Mommy Goes Green

Parents Magazine has a lot of great safety tips in their August issue including one about garden hoses and lead that I hadn’t heard anywhere before.  There is no safe level of lead consumption so we should try to limit exposure to ourselves and our family as much as possible.  The magazine’s advisor, Ari Brown, M.D., noted that many hoses are made of PVC, a material that contains lead.  ( lead is just ONE of the problems with PVC )  Since lead can leach into the water coming out of the hose, you should run the hose for a minute or two before using it to fill baby pools, for example.  Whether we like it or not, we know our kids drink the water in the pool!  They also suggested never letting children drink directly from the hose. 

 This is a great practice for in the house, too.  We recently had the water in our home tested for lead and it came back positive.  Our house was built in 2007 so lead exposure in your house does not just apply to older homes.  The advice we received from the testing lab was to run water for a couple of minutes until it’s cold before drinking and never to drink hot water from the tap – always heat cold water in the microwave or on the stove.  We are also purchasing a water filter – more on that in the future!

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