Hooray for Home Depot!

I know you all think I've gone off the deep end, but this is really important!

As I posted earlier, I'm a little worried about all those compact fluorescent light bulbs, because they contain mercury - a potent neurotoxin - which means if these bulbs break, in our homes or in the trash, you have to go through a big ordeal evacuating the house, etc.   Plus, if they're thrown in the trash, they'll certainly end up breaking and the mercury will spill into our water, soil and air.

I'm thrilled to hear that Home Depot has just announced that that every single one of their stores will be recycling old CFL bulbs!    Just bring any unbroken CFL bulb to the returns desk, and voila!   Hooray!  

FYI - the new energy-efficient halogen lightbulbs by Phillips don't contain mercury and are much safer.

Detox: the series begins

I am the proud mama of two sweet little boys.   My older son, we'll call him "Big T", has autism.

So many people ask me what I think causes autism, so I'll give you my opinions here on "A Mama Told Me" from time to time.     Keep in mind these are my opinions, based on my research and consultations with doctors and experts (and a bunch of other people WAY smarter than I am) - but if this was all cut and dry simple, we'd have figured it out by now.  So here goes:   

Genetic predisposition + environmental insult = Autism.

I believe some children are less able to detoxify all the gunk we put in our bodies.  So when the are exposed to outside toxins, their bodies can't filter and excrete the gunk out as fast as it's coming in, and they get pushed past their "toxic tipping point", and descend into autism.

Kind of like someone born with a deadly peanut allergy.    Genetics, plus the toxic insult (in this case, peanuts) causes a terrible reaction.

And I agree with a lot of the newer research that says that the autism spectrum is really a long line - with ADHD/allergies/asthma at one end, and full-syndrome, non-verbal autism at the other.     So maybe a child who would have just been "ADHD" would be pushed down into autism after a toxic exposure, and perhaps a completely healthy child is pushed into ADHD or allergies and asthma.

I know, I know, I sound like a nut.   This, coming from the chick who's always preferred the indoors, welcomed all chemicals, and loves air conditioning.   I never even used to wash my produce.   (Except when I had company, of course.)

But I believe this is very real, and our children are the canaries in the coal mine.

But don't freak out - all we need to do is to try to be better than we were before.   In the coming weeks, I'll post about ideas for reducing our toxic loads that even lazy moms like me can do. 

For now, if you're totally antsy to learn more, visit www.tacanow.com for lots of info.