In this world of environmental toxins, there’s a lot of grim, bad, and downright upsetting news. On any given day, I’m reading some report or study about pollutions’ link to allergies, heart disease and cancer, chemicals linked to sperm counts taking a nose dive, and chemicals so disruptive that a single exposure during pregnancy can lead to permanent changes in every future generation to come.
But as someone with a pretty positive outlook on life, these moments spent in NegativeNancy-ville can be a little tricky to navigate. I often find myself asking “how do these people sleep at night??”, followed quickly by feeling very pissed off.
I decided to share with you some of these things, one, because venting is good, two, because I’m looking for a few “hell yeah, sister!”‘s from you, and three, because getting pissed off is sometimes a wonderful thing.
So without further ado, here is a shortlist of things that piss me off:
- Pinkwashing – When a company or organization claims to care about breast cancer by promoting a pink ribbon product, but at the same time produces, manufactures and/or sells products that are linked to the disease. (see: Think Before You Pink & Pink Ribbons, Inc.)
- US based multinational companies that reformulate their products for overseas market to exclude banned chemicals, but makes no effort to remove those same chemicals from US lines, claiming it’s “too expensive” or that there’s “not enough demand” here. (See artificial food coloring used in US Kraft Mac & Cheese, but not the UK versions, and this great post on a bunch of other food ingredient discrepancies.
- BPA Free Claims – BPA Free marketing is everywhere these days, but what most people don’t realize is that product manufacturers, whether it’s for plastic containers, or cash register receipts, are simply swapping Bisphenol-A, with Bisphenol-S, a chemical with similar estrogen mimicking qualities. (See this article here)
- Big companies like SC Johnson who put out ads like the one below which reek of condescension, and placation, but do nothing to actually remove harmful chemicals from their products.
SC Johnson Debuts Transparency Awareness by multivu
Sucky, right? BUT there are also a billion things out there that inspire me, fill me with hope, and excitement, and these are worth sharing too!
And here are things that lift me up:
- The people at Women’s Voices For The Earth for creating this great spoof of the commercial above and knocking it out of the park!
- Organizations like Environmental Working Group, Healthy Child Healthy World, The Campaign For Safe Cosmetics, The Story of Stuff, Pesticide Action Network, and countless others. These people are AWESOME and fight the good fight. I feel thrilled just to be in their shadow.
- People like Dr. Peter Attia who gave this moving presentation at TedMed all about coming to terms with a hard to truth about blame in the medical community – about how we often see diabetes the result of poor choices, lazy habits and unhealthy diets, and about looking beyond conventional thinking when faced with something as damaging as diabetes
- And the increasing numbers of people in the health & wellness practitioner community who are passionate, dedicated, and tireless in the efforts to uncover what they can to help transform the health of their clients. Every single one of my clients inspires me, because they remind me that behind every list of things that piss me off, there sits a longer list of things that lift me up, and give me hope!
In writing this, one song kept running through my head that pretty much sums things up. Enjoy!