Queercents

Thanks to global warming, it’s already hit 80 degrees a few times here in DC.

My daughter loves being outdoors, but with skin cancer rates rising nationwide, and with her inherited bad skin-cancer luck (three of her great-grandparents and one of her grandparents have had skin cancers ranging from the benign to the quick killing sort), I’m concerned about protecting her. I’m also concerned about putting expensive, toxic gunk all over her…that might kill her more readily than the skin cancer that it’s supposed to prevent!

To put it bluntly: sunscreens suck. By the EPA’s own definition, sunscreens are chemicals that protect skin by absorbing and/or reflecting UVA and UVB rays. PABA, the most common chemical in sunscreen is a known carcinogen, as are many of the other common ingredients found in sunscreen. Sunblocks, on the other hand, are made of ingredients that themselves simply block, reflect, and scatter the sun’s rays, without any chemical reaction. But many products labeled as sunblock really aren’t—they contain PABA or other chemicals. As I noted previously, skin products aren’t monitored for safety the way food products are, even though new scientific evidence suggest that they may be absorbed even more directly into the bloodstream. Read the rest of this entry »

Here are a few updates that might be useful to those of you who have been reading this column.

In a previous post, I expressed my angst about having purchased onesies from Steve and Barry that were made with child labor.

The good news is that you can go buy those Steve and Barry/Sarah Jessica Parker-inspired onesies that I told you about. According to this report, they do not rely on child labor. And they’ve lowered their prices! So snatch up some of those groovy green and purple stripey onesies I told you about with a clean conscience. And maybe pick up some of SJP’s latest designs for yourself, if you’re so inclined (her dresses are a bit too Desperate Housewivesy for me, but I did pick up some cute metallic ballerina flats and relived my high school bunhead days).

In another post, I talked about the potential hazards of BPA leaching from plastic baby bottles. Read the rest of this entry »

Buried in this week’s headlines about the election, sex scandals, and so on, was this item: “Toxins Found in Leading Organic Brands”. Upsetting, no?

New tests show that known (and utterly inorganic) petrochemical-based carcinogens, which are particularly harmful to babies and children, were found in a shockingly wide range of skin and beauty products labeled and marketed as ‘organic.’

Some of these products are even marketed specifically to babies! Here’s the complete list, and the results of the study.

According to the results of the study, “the California Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classes 1,4-Dioxane as a leading contaminant of groundwater and suspects it to be a kidney toxicant, neurotoxicant and respiratory toxicant.” Yikes! Read the rest of this entry »

It’s finally spring, which means… it’s baby shower season. I’m up to my ears in showers; I have four friends who are so pregnant they’re about to pop, and one who just adopted.

Though I’m not a fan of most over-commercialized holidays, I love the ritual of honoring someone on the brink of parenthood. And it’s often the last chance to have uninterrupted adult time with them (of either the coffee klatsch or XXX variety) for… oh, eighteen years or so.

But though I love the spirit of the baby shower, I don’t embrace its commercialism (and underlying assumptions about gender, parenthood, and all the rest). So no, I’m not a fan of pink or blue onesies, prefab baby books, puerile joke gifts, or cookie cutter “you’re special, new mom!” sentiments. I strive to make my shower gifts memorable, meaningful, eco-conscious… and cheap. Read the rest of this entry »

“Oh, so you shop at Whole Paycheck?”

“Organics! Well, my family can’t afford that.”

“We didn’t have all these special organic products when we were growing up, and we’re fine, so why bother?”

These are some of the comments friends and family make when they hear that we’re trying to raise our kid in an organic environment. The popular conception is that you can either be cost or health conscious—not both. But I’ve found that some of the most organic, natural lifestyle choices you and your family can make are also the most cost-effective.

As for the ‘geez, we didn’t bother with this in my day and we’re fine” argument, I would argue that we are in fact on the verge of an ecological disaster due to our dependence on petrochemicals that impacts all of us. Moreover, as a 41-year-old with three friends incapacitated by allergies, two friends struggling with cancer, and one six feet under from an unidentified illness, I just can’t buy that the damage we’ve done to the environment isn’t in fact corroding our health—and our childrens’. And this is one case where I’d definitely rather be safe than sorry! Read the rest of this entry »

I knew that having a baby would change my life in unforseen ways, but there’s one aspect of modern parenting that I was totally unprepared for. Like Mr. Robinson in The Graduate, I have one word for you, potential parents: Plastics.

Plastic toys. Plastic bouncers. Plastic bottles. And of course, plastic diapers. If you don’t make a conscious effort to do otherwise, your house, your baby, and your life will soon be coated in a shiny, non-biodegradable plastic coating.

So why resist? Why not just enjoy that plastic rainforest bouncer? It’s cute, cheap, and shiny (like my ex-…but that’s another tragic story).

Well, because if we keep buying plastic rainforests, there won’t be any of the real rainforest left. There are two reasons to minimize our consumption of plastics: environmental and health-related. The environmental problems plastic creates are numerous and well-documented. Plastic is hard to recycle efficiently; most plastics are produced from oil, a limited resource; plastics are not biodegradable. The health problems linked to the use of plastics are more open to debate, but recent research suggests that one of the chemicals in most plastics, BPA, is especially toxic to babies. Moreover, BPA is leached out by the heating process. So when you sterilize your baby’s plastic bottles, you’re also releasing BPA. Yuck! Read the rest of this entry »

Parenting is expensive. (Duh!)

Over the course of a lifetime, it costs about a million per kid—four million if you do it the fancy shmancy way. And it’s wasteful: I’m not just talking about those evil plastic diapers, but the mountains of plastic toys, soccer fields of onesies, and carloads full of sundries that come with a baby. Then later there’s education, dentistry, more clothes, more toys…

Of course neither the cost nor the environmental impact deters us parents. The other side of ‘impact’ is that we are bringing new life, new joy, new possibilities into the world. Our childrens’ potential for positive impact upon the world is limitless.

Priceless, in fact.

So how do we reduce the yucky kind of impact, and enhance the good kind?
Read the rest of this entry »

First, a confession: I, your left-leaning, recycle-happy, Al Gore-loving, hemp bag-carrying Queercents mom, use disposable diapers. Though I am well aware of the hideous environmental impact of disposables, and I fear there’s a landfill somewhere with our daughter’s name on it, I really had no choice. No, really! Hear me out: we are living in a rural farmhouse that lacks the proper wiring for a washer/dryer. There is no diaper service available in our area. After some soul-searching, I came to the conclusion that hand-washing poopy dipes might be the urine-stained straw to break this particular mama camel’s back. (Okay, that’s one of my clunkier metaphors, but you get the [poopy] picture.)

The arguments for using cloth diapers are persuasive. They are far cheaper, less destructive to the environment, don’t expose your baby to numerous toxins, and so on. If you have a diaper service in your area and/or have easy access to a washer-dryer, then I do encourage you to at least try to go the plastic-free route.

It’s better: for the baby, and for the environment. And for your pocketbook, too.

However, some of us simply can’t—or won’t—use cloth. So what’s an environmentally conscious, money conscious, chemical conscious, you-name-it conscious queer parent to do? Well, here are some ways that I’ve found to save money and reduce the environmental impact of your little pooper’s waste products. Read the rest of this entry »