REVIEW: Green This! by Deirdre Imus

I've kind of been waiting for the furor over the "other Imus" to die down so this book can get the attention is deserves.

Call me a long-time admirer of Ms. Imus and her work with children with cancer and then figuring out on her own how big the toxin piece of the puzzle was...and how hospitals are huge repositories of chemicals and mutagens themselves (and don't forget the crappy food that would make anyone sick! We made sure to bring in our kids food AND water).

This book is full of easy and wise ways to green your cleaning and might even give you some insight into whether you overclean--as I used to--buying the marketers' ploys that we are in a war against microbes, must bleach, must ammonia, must KILL!!!! Actually, we're about 10-15% microbes ourselves, so bringing out the chems to kill 'em might not be the smartest of ideas.

I won't go over the tips, but after watching this great documentary Blue Vinyl about how PVCs not only might give you cancer and asthma but also how their manufacture and disposal gives people nearby a second chance to get more cancer...and so why we need to break our addiction to this noxious kind of plastic because the growing demand just means more pollution, etc.

Anyway, I was curious to see how/if Ms. Imus was going to address the issue, and I was more than pleased to see that one of the first things she did in greening Hackensack University Medical Center was to demand non-PVC bumpers and railings, thereby making it less toxic and hopefully starting the demand for these non-PVC products. THIS is the kind of thinking we need to do more of: how to make not just our homes less toxic and screw everyone else, but how can we simply, de-chemicalify, and also demand safer products so the whole world can be safer? Way to go, Deirdre Imus!

GreenFertility gives this two green thumbs up--buy this book and make your family AND the environment healthier.