Creating Better Habits

Small Changes Do Make a Difference

My friend and fellow writer Daylle Deanna Schwartz blogs over at Lessons from a Recovering Doormat. Daylle started The Creating Better Habits Challenge, which is open to any blogger who wants to tackle the challenge's topic: how to break a habit and replace it with one—big or small—that can lead to improvement in some aspect of life.

In developing the challenge, Daylle tagged ten other bloggers, including me, to write on the topic. We get to tag other people. And, hopefully, all these bloggers send a little ripple of conversation through cyberdom.

About Those Better Habits

I often hear from people that all the environmental health news is so bad that they feel overwhelmed. Why bother trying to change; something’s going to kill me. But one thing we know about exposures is that they are cumulative. Reducing your exposure now doesn’t reduce the burden of your past exposures, but does reduce those cumulative impacts, which in turn reduces your chance of getting sick from environmental exposures. It all adds up!

Habits. We all have them, and they contribute to our exposures. We put on potions and lotions and fragrances after we bathe. Or swing into the coffee shop in the morning and grab a to-go cup of joe in a disposable cup. We grab a bottle of water from the convenience store cooler. And on, and on, and on.

How do we change habits: By becoming conscious. By actually stopping to think about what we are doing. Once you start thinking about your habits, you can begin to change.

When I first started researching environmental health issues four or five years ago, I still had a plastic to-go coffee cup that I’d take with me when on the road. I switched it for a stainless steel one. I’m a klutz, so I have never kept a glass of water on my desk, but used a polycarbonate water bottle. That bottle got retired to store rubber bands, paper clips, and the miscellaneous detritus that most of us accumulate around our desks, and I use a glass bottle with a lid. The pleasant surprise: water actually tastes better out of a glass bottle, and it stays colder longer.

Next, I looked around my kitchen at the collection of plastic storage stuff—the Tupperware, and the recycled yogurt containers, and the baggies. I had ball jars in the cabinets. I had nice ceramic bowls. I started using these for food storage, and sent 99% of that plastic stuff to recycle.

Even before I’d started my research, my personal grooming regime had begun to shift. I was already using some organic or natural products, but I was also using a lot of mainstream cosmetics and grooming products. I began reevaluating the products I used. Some got tossed. Some got used up, but once gone, I purchased healthier alternatives. Now my grooming choices mirror my food choices: they are as clean and green as possible.

Again, my cleaning product choices were already shifting when I started looking into the connections between the stuff around us and our health, but my research made me finalize the shift. I went old-fashioned (see “tips”) taking a cue from my grandmother’s generation. They depended on things such as baking soda and borax, or plain old soap and vinegar, aided by a little elbow grease. Another pleasant surprise: it takes damn little elbow grease with these old standards.

I always tended to use a wired headset when using my cell phone if the call was going to go long. I did it not because I was trying to protect myself from radio-frequency electromagnetic fields (EMFs), but because the cell phone’s heat was uncomfortable on my ear. Now I’m glad about that accidental decision. Most of my phone time is when I’m sitting at my desk working. I used to have a cordless phone here. When I began reading about EMFs, I went out and bought a regular old corded phone for my desk. I still have the cordless in the living room, and will use it once in a while, but most of my phone time is now on the corded phone again.

None of these were painful, hard, or expensive changes. They just took becoming conscious, and breaking what I now see as bad habits. You too can become conscious, you can break those habits. It is worth the change, worth becoming clean and green, for you and your family.

And tag to:

Sharon at Out in the World. Sharon is blogging of her travels in a national park in India. Her trip and her blog are truly inspirational. I think she has seen things that will have a lasting impact on her habits.

Judy at Living Green, Living Well. Judy always has some really great and practical ideas on green living.

Get the lead out—of lipstick

Last week the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics published A Poison Kiss: The problem of lead in lipstick. According to the report, the average woman eats four pounds of lipstick in her life, and some of that lipstick may be very high in lead. For example, LʹOreal's "Colour Riche True Red", which tested the highest of the 33 lipsticks that the campaign sent to an independent testing lab, had 0.65 parts per million of lead in it. At the other end of the spectrum, 13 of the tested lipsticks had no detectable lead in them.

Most people assume that the FDA, EPA, or some other alphabet soup agency, regulates and tests cosmetics, but that assumption is plain wrong. FDA has authority over some coloring agents used in cosmetics, but beyond that, they have very limited authority over the cosmetics' industry. They have never set a limit for lead in lipstick or other cosmetics, yet numerous studies point out that there is no safe level of lead.

The report's findings include:

Lead is a proven neurotoxin that can cause learning, language and behavioral problems such as lowered IQ, reduced school performance and increased aggression.

Pregnant women and young children are particularly vulnerable to
lead exposure because lead easily crosses the placenta and may enter the fetal brain, where it interferes with normal development.

Lead has also been linked to miscarriage, reduced fertility in both men and women, hormonal changes, menstrual irregularities and delays in the onset of puberty.

Lead builds up in the body over time and lead‐containing lipstick applied several times a day, every day, combined with lead in water and other sources, could add up to significant exposure levels.

A 2004 survey of cosmetics use by 5,856 U.S. girls aged 7 to 19 found that 63 percent of the girls aged 10 and younger reported using lipstick.

Check out the report, and let the manufacturers of cosmetics you use know that you don't want toxins in your beauty products!