bye bye, glade plug-ins

Those plug-in air fresheners may leave your living room smelling like Hawaiian Breeze, but did you know the chemical fragrances are actually highly toxic?

In the winter months, we work hard to save energy by keeping the heat in. But our efficiency efforts, combined with synthetic items like air fresheners, cleaning products, upholstered furniture, carpets, scented beauty products and scented candles, actually worsen the quality of our indoor air.

According to GreenNexxus, these synthetics "off-gas" – meaning they emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that are all toxic.

It is estimated that indoor air is about five times more polluted than outdoor air - outdoor, city air that is! Because we're not about to throw open the windows for any extended period of time, here are some suggestions from GreenNexxus to breathe a little easier:

-Choose eco-friendly cleaning supplies that are less toxic than conventional products. Look for those with the EcoLogo certification so you don’t have to decipher labels. Better yet, switch to vinegar and baking soda for most of your cleaning needs.

-Ensure your stove top is properly vented (especially if you have a gas stove) and avoid cooking with Teflon coated pans since they emit toxic fumes when used at high temperatures.

-If you’re painting choose low VOC or zero-VOC paints. Home Depot, Home Hardware and Benjamin Moore all carry lines of these eco-friendly paints that make a newly painted room livable and much healthier.

-Avoid room fresheners, especially those that plug in. The chemical fragrances used in these are highly toxic.

-Buy fragrance-free beauty products and avoid all aerosols (you inhale all of those tiny spray particles).

-Choose soy or beeswax candles rather than regular candles, which are made from petroleum products. And go the unscented route since artificial fragrances are toxic in their own right.

-If you heat with a wood stove or wood insert ensure the chimney is properly cleaned annually.

-Incorporate house plants into your home decorating - they help to clean the air by absorbing toxins. Spider plants, philodendrons, mums, peace lilies, gerbera daisies and English ivy are some of the best. You need about one plant for every 100 square feet of living space in your home to really take advantage of the benefits.

Get more tips from GreenNexxus readers >

what are you doing june 8th?

Did you know that more plants and animals live in water than on land? Did you know that there are three different forms of water on our planet? Did you know that Canada is home to almost 25% of the world’s wetlands?*

World Oceans Day is less than a month away, and this year it's official - the United Nations finally recognized World Ocean Day as an international observance, and there are celebrations happening at aquariums, schools and zoos all over the world.

Get involved in your community with a list of events from thegreenpages.ca.

*From the Canadian Wildlife Federation's Rivers to Oceans Week site.

a web of pollution?

Metro News reports on an unreleased study that links web use and global warming.

Harvard physicist Alex Wissner-Gross studied the environmental impact of internet use, and found that about 20 milligrams of CO2 are released into the atmosphere for every second that an average website is viewed. That includes the energy used both on the surfer and hoster's end.

“At an individual surfer scale, the impact is not that large — about 50 per cent larger than a human exhaling,” Wissner-Gross said recently. “But in aggregate, for websites that get a lot of traffic, it can be substantial and it can be thousands of pounds of CO2 per month.”

His report has generated a lot of talk, most notably from Google after a British newspaper singled out the search engine giant as a key offender, mainly because it directs individuals to multiple servers simultaneously to generate speedier responses.

Google responded with the claim that it would take more than 1,000 queries on its search engine to equal the greenhouse gas emissions generated by an average car driving one kilometre.

Sounds innocent enough...but judging by the number of Google searches (according to Search Engine Watch), that's 91,000 kilometres a day!

Editors note: Thanks to Jimmy Guy for passing this along.

Can't Buy Your Health

It seems living in an economically developed country doesn't give you all the advantages in life as we might expect. Turns out living in affluent places like Canada or the US makes kids with allergies more likely to have asthma - four times more likely than kids in not-so-rich areas of the world. No one is sure, but things like exposure to pollutants and housing conditions might play a role in this lopsided finding. Figure? Gee, I wonder if diet, exercise, or rampant pesticide use were considered. Or maybe this asthma thingy is being caused by a lack of religious education in our school system (future blog/rant subject).

Studies with results like this always make me chuckle a little on the inside. When these studies get reported it is almost as if we are supposed to be surprised that living in a rich country has disadvantages peppered into all the good stuff like late-night drive thrus and no late fee movie rentals. Who doesn't know of a kid with some kind of severe allergy, real or perceived? The question is what are we going to do about it? Wait for a medical cure in pill form or get off our fannies and solve the problem at its source?!

Maybe its time we try out a government who will take environmental issues seriously for a change.

Green Party of Ontario: http://www.gpo.ca/

See how pollution affects your lungs: http://www.cleanair.utah.gov/SWF/lung_control.swf

See the CBC article on the subject: http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2007/09/14/asthma-affluent.html