Is Your Laundry Detergent Safe?

Is Your Laundry Detergent Safe?

Dana Grinnell shares the origins of her toxin-free online marketplace, Free Living Co along with her Top 3 Tips to Reduce Toxin Exposure Today.

I’m Dana, Founder of Free Living Co. Like you, I love to spend my time outside in our beautiful mountains and do my best to live a generally healthy lifestyle. My background in healthcare prompted over a decade of research and awareness into the toxins in our products and environment here in the US, becoming a student of clean living after witnessing so many otherwise healthy individuals entering the hospital for care. After living what I thought was a clean lifestyle for over a decade, I had a laundry detergent incident which prompted an entirely new career path.

On my return trip from Costco with the cleanest laundry detergent I could find that would service a busy, dirty, and stinky family of 5 - I opened my trunk to find the bottle had leaked all over the back of my car and in doing so, had turned from clear to radioactive purple, just by leaving the container. It occurred to me at that moment that the dramatic change was a result of a chemical reaction. I looked it up on the Environmental Working Group database (known as EWG) and discovered that the “free & clear, #1 dermatologist recommended” laundry detergent had ingredients known to cause cancer, reproductive, and developmental effects, allergies, and immunotoxicity. I’d had enough!

With absolutely no regulation on harmful ingredients in personal and household products, rampant greenwashing on labels, mediocre screening by “natural & healthy” brick and mortar and online marketplaces, and the shipping and packaging overload of trying to order clean products, I concluded there had to be a better way. Thus, Free Living Co was born.

At Free Living Co, we scrutinize and screen every ingredient in every product we carry and only carry products deemed to be safe for repeated human (and canine) use. We also deliver our products in reusable totes to minimize the shipping and packaging impact on mother earth. Our products span the spectrum of wellness as we aim to be your 1-stop clean and green shop!

We also love nothing more than to share knowledge on simple ways to live a clean and healthier life.  Afterall, you can do all the right things with exercise and diet but if you live in a house full of toxins your health is still at risk.

Here are my Top 3 Free Living Tips to Reduce Your Toxin Exposure Today:

Last Pump, Last Squirt. Download the EWG healthy living app. As you pump those last drops of lotion or spray that last squirt of all-purpose cleaner, scan the product to see what it’s rated before buying it again. Could you replace it with a cleaner alternative? Aim for an EWG verified rating of 1 or 2 for personal products and A or B for household products (our standard in our Free Living Co online store).

Avoid Fragrance. Avoid anything with “fragrance” listed as an ingredient. There are over 3000 compounds that comprise the general term fragrance. You will have absolutely no way of knowing what chemicals are in that particular cocktail and even if it claims to be “phthalate” free it is still a chemical, so skip it.

Bye Bye Plastic. Similar to the “Last pump, Last squirt” rule above, as you pull your last piece of saran wrap or grab the last zip lock in the drawer, replace your single-use plastics with a reusable silicone, glass, bamboo, stainless steel, or beeswax alternatives. Not only are plastics not great for the environment but the microplastics that end up in our food, and ultimately in our bodies, are harmful to human health and best avoided. We have a lovely selection of plastic free alternatives on our Free Living Co website.

Shop Small & Toxin Free. Follow along as I share monthly tips on clean living, visit our online store at freelivingco.co, or email me directly at dana@freelivingco.co and take the guesswork out of buying healthy, toxin-free products for your family and home.