Arsenic. Mercury. Pesticides. Dioxin. Toxic gases. Your typical hazardous waste dump, right? Wrong. These materials can be found in the home. Every day, people work, live, and play amid potentially harmful toxins-things they might not even know are there. They are exposed to these toxic substances in their homes, neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, foods, and consumer products. Now, two toxics experts with decades of experience in public health have created a book that separates the risks from the myths of everyday toxins. Comprehensive and easy-to-use, this guide provides scenarios and real-life examples-including important warning signs-that show how to identify problems and what to do about them. With Q&A segments, charts to help assess risk, and a special homebuyer's guide, What's Toxic, What's Not is a book no home should be without.

Arsenic. Mercury. Pesticides. Dioxin. Toxic gases. Your typical hazardous waste dump, right? Wrong. These materials can be found in the home. Every day, people work, live, and play amid potentially harmful toxins-things they might not even know are there. They are exposed to these toxic substances in their homes, neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, foods, and consumer products. Now, two toxics experts with decades of experience in public health have created a book that separates the risks from the myths of everyday toxins. Comprehensive and easy-to-use, this guide provides scenarios and real-life examples-including important warning signs-that show how to identify problems and what to do about them. With Q&A segments, charts to help assess risk, and a special homebuyer's guide, What's Toxic, What's Not is a book no home should be without.

Most of us turn a blind eye to the startling array of chemicals lurking in everything from shampoo to baby bottles to the bills in our wallets, choosing to believe that government agencies ensure the safety of the products we wear, use, ingest and breathe in daily. Yet the standards for product safety in North America lag far behind those of other countries. We frequently hear that a substance we’ve relied on for years turns out to have serious effects onour health, the environment, or both. After coming to terms with the fact that the autism and cancer which had impacted her family were most likely the result of environmental toxins, author Deanna Duke undertook a mission to dramatically reduce her family’s chemical exposure. She committed to drastically reducing the levels of all known chemicals in both her home and work environments, using the help of bodyburden testing to see what effect, if any, she was able to have on the level of toxins in her body. Follow Deanna’s journey as she uncovers how insidious and invasive environmental toxins are. Learn about your day-to-day chemical exposure, the implications for your health, and what you can do about it. And find out whether the author’s quest is mission impossible, or whether she is ultimately able to improve her family’s health by taking steps towardsleading a chemical-free life.

A powerful guide to owning our emotions—even the difficult ones—in order to show up authentically in the world, from the popular therapist behind the Instagram account @sitwithwhit. Every day, we’re bombarded with pressure to be positive. From “good vibes only” and “life is good” memes, to endless reminders to “look on the bright side,” we’re constantly told that the key to happiness is silencing negativity wherever it crops up—in ourselves and in others. Even when faced with illness, loss, breakups, and other challenges, there’s little space for talking about our real feelings—and processing them so that we can feel better and move forward. But if non-stop positivity is the answer, why are so many of us anxious, depressed, and burned out? In this refreshingly honest guide, sought-after therapist Whitney Goodman shares the latest research along with everyday examples and client stories that reveal how damaging toxic positivity is to ourselves and our relationships, and presents simple ways to experience and work through difficult emotions. The result is more authenticity, connection, and growth—and ultimately, a path to showing up as you truly are.

Like 75% of American women, Ronnie Citron-Fink dyed her hair, visiting the salon every few weeks to hide gray roots in her signature dark brown mane. She wanted to look attractive, professional, young. Yet as a journalist covering health and the environment, she knew something wasn’t right. All those unpronounceable chemical names on the back of the hair dye box were far from natural. Were her recurring headaches and allergies telltale signs that the dye offered the illusion of health, all the while undermining it? So after twenty-five years of coloring, Ronnie took a leap and decided to ditch the dye. Suddenly everyone, from friends and family to rank strangers, seemed to have questions about her hair. How’d you do it? Are you doing that on purpose? Are you OK? Armed with a mantra that explained her reasons for going gray—the upkeep, the cost, the chemicals—Ronnie started to ask her own questions. What are the risks of coloring? Why are hair dye companies allowed to use chemicals that may be harmful? Are there safer alternatives? Maybe most importantly, why do women feel compelled to color? Will I still feel like me when I have gray hair? True Roots follows Ronnie’s journey from dark dyes to a silver crown of glory, from fear of aging to embracing natural beauty. Along the way, readers will learn how to protect themselves, whether by transitioning to their natural color or switching to safer products. Like Ronnie, women of all ages can discover their own hair story, one built on individuality, health, and truth.

We are all shaped by our genetic inheritance and by the environment we live in. Indeed, the argument about which of these two forces, nature or nurture, predominates has been raging for decades. But what about our very first environment--the prenatal world where we exist for nine months between conception and birth and where we are more vulnerable than at any other point in our lives? In More Than Genes, Dan Agin marshals new scientific evidence to argue that the fetal environment can be just as crucial as genetic hard-wiring or even later environment in determining our intelligence and behavior. Stress during pregnancy, for example, puts women at far greater risk of bearing children prone to anxiety disorders. Nutritional deprivation during early fetal development may elevate the risk of late onset schizophrenia. And exposure to a whole host of environmental toxins--methylmercury, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins, pesticides, ionizing radiation, and most especially lead--as well as maternal use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, or cocaine can have impacts ranging from mild cognitive impairment to ADHD, autism, schizophrenia, and other mental disorders. Agin argues as well that differences in IQ among racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups are far more attributable to higher levels of stress and chemical toxicity in inner cities--which seep into the prenatal environment and compromise the health of the fetus--than to genetic inheritance. The good news is that the prenatal environment is malleable, and Agin suggests that if we can abandon the naive idea of "immaculate gestation," we can begin to protect fetal development properly. Cogently argued, thoroughly researched, and accessibly written, More Than Genes challenges many long-held assumptions and represents a huge step forward in our understanding of the origins of human intelligence and behavior.