Just in time for holiday gift giving, Victoria’s Secret has aired their annual holiday fashion show, but before you run and add a sexy little number to your Christmas list, read on.

ABC News has released a story stating that several women have now come forward complaining of “welts that were very red, hot to the touch, extremely inflamed, blistery”. These women had all purchased the same bra types from Victoria’s Secret and have since joined forces in a class action lawsuit against the lingere designer. Shockingly enough, the bras were tested and were found to have traces of formaldehyde!

Why would formaldehyde be used in bras?

In general, formaldehyde is used in fabrics for anti-cling, anti-static, anti-wrinkle, and anti-shrink, waterproofing and stain resistance, perspiration proofing etc…

Formaldehyde, for all its benefits, is also listed as a “probable carcinogen.” And, unfortunately, the United States is more lax about its regulation than most other countries. For example, “low level” of acceptable formaldehyde in Japan is 75 ppm, whereas the U.S. “low level” of acceptable formaldehyde is near 300 ppm. (Dr. Mercola)

What’s a girl to do?

According to the American Contact Dermatitis Society, rayon, blended cotton, corduroy, wrinkle-resistant 100 percent cotton, and any synthetic blended polymer are likely to have been treated with formaldehyde resins. I can only summize that the healthiest solution here is to either let the girls hang free or buy only organic cotton. What a shame!

What’s a day without learning about another toxic additive to our lives? This time it’s a chemical substance called Propylene Glycol. This little baby is found in moisturizers, as the killing and preserving agent in pitfall traps (usually used to capture beetles), as a food additive (AKA E1520) and…are you ready for this? To De-ice airplanes! Because of its low chronic oral toxicity, propylene glycol is generally recognized as safe for use as a direct food additive. The US Food and Drug Administration includes it on its list of ingredients that are generally recognized as safe (GRAS) and the World Health Organization recognizes it as safe for human use. I would beg to differ. Putting the same chemical used to de-ice planes on my skin, doesn’t strike me as the safest thing to do. So much is deemed safe for human consumption because it won’t immediately strike you dead, however does anyone really know the cumulative effects of this and other chemicals on the body? Continue reading Propylene Glycol?!

Who thought shopping for pjs for a 4year old could be stressful? I unassumingly walked into a store with my son giving him carte blanche to choose some warm jammies for the upcoming cooler months. He immediately gravitated to a pair with a fire engine print. I picked it up to look at it and noticed several tags hanging from it, one of which declared that the garment was flame resistant. Why had I never noticed this before? Have I been innocently putting my son to bed wrapped up in chemicals? I needed answers.

If you’ve never heard of PBDE (Polybrominated Diphenyl Ether), you should acquaint yourself, after all you’re living with them, we all are. Household products ranging from kids’ pajamas to computers release these brominated flame retardants according to the Environmental Working Group. The obvious goal of these chemicals is to reduce the risk that the product will catch fire. The problem however, is that these chemicals via dust and off-gasing enter the body and accumulate. These same chemicals have recently been turning up in tests done on breastmilk. In fact these same tests have found that toddlers and preschoolers typically had 3 times as much of these hormone-disrupting chemicals in their blood as their mothers. Why are our children more polluted by these chemicals than us? Because these nasty PBDEs stick to kids’ hands, toys, furniture or other objects that they put in their mouths.

Continue reading Toxic jammies?