The Irrefutables™
The Chemicals Dominating This Dirty Age We Live In
Over the last 15 years I’ve become an expert in specific manmade, fully synthetic environmental chemical hazards – these are environmentally persistent, health-harming, eco-toxins that I have named The Irrefutables.” I call them this because these particular chemistries have sufficient study to know they do harm to our ecosystem and ourselves. The sad part is that this undisputable knowledge does not automatically classify them as unusable.
However illogical it is, products, goods, foods and so much of what we buy and use on a daily basis contain these harmful chemicals. Many of them may be familiar as a classes:
PFAS (Per and Poly-fluoroalkyl chemistries)
Harmful Preservatives (QACs, Parabens, Formaldehyde and formaldehyde releasers and others)
As you learn about these chemicals, their harms become increasingly alarming. But what’s most astonishing is that they are known toxicants, yet used so widely. And, for that matter, completely legally. Why it isn’t a crime to freely pollute our air, water and soil is something I can’t understand. Despite all of the science decrying their existence, denouncing their continued use, documenting their pollution – use of The Irrefutables continues to proliferate. It would be one thing, if we didn’t know how harmful these chemicals were, if we didn’t understand they had serious and severe consequences however inconvenient. Yet it’s another thing to know and still look away.
That denial, that is exactly what companies want you to do. They want you to feel overwhelmed and under-supported so that you capitulate and cave. Corporations want you to just keep bobbing along, complicit, instead of demanding better. So here we are. Living life and simply eating, breathing, and keeping the status quo protected amidst these invisible invaders that infiltrate our lives.
But not for me. I will not. I can not. I say, No More. Not in my house. Not to my family. Not to my planet.
So. I’ve learned that despite these sometimes seemingly impossible realities, we are also profoundly influential in creating change with the simple act of intentionally using our purchases to commit to it. Every single day I try and live my beliefs by making purchase that align to my values, this buying my beliefs mantra may not always be 100% but it doesn’t have to. The very act supports not only my health and that of the earth, but sends a very important signal about what I want, what the market needs, and also, what it doesn’t. While I am not perfect (just ask my teenagers!) it helps fuel my mission and brings me some sense of fulfillment to use a purchase to impact the greater good.
How do I do this, you ask? These Irrefutables, are seemingly everywhere, in everything. And though they are certainly pervasive, they don’t have to be in your life, they don’t have to dominate your home or dictate your health.
At the NGO I started, we have a formal process using the Ecosystem Approach to help companies do better. This can be a starting guide. But that work only touches a fraction of the decisions we have to make about purchases. Here at Clean Living In A Dirty Age™ I am sharing my own process and putting my knowledge to use by sharing how I work to avoid, reduce and replace these chemicals in my daily life.
I decided to start this community because the one question I am always asked by people is how do I do this? I share in the hope that it will help others implement this kind of clean living too. I’m passionate about this because every time you avoid one of The Irrefutables and opt for another product altogether you become another voice, another vote alongside mine. Together we send a very clear signal to the Marketplace, Main Street and Wall Street. But even more important than that, on a personal level, with each avoidance we remove harms from our surroundings so that our overly burdened bodies don’t have to.
Now that you know about these indisputably despicable chemicals of our time, you too can refute The Irrefutables.