Let’s see, I am a 42 year-old white male, of average height and weight and exercise only occasionally. I avoid the obvious, no soda or excessive salt, try to eat only meals made at home with ingredients I can pronounce, drink green tea and plenty of water and take several vitamins and minerals daily. If you follow this blog you will also notice that I bake, at home, pies and cookies and breads. Baking is usually a weekend indulgence and, again, I know everything going into that pie because I made it. Perhaps this is a off-kilter view of healthy living, but it is my life and I feel pretty darn good over all.

When I was a kid, we didn’t get candy except on Easter, Halloween and Christmas. That was it. There were no store-bought cookies in the kitchen cupboard and no soda in the refrigerator. When she had the time, and we had the money, my mother would bake pies or cookies or bread (zucchini and banana were my favorite) and at Christmas the younger kids would help to make candies. Perhaps this is a way of life that doesn’t fit for most people any more. I can believe that. But I am also likewise convinced that, at least for myself, the option to instead buy off the shelf pre-made meals is quite literally off the table.

I want to give my son healthy food. Moreover, I want his choices in life to be healthy positive ones. I try to educate him about why we don’t eat at fastfood restaurants and why only occassionally will he be allowed to have candy or soda. Extending that lifestyle from beyond what we consume to the environment which we find ourselves in most of the time, our home, I attempt to surround our lives with wholsome products. I have stopped using bleach. Vinegar works great as a cleaner and disinfectant. Baking soda can be used to clean sinks and tubs. I make my own laundry detergent.

Obviously, I can affect our lives only to a certain, or not so certain, point. I don’t, currently, have the land to garden and I no longer keep bees. I buy meats, fruits and vegetables - I don’t raise or grow them myself. I didn’t make the furniture we use or have any choice in the materials used to build this apartment complex where we currently live. Certain epoxys and products that are in my home most certainly will not find their way into my own house, when I am able to build it, on my own land.

But, for now, I do what I can.

Looking over the choices I have made in this regard, and others I hope to effect, I realize that to most people this seems like crazy talk. But, if just for a moment, we could pause and think about the chemicals that imbue our lives I am sure some of that craziness will begin to make more sense. During any average television commercial break there is bound to be an ad for something that will make your house smell better (do we all really have such smelly lives?), an easier way to clean by pushing a button and letting foaming bubbles do their magic and something to spray on that kitchen floor or bathroom sink that will wipe away all of the germs and dirt. But what is left behind?

In our own homes, in the average American home, everything we touch, eat - or eat out of - breath and drink is touched by chemicals. Smell something, or more likely, don’t smell anything at all? Plug it in, that will take care of that pesky lack of freshness. Can’t get it up? There’s a Swiffer way to clean, just spray and wipe. No time to clean, just touch a button and walk out of the bathroom, let the scrubbing bubbles do their thing.

We spray, wipe, soak and wash everything in our lives to the point where the room doesn’t smell right if we can’t smell something manufactured for our olfactory senses. It’s not clean if it doesn’t smell of bleach or glisten from being sanitized with something that has a quantified Lethal Dose 50 rating. A new study, released today, finds that BPA, a common component in many plastic food containers for decades, increases the likelihood of diabetes, heart disease and liver problems. Another recent report found that nearly every American has trace amounts of BPA in their system. That finding zeroes in on just one chemical found in thousands of products which we use every day. What about the rest?

It worries me. But, maybe I’m just crazy.