Hi! Welcome to what we call our awareness-raising exercise. We decided to try a blog as one of our means for raising awareness about the potentially harmful ingredients that are found in our cosmetics, our sunscreens, our shampoos and other personal and body care products. While our focus is principally on the environmental linkages with cancer, we will also be addressing other illnesses potentially linked to harmful ingredients. If you prevent the causes of cancer, you will also prevent the causes of numerous other illnesses triggered by harmful chemical exposure.

Who are we?

We are a group of concerned and active citizens who have decided to highlight the environmental linkages to our health, especially in relation to breast cancer and other cancers. We belong to an activist, preventive-oriented group called BCAM, Breast Cancer Action Montreal.

What will this blog feature?

The aim of this blog is to raise community awareness of the real & potential damage to our health being caused by a variety of ingredients found in our everyday personal-care products. By community, we mean anyone able to access this site. By ingredients, we mean for the most part, harmful chemicals.

Part diary (our events, thoughts & experiences); part information clearing-house (links, direct pointers to answers/alternatives) and part information provider (we'll get the information to you on what you can do, read, avoid, replace with etc), this blog aims to serve as an interactive forum for you, the reader/consumer/affected individual to share your thoughts, ideas and information as well.

What does this blog hope to achieve?

It is intended that the blog will be a source of information & resources that you can access easily and quickly, to assist in informing your own decisions whether or not to use products. It is a grass-roots approach that aims to foster your participation and knowledge-building, so that you can not only make an informed choice but you can take this information further - to your family, your friends, your local politicians, the manufacturers and the sellers.

As part of this, we will include such items as links to helpful websites, articles from our perspective, articles written by others and other relevant information.

What about comments?

We appreciate comments as a means of sharing information, furthering ideas and continuing the momentum of the topic in question. For now, we will see what our readers wish to share.

Please respect the spirit of this web-blog as an information-sharing tool for its users. We do not endorse any products, services or links that our readers leave by way of comments. We reserve our right to remove comments that are not considered in keeping with the spirit of this exercise in awareness-raising.

Will this blog endorse products?

No, we won't endorse particular products for any particular purposes because we want to maintain a good sense of independence and unbiased provision of information. What we are aiming to do is to give you the information about product ingredients in an easy, fast and concise way to help you make your own informed decision.

That said, we will, however, mention brands that provide adequate information about their ingredients and do not contain suspect ingredients and we'll include links to information about products in a general manner. We will also be suggesting the use of substitutes and alternatives. This site is not about hedging our bets - we believe that there are some very unsafe product ingredients out there & we will be pointing this fact out, backed up by the data. But we also believe that there are safe alternatives and these will be discussed. We understand that people want more than the information about the problems - you are also seeking the solutions and the alternatives.

Links from this site

We are not responsible for the content of sites we link to; nor do we endorse particular products.

What is positive prevention?

Positive prevention is about preventing the disease in the first plaace rather than focusing on curing it. Everyone knows the adage, "an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure". We are interested in taking a pro-active, positive approach to seeking out harmful chemicals and having them removed, managed tightly or substituted completely. While some cancers can be directly related to personal behaviour (for example, smoking or alcoholism), there remains a vast amount of cancers and illnesses that are not brought on by dietary or personal behaviours. These are the cancers that have environmental influences and we want to raise awareness about these environmental factors and to shift the sense of responsibility towards those who have control over the air we breathe, the water we drink and the ground we grow our food in. To this end, we are keen to emphasize that while self-responsibility is an admirable trait that is well worth upholding as part of the preventative approach, it can only go so far and the larger sense of responsibility must fall to those manufacturers, marketers, sellers and regulators who have the power to make a difference for the better.

How can I tell others about this blog?

Click on the link in your URL bar and copy it. Then paste it into your e-mail and send away! We would love you to send on the link to this site to your friends, girlfriends, wives, mothers, husbands, sons, daughters, cousins, neighbours, local community etc - the more who have access to this information, the better informed we will all be.

How else can I help?

If you want to assist further with the positive prevention measures we seek to undertake actively and you wish to support the efforts of BCAM, please make a donation to BCAM.