Chemical Reaction
First published in the TasWeekend magazine (The Hobart Mercury)
Before Bec Hartnett was aware of the dangerous chemicals lurking in the beauty products she used every day, she was bed bound once a month with crippling labour-like pains. “I had terrible hormonal monthly cramps,” she says. “Every single month.” She was using an expensive ‘healthy’ beauty range spruiking marketing words like ‘beneficial’ and ‘safe’ and ‘pure’ and promising ‘health and wellness inside and out’. Fed up with the inconvenience and pain, the Rose Bay mother of two and part time nurse, 37, started researching the listed ingredients in her ‘natural’ moisturiser and toner and cleanser, shampoo and conditioner and found the culprit. Phenoxyethanol. “It’s a hormone disrupting preservative,” Hartnett says. “I threw out hundreds of dollars worth of beauty products that had that listed in the ingredients and by next month my pain had substantially decreased. I am positive it was the cause of my terrible pain.” She is now pain free.
She’s also now toxic chemical free thanks to an overwhelming and fierce feeling of protection she experienced when she held her first child four years ago. “Little did I know that William’s birth would spark such a strong desire to lead a more natural inspired lifestyle,” she said. “I thought we were leading a pretty healthy life but as soon as he entered the world, boy did those nurturing, care-giving hormones kick in and I realised I could do so much better.” She discovered nasties in the baby skincare products, in nappies and wipes and well “pretty much everything”. Her synthetic, allergy free and antibacterial “chemically laden” pillows were swapped for wool pillows she now airs in sunlight to kill dust mites. She’s done away with complicated beauty routines and now only uses a simple moisturiser and sunscreen. Plastic containers were replaced with glass containers. It’s been a slow process but she’s worked hard to illuminate products and items in their house that were full of those toxic chemicals. Hartnett can no longer tolerate artificial fragrances like scented candles, perfumes and plug-in air fresheners that contain phthalates to make them last longer – they give her an instant headache. “I love fresh flowers and am a big fan of indoor plants,” she says. “Over time we just slowly swapped out things that were not so great and now pretty much our whole house is toxic free,” she said. It’s been a life-changing new habit that’s given her a new direction and a new tribe.
Hartnett was so frustrated with the ridiculous hours she spent as an amateur sleuth researching the complicated ingredient listings to determine if products were really safe to use, seven months into her second pregnancy she started her own business Eco and Us. “I just saw a need,” she says. “There are many greenwashed (say they are green, but they are not) brands out there that are spending lots of money on new ways to confuse us, trying to make us believe their toxic ingredients are safe. I was just sick of having to constantly decipher ingredient lists every time I wanted to shop. I knew how hard it was to find good quality, natural products that were what they said they were because there are heaps of ‘natural’ products out there that really aren’t because they still have loads of crappy ingredients in them. It was damn confusing shopping for authentic toxic-free natural brands. Everywhere I looked I seemed to be faced with fake natural brands trying to fool me that claimed they were something they weren’t. It did my head in. Eventually it got the better of me and I thought, ‘I will create the perfect one-stop shop that meets my high expectations’. I really wanted a place where you could guarantee that the products were safe. Eco and Us is a national, web-based portal where you can find all your toxic-free, natural products and learn from a specialised community of wholistic professionals. It includes a free downloadable, ever-expanding checklist of things you can swap out in your home including cosmetics, cleaning and makeup items and links to e-courses and e-books. She says 90 percent of the people she’s met since starting Eco and Us have started living a more natural inspired lifestyle because of a significant health diagnosis. “And what’s more they have improved since becoming chemical-free or have been cured,” she says.
