One Simple Step That Can Keep Your Child Healthy

 

One Simple Step That Can Keep Your Child Healthy

{Photo credit: With A Red Bird On My Shoulder}

You wouldn’t let your baby crawl on the floor of a public restroom or through the oil splattered parking lot of the auto body shop. You wouldn’t let him roll around in a freshly fertilized landscape or retrieve his fallen pacifier from the grounds of a busy dog park. You wouldn’t expose your baby to these places because you know that vast majority of germs and bacteria live in them.

So, you visit the grocery store and get your oil changed and take the dog for a walk, and then you come home and immediately wash your hands. You set your baby down on the floor and let him crawl around at your feet while you prepare dinner. As you walk around the kitchen, he follows on his hands and knees. He stops to pick up a toy, and nibbles on its edges.

Crawling

{Photo credit: With A Red Bird On My Shoulder}

In this simple act, your baby has just consumed particles of E-coli from the dog park, traces of oil from the auto body shop, salmonella from the floor in the meat section of the grocery store and pesticides from the fertilized lawn.

And they all came from your shoes.

If that isn’t scary enough,  aside from bacteria, pesticides, oil, animal and human feces, dirt , allergens and a number of other germs and toxins, we are also tracking  a significant amount of lead dust into our homes on our shoes.

In 1991, the U.S. Environmental Protective Agency (EPA) conducted “The Door Mat Study,” in which they concluded that taking your shoes off at the door can reduce the amount of lead dust tracked into your home by 60 percent. Further more, wiping your shoes off on a door mat and then removing them can reduce lead dust in your home by 98.5 percent. So, by simply wiping and removing your shoes, you can eliminate nearly ALL of the lead dust in your home.

You do everything you can to keep your children healthy and safe. This single act of leaving your shoes at the door can reduce their exposure to thousands of toxins that are both detrimental to their health but also their growth and development. It’s that simple.

 

For more tips on keeping your family healthy, visit HEALTHY LIVING in THRIVE

Source:

Small property owners of America, The Door Mat Study

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Danielle
Daniellehttp://www.Witharedbirdonmyshoulder.com
Danielle is a Pittsburgh native who has been warming her “black and gold” blood in sunny Northern California for the past 6 years. On any given day, you can find her arranging ridiculous photo shoots of her one-year-old son Graeme and cat Gizmo, or working on any one of her 27,000 writing projects. She enjoys daydreaming about becoming a famous actress and starting a handful of different businesses with her husband over glasses of wine in the evenings. Someday, she hopes to travel the country in an RV with her family… but she needs to sell that novel first. You can follow her journeys through her blog With A Red Bird On My Shoulder

3 COMMENTS

  1. I just wanted to express my thanks to your team for writing and sharing this article. I have been telling my friends who have children on how important it is to take our shoes off when we first walk into our homes. My 21 month old son was trained to take his shoes off at the door when he first started to walk. Now it is so automatic. When my husband and I were purchasing our first Condo, we even made sure there was large entrance so there was enough space for everyone to take their shoes off. So, Thank you!

  2. Oh my god. You can’t be serious. Good, standard hygiene is important, but this takes it to a ridiculous extreme. Kids need a reasonable level of exposure to germs to build up a resistance.

    I have three kids, and *gasp* allowed them to play on the floor since they were babies. They are now 4, 6 and 12, happy and healthy with fantastic immunities.

    Enough with the fear mongering.

  3. In response to the “fear mongering” comment: kids definitely do need a reasonable level of exposure to germs to build up resistance and strengthen their immune systems naturally.

    HOWEVER, exposure to lead, salmonella or e.coli will not strengthen your immune system, and those are the very toxic, dangerous particles and bacteria that the author is referring to. They are very present on the soles of our shoes, and thus get tracked into your home if you don’t take your shoes off.

    So yes, please let your kids play in the fields, in the sand, with farm animals, etc. But don’t confuse naturally occurring bacteria that live outdoors with poisonous heavy metals and fecal matter.

Comments are closed.

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