What's In This Stuff?: The Hidden Toxins in Everyday Products - and What You Can Do About Them

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Penguin, Jan 2, 2008 - Health & Fitness - 400 pages
We all like to buy things that make our lives easier, keep us healthy and provide a bit of luxury. But, few of us are aware that many of the products we buy every day are polluting our homes and bodies. In this fascinating and sometimes shocking book, Pat Thomas reveals that many widely-used products contain a cocktail of cheap, poorly-tested chemicals that are implicated in long-term health problems. Many of us now scan food labels for unwanted ingredients, yet we unthinkingly use toiletries and other products that contain a multitude of undesirable chemicals, believing that what we put on our bodies is not as influential to health as what we put in them. However, scientists now believe that household and beauty products and everyday foods expose us a witches' brew of chemicals that wage a kind of chemical warfare against our bodies.

Wide-ranging and practical, What's In This Stuff? examines everything from food additives, beauty products and household cleaners, to pharmaceutical products and garden and pet supplies. It also contains a glossary of chemicals and E numbers, a list of the 50 chemicals you should definitely avoid, and suggests non-toxic alternatives to conventional products.
 

Contents

Introduction
Whats in Store?
Not Everything Gives You CancerBut Lots of Things
How Your Body Reacts
Especially for Parents
Food and Drink
Toiletries and Cosmetics
Household Products
Home and Garden Pesticides
Pet Supplies
A to
Afterword
Select Bibliography
Index

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About the author (2008)

Pat Thomas is a journalist and author in the field of alternative and environmental health. She is the author of a regular column - Behind the Label - in The Ecologist magazine and is contributing editor to the influential newsletter, What Doctors Don't Tell You. She is a regular contributor to newspapers, has written a number of books and appears regularly on TV and radio.

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