Avoiding Endocrine Disruptors
Endocrine disruptors are everywhere, making them very difficult to avoid. Many of the products that contain them are
intimately integrated into our lives. But there a few simple everyday measures that we can take to decrease our toxic body burden.
Firstly we can make small significant changes to our eating habits:
- If possible try and buy organic food.Try to eat foods as low down the food chain as possible. A number of pesticides are established endocrine disruptors and they inevitably
get into our foods if they were used to treat them while they were grown.
- Try not to eat too much fatty foods such as meat and cheese.
Most endocrine disruptor’s bioaccumulate in the food chain by been stored in fatty tissue.
- Avoid eating fish from lakes, rivers or streams that are contaminated with chemical pollutants.
- Don’t heat or store foods in plastic containers. You don’t know if the container
is made out of bisphenol A, which leaches into foods especially when heated. Also don’t microwave in plastic.
What You Can Do
Secondly we can take some deliberate action to avoid the worst instances of endocrine disruptors in our lives:
- Avoid using pesticides or herbicides in your home or garden. Use alternative
means to get rid of your garden weeds and use baits or traps to kill cockroaches or ant infestations.
- Make sure that your child’s environment is free from pesticides. Find out if your child’s
school or play–centre use pesticides and encourage them to use safer, non–toxic alternatives.
- Don’t give infants soft plastic toys that are suspect endocrine disruptors. Be especially wary of the flexible,
strong plastic smelling toys these probably contain phthalates which is an established endocrine disruptor. Choose wooden or metal toys instead.
- Bisphenol A is commonly used in baby bottles, if possible try and use glass bottles instead of plastic ones.
- Parabens are in a variety of cosmetic products from deodorants to shampoos and sunscreens. Try and seek out paraben free
alternatives found in ‘green’ range of products. There is strong evidence suggesting that parabens are endocrine disurptors.
- In the kitchen choose stainless steel cooking utensils instead of the chemically treated non–stick variety. Perfluorinates
are the chemicals used to make non–stick material they are known to leach from the products that contain them and they are endocrine disruptors.
- Support efforts to make local and global policy changes, so that more research can be done on endocrine disruptors.
There are much more tips and advice that can be given on this topic. Too much to list in this small website. The best advice, however, is to keep yourself informed about endocrine disruptors,
chemical pollutants and all aspects of your local and global environment.
Be aware of what’s going on and keep those around you informed so that everyone can make better lifestyle choices, that could benefit them in the long run.
