Bridget's Green Living: September 2013

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

8 tips to improve indoor air quality

It used to be that cooking aromas made their way from the kitchen to our bedroom. It was kind of nice if I was baking molasses cookies but not so great if I cooked haddock for supper. I knew that inhaling cooking fumes wasn’t great so last winter we installed a new range hood that vents to the outside and now our bedroom just smells like our dog.

Cooking fumes are just one of the many issues with indoor air quality that most of us live with, without understanding the consequences.

New clothes are coated with a variety of chemicals to keep them looking crisp.

Late August is likely one of the busiest clothes shopping times of the year. It’s a tradition in many households to get a pile of new back-to-school clothes and even people who aren’t heading to school get in the shopping mode as we approach a new season.

Before you dress your kids, and yourself, in your brand new, never-been-washed clothes, you might like to toss everything in the wash first. And then put them through the wash again. And then again.

Here’s why...

7 healthy habits for you and the planet:

September is a good time to start new habits. Because a sense of routine resumes after Labour Day you might be able to slide some healthy changes into your everyday routine without much trouble. If you’re open to this notion, here is a September checklist to consider:

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Tips: cellphone safety

-Buy a low-radiation phone. Look up your phone, or search for a new phone, in this handy guide. (Check under your battery for the model number.)

-Use a headset or speaker. A headset emits much less radiation than your phone and using speaker phone mode keeps that radiation away from your head.

-Less radiation is emitted when you're texting compared to talking, and texting keeps the radiation away from your head.

-Stay off the phone if you don’t have a strong signal. Your phone will emit even more radiation when it’s working hard to get the signal to the tower.

-Limit children’s phone use. Young children’s brains absorb twice the cell phone radiation as an adult’s.

Tips: Steer clear of bottled water

Fill water bottles at home before you head out on a road trip. Even if you’re just out and about for the afternoon.
Make sure you have enough bottles for everyone in your family (and maybe a couple of extras).
Bring an empty bottle with you when you travel. Fill it from the bathroom tap in your hotel room (so you’re not buying the expensive bottle of water in the room and can steer clear of plastic.)
Buy a carbon filter for your kitchen tap if you don’t like the taste of your tap water. Or buy a filter jug to keep in your fridge.
At restaurants ask for tap water if they offer bottled water.

Tips: Packing eco-friendly lunches:

- Reduce (or eliminate) prepackaged foods.

- Pack food in reusable containers.

- Pack stainless-steel spoons and forks. (Plastic utensils can’t be recycled).

- Use stainless steel water bottles.

- Only use plastics with 1, 2, 4 or 5 on them (inside the recycling symbol). These are food-safe numbers & recyclable.

- Don’t put food items in any containers marked #7. (It contains Bisphenol A, a hormone disruptor banned from baby bottles.)

- Don’t heat food in plastic containers, no matter what number is stamped on it.

- Reuse plastic sandwich bags & then recycle them.

- Better yet, use plastic containers and fabric snack bags instead.