If you are painting, or putting in new floors, or carpet, redoing your kitchen cabinets, or building a new house....
STOP!
Before you do any of these things, consider what materials you are using. Just as you are learning the importance of being careful with the ingredients you are putting inside your body, it is equally important to think about what materials you are surrounding your body with environmentally. for those of you who think it does not make a difference, I can assure you, it makes a huge difference.
In just the recent months I have had three patients flare because of the environmental surroundings-badly.
There is a lot to know about all of this, but, there are so many natural companies popping up these days. Safecoat is one for paint. It is exclusively what we use when we are painting our home inside or out.
And there are natural wood floor stains and finishes-polyurethane for example is super toxic even in the prefinished floors. And, the glues they use are also toxic. Minimizing all of these things will help you not react to your new environment.
Roofing-well, I dont know if there is a more healthy solution for roofing, but, if you are doing it-go stay with a relative until all the toxic smells have blown away-yikes, into the environment, but, most importantly away from you!
These toxic smells-not that dissimilar to the toxic smells in a nail salon BTW, can make you flare horribly-as in you feel like you have a UTI.
So, research before you make plans and spend money! It is so important.
Dr.M & B
Comments
Thank you so much for this
Thank you so much for this timely post. We are redoing one of our rooms! I will read what you wrote to my husband. I remember reading on the forum some time ago about a gal who had a bad reaction to some carpet glue, I believe. This is a very good
reminder for me. Thank you again!
Very good reminder! Hopefully
Very good reminder! Hopefully I won't have to worry about these things for quite some time again in my own home. The chemicals in the stains and carpet are so strong! Makes me think, oh gosh, finally getting out of the smells at home and they are redoing all the rooms at the hospital with new carpet. That is A LOT of carpet! Seems like there is no escape on top of all the chemical sprays they use for cleaning that sends me into a coughing fit. Maybe I can live in a hazardous material suit for a while! :( Is there really any good way to avoid all the chemicals?
We are currently living in an
We are currently living in an apartment and will be either buying or building in the next few years. In your opinion is it better to purchase a home that has already off gassed some or build using less toxic products. I have often contemplated this and I'm not sure.
True story!! I am going
True story!! I am going through this now and it is not fun! I feel naive for thinking these materials couldn't cause me significant pain. Now we must work back to health, again! - THANK YOU so much for the info on the Safecoat company - looks like lots of great products that could keep us all out of the woods!
I am one of the other patients Dr. M is referring to. I have been a patient for almost two years and have been pain free for almost 3 months. We had a flood in our home last month and had to have our floors replaced. I am so mad at myself bc I have a chemical free house and monitor all products all the time. I truely thought laminate floors were the way to go bc they did not require glue- WRONG New floors were installed on Monday and by Friday I had what I thought was a full blown UTI- tests were negative. Emailed Dr. M- she says its the off-gassing of the floors. I am now in hell- had to move out of my home into my parents house with my daughter. My husband and I are giving it a week then going to rip the flooring up. Ironically I had my appointment last week with Dr. M and she moved me to list 4- I was so excited. Please, please be careful with products in your home.
Wow- I am so sorry to hear
Wow- I am so sorry to hear that! I hope you can get back to feelign good soon! Thanks for the warning
I just wanted to follow up
I just wanted to follow up and say I found this site www.milkpaint.com - looks really cool and they ship their product.
Also www.greenbuildingsupply.com has a lot of information and carries a lot of products.
Was interested to see though that Benjamin Moore carries a zero voc paint that I would imagine woudl be widely available but I haven't looked into it much yet. Also, I had been looking at LG HiMacs for our new kitchen counters and figured perhaps that wouldn't work now but after researching they do use a lot of recycled product and are supposedly very low VOC. SO much more information out there than I realized. It is crazy that I haven't used mainstream deoderant, shampoo, toothpaste, etc in years but didn't think twice when it came to paint, stains, etc for my home! Just figured they were necessary evils- so wrong!
These are great. My friend
These are great. My friend who is a contractor and helps us with projects a lot really likes the Benjamin Moore paint. And I THINK we used that at one point in our last house and it was fine too. Also floor finishes are HUGE!