Did you know that for 50 years, variations of x-ray machines were popularly used in shoe stores? Yup, it’s true!
A kid would try on a new shoe – then put his foot inside the x-ray machine – while the parent and shoe-store attendant peeked into the machine to see how much wiggle room the little toes had. As you can imagine, this revolutionized shoe-buying!
Despite people getting really sick and dying as a direct result of too much extended x-ray exposure, early scientists, physicians, and inventors argued x-ray machines to be perfectly safe. And so the use of x-ray technology went widely unregulated for a long time.
To give you an idea, x-ray technology was discovered in 1895, and shoe stores kept using these machines into the 1970s. Meaning many of you reading this might remember using them.
Due to more research showing how direct exposure to x-rays can lead to hair-loss, burns, cancers and all kinds of other negative side-effects – the use of x-ray technology is widely regulated today. And for good reasons!
Isn’t Everything Cancer Causing?
As much as everything we do today is claimed to be “cancer causing”, I often wonder what one-thing my girl will one day look back at and say “I can’t believe my health-conscious parents did that not knowing how bad it was for their health”.
I used to laugh when people came up with yet another thing that was supposed to be “cancer causing”. I’d say dumb things like “oh everything causes cancer these days, doesn’t it” or “living itself is deadly!”
Now that I am raising a 4 year old, I take all this stuff a little more seriously. Not just so I live a longer and healthier life, but more importantly that I raise my daughter to live as healthy, happy, and fulfilling a life as I can.
Yes, eating healthy is important and goes a loooong ways. And as you know from following my blog, I am passionate about healthy food. I constantly try to find ways to make food healthy, nutritious, while also keeping it delicious.
Health Conscious Beyond Food
As passionate as I am about the things we put in our body, I’ve started to become passionate about the things we put on our body: Does it contain harmful chemicals? Is it good for the skin? Is it naturally rejuvenating? etc.
For the last 4 years or so I’ve started taking a closer look at the ingredients in the soaps, shampoos, lotions, makeups, etc that we have in the house. And started replacing them one by one with products free of potentially carcinogenic (cancer causing) and other questionable ingredients.
Yes. I know I can go overboard with this, but if given a choice, does it not make sense to go with the safest option possible? When I stop to truly think about it, it makes perfect sense to me.
Truth is, every product on the shelf today claims to be “safe”. Is it really though? Is “safe” enough? What if I want products that are not just “safe”, but also all around “good” for us?
Chemical Conscious Companies
This quest for products with no questionable ingredients has led me to trying dozens of different products from all kinds of “health conscious” companies. Yes, some of the products were clean of potentially harmful chemicals, but I did not like how they worked (or failed to work) on my body.
Then just this year I was introduced to a company that has been extremely vocal about chemicals being used in many hygiene and makeup products. Many of these chemicals have long been banned in places like Europe because of them being dangerous or unsafe, and yet are still widely used in the US and Canada.
This company has a long list of unsafe chemicals it will NOT use and is constantly urging regulators in the US to ban them from being used in common household products. Even if I never used this particular company’s products, a safer “tomorrow” is something I can most definitely get behind.
Regulation VS Reality
Just because a company claims it’s products meet all regulatory requirements, does not mean they are good or even safe for consumption. Just like shoe stores used x-ray machines that met all regulatory requirements, did not mean they were safe to use when trying on a dozen pair of shoes.
The reason regulation was so non-existent for these machines for almost a hundred years was because side-effects of using them did not manifest instantly. Meaning, the symptoms took a long time to show, and ultimately killed a handful of people before regulation tightened up.
Something tells me the same is inevitable for a lot of the chemicals being used in health, hygiene and beauty product today. Which is why I decided to do something about it and team up with a company who has a long history of going above and beyond regulatory requirements.
To learn more, please check out my short introduction to this up-and-coming company here!