Eliminating chemicals has drastically improved the health of Michelle Dyer who runs the Salamanca Market Harvest Feast organic fruit and vegetable stall every Saturday. “I’m super lucky to be immersed in a Tassie community with a huge interest in living a chemical free life,” she says. “Given we live in a smaller community we can connect more easily to inspire each other, share ideas, resources and knowledge. We discuss and swap different ways of thinking and doing things like recipes for how to make chemical free toothpaste, deodorants and cleaning products. Dyer’s been striving for a chemical-free lifestyle since she was struck down with chronic fatigue in 2001 and says she now feels more energised than ever. “I was a vegetable for three months. It took me five years to recover. Now I’m working 14-hour days, four days a week and feel very energised. You are in a better position than before if you just illuminate one chemical-laden product and then focus on what the next one will be,” she says. “There are a lot of businesses down here doing great things. We are really lucky that we live in a place like Tasmania where there are so many people passionate about chemical-free, and plastic-free and waste-free,” she says. Dyer is so immersed in a chemical free world now, all her tribe in Tassie are chemical free, that she feels it’s just normal. “It’s only when I step out of the tribe that I realise we are not the norm. The businesses and fruit and vegetable growers and community groups I’m connected with all embrace this way of living,” she said.
One of Dyer’s tribe is South Hobart’s Gaby Jung, a seasoned chemical-free, nature-loving gardener who has used both her front and back yard spaces to grow all the vegetables and herbs she needs. She supplies home-grown, organic herbs and other greens to Harvest Feast every week carefully wrapping her produce in recycled rice bag packaging and loading them into the big basket on her trike for a delivery in the pre-dawn dark. Environmental concerns lead Jung to follow a toxic-free lifestyle that’s she’s been living for at least twenty years. “I personally think you actually save a huge amount of money if you don’t buy all these products that you supposedly need because you don’t really need all those products,” Jung says. “I haven’t used deodorant for about forty years,” she says. “I always found that the stuff stinks so I never really used it and then when I found out deodorant is based on aluminium then why would I expose myself to that kind of stuff? I haven’t bought shampoo and conditioner for I don’t know how long. Water does a brilliant job for washing my hair and nobody has said that my hair is stinky or anything and every now and then I also use apple cider vinegar on my hair because that’s really nice.” Jung cleans her teeth by dipping her toothbrush into either salt or bi-carbonate soda and swishing coconut oil around her mouth to get rid of toxins. “If I’m washing the floor, I usually put a bit of apple cider vinegar into the wash water or bi-carb soda so I haven’t bought any of those cleaning products that most household have for a very long time.” She says she feels she has a responsibility as an elder to actually make good again and to be an example to others to show you can live with less. “There has always been a part of me that has been interested in alternative kinds of things, how you can do things differently,” she says.
If you look under the kitchen sink at the Carter’s residence in Taroona or even under the bathroom or laundry sink, it will look a lot different to the norm. You won’t find any commercial cleaning or beauty products. These guys are experts at thinking outside the box when it comes to toxic-free beauty and cleaning products. They are an inspiration to other Tasmanian families who are aspiring to live chemical and toxin free. Lauren, 41, and Oberon, 42, and their three daughters Audrey, 14, Xanthe, 11, and Maisie, 7, make their own bathroom and cleaning products from raw ingredients they buy in bulk. They use recipes they have tweaked over time that are great alternatives and don’t make unnecessary waste. The kitchen, laundry and bathrooms are usually the hot spot chemical rooms of any household but in the Carter house if they are going to put something on their body, then they have to be willing to eat it too. “I wouldn’t put anything on the outside of my body that I wouldn’t eat,” Lauren says. “So that’s a way of looking at it, if you are willing to eat it, then you are going to be okay about putting it on the outside of your body. But think about the things you put on the outside of your body and question whether you would be willing to ingest them. A lot of those products would say ‘do not ingest’. We wouldn’t have to go to the hospital for ingesting anything that we use to clean or put on our bodies.” Lauren creates a dry shampoo using arrowroot powder or tapioca flour with a little bit of cacao. She also makes her own face powder using the same ingredients and Oberon whips up his hair wax out of almond oil, bees wax, and essential oil. “If you look at the ingredients list on the back of hair products, it’s like a chemistry experiment,” he says. “We make our own toothpaste which is based on coconut oil, bi-carb and essential oils and we also sometimes use dried, crushed egg shells and activated charcoal and bentonite clay. We make our own deodorant too which can also use a lot of the same ingredients as our toothpaste. So sometimes is we run out of toothpaste, you can just use the deodorant and vice versa which is really good. It’s great to only have to pack one when you are travelling.”
