Margie Kelly
Blog Post List
October 24, 2013
The color of October used to be orange, as leaves died and pumpkins arrived on the scene. But now the color of October is pink, in the form of pink ribbons for breast cancer awareness appearing on everything from yogurt, Sharpies, football helmets, cereal and more. It’s time to move beyond the pink from awareness to prevention. Why? Because when 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with the breast cancer, how much more awareness do we need? This October, the Breast Cancer Fund launched “ Beyond the Pink ,” a campaign to engage individuals and institutions to shift resources away from awareness...
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September 13, 2012
Last month, industry giant Johnson & Johnson made a stunning announcement: it was prepared to eliminate a “most wanted” list of chemicals from its beauty and baby products lines by 2015. Johnson & Johnson plans to phase out preservatives like quanternium-15, which releases formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, and triclosan , an antibacterial that may harm the human immune system. Another chemical that Johnson & Johnson pledged to eliminate is 1,4 dioxane, which has been linked to increased risk of breast cancer. Johnson & Johnson contends the chemicals are safe and meet all...
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September 6, 2012
Are there vending machines lurking in the cafeteria or hallways of your children’s school? If so, you may want to learn as much about what is in those machines as you do about the books your child will be reading in the classroom this year. A study published in Pediatrics found children who live in states with laws regulating the sale of junk food in schools gain less weight – 2.2 pounds for a 5-foot tall 100 pound child - than children in states with no such laws. The findings were based on data from 6,300 students in 40 states. The researchers also found that kids who were obese in fifth...
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September 5, 2012
September has arrived. I’ve been so caught up with back-to-school preparations for my children that I haven’t had a chance to think about much more beyond the chaos in my house: setting new routines, figuring out car pools and bike routes, and helping with homework. It’s a hectic time. But those thoughts vanished after I remembered that September is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month . President Obama set aside the month “to remember the young lives taken too soon, stand with the families facing childhood cancer today, and rededicate ourselves to combating this terrible illness.”...
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August 15, 2012
Do you remember the moment you first learned you were pregnant? After the shock and awe period passes, pregnancy is the perfect time to commit to eliminating toxic chemicals from your food, home, and personal care products. Making your daily routines as healthy as possible during pregnancy will make you feel better and will go a long way toward protecting your unborn child from toxic chemicals like BPA, mercury, phthalates and more, all of which have been found in the bodies of pregnant women. Clearing out chemicals from your daily routines now is good practice for creating a healthy home...
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August 7, 2012
Labels can tell you all sorts of things about foods: the number of calories, the percentage of sodium or calcium recommended for your daily diet, whether it’s organic or contains food dyes or flavors. One thing you cannot know from a food product label is whether it was made with genetically engineered food, often referred to as genetically modified organisms or GMOs. There’s a massive campaign underway to make California the first US state to require labels on GMO food. Proposition 37 is a ballot measure on the November ballot this fall. All it took was 10 weeks for more than 1 million...
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July 25, 2012
by Margie Kelly, Communications Manager, Healthy Child Healthy World We know a lot about how toxic chemicals hurt kids. Babies are born with more than 200 chemicals in their bodies. Rates of childhood cancer keep rising, while other types of cancer are holding steady or declining. Every ecosystem, person and animal on the planet is contaminated with toxic chemicals. It’s not just factories that harbor dangerous chemicals; our couches, lotions, household cleaners, toys, building materials, canned foods and more in our homes are made with chemicals known to harm human health. We live in a stew...
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July 10, 2012
If you’re a meat-eater, it’s better for your health and the planet to buy antibiotic-free meat and poultry. That might be tough to do, given that 80 percent of the antibiotics in use are fed to animals raised for food to keep them growing faster and to prevent them from getting sick in crowded and unsanitary conditions. A recent poll released by Consumer Reports found a majority of people polled want more access to antibiotic-free meat. Eighty-six percent of respondents want meat and poultry free from antibiotics to be available in their supermarkets, but only 57 percent were able to find it...
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