Long gone are the days when ‘Unsafe at Any Speed’ revealed how little regard American car manufacturers had for safety. And even today we tend to think of our home as being our castle … a place where we can be safe from all the dangers of the world. But could it be that our car and our home are perhaps the most dangerous things to our health and wellbeing and even more dangerous for our children?

Sadly, for many of us, it’s an absolute fact that the very place where we seek sanctuary or the car we drive are indeed in the process of killing us … and if they’re not actually killing us then they’re making us extremely unwell. Obviously it’s something that we’re not aware of because if we were we would be doing something about it but it is happening and the people who are responsible know what’s happening and aren’t doing anything about it.

Why should they do anything about it? They’re making plenty of money running legitimate businesses that are operating within the law … even though they are doing so much damage to our health and ultimately to the health of the environment.

So who are these people who are slowly killing us? They’re the people who are filling our new cars with plastics and carpets that give off toxic gases that we can’t see and can’t smell but that do so much damage to us.

They’re also the people who are making furniture, carpets, fittings and even children’s toys that we eagerly buy for our homes and our kids because we know no better. It’s those items, just like the plastics in our cars that give off harmful gases that do so much damage to us.

And all those toxic emissions aren’t just happening while the vehicle or the furniture is new. They go on giving off toxic gases for years and the longer we are exposed to them the worse the damage is to our health.

Not every car and not every piece of furniture is as harmful as the next … it all seems to depend on the manufacturer … although it’s not clear that any manufacturer has reached the point where they are taking positive action to only source raw materials that are going to be low in toxic emissions … some just seem to be doing it by accident rather than intention. But how can we tell what’s harmful and what’s not?

Well it seems that most modern plastics, vinyl products and carpets give off some harmful emissions over their lifetime and without testing we can’t tell which ones are less harmful. Fortunately for us there are bodies out there … such as HealthyStuff.org … that runs tests on these products and go so far as to publish their findings on the Web.

In 2009 of the many vehicles that they tested, the 10 vehicles that gave off the least toxic gases in the passenger compartment were:

• Pontiac G5
• Chevy Coblt
• Toyota Corolla
• Honda Accord
• Nissan Cube Krom
• Honda Insight Hybrid
• Jeep Wrangler
• Toyota Prius
• Honda Civic Hybrid

The ten worst vehicles for toxic emissions were:

• Chevy Aveo
• Mitsubishi Eclipse
• Hyundai Tucson
• Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder
• Volkswagen Jetta
• Chevy Impala
• Volkswagen Beetle
• Volkswagen Eos
• Ford Expedition
• Audi TT Roadster

Chemicals in the home
Many of the chemicals that are found in the fittings in motor vehicles are also found in the furniture and fittings in our homes and even in some of the common consumables that we might use each day as well as in children’s toys, pet care products, and some fabrics used in the clothing we wear.

Sometimes the problematic chemicals form part of a compound in the item that is toxic and sometimes they are included in the toxic items without being part of a compound. Some of the chemicals that you should be concerned about are things like lead … a heavy metal that can be used in paints and plastics for color, as a stabilizer in PVC products and in metal castings for jewelry.

Bromine is another chemical that really cause you a lot of concern. Bromine is usually included in compounds that act as fire-retardants in children’s products and it’s also used in plastics and printed circuit boards as well as thermal insulation foam … the stuff that’s often sprayed in your roof to insulate your house.

PVC plastics are in common use just about everywhere and yet vinyl chloride … a building block of PVC … is a known carcinogen … and if PVC is burnt in a house fire for example it gives off dioxin, yet another well-known carcinogen.

Cadmium is a heavy metal used to stabilize PVC plastics and it can also be used for coatings and pigments on plastic and in paint. Cadmium is a known carcinogen that often produces cancers in the lungs and prostate.

Arsenic is a well-known poison and yet it is in wide-spread use in a variety of areas including wood preservatives, herbicides and insecticides. Sadly arsenic often shows up in children’s toys … probably from its use as a dye in textiles and plastics.

Mercury is often used in a variety of forms and some forms are more toxic than others. The latest use for mercury in what must be its most toxic form is in low-wattage fluorescent globes. If one of these breaks in your house you should evacuate the house immediately and call for help. You might not think that there would be enough mercury in a light globe to kill but there certainly is.

Those are just some of the chemicals that can be found in common fittings and furnishings in your house and in your car. It’s almost impossible to avoid them and the best you can do is limit your exposure to them … otherwise your car and your house could really kill you over a period of time.