A lot of the things the Carters do now, are just looking at the best of what was done in the past and then using what they now know to make them even better. “Looking to the past, can give you some of the answers you are looking for,” Oberon says. “Sometimes it’s about looking back at how people used to do it in the old days.” Lauren’s grandfather was a professional house cleaner who swore by vinegar and newspapers for making windows gleam. “You don’t need to go and get a window spray that looks like bright blue Gatorade with all these added abrasive chemicals in it,” Oberon says. “Vinegar and newspaper works really well. There was a real kind of embracing of chemicals for a long time. Things that today we would never consider consuming were recommended to be ingested. So it’s only through the increased understanding of the impacts of different products or ingredients or chemicals that we know better now and I feel we are going to know better in 50 years time,” he said. “It’s worth looking back and asking the elders, ask your grandparents if they are still around or someone who is from a past generation how they might have done something and then you might find a chemical free alternative there because it might have been before all of these products were out that they are always trying to coax you into buying.”
The Carter’s store all their food and cleaning and beauty products in glass jars. Oberon says his family avoids chemicals like BPA found in plastics. “Plastics have lots of other chemicals,” he says. “Plastic is not a stable material chemically so overtime as the plastic deteriorates it can release chemicals into your food or whatever it comes in contact with.” The Carters started their chemical free lifestyle about fifteen years ago because Lauren suffers from terrible eczema outbreaks if she comes into contact with products containing SLS (Sodium Lauryl Sulphate) prevalent in dishwashing liquids or shampoos or cleaning products that foam up when you use them. She started making vinegar cleaning sprays to avoid commercial, chemically heavy products that caused her eczema flare ups. “There’s always a budget friendly chemical free alternative,” Lauren says. “The best way to avoid those chemicals that can harm you is to make your own products because you know exactly what the ingredients are.”
Retired Hobart dermatologist Frances Watkins, who is married to Tasmania’s fertility expert Bill Watkins, says reactions to skin care products could be irritant or allergic. “If the reaction is irritant then the product just needs to be avoided,” Frances says. “This is often the case with soaps, cleanses and shampoos. If the reaction is allergic then the specific ingredients causing the allergy need to be avoided by reading the ingredient list carefully and sourcing products that don’t contain the problem ingredient. She said the most common ingredients causing allergies were preservatives, fragrances and foaming agents. “As a general principal we should try to avoid chemicals,” she said. Frances says natural beauty products were a myth. “Read the fine print of the ingredient list and you will see these products are full of preservative chemicals,” she says. The Watkins have been reducing their own chemical exposure in their home and garden for more than six years. This January Bill attended a Madrid fertility conference where one of the speakers covered fertility and environmental chemical exposure. “The key speaker was very passionate about reducing the amount of chemicals we are exposed to around the home,” he said. “She was saying her work showed you can measure chemical levels in babies straight after they are born. So the placenta is not a perfect filter and I suppose it’s fairly logical really that those chemicals are going to be passed onto babies. Even though they are not terribly high levels, and there’s not direct evidence of harm to babies, it’s common sense to try and avoid chemicals.”
Being aware of the dangers of these chemicals can swing people away from using them says Eco and Us founder Bec Hartnett, but eliminating them altogether can be a daunting process. Her advice is to just start ticking things off your list. “You have to start somewhere,” Hartnett says. “Don’t beat yourself up about what you can’t control, just focus on the ones you can change. Don’t get overwhelmed by the big picture, just take little steps and you will get to your end goal. Each day adds up to big results.”
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