Happy Monday!
I hope you all had a great weekend! I missed last week's "Melaleuca Monday" post because our son came down with a nasty virus and it lasted ALL week. In fact he just got his appetite back yesterday.
So, I thought it would be appropriate to make today's post about Melaleuca's disinfectant spray called Sol-U-Guard, since we have used it A LOT in the last week!
First, if you are new to the blog and haven't heard of Melaleuca, you can click here to read more about it. Each "Melaleuca Monday" post is meant to EDUCATE not to scare, even though the facts about ingredients found in name brand products can be down right scary sometimes!
Anyways, being a first time mom, I'm sure I was a little over protective in taking care of our toddler while he was sick, in fact I know I was and I can totally admit that! But I have never seen a baby look like he looked in my entire life and it honestly scared me to death! At one point his fever went from 99 to 102.8 in a matter of minutes! He had the shakes, his nails were losing color, and his eyes became very droopy. I took him to the doctor twice in 2 days because I didn't know what else to do, and all for our very patient pediatrician to kindly sit me down and tell me, "its a virus, probably the worst virus he can get for his age, and it's going to be bad for the next 7 days. He WILL have fever for the next 4-7 days and it will spike and subside which brings on some very scary looking side effects like the ones you saw before bringing him here........again!"
So being the neurotic mama that I am, I immediately left the pediatrician's office and started googling everything about this virus and what I could do to help my son. Everything I was reading paired exactly with what the doctor told me, in addition to finding information from the Mayo Clinic that said I could try to cut the life of the virus in half by practicing very good hygiene. So, as soon as I got home, I was on a mission to "clean this virus out of my house!" Now, before you stop reading and write me off as a total cuckoo bird, I DO NOT think that me using Melaleuca alone, Sol-U-Guard in particular, gave my son any more of an advantage to fighting his illness. But what I do want you to know, is that because Melaleuca's products are all natural AND effective, I felt safe enough using them more often than normal and had the confidence that they were working to kill the germs!
I also read that this particular virus was very contagious and spread through saliva. Well, seeing as though our son is constantly drooling from cutting his molars (bad timing I know!), I knew this was going to be extra tricky.
The first thing I did was round up all of his favorite and most used toys and soaked them and/or sprayed them down with Sol-u-Guard by Melaleuca. Because of his age, everything he touches these days goes straight into his mouth so it was safe to assume that every single toy and book he loves was covered in saliva and germs. So to disinfect, I soaked the plastic and non-battery operated toys in big glass bowls with a few cap fulls of the Sol-U-Guard concentrated solution and hot water. To disinfect his books and the battery operated toys, I sprayed them with the Sol-u-Guard solution in a spray bottle. The best part, and my favorite thing about Sol-U-Guard is that it does not need to be wiped off after you spray it! The longer you leave it on a surface, the more germs it kills (up to 10 minutes) AND it is safe enough to leave on your child's toys without having to wipe it off. Can you say the same about Clorox Disinfectant Spray or 409? Would you feel comfortable leaving 409 on your child's toy knowing the next time they played with it, it was going in his/or her mouth? If the answer is yes, than Melaleuca is not for you and that is TOTALLY OK! If the answer is no, your worries are warranted and you're not alone in your thinking. Here's why...
The 3 most common ingredients in household disinfectants are ...
INGREDIENT POTENTIAL HARM
| Disinfectant | Sodium hypochlorite | Corrosive; irritates or burns skin, eyes; may cause pulmonary edema or vomiting and coma if ingested. |
| Phenols | Flammable; very toxic; respiratory, circulatory, or cardiac damage. |
| Ammonia | Vapor irritating to eyes, respiratory tract, and skin; possible chronic irritation. |
(information found on downtoearth.org)
There are stories on the internet about people accidentally leaving 409 disinfectant on their stove and not fully wiping ALL of the solution off and when they lit the burner the next time for cooking, 409 fumes were propelled into their eyes and burned very badly, sending some people to the hospital!
Here are some of the most toxic cleaning products on the market, according to EWG...
