One Small Change - January 2011

My one small change for January focuses on the kids' pajamas.  We recently learned that all loose fitting kid pajamas are coated with fire retardant chemicals.  Once we learned this, we tried to find information online about these chemicals.  Some information said the chemicals were harmless and there was too much hype over the concerns regarding them in the use on kids pajamas.  Other articles said the chemicals DID have harmful effects....specifically showing signs of messing with the nervous system and thyroid.  Interesting.  Other articles said that some of the chemicals hadn't been used over long periods of time so not enough was known about long term effects. 

Though we could not ever discover 100% if the chemicals were harmful or not, we WERE able to discover what pajamas they are used on.  Basically, any loose fitting pajamas have the retardant chemicals on them.  I'm not sure about the organic options, but the normal ones you buy in the store have the retardant.  The ones that are free of chemicals are long johns and those thin cotton two piece numbers that remind me of thin long johns, just made of cotton instead of thermal. 

One of the major issues that was pushed by the authors of the articles in favor of the retardant chemicals on p.j.s was the chance of the child coming into contact with an open flame such as a candle.  Their point was that if the child was messing around with the open flame, their loose fitted p.j. sleeve would not ignite.  Well, we rarely light candles in this house and when we do, we don't leave them in reach of the kids.  Never once did the pro fire retardant authors address the fact that if the house were to catch on fire, the retardant in the p.j.s would not do much for a child who's bed sheets and hair would catch fire.  Authors against the chemicals did mention this fact.  In the tragic event of a house fire, the retardant doesn't have a fighting chance against all the other flammable materials surrounding the child.  Since our kids' safety in the case of a house fire would not have anything to do with weather or not their p.j.s were flame retardant, and since we don't have open flames such as candles lit in the house at their level, making the switch to chemical free p.j.s was easy for us. 

Everyone has an opinion and with stuff like this, since we're not scientists, its hard to know who to believe. We decided that since the harmful effects were unclear, we'd just skip on the loose fitting store bought p.j.s to be on the safe side. The kids already have a decent amount of thermal and cotton long johns so it was easy to go through their p.j.s and get rid of all the bunny sleepers and loose fitting two piece sets. I consigned, thrifted, and handed down their old p.j.s. None went in the trash.  To fill in the few gaps in their pajama needs, I sewed up a few flannel pants for each of them.

 

Kian was NOT happy about modeling his Big Butt Baby Pants and needed some consoling from Daddy after the torment of it all.

So how is this one small (green) change?  No chemicals = Green   
Plus, I'm really good at reusing stuff so a lot of the flannel used to make their pants (as well as the piles of flannel waiting to make more when they grow out of these) was handed down scraps, old sheets, or thrifted.  So I'm using stuff that would have otherwise just been thrown out.  Some is new flannel though, I admit.  JoAnns was having a super sale on flannel on Black Friday and I got sucked in big time.  :)  But in this house, we use flannel to the max.  None will go to waste!