Text by Amanda Sims, AD Clever
In your heart of hearts, you know you should probably live with fewer chemicals. But why, exactly? And—gulp—how? Marilee Nelson, one of the co-founders of all-natural cleaning brand Branch Basics, has answers that actually make it easy. As an environmental consultant and building materials specialist, she's spent a lifetime educating herself and her clients about how chemicals interact with our bodies and our homes. Her answer to that "why live with fewer chemicals" question starts with recalling your last grocery store visit: When you turn down the cleaning aisle, you can smell the products. Those containers are not airtight! "People don’t realize that even though they're sealed, those same volatile organic compounds will spread throughout the house," Marilee explains. "The simple removal of these products can create an instant improvement in the air quality." Her clients—people with bizarre allergies, or kids with behavioural problems—have often seen dramatic improvement simply by getting the chemicals out of the house. Not only does it make sense, but scientific studies also back her up.
Now the good news. For anyone alarmed at the expensive, time-consuming prospect of reviewing, discarding, and replacing their chemical products all at once, there's Marilee's Clean Sweep Process of a Healthy Home. Basically, you'll round up all the products on the list below and stash them either outside your house, if you have a garage, or in an airtight container you order on Amazon, where they can hang out until you need to use them. Eventually, yes, you should replace them—that's why Marilee helped launch Branch Basics, a line of nontoxic cleaners that yours truly uses and very much endorses—but in the meantime, at least quit living and breathing them. When you see a roach, take out the spray and use it, but return it to the sealed container afterward.
Got your box? Here are five chemicals Marilee recommends getting out of the house, worst offenders first.
Pesticides
"From my personal and professional experience, I’ve found that pesticides are one of the most toxic categories in the home," says Marilee. This category includes insect repellent, roach spray, flea and bedbug treatments, lice shampoo, and fertilizers—basically anything designed to kill another thing. She also lumps sanitizers and disinfectants into this category, as they contain EPA-registered pesticides to kill bacteria. The CDC has actually found that these only allow germs to mutate and grow stronger—surfactants clean germs more effectively—so box them up or ditch them.
Cleaning Products
"Outside of pesticides, cleaning products are the most toxic category," says Marilee emphatically. And she didn't just make that up. Øistein Svanes, the main author of a 2018 study of regular exposure to cleaning products conducted by the University of Bergen, puts it plainly: “People who have worked as cleaners or done household cleaning for 20 years have reduced lung function equivalent to smoking 20 cigarettes a day for the same period of time." Let that sink in. Conventional cleaning products are as bad for you as cigarettes . When you're sorting through your bottles, look for the words "warning," "caution," and "danger" on the label; those should be kept in your airtight box or tossed.
Laundry
The problem with most laundry supplies is probably what you find most appealing about them: the scent. "If a laundry product is fragranced, it’s going to have a fragrance recipe—so not just one chemical, it could be up to hundreds, all known to be asthmagens, carcinogens, neurotoxins, obesogens, endocrine disrupters, and so on," Marilee cautions. Common sense plays a role in this category too: Once you wash your clothes in a chemical fragrance, the scent and the chemicals follow you around all day. For eight hours (right?) every night, you're sleeping in direct contact with your pajamas and sheets. "Your body never gets the chance to rest, recover, and recuperate in your sleep because it’s busy detoxing these chemicals," says Marilee, who also considers many detergents labeled "unfragranced" suspect because they rely on masking chemicals to muffle the scent.
Not sure if your detergent and dryer sheets are above board? Stash them in your airtight box now; when you get a chance, check the product by scanning its label into the Think Dirty app, which will tell you how toxic the ingredients are.
Candles and Air Fresheners
For the same reason fragranced detergent is concerning, so are products designed to change the smell of a room. Cheap scented candles, scented stationery, fragranced soaps, air fresheners, and plug-ins; "these are in the category with pesticides," Marilee says. Fragrance lovers can use essential oils—if processed without solvents, she notes—to scent the air in the house naturally. Fill a spray bottle with vodka and a few drops of the essential oil of choice, and spritz away. Picking up the right plant can even clean the air in your home, rather than mask a fragrance.
Body and Skincare Products
Obviously, this is a big category that you might have invested a lot of money in, but it's worth reviewing to check the fragrances (often labeled vaguely as "fragrance" or "perfume" on the ingredient list). Stash these in your airtight box so you're not constantly smelling and breathing them. Once all these offenders are actually sealed up or out of the house, see how you feel. "If you do this, you’ve made an amazing change in your air quality," says Marilee. "Whether a person is sick or well, there’s a good chance they’ve been impacted, so they will see good results. It’s so empowering because our efforts matter."
Images: Pexels, Unsplash
