What do you consider clean? Is it a sparkling glass window, laundry that smells like spring breeze and a room that smells like Lilacs? I have come to fear cleaning products. I consider them dirty. Our bodies are not steel walls. Our skin breathes and absorbs chemicals from our environment. There are a plethora of health regulations for food products, but the products we use to clean ourselves and our surroundings with daily are full of dangerous ingredients. The chemicals contained in these cleaning products are inadvertently absorbed into our bodies, especially via our hands.
One of my least favorite house products are air fresheners. They are utterly useless. Why cover a stink when you can clean it right? Why have your house reek like artificial flavons? Air fresheners are known to contain toxic chemicals such as formaldehyde, used to embalm the dead, and phenol (which can cause skin to swell, burn, or break into hives). Personally they give me headaches, but this may be cause by my snobby hate for them. Truly though, the fragrances may cuase respiratory irritation such has headaches and agitate asthma. We carelessly spray our air freshners and the little misty particles settle themselves lovingly onto our belongings and into our lungs.
Chlorine is actually an agent of chemical warfare. After World War II ended there was an abundance of chlorine. Of course a lot of money was made off of this surplus by adding it to water supplies and to many products, especially store-brand cleaners like dishwashing detergents. Of course residual dishwasher detergent remains on the dishes and you inevitably consume it even though there is a warning “harmful if swallowed” on the container. We literally are swimming with chlorine. Chlorine is said to cause breast cancer. My uncle puts bleach on his poison ivy rashes so who knows.Laundry detergent is one of those things I wish people would think twice about. It’s blue most the time. Why? It gets blended into the water supply and results in water contamination. The harmful chemicals used in laundry room products follow us everywhere. We inadvertently absorb them through our clothes and bedding. They often cause rashes, itches, allergies, sinus problems and so on.
Possibly one of the most toxic chemicals used in a household, along with corrosive drain cleaners and acidic toilet bowl cleaners, is oven cleaner. Oven cleaner often contain lye and ammonia or chlorine and ammonia. Both can eat the skin and affect the respiratory system. Some toilet bowl cleaners actually contain hydrochloric acid and hypochlorite bleach. When chlorine is mixed with acids, toxic chlorine gas can form. These cleaners can cause vomiting or coma if ingested. I think that might be interesting to witness.
There is also the topic of body cleansing products. There are harsh chemicals in our body wash, toothpaste, shampoos, antiperspirant deodorant…
I could go on for a long time.
My father used to run a car business. As a kid I’d wash cars with “brown stuff”: a brown liquid chemical in a spray bottle. He’d always say, “don’t breath it in”. Everyday working people such as my father are dealing with chemicals. How is one to make the connection that the exposure to products used in everyday work, from carpet cleaner to car cleaners, are making people sick. These products poison our bodies and environment. It is an interesting phenomena how this came to be.
All the cleaners are diluted with water and disapear through drains. Most ingredients in chemical cleaners are broken down and seem to be relatively harmless. There are, however, exceptions. There is a class of chemicals called alkylphenol ethoxylates (APEs). APEs are surface active agents that are used in cleaners for the detergents’ effectiveness. APEs have been found to mimic estrogen and interfere with the reproduction and survival of fish. Also, phosphates, water-softening minderal additives found in automatic dishwasher detergent, act as fertilizer and may spark overgrowth of algae. In this light, phosphates encourage eutrophication, or a depeltion of the oxygen supply in water. Extreme eutrophication leads to deadzones.
The solution is to stop purchasing stupid products to “clean” and to educate yourself about what you put on and near your body and in your surroundings. You can try all natural products, they smell good too. Usually they don’t give you headaches unless you’re really taking deep whiffsIt’s worth the extra money to be uncontaminated, I promise
There are simple solutions. For instance, instead of oven cleaner one can use salt and baking soda. Actually, baking soda can be used to clean many different things (including your teeth and face if you want to go that far). Other cleaning agents to utilize and look for are vinegar, lemon juice, borax. The best solution in many cases is some sort of orange cleaner for heavy duty cleaning needs and for the rest simple soap and warm water.
So, the same goes for a pretty face. Cosmetics also contain some very dangerous compounds. They are pretty scary and it takes a lot of time in a year to deck the face with shiney anyway. That time could be used to better oneself in a more permanent fashion. But seriously, consider what it is you are putting near your precious eyes and near your eating orifice and all over your skin.I’m sure you’ve heard it before anyway. Not like we can pronounce half the words in ingredient lists for our food let alone know what is in the cleaning products. If you haven’t noticed many time there aren’t any ingredient lists on cleaners. It drives me batty. To get an idea of what might be going on in the plastic bottles, read the warning labels and check for active ingredients, which are most likely detrimental to you in some way.

