Cleaning It Green



Whenever it comes to a general discussion of hazardous chemical products, most people tend to feel worried about industrial wastes that are contaminating the air, water, and land around us. To give you all goose bumps, the threat of toxicity is more immediate – lying next to our daily life inside our very own houses. True that the levels of toxic chemicals used in households is usually much lower than those dealt with in industries or workplace. Nevertheless, houses do carry a threat to health and environment due to hazardous chemical products. While different substances in the house may contain higher than safe levels of toxic chemicals, household cleaners are particularly infamous for posing greater risks to health.
Aside from the composition of household cleaners, the latter are of worse concern to health-conscious families because they are used throughout the house for cleaning purposes. Since water is used with many of them, the vapors formed indoors may affect all the inhabitants of the house. Within a house, various cleaners of toxic composition are used in the kitchen, bathrooms, garages, and virtually anywhere. Two main reasons appear to be responsible for the use of potentially harmful chemical cleaners in our modern day houses. First, synthetic chemical cleaners are quick to use and help save the consumer’s time. Secondly, they are easier to use than many natural cleaners that were used prior to the popularity of synthetic cleaners. Given the health and environmental effects (both actually related) of synthetic cleaners, spending more time and effort is worth adopting.
Prior to going for natural and safer cleaners at home, it is important to identify hazardous cleaning agent used for household cleaning. This is easy since most of such cleaners are labeled with one of these three main alarming words: Danger, Warning, and Caution. Those marked with the word ‘Danger’ are the most toxic followed by those with ‘Warning’, and products labeled with ‘Caution’ are rather low in toxicity (though still not advisable for use). Generally, caustic and highly evanescent (solvent) substances used at home are mostly toxic to health. In the long term, they cause a large number of health problems ranging from skin problems to cancer.
For general safety to your health and environment, proper disposal of all waste/left-over materials is indispensable. Following the instructions on the container is the best way of safely using the product it contains. All labels need to be duplicated and affixed to a new container in case the user needs to change containers. People with access to the Internet (and who hasn’t got it these days) can get plenty of free information on safe disposal of household products. It goes without saying that all chemical cleaners need to be kept out of the reach of kids.

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Coping with Garden Bugs



One of the reasons why organic gardening can come as a real challenge is the limit on insect (pest) control methods. Green living means saving the ecological habitat from noxious pesticides. While environment and health may be smiling in relief at the non-use of toxic chemicals, our eco-conscious gardener is apparently at a loss here. But not really! A number of safe and environmental-friendly means of pest control can be practiced to obtain a healthy yield in plenty.

Organic gardeners, unless they are just about to begin with the gardening practice, know that selective plantation of certain plant species/families obviates the need of using any insecticides. A large number of herbs and vegetables – including radish, pea, turnip, sweet potato, beet, and onion etc – develop with little threat from insects. However, there are crops that fall a prey to garden bugs. These include potato, cauliflower, broccoli, beans, cucumber, pumpkin, and many other food plants. The first thing to do for an organic gardener, therefore, is to mark the pest-resistant and pest-prone varieties of crops.

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Checking Greenhouse Gases for a Cool Planet



For nearly three decades, greenhouse gases have been censured, in academic circles as well as mass media, as the agents responsible for the greenhouse effect and hence for a considerable degree of global warming. As their levels rise in the earth’s atmosphere, they absorb and emit infrared radiation that would otherwise escape the earth and dissipate away into space. This way, greenhouse gases keep increasing the average global temperature of our planet.

Both natural and anthropogenic processes are the sources of greenhouse gases that accumulate in the atmosphere, blanketing the earth all around. Before discussing the relative role of natural versus human factors in producing greenhouse gases, it is worthwhile to know what greenhouse gases are and their relative proportion in earth’s atmosphere.

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