score big...

i picked up a copy of sophie ulianos's "gorgeously green" for $1 today. a steal, no doubt. i had just been thumbing though it at barnes & noble... $17.00. decided i'd get it from the library but none in the area have it. so... i was planning on going back to b&n sometime soon to purchase it, and found it today at a sample sale for a garden company.

lucy takes a break... hey, reading's no small task when the book is half as big as you are!

can't wait to learn more about the toxic substances found in products i use daily. yesterday i rummaged through my closet and bathroom, tossing anything that a) i don't use or plan on using and b) stuff with parabens in the ingredient list. i put them all in a box and sent them over to my sister-in-law. what she doesn't want, i'll post on freecycle. does that sounds mean? i kinda felt like i was saying "here, these aren't good enough for me, but you can have them..." but otherwise i'd just be tossing stuff out, lots of it completely unopened (i'm that girl who stocks up during a sale). i feel so conflicted.

for those of you that don't know, parabens are "chemical preservatives that have been identified as estrogenic and disruptive of normal hormone function. estrogenic chemicals mimic the function of the naturally occurring hormone estrogen, and exposure to external estrogens has been shown to increase the risk of breast cancer..." (taken from gorgeously green).

you'll find them in tons of beauty products, from lip gloss to shampoo to lotion. they most often come at the end of the ingredient list, and have -methyl, -ethyl, -propyl, -butyl, etc in front of the suffix 'paraben.' i was pretty much disgusted to see them in lucy's infant tylenol (she had shots done today and ran a small fever) though my understanding is that the body metabolizes parabens when ingested, but cannot do so when products are applied directly to the skin. still, i didn't feel good about giving her the tylenol.

we're so trusting. companies manufacture products and put them on store shelves. we buy without looking. we slather, puff and paint layer upon layer of product onto our skin, never giving our health a second thought. we TRUST that companies (run by PEOPLE, after all) wouldn't knowingly put a harmful product on the shelf in the first place. apparently, we are naive. and our naivety could cost us in the long run.

sigh.

i look forward to reading g.g. and posting more about what i find out!