All-Purpose Cleaners
• Simple Green Concentrated All-Purpose Cleaner—This product is anything but green. It contains 2-butoxyethanol, a solvent that soaks through the skin and damages red blood cells; even more dangerous is that some people miss the fine print and don't dilute it.
• Citra-Solv Cleaner & Degreaser—Orange may seem natural, but these sprays contain d-limonene, which can react with ozone in the air to form tiny harmful lung-penetrating particles and the known carcinogen formaldehyde.
• Clorox, Fantastik, Febreze, Formula 409, Mr. Clean, and Spic and Span— EWG says many sprays sold under these brand names contain quaternary ammonium compounds or ethanolamine, ***compounds that can cause or trigger asthma.
To read about more products on this same list click here
A type of glycol ether is frequently found in popular cleaning products such as Windex Aerosol, Formula 409, Lemon Fresh Pine-Sol and Simple Green All Purpose Cleaner.The chemical, called ethylene glycol butyl ether or EGBE, is on California's list of toxic air contaminants. Some animal studies indicate that it produces reproductive problems, such as testicular damage, reduced fertility, death of embryos and birth defects. People exposed to high levels of EGBE for several hours have reported nose and eye irritation, headaches, vomiting and a metallic taste in their mouths, studies show. (to read this entire article click
here)
***So to sum it all up, 409 disinfectant cleaner has been linked to asthma, infertility, head aches, eye irritation, and many other symptoms because of its toxic ingredients!!!
My question is, why risk it? If scientific research is showing that big name brand products are not safe for our health, why risk it when there is a safer, healthier, inexpensive, and effective alternative!?!
Sol-U-Guard by Melaleuca kills 99.9% of household germs including Ecoli, staph, enterobacter aerogenes, salmonella, strep, MRSA, H1N1 , Flu A, Polivirus Type 1, Rhinovirus Type 37, & Rotavirus (aka the "stomach bug"). It is the first EPA approved disinfectant to combine thyme oil and citric acid as active ingredients in a botanical formula.
We use it to disinfect door knobs, light switches, sinks, faucets & drains, toys, the baby's changing pad, non-pourous surfaces (tile floor), etc. I know of a daycare and a PT clinic in our community that recently switched to using Sol-u-Guard from a commerical-name brand cleaner to clean their facilities.
When you purchase Sol-U-Guard, it comes in a concentrated bottle and a separate empty spray bottle so you can mix the solution to be a strong as you prefer. For those of you who are in to recycling, you save plastic by using the 16 fl. oz. Sol-U-Guard Botanical 2x mixing bottle. One 16 fl. oz. bottle of concentrate will make two 16 fl. oz. bottles of ready-to-use disinfectant. That's 32 fl. oz. of powerful disinfectant from one concentrate bottle. And your mixing bottle can be used over and over again. Why throw away a perfectly good bottle? It's convenient, it's smart, and it makes sense for the environment. Saving plastic also saves energy. Seven percent of crude oil is used to produce new plastics, so by consuming less plastic you actually save energy. Now that's something you can feel good about.
Concentrated products and reusable mixing bottles save you money. For as often as a disinfectant is needed in the home, concentrated Sol-U-Guard-Botanical 2x is an incredible value. Your family can save more, breathe easier with botanical ingredients, and still thoroughly eliminate germs. Now that's a formula for success! (found on Melaleuca.com)
So after practicing good hygiene, i.e. disinfecting literally everything in our house that our son drooled on or touched, switching out his sip cup constantly, and changing his sheets after each time he slept, his fever only lasted for 2 days! Remember, the pediatrician told me he would have fever for a minimum of 4 days!? I would not have been able to be this thorough yet safe with a Clorox wipe, 409 spray, or Lysol!
As I have mentioned before, we changed over all of our household products to Melaleuca shortly after our baby was born. We have been living in a "toxin free" home for exactly 1 year now and have been very satisfied with our decision to switch from name brand to Melaleuca.
If you would like more information and/or would like to become a Melaleuca customer, email me at lemonstolovelys@gmail.com
Remember, when life hands you lemons, turn them into something lovely!
-Marci
Labels: all natural, clean, cleaner, disinfectant, Melaleuca, melaleuca monday, non-toxic, soluguard
