A little about oil....

I am not a completely pure living sort of person, but I keep trying to perfect and get a little closer to the ideal. My family does try to do a lot of recycling, and even some reusing. For a very long time my mom has been vocal about her opinions about the possibility of too many people being over medicated. We use natural products for any minor health problems we might have, along the way my mom has educated me on all the aspects of why as a family we do the things we do, so I tend to have a knowledge, if only a little, about some things i don't think most people don't.

So here goes a little of it. Just about any shampoo, conditioner,makeup,detergent,fabric softener, dish soap,dishwasher detergent, paint,carpet, glue/adhesive, body or face lotion, contain a form of petroleum.That black gold stuff that also gets put into engines and gas tanks. Unless of course you already know this and are using organic non-petro chemically laden products.

Okay, now whenever you get the chance, go take a look at the ingredient list on any or all of the aforementioned products around your house. I can very nearly guarentee, unless your family is like mine, one or more of the ingredients listed will be a form of paraben,( methyl-,butyl- , ethyl-, and propyl-).

Why this is not such a good thing:Parabens and in general petroleum based products are considered xenoestrogens. What exactly is the problem with xenoestrogens? For starters screwing up the balance of hormones in both men and women, and there are studies that have shown a connection with breast cysts in particular.(I am neither a doctor nor scientist so please forgive me if i get any of this wrong)

I should at least say that there are those in the medical and scientific fields who do not believe these things cause us any harm. However, we were also led to believe and trust that the use of antibiotics were safe. How many prescription medications have been taken off the market within just a couple of years of people being told they were safe, only to find out later just how dangerous they were? Cigarettes were also at one time considered safe, only decades later to discover that they were deliberately misrepresented to the public. Incidentally, they also happen to still be available, regardless of the danger to public health.

This is an interesting series of articles on the subject, about male bass fish developing ovaries and too many female hormones in The Potomac.
http://www.nobreastcyst.com/bass.html

The other plus with buying nonpetroleum based products is saving oil for other uses. We use a brand called Seventh Generation for our laundry detergent, and liquid detergent for our dishwasher. The back of the bottle says:

"If every household in the U.S. replaced just one bottle of 100 oz. ultra petroleum based liquid laundry detergent with our 100 oz. ultra vegetable based product, we could save 225,000 barrels of oil, enough to heat and cool 13,000 U.S. homes for a year!"

If this is true, can you imagine if everyone bought a vegetable based product all of the time to replace all of their petroleum based products?