SEATTLE - Cindy and Damon Knight are serious about protecting their children from environmental toxins. It's especially worrisome at the baby stage.
"They crawl around on the floor and things go in their mouths. And that's when we started looking more closely at our cleaning products," Cindy said.
They chose green cleaning products, including vinegar. They tossed out old baby bottles with chemicals, and they read ingredients on shampoos and lotions. But keeping up with new research is daunting.
"I'm already a label reader, but it's like, aww what if I forget to check something!" Cindy said.
Nailing down the risks is difficult even for the experts. Many of them met in Tukwila this week at the Northwest Children's Environmental Health Forum. There's urgency to find answers.
"Children are our most vulnerable population. They have developing organ systems. They're very vulnerable to the kind of environmental toxicants we see," said Dr. Sheela Sathyanarayana, of Seattle Childrens.
The local environmental health researcher and pediatrician consults with families on ways to protect their kids.
"It's kind of the concept of trying to decrease exposures as much as possible, but don't worry about getting to zero. Zero's not realistic," Sathyanarayana said.
Instead she says do simple things like gardening without pesticides, testing your home for lead paint, and vacuuming carefully to eliminate chemicals in household dust.
And keep kids away from the worst culprit - cigarette smoke.
Then take shoes off, to leave outdoor toxins at the doorstep.
While the government is working to make sure new toys are lead free, there's another way chemicals can make their way into children, in the kitchen.
"There are chemicals in non stick coatings called Perfluorinated chemicals. And they're very persistent in the body," Sathyanarayana said.
So avoid metal utensils that can scrape the coating.
Another tip as we get into wet winter months, get rid of mold that can worsen kids asthma and allergies.
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