we don’t have to live in fear. The Safe Chemicals Act can protect us and it’s something we need NOW. Tejada says “For decades we just let these chemicals go totally unregulated. The way food and medicine are regulated is [good], but the regulatory structure formed by the EPA is so weak that it’s effectively not regulated.” The Safe Chemicals Act is a strong start towards something that has enormous potential to help us as consumers find safe products for our family and ourselves, helping to ensure that we are protected from chemicals like PBDEs. Click here to send a letter to congress and find out more about what you can do to support the Safe Chemicals Act of 2010.
If you’re wondering what to do now though, the best way to protect yourself is by researching what’s in the products in your home and making smart decisions by choosing non-toxic alternatives that we are sure are safe for our homes and our families.
Wondering what New Living is all about? Want to know exactly what the terms “non-toxic” and “natural” mean? Then check out this video where customers and our owner, Jeff Kaplan, explains exactly why we sell healthy, non-toxic, and green products. I would write about it here but it’s probably just easier to watch the video:
Anyone who has ever painted a room with conventional paint knows that the smell of paint is terrible. Typically, you have to wear a mask, can’t stay in the room for a few days, and may even feel dizzy or get a headache. This is because conventional paints are filled with harmful chemicals known as VOCs (volatile organic compounds) which emit toxic chemicals into your home (even after the paint dries) and can be detrimental to your health. One of the worst chemicals in conventional paints is also one that is used by morticians to preserve the dead: formaldehyde.
Although safe to use on the recently deceased, formaldehyde can effect the health of adults and children in a variety of negative ways. Multiple studies have found links between the use of paint and childhood cancers. A University of California study found a significant association between rooms painted and an increase in leukemia by 65 percent. Furthermore, mothers who used paint during pregnancy were three-times as likely to have a child with acute lymphobalstic leukemia. There have been several other studies that have uncovered links and associations between formaldehyde and cancers among adults. Studies of paint workers have revealed that they are at a higher risk for cancer of the bladder, lungs, pancreas, liver, and stomach because of their exposure to formaldehyde and other toxic chemicals in paint.
The formaldehyde in paints has also been linked to skin irritations, eye irritations, bronchitis, and can cause problems in the central nervous system. The U.S. National Cancer Instituted found in a 2009 study that the longer funeral workers spent embalming bodies with formaldehyde the more likely they were to to develop certain types of cancer – particularly those who were involved in embalming for more than 20 years. Formaldehyde can also trigger asthma – a condition which has increased nearly 600% since 1980.
To keep yourself and your home from smelling like the dead and causing health problems that could put you six feet under, it’s important you look at the label of all the paints that you buy to see how much formaldehyde it contains. While formaldehyde is federally regulated, many paint companies still carry it at “safe” levels – even though medical evidence suggest the safest level of formaldehyde is none. Read the labels of the paints you purchase, buy paints that don’t contain any VOCs (typically called No VOCs or Zero VOCs), and make sure that the colorants put into the paint don’t contain any VOC. No VOC paints not only are absent of formaldehyde, but they don’t have any other Volatile Organic Compounds making them safe to use! Most who use them say there is very little smell and never feel dizzy or develop the headaches that they once did with conventional paints. Using non-toxic No VOC paints will help you stay away from formaldehyde in your home and in your body for a very long time.
