Vasil - Ecoholic body: your ultimate earth-friendly guide to living healthy and looking good

VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2012

Copyright 2012 Adria Vasil

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2012. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited.

Vintage Canada with colophon is a registered trademark.

www.randomhouse.ca

This publication contains the opinions and ideas of its author. It is intended to provide helpful and informative material on the subjects addressed in the publication. It is sold with the understanding that the author and publisher are not engaged in rendering medical, health or any other kind of personal professional services. Nutritional and other needs vary depending on age, sex and health status. If you suspect that you have a serious medical problem, the author strongly urges you to consult your medical, health or other competent professional for treatment.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Vasil, Adria
Ecoholic body : your ultimate earth-friendly guide to living healthy and looking good / Adria Vasil.

eISBN: 978-0-307-36967-3

1. Hygiene productsCanadaEnvironmental aspectsHandbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Green productsCanadaHandbooks, manuals, etc. 3. Beauty, PersonalCanadaEnvironmental aspectsHandbooks, manuals, etc. I. Title.

RA778.5.V37 2012 613.4 C2011-904093-X

Cover design: Kelly Hill with Erin Cooper
Cover images: (photography) Dustin Rabin, (icons) Dreamstime.com
Interior images: Dreamstime.com and Shutterstock.com

v3.1

For my brother Nick, who led the way

	Do it yourself (easy-peasy).
	Sniff out questionable green marketing claims (a.k.a. greenwash) by tracking down this symbol.
	Follow this birdy and youll find more money in your wallet.

Wake up. Hop in the shower. Throw on some clothes. Pop a few vitamins, maybe, and off you go into the world. Its all so routine, we tend to drift into autopilot (if they ever need an extra for a zombie flick about making toast, Im so there). But while were all dozing on our feet, boy, do we ever manage to do a lot of collateral damage. Every day in our households, theres an oil spill in our bathroom, a chemical spill in our closets and a drug lab flushing down the drain. Yes, sir, we take in and pump out a hell of a lot of pollutants in the name of looking and feeling good, and to be honest, its not our fault. If its on shelves and in stores, it should be safe. Period. But were starting to notice that a lot can lurk behind a pretty package. And were beginning to see that were the guinea pigs when it comes to testing the long-term chronic health impacts of all the chemical substances in our shine-boosting shampoos, wrinkle-retarding clothes and pain-killing pills. (Funny, I dont recall signing a release form, you?)

As the bigger picture comes into focus, were waking up to the fact that were not only making ourselves sick, were making the planet sick too. Because, though it often feels as if our bodies are bubble-wrapped islands unto themselves, theres actually an invisible umbilical cord tying our bellies to the earth, and when the mother on the other end of that cord gets sick, so do we all. That means that when the products we use hurt Mother Earth, oh baby, it gets personal. Our choices boomerang right back at us, knocking us upside the head like a five a.m. wake-up call from Gaia. Just skip ahead to , Environmental Health: What Goes Around Comes Around, to get an inside peek at some of the illnesses coming back to haunt us. Kenyas late, great, kick-butt Nobel laureate and green revolutionary Wangari Maathai boiled it all down for us in one simple phrase: To destroy what is essential to life is to destroy life itself.

) to put you in touch with natures built-in remedies. Its time to knock down that wall of toxic products between us and nature and have a spoonful of planetary harmony. Call it Chicken Soup for the Earth-dwelling Soul.

Ecoholic Body will tell you exactly how to do your part to live more sustainably while protecting yourself from toxinsall while dodging phony greenwashed products, of course. Well also connect the dots between those toxins and the people that put them there, and Ill tell you just how to harass your politicians and the companies making these goods into prioritizing our healthand the health of the planet. If enough of us do it, well eventually have a better world to call home. Until then, Ecoholic Body is here to arm you with the knowledge you need to keep you and your family healthy, happy and greeninside and outand, yes, still looking, smelling and feeling good along the journey.

). But all in all, it felt right. It felt political. Like I was voting for green pastures, clean rivers and happy bunnies with every dollar I spent. And we are. More and more Canadians are asking why exactly we need carcinogens in our body wash and estrogen mimickers in our soap. Thats exactly why youll see more drugstore brands that say theyre free of parabens. Hell, we did that. Were demanding change. Unfortunately, the toxic journey doesnt end there.

In an ideal world, you and I would be able to walk into a drugstore, pick any product off the shelf and assume it was totally free of harmful ingredients. Wait? Cant we do that today? Sorry, no, thats life in a parallel universe called Canada the Good. That world could easily exist if Health Canada were doing its job of protecting our health by getting tougher on body care chemicals. Oh sure, theyve phased a few bad guys out lately, but we need to dig deeper. At this point, our big safeguard is Health Canadas List of Prohibited and Restricted Cosmetic Ingredients (a.k.a. the Cosmetic Ingredient Hotlist). It sounds like serious business, as if it might actually keep harmful chemicals far away from our bodies. What a pity its got minimal legal teeth and no ones really policing it. Lets get real here: five years after my first Ecoholic book complained about this, theres still no one pre-screening products to make sure theyre free of cancer-causing or long-term-health-disrupting chemicals. No wonder the David Suzuki Foundation and Rseau des Femmes got all up in Health Canadas grill in 2011 and filed a petition asking why Canada isnt enforcing a prohibition on estrogen-mimicking substances in personal care products such as shampoos, lotions, deodorants and makeup. If it did, junk like phthalates, parabens, siloxanes and dodgy preservatives like BHA (see Mean 15, nuh-uh. According to the advice posted openly online: Consider marketing the product as a drug or natural health product. Turns out, if theres something medicinal in your product, you can avoid the Hotlist altogether (not to mention the fact that the ingredients dont have to be listed). Thats great, Health Canadaglad to see you nudging corporations to use a dodgy loophole that increases secrecy.