Chemical Free Kids

What is Chemical Free Parenting?

’Our children will ask.... What were our parents thinking? Why did they produce toxic chemicals and then put them in and on our bodies? Were they so arrogant to think that our bodies would not be affected?’
– Dr Sarah Lantz (PhD)

For many parents, the importance of keeping our children as pure and toxic free as possible is critical. But it's not so easy to do these days. There are over 100,000 synthetic chemicals available on the market with over 1500 new chemicals being produced annually. Over half of these chemicals have never been tested for their toxicity on the human body.

These chemicals, used extensively in manufacturing and emitted into the environment, accumulate in the food chain and end up in our bones, blood, fat, urine, and breast milk, ovaries, and sperm. They are then passed onto the developing child across the placenta, through breast milk, in food and water, or the creams, lotions, soaps and personal care products we lather and bathe them in.

Chemical Free parenting is about conscious parenting. Because we initially make the choices about what our children consume, how they are washed, what they sleep in, what medications and drugs, if any, we recommend, and where they spend most of their time, we need to know about these chemicals and be able to identify them. Chemical Free Kids: Raising healthy children in a Toxic World , is a community program and book about these chemicals and the impact on the bodies and health of our kids - how they get into their bodies, the health and behavioural problems they cause, why kids are particularly exposed to chemicals and what we, as a society, industry, and parents, can do about it.

The intention of this program is to unconceal to the public the hidden impact of chemicals in the environment on the health and wellbeing of our kids and young people and to give parents, care givers, teachers and health practitioners of kids and young people more control over what enters their kids’ bodies.
The program consists of a number of vehicles that serve to bring awareness about the issue of environmental chemicals and their hidden impact on human health:

• A book titled CHEMICAL FREE KIDS:RAISING HEALTHY CHILDREN IN A TOXIC WORLD
• A national seminar speaking tour
• Workshops to be held throughout in both capital cities and regional centres across Australia

The website for the book can be found here.

Recycled sewerage plan for WA taps

The West Australian carried an article on Saturday (28/2/09) that outlined plans to add treated sewerage wastewater to Perth’s drinking water supplies. The Water Corporation has released a draft policy, Water Forever: Directions for Our Water Future, which is open for public comment until the 15^th May 2009.

Last Wednesday (25^th February 2009), Jane Bremmer (Vice Chair of the ACE) delivered a presentation to the Conservation Council of WA's "Environment Matters - Wastewater Recycling - the Future of Water in WA ?" forum. The presentation, called "Muddying the Waters" raised concerns over the use of reclaimed water for drinking water or groundwater recharge, in particular the fate of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDC) and Pharmaceutical and Personal Care Products (PPCP) that are known to survive even advanced water treatment processes. A copy of the presentation can be found here.