Non-toxic laundry
To improve air and water quality, don't use toxic fabric softeners, dryer sheets, or detergents containing dangerous chemicals! Instead, try the safe, simple alternatives listed on this website:
http://www.lplpublishers.ca/toxiclaundry.html
In Canada, laundry products do not as yet require labelling as to contents. Some detergents contain hidden, harmful chemicals. So do fabric softeners and dryer sheets. Contact your government representatives: civic, provincial and federal, to support and encourage "right-to-know" labelling, which would list toxic ingredients in laundry products.
We are entitled to know what is contained in the products which we buy and use.
Vancouver can work towards becoming the Greenest City by creating a bylaw which would make it illegal to pollute neighbourhood air with toxic fumes from clothes dryers. It is not necessary to poison our air and water in order to have soft, fresh, non-static laundry. See above website.
And finally, I agree with the person who advocates clothesline use, which would cut down on carbon emissions from the power required for dryers. Drying racks, indoor or outdoor, and clotheslines, do not produce static in laundry, negating the need for toxic products.
Val Bjarnason
shared this idea
Application to air quality is tangential.
Water quality as affected by residential discharge is governed under Bylaw #8093, and administered by City of Vancouver’s dedicated Environmental Department: http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/licandinsp/inspections/environment/
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Chemical Hypersensitive
commented
To go Green does require a bit of a clean up which starts at ones own premises. Our own dwellings have become, unknowingly, dangerous to our health. Recently, a study found a potential link between the use of household cleaners and air fresheners and breast cancer.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/08/07/are-cleansers-linked-to-breast-cancer.aspx
The molecules of lab produced fragrances are designed to cling, so my Health-care-practitioner informed me. And I do not think that those molecules are too fuzzy on what they cling to; whether it is a towel or the core of the human anatomy.Hardly a day goes by where one in not assaulted by lab created scents which are emanating from surrounding neighbours dryers. These chemicals are being pushed out into the environment; airborne, they end up in other peoples homes causing havoc. Manufactures are flooding the market with multitudes of strong scented cleaning products and the consumer is paying hard earned money to purchase all these miraculous, deodorizing and what have you, cleaning products and sometimes signing their own death certificates. Many women have paid a hefty prize using these lab produced “GOODIES” and the time has come to leave them in on the shelf in the store. Because when one really thinks about it – scent does not clean anyway.
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U92
commented
This needs to be a top priority. My neighbours' fumes have nearly put me in hospital a few times. It would not only be a green choice, but would reduce medication and health care costs as well as absenteeism from work and school. I can't believe this stuff is even legal.
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Lucie
commented
thank-you for bringing this most definite issue to light. namaste.
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Janine Brossard
commented
Great idea. I was surprised and alarmed when I read about the toxins in dryer sheets and fabric softeners. Anyone within the vicinity of a dryer outlet (including birds and other wildlife) has no choice but to endure the release of these toxins into the surrounding air.