A Polluted Lifestyle

I’m a healthy, relatively fit, 32-year old guy. I work for an endurance sports fitness publisher in Boulder, CO. It’s a health-conscious job in a health-obsessed town. Yet I live a polluted life. A typical day:

• Wake up, brush teeth (with antibiotics, flouride – a neurotoxin, other chemicals).
• Use mouthwash (with artificial colorants, flavors, alcohol).
• Make coffee in my plastic coffee maker (possible bisphenol-A from polycarbonate plastics).
• Hit the shower, using soap and shampoo (made of petroleum by-products).
• Shave with all sorts of synthetic, petroleum-based chemicals.
• Apply aluminum-based deodorant.
• Get dressed (in clothing routinely cleaned with petroleum-based detergents).
• Eat breakfast of cereal with milk (fertilizers, pesticides, bovine growth hormone, antibiotics).
• Pour hot coffee into Nalgene bottle, add milk (bisphenol-A from polycarbonate bottle, more bovine growth and antibiotics).
• Drive to work (outgassed fumes from vinyl dashboard/console, exposure to various flame retardants in upholstery, exposure to stain-resistant chemicals in upholstery, carcinogens and heavy metals from car exhaust, carcinogens and particulates from diesel exhaust, heavy metals from brake pad and tire dust).
• Work (exposure to office cleaning agents, allergens, etc.)
• Drive to lunch and back for a deli sandwich and soda for lunch (more growth hormones and antibiotics from meat, more pesticides from vegetables and bread, more bisphenol-A from polycarbonate soda can liner, more car and exhaust pollutants).
• Brush teeth (more antibiotics and flouride)
• Afternoon snack (possible crop-related pesticides, nitrates, etc.)
• Drive home (carcinogens from gas fumes, more car and exhaust pollutants).
• Go for a jog or bike ride (more exhaust pollutants and allergens but breathed more deeply into my lungs).
• Eat dinner (more fertilizers, pesticides, bovine growth hormone, antibiotics).
• Clean up dinner with dish soap, dish detergent.
• Play with kid (exposure to flame retardants and stain resistants on carpeting).
• Mess around on computer or watch tv (exposure to flame retardants and stain resistants on upholstery).
• Brush teeth (more antibiotics and flouride).
• Go to bed (on pillow and mattress doused in flame retardants and stain resistants).

Then there’s the less-than-daily chores: cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms; doing the laundry; changing motor oil in the cars; replacing windshield wiper fluid; getting gas. All of these tasks involve shorter exposures to more toxic chemicals.

Toxicologists like to say that “everything is toxic at a high enough dose”. Most of the individual toxic doses of daily living are minute. Yet small, repeated doses can raise the body’s chemical load. Some of these chemicals may interact in ways we don’t yet understand. And some of these chemicals persist in the body; it takes days, weeks, months, or years before they are eliminated.

What does your daily routine look like, chemically?