I know this is a big jump from mass ordering most of their foods from the third largest food distributor in the United States, Reinhardt Foodservices, but I believe Michigan Tech should create a space for a University garden. The school should integrate an organic garden into course work, first in to general distribution credits and later into a more meaningful purpose. This way the care for the garden would be taken care of by people who are passionate about the process and project. A garden would attract at least one faculty member concerned with sustainable, organic gardens and the type of lifestyle associated with it. I believe it would also attract certain types of passionate and driven students.
There exists universities and colleges integrating a garden, especially organic, healthy, flourishing gardens. Working with one’s hands in the dirt and witnessing and fostering the life cycle of a garden is an extremely useful learning tool and life experience. The presence of such a garden sends a particular vibe of health and prosperity as well as genuine concern. The produce harvested from the garden could be integrated into the meals provided on campus.
Reinhart FoodService (RFS) distributes food that could be coming from any where in the United States, as far as we know. RFS makes it possible for people and groups that needs enormous amounts of food to have a one-stop place for all their needs. Distribution services certainly have their place in business but such large operations dilute reality. It is hard to see the individuals responsible for the creation and production of consumables when they all arrive on the same truck. I have so many questions involving the transportation and spread of money, especially to famers who provided the staples for the food in the first place.
Upon my inquiry about the origin of foods used in Michigan Tech meals I received the reply that it would take a lot of time and searching to find that information and that I should look at the RFS website. I don’t think I could get any information from a private company about what they sell to Michigan Tech. Of course the student body and those who consume food provided by Michigan Tech Dining Services could ask that ingredients and origin of foods be given or available. It is largely up to the consumers to demand knowledge. It is the consumers’ dollar that keeps buisnesses going.
I want to know which produce is genetically modified and where the meat is coming from. How are the animals treated? What are the plants treated with and are they from seeds that have been patented? There is a lot of karma involved in the production of food products.
Why is it that this information already isn’t available on the Michigan Tech Dining Services website? Why isn’t it a question that consumers of the food ask very often?
I think everyone should wonder where their food is coming from. When the food is presented so readily at buffets and on counters it doesn’t occur to many people to ask how it got there. Sure the workers put the food together, but where was it before they put it out for dinner?
It is each of our personal duties to know what we are consuming. Each of us should know the consequences of our choices, espeically those choices that affect the entire globe. We cannot be so naive as to assume the food choices we make do not affect anyone else except our mouths and the Dining Services wallets.
Each time someone eats in the dining halls they are supporting the school’s choice to purchase their food from one of RFS’ 22 distribution centers. In turn that is a choice to support big companies. It is a choice to suppor the sprawling of food sources. It is a vote to n ot support local options and to buy food that may not be staying in Michigan but is trickling down from RFS to wherever they purchase their foods from. However, it is required that Freshman have to eat in the dorms. Although I think that this is debatable because it is one’s right to control what it is they support with their dollar and more importantly what they put into their mouths.
Let me share an anecdote. As a freshman I didn’t want to eat in the dorms. After a semester of trying to eat only salad with veggies coming from the unknown and most likely treated with fertilizers and pesticides, I decided to stand up for myself and get off the meal plan. I don’t eat meat from tortured animals , artifical dyes and flavors and I don’t want to eat bleached flour or white sugar. That accounts for a large majority of the offerings in the dining halls. It was pretty hard to get through. I had to fill paper work and talk to the guy in charge of dining services. I tried to explain to him that I am a crazy health nut and he was obviously angry at my want to stop eating in the dorms every day. Needless to say, he made me cry. However, he let me off the meal plan. In my opinion it’s because there really is no way to force people to eat where you want them to eat. He told me sternly that I shouldn’t go around telling people this is a way to get off the meal plan. I don’t see why I have to withold that information or the way I was treated. I am a firm believer in educating people about what is going on behind the scenes in their lives.
RFS is one of Reyes Holdings companies. On the Reyes Holdings website it states, “Reinhart FoodService is one of Burger King’s largest US distributors.” It is also one of Subway’s largest United States distributors. Of course this says nothing about what Michigan Tech purchases from RFS but it certainly gives an idea of the scale at which RFS operates and distributes. To me this screams that RFS has probably distributed beef that needed to be recalled since they purchase from around the United States.
I no longer see food but instead a mystery covered by advertising and the name Reinhart FoodService, or Dining Services.
I don’t like any level of secrecy. Even if there isn’t blatant lying, there are still choices to not include certain facts like any good propaganda or advertising scheme. I don’t like that something that should be so simple is made to be complicated. It’s food. It’s a need we meet everyday. Everyday we are putting food in our mouth. My modern interpretation of the word food is an adjective for a substance that gets put into a human mouth. It isn’t a word that makes me think of healthy cows feeding on grasses and it certainly doesn’t make me think of an apple or orange hanging heavily on a fruit tree branch. Instead, it makes me think of piles of tomatoes under fake, hard lighting and bread in plastic covering coming from elsewhere in boxes, rolling off the back of big trucks.

The price we pay for “health” is quite ridiculous if we just take a look. I say health with quotations because what most people are buying are advertisements and/or paying for medical bills and yet do not feel healthy. At least they aren’t experiencing health as it could be possible. I often fixate myself on the problem of out health as a nation.

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