photo credit: goldberg

Back to school… Having Lice in your hair is not fun.  Schools encountered kids with this problem all the time because Lice can easily spread in schools. To remove the lice, most people essentially use toxic pesticides in their kid’s hair which include Permethrin, Pyrethrum, and Lindane.  Hair lice has slowly become resistant to these chemicals.

We found a non toxic product called Licefreee! that uses the naturally occuring mineral Sodium Chloride USP to kill lice.

You can whip up your own Pediatrician’s home remedy using 2 ounces of vegetable oil with 20 drops of 100 percent tea tree oil and 10 drops of essential oils of rosemary, lavender and lemon. (Apply to the inner arm for about an hour to test for hypersensitivity first.) Rub oils into scalp and hair and leave for one hour covering with a towel. Comb out nits with a nit comb and use a hand-held blow-dryer for 10 to 15 minutes, before washing out oils. Repeat in seven to 10 days.

Other suggestions include:

1. Covering hair with a show cap and heat with a hair dryer.
2. Soak head in salt water for a few minutes or swim in the ocean
3. Apply olive oil in your hair for about 30 minutes

Indoor Air Quality refers to how clean the air indoors is. We spend 90-95% of our time indoors. Often times the air outside is cleaner. This leads to health problems like allergies, asthma, etc.

Consumer Product Safety Commission and EPA has a good guide on how to improve indoor air quality. EPA has an extensive list of items that affect indoor air quality.

Major problems include: Smoking, Fireplaces, Mold, Dust, Radon, Stoves.

Some lesser known problems include: Offgassing of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and other chemicals from paint, carpets, cleaners, office equipment, furniture, building materials.

NASA has done research to show that plants Clean Air and Water for Indoor Environments.

An NCPA article states:
“For every 100 square feet of office area, one or two Boston ferns can clean so much formaldehyde out of the air that it is no longer detectable.

Other toxin-eating plants include the azalea, poinsettia, dieffenbachia, gerbera daisy, corn plant, pot mum, Chinese evergreen and various species of philodendron, schefflera, chrysanthemum, tulip orchid and ligustrum.”

Penn State recommends plants like Spider plants, Grape Ivy, Chinese evergreen, Snake plants and more.

If you have carpet, consider removing it or using modular green carpets such as Interface flor. Install using no voc adhesives.

Putting a better filter on your heater, such as a 3M Filtrete will also improve indoor air quality.

In room portable air purifiers with HEPA filters also help clear the air. Look for ones that are whisper quiet.

This is a lot cheaper and more eco than buying lots of air purifiers or replacing every piece of furniture you have.

method ultra Concentrated Laundry Detergent is now available. The 20 ounce bottle is good for 50 loads of laundry.  Smaller bottle = less cost, less 50% post-consumer recycled plastic, less fuel burned in shipment. They claim a 35% smaller carbon footprint than conventional 2x concentrated detergent. Dye-free, hypo-allergenic, and 95% plant based formula helps make it more green. method is open about the ingredients it uses, no need to do sleuthing to find the MSDS documents. The bottle is even recyclable. It is the world’s first Cradle to Cradle certified laundry detergent.

We saw an ad for a Green Dry Cleaning company. What is up it that?  EPA had an article and defined Green dry cleaning as a cleaner that uses wet cleaning or non toxic CO2 cleaning techniques instead of toxic and VOC filled perchloroethylene or perc cleaning. Wet cleaning uses water as the main solvent in specialized machines, along with specially-crafted detergents and additives. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is captured from the production of chemicals, as well as natural sources, and used to clean clothes in high-pressure machines.

Watch for those who claim to be green but use a hydro-carbon solvent called DF-2000 or a chemical called D-5.

Many ‘green’ dry cleaners switched to a hydrocarbon solvent because it can be used in the same machines they currently own.  The problem is that the solvent contains suspected carcinogenic and known neurotoxin chemicals.

Organic dry cleaning is a stretch of terminology. No agency has to find what organic dry-cleaning is. We would avoid any place that calls itself organic.

Of course the best bet it is to avoid clothes that need dry cleaning if possible.

In San Francisco, Pacific Heights Cleaners and SF Green Clean are two recommended green dry cleaners.

Also recycle those hangers when you are doing dry-cleaning!

Here are some web site that can point you to local ‘Green’ dry cleaners:

igreenclean.org

Find co2.com – Very few places

Professional Wet Cleaning.com

Green Earth Cleaning.com

No Dry Clean.com

photo credit: crd!

SC Johnson, makers of Pledge and Windex has a new site that lists ingredients in their products.    I noticed that the website contains most of their products, including the Windex products shown on the home page of the site.  You no longer have to dig for MSDS documents. Clearly the green oriented brands like Seventh Generation, Method, and the like are starting to affect the mainstream brands.

SC Johnson created their own Greenlist label to indicate how green their products were. A consumer, Wayne Koh has actually sued them over this label.

“Through our Greenlist™ process, each potential ingredient receives a rating from 3 to 0. An ingredient with a 3 rating is considered “Best,” 2 is “Better,” 1 is “Acceptable” and 0-rated materials are used only on a limited, approved basis when there is not a viable alternative. Whenever possible, we work toward replacing these 0-rated materials with those that have a preferable environmental or health profile.”

A consumer who sued cited paying about 50% more and not getting a product that was very green.

This article describes the efforts and covers the controversy behind some chemicals like monoethanolamine in Mr Clean and Formula 409. 2-butoxyethanol in Simple Green is another chemical that I would just avoid.