Michael Green founded and is the executive director of the non profit -  Center for Environmental Health.  Its mission is to protect your family and  community from toxic chemicals.  If you have heard of the recalls surrounding the use of lead in children’s jewelry, you know their work (our previous blog post on CEH’s work is here)

In creating the nursery in your home, where did the goal of creating a healthier / greener nursery rank for you?

Our son Dylan is three and our daughter Juliette is 18 months old: they still share the same room that was their nursery.  A healthy green nursery was one of our top priorities when Dylan was born.  By the time Juliette showed up, we were too busy to add much other than a toddler bed for Dylan so that Juliette could have the crib.

Unfortunately, so many products today contain untested chemicals and/or chemicals known to be associated with long-term health problems.  We did everything that we could to identify the items that don’t contain these chemicals.  The problem is that it’s sometimes impossible to find out what a product is made out of.

Assuming it was a consideration, what were your main reasons for this?

We tried to avoid PVC and products that contain phthalates.  We obviously wanted to avoid anything containing lead.  Brominated flame retardants in foam or other items were also something that we wanted to avoid.  We also didn’t use pesticides, didn’t repaint the room, and didn’t replace the carpet so we avoided the toxic chemicals that are often in all of those products.

What were the easiest & hardest aspects of creating a healthier / greener nursery?

The easiest part was knowing that we would not get the information that we needed from a large chain focused on selling volume.  We found a family-owned store whose proprietor was pretty knowledgeable.  The hardest part by far was finding out what materials each product contained and which we should worry about.  I think that for most people it will also be very difficult to know which materials to avoid and which ones are OK.

What is your child’s favorite aspect of their nursery?

The toys of course!

What resources did you rely on in creating a healthier/greener nursery?

I had the luxury of talking to my team at the Center for Environmental Health.  Our Research Director’s kids are grown and she had a million opinions about what materials/products to use.  There are a number of good websites today that have good information.  But it is time consuming to find it all out, and the typical person creating a nursery is kind of busy!

If you were to make 3 recommendations to a family just starting the nursery process, what would they be?

1. Find a guru so that you don’t have to re-invent the wheel.  This could a store owner or a friend who has already done a lot of research recently.
2. Err on the side of natural materials over synthetic ones when possible.
3. Don’t worry too much:  the worry can sometimes be worse for your family than the risks that you are trying to avoid.

Tags: Center for Environmental Health, green nursery, Michael Greene, Q Collection Junior, safer chemicals

This entry was posted on Monday, May 3rd, 2010 at 6:34 pm and is filed under Designing, Expecting, Grab Bag, Green Living, Health & Wellness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.