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During the Democratic
convention the Reverend Al Sharpton quoted a shocking
statistic: One third of the children in Harlem suffer from
asthma. This shouldn’t be completely surprising since
asthma cases have been consistently increasing over the
years, especially in the cities, escalating recently
during the rollback of some key environmental laws, but it
is a trend we must turn back.
While parents have only
limited control over the environment where they raise
their children, there is a personal environmental decision
they can make that may dramatically reduce the symptoms
their children experience. It all comes down to detergent,
and not just any detergent. It is the detergent that they
use to wash their children’s clothes and sheets. The
biggest selling detergents in the United States contain
large amounts of irritating phosphates, which are not only
a major irritant to the skin and respiratory system, but a
source of serious pollution, and a component in global
warming.
If you are wondering if
your laundry detergent contains phosphates just read the
label, it is listed there. In most industrialized
countries phosphate detergents are outlawed for good
reason, but in the United States the chemical industry has
a strong lobby and cheap phosphates help manufacturers
keep their costs low, so their use continues. The next
time you walk though the laundry detergent section of your
supermarket, take a deep breath and notice how much the
smell irritates your nose and lungs.
What kinds of detergent
contain low, or no phosphates? Baby detergent! No mother
would dream of washing their newborn’s clothes and
sheets in the family’s powdered detergent! That would
give their baby’s delicate skin rashes, not to mention
an increase in crying and crankiness. There are many
readily available natural detergents that are
phosphate-free and it’s worth the time to find them.
We have noticed tremendous
improvements for both children and adults when their
clothes and sheets are consistently washed in a
phosphate-free detergent. By itself this change may not
alleviate all of the symptoms of asthma and those related
skin rashes, but it clearly removes an insidious irritant
from the equation.
It might be helpful to
explain why this simple change is so effective. Testing in
Europe shows that, while sleeping, people are between two
thousand and ten thousand times more sensitive to chemical
and electromagnetic pollution than while they are awake.
When a child’s pajamas are washed with a chemical
irritant and they sleep on bedclothes containing those
same toxins, their immune system is challenged nightly,
during a time when they are most vulnerable. Their
body’s nutritional reserves are consumed in that battle
and they are less able to defend themselves from the
pollutants they encounter during their day. Asthma and
allergies are not produced by a single irritant, but by an
accumulation of minor irritants that eventually overwhelm
the body’s ability to adapt. It is not a huge leap to
imagine that removing a respiratory irritant from the
sleeping environment, where a person spends one third of
their time, is going to produce an improvement in a
child’s ability to breathe.
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About
The Author
Drs.
Ralph & Lahni DeAmicis are
Naturopathic Physicians. Their educational
program, The 10 Minute Herbalist, seeks to
put the knowledge of everyday good health
into everyone’s hands. Information about
their program and publications is
available at www.SpaceAndTime.com.
ralph@spaceandtime.com |
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