Toxic Car Seats and a Case for Local Economies

I've been busy! Hopefully I will be able to write more regularly again soon.

For now I wanted to pass along this website: www.healthycar.org

This is for all you parents and parents to be out there. I'm passing this along for two reasons. One, so you can figure out if your car seat is poisonous and/or prevent you from buying a toxic one. Two, more importantly, I want this to serve as a reminder for all of us that, due to the reckless and indiscriminate use of toxic chemicals, we are all at risk of being poisoned. It is up to the individual consumer to minimize exposure from contaminated products. I've been thinking about this a lot in light of what's been happening with food and chemical production in China (the mass dog poisoning, mass human poisoning, and tooth paste contamination). We also have a current US engendered meat contamination going on.

Yet another (big) reason to re-localize our economies. Local food is less likely to be contaminated, and the same is true for locally made products. In the unfortunate case of a contaminated product the poisoning is limited to a smaller group of people rather than a huge and scattered population. Recalls could happen swiftly and easily.

This is pure speculation, but I would guess that local producers of food or goods would be less likely to use toxic chemicals in or on their products for a number of reasons. They would have to literally face the people who are harmed by their indiscretion. A local food producer may not need chemical preservatives because their product spends less time getting to the consumer. Smaller production is less complicated and more personal which allows producers to use higher quality, natural materials. Staying in the good grace of the community insures their survival as a business, why would they jeopardize that with a harmful product?

While we're on the subject of local economies, I just joined the Asheville Local Exchange Trading System (AshevilleLets). It's awesome!