Thursday, October 23, 2014

"do not use for children's sleep wear"

It's printed in a large font on the selvages of the harvest-theme fabrics I was pressing the other day.  To my contrarian bent of mind, that probably means you SHOULD use it for just that.

In the hopes of keeping children from being burned in their own pajamas (like maybe when the rest of the house is on fire???  what?), it has become standard policy to construct their sleepwear out of fabric treated with "toxic fire retardant chemicals" which "at critical points in development can damage the reproductive system and cause deficits in motor skills, learning, memory and behavior. Some are carcinogenic."

Makes perfect sense!!!

Frankly, if you're not allowing your children to smoke in bed, play snapdragon unchaperoned, read books by candlelight under the covers, or heat their bedrooms with open flames, I think it's probably a good trade-off to spend a third of their time NOT enveloped in hormone-disrupting-chemical-saturated attire.

Parents these days are getting in trouble for sending grainless lunches to school (but not meatless ones)....

Parents are criticized for not letting their little ones eat a McDonald's, or for limiting sweets....

Parents are, however, encouraged to give inappropriate drugs to their toddlers, limit the kinds of foods that nourish their little bodies and brains, and drench their surroundings with documentably-harmful -- and arguably-superfluous -- flame-retardants.

The fact that these fabric treatments are actually banned in Europe means nothing to us in America!  [sarcasm alert]  We believe our chemical companies and their puppets in government wouldn't LIE TO US!  Why, that would be ... that would be ...

TYPICAL. 

So, despite being tempted to do just that, I WON'T be making jammies out of the fabric I bought.  But I am pleased that the autumn-theme quilt i'm making won't be off-gassing hormone-disrupters on us.

15 comments:

  1. Your post reminded me about my sentiments when we just arrived to Canada, back then my son was only 3 years old. I found the level of children safety concerns was at paranoid grade, like children in a daycare were required to sleep in shoes in order to walk away from the daycare building in case of a fire without any delay. When my son overgrown his pajamas, I had to buy only underwear bottoms and t-shirts as his pjs because what was sold in stores was not suitable for a child, especially the one with an eczema. Fortunately, fireproof underwear was not required yet and I didn't think children had to have every inch of a sleep wear to be covered with images of cartoon characters.

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    1. Raising children has become so artificially-complicated ... and was pretty complicated already! :-P I'm so glad my childhood was different; even my kids' wasn't as crazy as this!

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  2. Hi Tess

    Plain cotton and wool are great materials for clothing and don't burst into flames like many man made materials when near a flame. They don't need polluting with dangerous chemicals to keep them safe. In all the years of different materials being invented, the best clothing is still made from 100% cotton and wool.

    Kind regards Eddie

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    1. Cotton can be pretty flammable, but wool IS Nature's flame-retardant fabric! That's why in the 19th century, when women's burning deaths were second only to childbed deaths in number, wool was the favored material to use for aprons -- a spark falls on it and quickly extinguishes.

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  3. There are rumors that our furniture and rugs are pre-treated with fire retardants too which release fumes, especially when new, into indoor air, and it also makes less healthy floor crawling for a child. My furniture is covered with leather, but , unfortunately, I have carpet floor in most of my house.

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    1. Yes, indeed! And since all those fabrics "shed" molecules of the retardant as time goes by, it settles and makes the rugs even more toxic than they started out. :-( Traces of the chemicals have been found in all kinds of locations -- in newborns, in breast milk, in food at the grocery store....

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  4. Perhaps we are indeed slowly poisoning ourselves, our atmosphere .....will we wake up before it's too late? In recent times I can remember people being allergic to some settees because of the 'treatment' they had received prior to shipping ....is anything pure? In fact what is pure these days as our bodies struggle to keep up, with how we are poisoning them.

    Sorry don't mean to be negative ......

    Have a good weekend

    All the best Jan.

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    1. Jan, I believe people evolved to live in not perfectly pure environments - dwellings with a source of fire inside is a good example. I am sure I would die from asthma if I had a smoky house, but I have no complains in my modern house. Metal making was another poisonous activity. Many natural pigments are poisonous, on the top of all that, our ancestors managed to find different intoxicating substances everywhere on earth with the probable exception of icy environments.

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    2. Hi Galina - yes, it's quite true what you say. Over the years we do breathe in and come into contact with many things that don't necessarily do our health any good. In fact nowadays our clean living is being blamed on certain illnesses and allergies because the children do not have enough contact with 'dirt' or certain germs to build up an immunity.

      Was there ever a time when we lived in harmony with the planet?

      All the best Jan

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    3. Yes, we did live in more harmony with a nature in more primitive time, like Aboriginal people in Australia before white people came, but I am afraid that life was more perilous for humans, and I am absolutely sure harder on us, females. Personally, I would not exchange my modern life on something more natural, without hair coloring, birth control, washing machine, easy access to any food, modern dentistry.

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    4. Jan, I think there's a world of difference between being negative (you're not) ... and being realistic! I get so angry and frustrated that the corporate powers-that-be are being given license to do so much damage to our environment, and so few people seem to care! :-( There's little that an ordinary person can do, but we CAN try to make our personal space a little more wholesome ... which i'm sure all of US are trying to do!

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    5. "Many natural pigments are poisonous...." :-D My very-old household-management books say one should never dress one's babies in green -- their tendencies to chew on their ribbons (for example) may subject them to poisoning from the dye!

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    6. My husband who is a chemist was very unpleasantly surprised when he saw my art supply box and read labels like "cadmiun" and "lead white". The art supply distributor honestly tells "Some of our products contain hazardous materials such as arsenic, lead, mercury, etc. " http://www.naturalpigments.com/art-material-safety-handling.
      I went through an artist training as teenager , I went to an art school several evenings a week after a regular school. I don't remember anyone telling us to be careful about our pigments. BTW, using lead white as a facial paint was very popular among grand dams in 18-s century, and probably long after, Romans used lead plumbing, and the rest of western world followed for centuries,and still lead plumbing is used in many places, even in Washington,DC. Every time has its own poisons, but humans continue to live.
      Tess, on a personal level I am more annoyed with the damaged for environment caused by a lawn care. Corporations at least turn some profit and provide people with jobs while poison environment, but we poison water and land in order to just get an unnaturally green and uniform lawn in front of the house. It remind me a beauty from dark ages who used lead-based makeup.

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    7. Sorry,"Cadmium", not "Cadmiun", and "damage for environment".not"damaged for env." I am typing between doing different things and talking.
      It looks like every time has its poison.

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    8. Absolutely! And then, some cities fine home-owners for growing food instead of lawns -- how insane is that?!

      As a tour guide in an historic house, I learned that locking compartments in chests of drawers and dressing tables were not only for milady's jewels, but also for her beauty lotions! Many had arsenic as an ingredient -- non-fatal doses have a tendency to make the skin beautifully pale and translucent!

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