Modern life seems to be full of poisons. Our generation has to deal with more toxicity it appears than our parent’s generation. All the time I meet people with newly developed allergies. The word ‘hypoallergenic’ was first used by a cosmetic company in 1953 and since then has become a key way of thinking. Consumer products are giving us allergies, are making us sick. Whether it be mercury in our fish, ‘e’ numbers in our kids’ diet or estrogenic chemicals in our bottled water we have to be forever vigilant for the next revelation that something we thought was harmless is in fact detrimental to our health.
Of all the chemicals we need to watch out for, formaldehyde should be near the top of the list. ‘VOC’ means ‘volatile organic compound’. This is a chemical compound that easily becomes air-borne, as it were, and thus gets breathed in by people. Before I go on to discuss formaldehyde, let me mention Eimann Fabrik VOC free Engine Degreaser. It is one of the few products I have found that is not just simply low in VOC but free of it. Driving a car might not be very environmentally friendly but that doesn’t mean to say that the products you use to maintain your car also have to be bad for the environment. Eimann Fabrik VOC free Engine Degreaser uses a non-ionic surfactant (that’s a cleaning chemical) that replaces the acid, butyl and butyl ethers normally used in engine degreasers. It contains no chlorinated solvents or harsh chemicals and yet it removes dirt, grime, grease and oil from virtually any surface. In fact, it is so safe and chemical free you can use it to wash your hands.
BUY EIMANN FABRIK VOC FREE ENGINE DEGREASER FROM AMAZON
As I discussed in my post about the harmful chemicals found in detergents, there is a lot for us to learn about cleaning products. Hygiene is very important for good health but this has created a blindness for the average consumer for too long about the environmental damage our need for hygiene is causing. Cleaning products are often toxic to the environment. They pollute the water supply and while they are making our things clean they are at the same time poisoning us. Now is the time to look to products which are using the new technology of bio-mimicry to create products that are free of dangerous chemicals, that instead mimic nature’s solutions. This is what Swedish scientists have done for the engine degreaser. They have found an alternative to using acid, butyl ethers and chlorine. The Eimann Fabrik VOC free Engine degreaser is something everyone with a car should have. You have to degrease your car engine once in a while and so why use a degreaser which is going to poison you and the environment? Off-set some of the eco-damage caused by burning fossil fuels by using an environmentally friendly engine degreaser. At $12.99 for a 32 oz bottle this seems a reasonable suggestion to me.
And so back to formaldehyde. Formaldehyde (HCHO) is a strong irritant and potent sensitizer. It is extremely volatile. Inhalation in large doses causes respiratory problems and possible death. In small doses of only 1 to 11 ppm (parts per million) it causes eye, nose and throat irritation. For children it causes allergies as well as respiratory problems. Formaldehyde is also linked to cancer.
What has formaldehyde in it? The answer is that the room where you are sitting reading this probably has products giving off formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is used in building materials and furniture. Plywood, pressed wood, particleboard, fiberboard usually contain formaldehyde. Textiles, glues, durable press drapes and tobacco smoke also contain formaldehyde. It is nearly omnipresent in buildings, especially public buildings and cheap new furniture.
The Environment Massachusetts Research & Policy Center recently carried out tests of children’s products found at Babies-R-Us, Target and Wallmart. Their findings were startling. To quote just one example: a new single-family home furnished with a Child Craft Oak Crib and a Storkcraft Kayla II Changing Table—and no other furniture—would have indoor formaldehyde levels of about 30 parts per billion (ppb) on average throughout the entire house.
That is frightening. No wonder as I write the Massachusett’s State Senate is considering new legislation to ban products with such high VOCs. The idea is to move away from a chemical by chemical approach to banning substances and instead look at the toxicity of each new product.
So do the right thing and start looking out for products that are labelled ‘low VOC’ and ‘VOC free’. They are literally not going to give you a headache. One good start is to throw away your old engine degreaser and order an Eimann Fabrik VOC free Engine Degreaser.
