HUFFINGTON
07.22.12
CHEMISTRY LESSONS
02
“Once they were kept in containers
marked with skull and crossbones.”
PINGREE DOES EVERYTHING
she can to limit both her and Elsie’s chemical exposures. Like
other parents, however, she finds
the task frustrating.
“It’s impossible for a parent to
live their life trying to make the
right decisions about chemicals.
There are so many things we don’t
know,” says Pingree. “We have
this system that allows all of us to
have these levels of consumer and
industrial chemicals without any
idea how they got in there.”
Potentially toxic chemicals
are pervasive yet generally invisible — from pajamas treated with
flame retardants to bisphenol-A
leaching out of plastic bottles to
pesticides lingering on fruits.
Parents faced much the same
predicament 50 years ago. “Lulled
by the soft sell and the hidden
persuader,” wrote Carson, “the
average citizen is seldom aware of
the deadly materials with which
he is surrounding himself.”
Manufacturers are rarely required to disclose ingredients in
their products, notes Woodruff.
And when they do, there are often
loopholes such as the requirement that a pesticide label need
only include the names of “active” ingredients.
“You can’t know it if you don’t
see it,” she says.