During my latest "Netflix and Chill" sesh, I had the pleasure of watching "Stink!", a documentary about chemicals in the everyday products we use. "Stink!" goes into depth how companies conceal the cancerous, toxic chemicals that go into their products that contain "fragrance". As someone who lives with OCD, my compulsion to clean and sanitize our home and things we use on our bodies often leads me to use cleaning products with chemicals that could possibly harm myself and my family. I had not known the extent to which these products harm the consumers until now.
You could read labels until your eyeballs fall out of your head, you will miss many of the caustic chemicals hiding in your household items that include your clothing. One way these companies deceive us is in scents that spark nostalgia or prestige. The "new car smell", the whiff of Davidoff's Eternity when walking through Abercrombie & Fitch, that new shower curtain liner, to your fabric softeners, dryer sheets, perfumes, my Burberry Brit or Jo Malone perfumes, all personal care products; new clothes smell, reed diffusers, Glade plug-ins; all the way to my beloved Febreze plug-ins. All of these products are killing us softly with their off-gassing while corporations are living their best billionaire lives on top of the phthalate laden corpses of our loved ones....
When I think about the lives in my families that were lost due to odd, outlandish bouts of cancer, this gives me great pause. My father, while he was super-morbidly obese, was the ONLY Morales to have cancer EVER. Medically, there is absolutely no family history of cancer on our Morales bloodline. NO ONE on my Morales side had ever suffered from cancer. Back in 2004 when Daddy first told me he had colon cancer which quickly spread to his liver, I was in shock. This meant a great deal to me and I was perplexed. How did this happen? During that time I was a Licensed Vocational Nurse simultaneously pursuing my BSN. I assumed that it was his eating habits and years of morbid obesity that may have lead to his illness. Its almost too easy for us as healthcare professionals to blame the fat in the room. But over the years I've been thinking...
I had my own bouts of early stage cancer and immune disorder which makes me susceptible to simple diseases caused by common bacteria and viruses in our environment. I have allergies to food, prescription drugs and various plants. I became the 2nd Morales in my family to have cancer and I was only 35 and not morbidly obese. In fact, I wasn't obese at all and my diet was mostly plant-based. Hell, I led a pretty healthy lifestyle and I exercised regularly. What was going on with my body? My doctor said that my weak immune system may have contributed to my diagnoses. This didn't sit well with me. I deeply pondered the things I had in common with Daddy that we both enjoyed and used frequently. My Dad and I both enjoyed fragrances. He used cologne and I used perfume, and lots of it. An inside joke was that he couldn't live without his Aramis and I'd die without Burberry Brit. Those statements are so ironic...
While today I am cancer free, there has always been that thought in the back of my mind that something was amiss with a product or products I use daily if not weekly. The chemical industry is killing us and we don't even know its happening. Or we know its happening, but so much of the chemical industry controls lifestyle products that it feels nearly impossible to change our ways. I'm a Capricorn, so this was just a new challenge for me to conquer. Like the patient goat, climbing the side of this mountain is an ongoing stride. For each product I replace with a natural counterpart, that's one more rocky knot conquered for our lives. I don't know if I'll ever be able to eliminate every chlorine or pthalate engorged product, but I cannot afford not to at least try. Even if it buys us a few more years, a little can go a long way.
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