Why using recycled toilet paper is dangerous to your health, and three green, nontoxic and sustainable alternatives to consider instead.
Like many of you good little girls and boys out there trying to be responsible citizens of Planet Earth, I bought recycled toilet paper in an attempt to be more environmentally conscious.
Alas.
This method of going green in the bathroom is not such a good idea after all. In fact, it is a most decidedly BAD idea.
Green does not necessarily mean healthy!
Recycled Toilet Paper is Toxic
Two studies published in Environmental Science & Technology have shown that BPA and cousin chemical BPS used in “BPA free products” but also highly estrogenic in nature, are much more pervasive in our common, everyday products than we could have imagined.
Yeah, that BPA free stuff is no better and will mess up your hormones just as much. But then, you sensed that was the case already didn’t you? I know I did.
The term “safe chemical” is kind of an oxymoron. If a product contains chemicals, just assume they are toxic unless proven otherwise.
How does all this relate to recycled toilet paper?
Hormone Disruptors in Recycled Paper
These two studies involved examination of hundreds of samples of paper from everyday items such as toilet paper, paper towels, napkins, newspapers, magazines, tickets, and even business cards.
Most of the paper samples tested contained the hormone disruptors BPA, BPS or BOTH.
How and why the paper was so contaminated is a question that requires further study to ascertain.
But for now, the key is to avoid thermal paper as much as possible. This stuff is the worst offender perhaps because it is often recycled and may somehow become contaminated during the reclamation process.
The ink itself may also be a culprit in the overall toxicity of recycled toilet paper.
In fact, it is best to avoid touching all recycled paper period! Sister chemicals BPA and BPS absorb very readily through the skin.
You don’t have to eat it to have them enter your bloodstream.
If your job involves handling thermal paper receipts, for example, best to wear gloves. And, if you can turn down receipts and instead rely on an online itemization of your expenditures, that would be a good step as well.
TP Used for Thin Skin Near Reproductive Areas
As for your backside, opt for toilet paper made from virgin pulp or better still, bamboo toilet paper.
This is an especially important area to protect from BPA and BPS as the skin in these areas is thin and delicate.
This means that the chemicals can more easily enter the bloodstream with very close proximity to the reproductive organs.
Green AND Safe Options to Toilet Paper
If you don’t want to change habits right now, at least switch to bamboo toilet paper (I suggest this brand). It is nontoxic and sustainably produced.
If you really want to go green with your toilet habits, skip the toilet paper entirely and invest in a bidet attachment for your toilet. They are very reasonably priced and easy to install.
If this European method of saving trees doesn’t work for you, your other option is to go the reusable TP cloths route.
Any of these approaches makes for a sanitary, nontoxic and sustainable bathroom experience.
Reference
(1) Bottom Line Publications, Toxic Toilet Paper? You Got It
just use old sraps of clothing to clean with or use ur shower with soap after u take a dump if u are at home. sorry i know my language is crude
So I’m totally late to the game but I suggest Norwex’s body cloths and/or baby cloths! They sanitize themselves with a bit of water!!
What do you think about toilet paper made of bamboo and it is BPA-free?
1) I don’t know which toilet paper you’re talking about. All products are manufactured by different people using different processes.
This is really important to note, because the processes used in modern manufacturing are multi-step and often involve many chemicals.
2) That said, BPA is one of many, many estrogen-like compounds used in manufacturing (particularly plastics and non-stick/watertight linings & surfaces like inside cans).
MANY companies replace BPA with other chemicals similar in nature to accomplish what the BPA was.
It’s a bit like “gluten-free” items often being filled with processed crap or other additives or things you don’t want in your body.
The point is that BPA is one of many chemical compounds that are estrogen-like in the human body.
3) I’m chemically sensitive and have read others not liking the bamboo craze in clothing/”sustainable” products because of either (a) chemicals in how the bamboo is grown? or, perhaps more importantly, (b) chemicals added in processing. For example, “bamboo cutting boards” are often treated with formalin (a form of formaldehyde).
There can — and quite often is — a difference between “renewable resource” and “healthy for a human to be in contact with”… but, ‘sustainable’ is often equated with ‘healthy’.
(4)That said, I don’t know about the toilet paper you’re looking at.
Is it better than what you’re using or going to use otherwise, though?
That’s always a question with health.
