Recently I read The Non-Toxic Avenger by Deanna Duke. I first stumbled upon Duke’s blog a couple of years ago, and found some useful takeaways from her writing. Therefore, I was looking forward to reading her book. While poorly edited and containing many irrelevant asides, the book would be helpful for those curious about the health effects of today’s modern world as it contained references to studies detailing the negative affects of chemicals that are in many everyday products. Everyone could find an improvement that would be easy to make as Duke does showcase several different ways to lower one’s exposure to such chemicals.
The premise of the book is that Duke leads a healthier than average lifestyle, yet worries about the toxic body burden she and her family have and the consequences of that burden. Her husband has a form of cancer that was practically unheard of in people his age until recently, and her son is one of the growing tide of children diagnosed with Asperberger Syndrome. Duke wondered how our modern exposure to so many relatively new substances played a part in their illnesses.
To see if it’s possible to lower a person’s chemical load, Duke had body burden testing done to see her current levels of several key health-hurting compounds, she changed her lifestyle to be as non-toxic as possible, and then she had body burden testing done once again to see the difference. I won’t spoil the test results for you, you’ll have to read the book to find out the test results!
Overall, I would say this book is great for someone who wants to keep up a lifestyle of consumption, but wants to consume less toxic products. Duke tries several different body care products, and gives her recommendations as to which do a good job while still not exposing you to carcinogens. For those looking for alternatives to store-bought solutions, this book is sparse in its offerings.
Many of Duke’s changes to her life are things we already do. She ate organic food, used coconut oil as a moisturizer rather than lotion, chose natural fabrics over synthetic, used deodorant without aluminum, avoided plastics, used only beeswax candles, etc. These changes are all easy to make, and I think life’s been better since we’ve made them. Many of these changes are cheaper, too!
New houseplants we bought as a result of reading this book
There are a couple of improvements that we made to our lives that were motivated by this book. First, we went through the kitchen to get rid of any suspect plastics and anything with non-stick coatings. We didn’t really have much of either as we’ve avoided those products for years, but we had a few things still hanging around that we gave the boot. The second change was to increase the number of houseplants we have in the house. Duke devotes a section of the book to how houseplants can improve indoor air quality. While that’s somewhat self-evident, we hadn’t taken the time to bolster our houseplant collection since we moved and gave away plants at that time. The research she cited motivated me to go get plants! This article that Duke cited says for an 1,800 square foot home, 15-20 plants should make a difference in air quality. That figure should give you a guideline for how many plants you’d need for your home. We still need more but we improved our plant count from 2 to 12 already!
More plants!
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