According to Deirdre Imus, why is it important to raise green kids?

Interviewer (M) Deirdre Imus (W)
M: Now Earth Day is approaching. We are showing you how to be green in every aspect of your life, how to go green. And we are kicking off this series this morning with Deirdre Imus, the author of Growing Up Green! —Baby and Child Care. Her book leads us to raise all of our children in a healthy and environmentally friendly way. It’s packed with really wonderful tips. What are those great ideas? Today we are honored to have Deirdre Imus here. Welcome, Deirdre Imus!
W: Thank you, Sam.
M: Tell me why it is even important for us to be thinking about raising a child environmentally friendly from day one. Why is that important?
W: (1) It’s important because our children are being exposed in all directions from their food, everyday products, cleaning products, everything in the home. The air, our soil, our water is polluted. Many of these products in our food chain has harmful ingredients, so it’s possible to use at least some of toxicity with everything you do with your children for alive.
M: And reading this, it starts to make sense to me because we have somebody crying in the studio. (2) It starts to make sense to me because you smell the product-when you spray, it smells harsh to you, but the kids are on the floor, they have their mouth on the table, they are actually taking in all these stuffy not being aware of them at all. Let’s start with the house cleaning products. Do we get the chemicals out of these products?
W: Yes, these products are all non-toxic products, the great example here is hand dish, distilled white vinegar which has been around for years, and then non-toxical purpose cleaners. The difference with the green and non-toxic cleaning products is that they do not contain any synthetic chemicals.
M: (3) Those are what we are really worried about, the synthetic chemicals.
W: Really. Especially the bleach for moms that have little babies and pets. It’s a low-lying chemical, which means it’s at around our knees. It stays at that level where your child’s mouth is breathing, a young child. So it’s much more harmful to children.
M: I love your tip that cleaning products should look like water because if they don’t, then they have chemicals and false colorings and anything else, sort of. So they should look clear like that. I didn’t think about that.
W: Unless they use vegetable dye for their colorings, they are naturally going to be clear. Otherwise they have synthetic chemicals that are very harmful.
M: Now glass bottles. This was the biggest news yesterday with the plastic bottles, glass bottles and baby food, organic baby food. Tell me why organic food is important.
W: (4) Organic food is important because organic means that all the food that you are feeding your child does not have pesticides. Again, pesticides are known to contain harmful things and are totally in links from studies with all the children’s illnesses that will happen. It smells good, right?
M: It does smell good.
W: "EARTHS BEST", the trademark of an organic food for children, has been around, and this is what I fed my nine-year-old son and I’ve even eaten this baby food. There’s a study that was done where over 16 different pesticides were found in just a jar of conventional baby food.
M: That really shocked me a lot when I read this in newspapers this morning.
W: How terrible it is! (5) And pesticides are known as certain chemicals and are linked to everything from cancer, learning disabilities, allergies and asthma.
M: Well, let’s be fair, this costs more money than regular baby food right now, but about how much?
W: Well it does cost a little more, but also you can buy them in bulk. You can go to certain stores, health food stores now that they are more cost-competitive and of course now Gerber has an organic line as well.
M: OK, that’s helpful.
W: And there’s alternative. You can make your own baby food. I did that when my child was a baby, it’s easy to make, just mashing up the potatoes and the green vegetables. It’s easy.
M: So in that way, it isn’t more expensive.
W: No, it’s not.
M: Are there other important factors we should pay attention to?
W: Well, the baby bottles are big things, too; glass bottles are the gold standard for baby bottles. I highly recommend glass. For whatever reason, if someone doesn’t want glass and there are healthier plastic bottles, but still they’re plastic. They’ve taken out the major chemicals in them but they are still toxic.
M: So, in order to raise a green child we need to put much effort in it!
W: Yeah, that’s true.
M: Well, thank you very much for coming on the show and sharing your ideas with us!
W: My pleasure.