I’d personally use a combination of organic cotton cloth for urinating, and a bidet for “pooing” as my optimal solution… but, then, I’m actually likely to DO that consistently. Your mileage may vary. 🙂
(5) Not in direct reply to “toilet paper made of bamboo,” but to the original post:
The point about BPA is really interesting and makes me wonder what other things (xenoestrogen or other) we may be absorbing through our skin by constantly touching things like:
– Our computers
– Our nice, varnished wooden desks, tables, chairs, whatever. (Modern varnish is full of glues and other icky chemicals)
– Things in our houses and buildings in general
I don’t know all of which chemicals are in these things, and what effects they have via skin contact
(or being breathed in, or a number of other methods of affecting our health like unintended low-level ingestion due to presence on our hands?)
To wax philosophical…
I know that everyone focuses on a few things: often bedding, clothing, and the food that goes into our system,
…but there’s a whole world out there that we’re living in —
the air we breathe, and all the chemical products that have made their way into our lives over the past few decades: manufactured “deodorants”, scented “soaps,” the myriad cleaning products and pesticides that inhabit the spaces under kitchen and bathroom sinks… even what we build our houses with, from the treated lumber to the paints and drywall.
It’s not just some far-off residue in the oceans, or some one-off thing in a particular product you buy: myriad chemicals that weren’t here 50 years ago are everywhere in your daily life now.
And, I keep discovering more of how we’re not regarding these interactions with all these new chemicals with rigor and awareness.
They’ve brought lots of benefits and problems into our lives. (and, there are definitely benefits, but most people seem so unaware of the potential costs, and even how much chemical they’re dealing with on a regular basis…
A “package” is just a… “package” to most people. Taken at face value. So’s a “household cleaner” or “air freshener” or “natural food” — but we consider so little of the way things are now, and the alternatives to the chemicals we use.
Many of these chemicals haven’t been tested for long periods, or at all (as with, say, the perfume industry not being required to disclose or prove safety for its ingredients), and short-term assays show all sorts of potential damage from them — crossing the blood-brain barrier, estrogen-mimicking… a number of things that throw off how our bodies have evolved to function.
That said, it’s complicated — there are certainly many more choices that I’m probably not aware of as far as changing my environment and living my life differently, but there are also 7+ billion other people in the world, and many of them are currently continuing to fill the Earth with more chemicals.
It’s a complex question to ask:
What’s an appropriate way to live one’s life given the preponderance of likelihood that many of these chemicals are damaging, and large control over our own lives, but little over the other 7+ billion, many of whom are likely to continue chugging along filling our lives, products, and wilderness with them?
I can understand why many people tend to brush off the overall chemical-soup we live in as fine and normal — it’s much more difficult to consider questions like the above one with a picture of likely ongoing harm to everyone’s health, at the same time as the overwhelming ubiquity of the chemicals in our modern industry.
Of course, given the wider awareness of and attention to blogs like this and even things like Mercola.com or ancestral/traditional diet & lifestyle, I do hope that the world will continue to somehow shift towards combining health with wanting a “modern lifestyle”.
+1 on bidet
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The recycled toilet paper is the only paper that I haven’t had an allergic reaction to that makes me sneeze, cough and itch even if I’m breaking off a square and the little fibers go airborne. That being said, I’m assuming there are a load of chemicals and bleaches in the virgin toilet paper to give it its pristine white and fluffy texture. I’d rather listen to my body and stick with the slightly less processed version even if its not perfect.
I so agree with you!
Ashley I agree with you. I like recycled papers better as well, they feel better, and they seem to have less toxins in them than the other paper products that were made from clear cutting forests. Ethics feels a whole lot better. This anti recycling blog sounds a bit like “Brought to you by Pacific Lumber.”
A whole lot needs to be reformed. We need to have companies that produce paper products from grasses, leaves, bamboo, garden clippings etc. Tree free stuff and processed with Sodium Bentonite instead of toxic binding substances. We need companies to do this so that other companies will be forced to do it as well due to customer demand. All conventional paper products have toxins in them so far and that is unethical. Recycled paper products have less toxins in them because the toxins had been washed out. They also use oxygen bleach which is safe.
I just found toilet paper made from bamboo & sugar cane at Walgreen’s store. I like it a lot & wondered if anyone has information about this product.
I heard that bamboo can be high in formaldehyde. Sometimes it is hard to determine which way to go and what battles to pick.
The research that you’re quoting from says very specifically that BPA exposure from paper contact is trivial for the general population.
Advocating for people to return to “virgin pulp” sources is absolutely absurd. Thanks for your awful and useless interpretation of the data.