Less Toxic Living – Book Review and Giveaways

Something that I have been interested in for a while is how to remove toxic chemicals from our home and lifestyle.

We already have an organic suburban food farm, and eat mainly biodynamic meat a few times a week.

But one thing that we haven’t tackled was other products in our home, besides a few basic green cleaning products.

So you can imagine my delight when I was approached by Kirsten McCulloch, who blogs over at Sustainable Suburbia, to review her new book about the subject and be part of the book blog tour.  The book is titled Less Toxic Living – How To Reduce Your Everyday Exposure To Toxic Chemicals: An Introduction for Families.  Just what I needed at the right time in my journey.

The book weighs in at just over 200 pages, and is jam packed with valuable, well researched and referenced material leaving you no doubt about the authenticity of the information.  It is written as a collection of articles from 19 individual contributors, which are grouped into themes such as Your Home, Cleaning, Food & Water, Plastics and, Cosmetics & Skin Care.

You may already know some of the contributors from popular blogs and books;

Dr Sarah Lantz (Chemical Free Kids) | Nicole Bijlsma (Healthy Home, Healthy Family)|Nyree Bekarian | Cate Burton | Joanna Cozens | Sonia Donaldson | Katy Farber |Melissa Goodwin | Jo Hegerty | Kate Hennessy | Tricia Hogbin | Katharine Koeppen |Teray Garchitorena Kunishi | Vanessa Layton | Andrea Muse | Alexx Stuart | Alicia Voorhies and Sarah Wilson.

You would think that with all these writers it would make the book difficult to follow, but this is not the case. Due to the grouping, I found that the themes flowed well and complimented each other.

One of the great features of this book is that you do not have to read it cover to cover to get value.  You can skip to any section, which stand alone, and learn about your chosen toxic topic.

The only fault I found was with formating.  A few chapters only list Metric or US Imperial measurements and not both, however it does not detract from the overall book.  Also, I hope the eBook version has hyperlinks when released, as there are a lot of websites within the references that would be easier to visit if linked.

I particularly enjoyed the chapters about Food & Water and Plastics, learning quite a bit in the process.

Did you know that food additives can cause behavioural issues and learning difficulties in children?  I had often joked about red cordial, but it is much more serious than that.  It left me thinking about my own diet, albeit quite good in that regard.

The other chapter that made me really think was Five Foods That Have Sneaky Additives.  I really wanted to research this further as I found it didn’t go deep enough, but remember that this book is only an introduction.

Although only a handful of chapters long, the Plastics section really hit it home for me.  I will be actively weeding out harmful plastics around our home over the next few weeks.

I highly recommend this book for all who want to learn how to lower the toxic chemicals around your home and are looking for an all-round introduction to the subject.  I will give it 5 stars, as I really needed an introduction to this area of sustainable living.

Now I have even better news.  For a limited time, Kirsten is giving away the eBook version for FREE, with a lot of free bonus material.

You can pick up the free copy from now until 3rd December 2013 at the book website lesstoxicliving.net.  However, you will need my special access code GREENGAV to download it and the free bonuses.

Less Toxic Living is also available as a paperback at Amazon, but it will be available in this format in Australia at this link; lesstoxicliving.net/buy-it-in-print/

Let me know what you think of it in the comments if you download and read it.  I would be interested in your opinion.