Mom as EPA in her home…toxins and kids…what do you do to protect your family from toxins in the home?

Are you obsessed over having a green environment in your home?

Or do you have a more moderate approach to your household environment?

Or are you laissez-faire about the stuff that comes and goes in your home?

It is hard to be oblivious to the efforts of many folks who are trying to stay local and buy local, and who are concerned about toxins in their food and in their homes. But is it healthy to obsess over being “organic”, “green” and “sustainable” while trying to work, raise kids and take care of yourself?

For me…I fall somewhere between a moderate and a laissez-faire depending upon, what day it is, what I have recently read about our polluted environment, and how much energy I have to devote to any one cause.

I admit, I do buy organic (not everything) and I make an effort to avoid the “dirty dozen” foods. To do this, I either avoid those produce items or I purchase the organic ones.

We know certain chemicals are surely hazardous to our well being and many of us trust the EPA here in the United States to protect us from unnecessary exposure to carcinogens etc. But is this enough?

Most certainly not but how much time are you willing to devote to wearing the EPA hat in your house?

If you don’t like your odds of cleaning up Washington, start at home. The best primer may be “Raising Healthy Children in a Toxic World” by Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, director of the Children’s Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, and two other authors. It’s a decade old now, and plenty of chemical scares have come and gone. Still, the book offers comprehensive checklists: for the nursery, the bathroom, the neighborhood and the day care center. How can you keep lead out of your child’s sandbox? What nastiness lingers inside a toddler’s art box? What do you know about your drinking water?

via Going to Extreme Lengths to Purge Household Toxins – NYTimes.com.