If you’ve just joined us, allow me to fill you in. I’m an anxious mom of a four-year-old, whom I am constantly trying to save from having her little mind poisoned by big commercial marketing ploys and her little body poisoned by big agribusiness. I’m a little bit paranoid, a lot mistrustful and prone to believing the latest scare — especially if it’s about kids. I try to balance what I know with what I can afford but I try not to cut corners when it come to Georgia’s health. I buy organic [0] produce, free range meat, bovine growth hormone-free dairy products and though I have jumped down the economic ladder a bit and no longer buy organic body care products for myself, I do make sure Georgia’s shampoo, lotions and balms are free of anything that gives me pause. And yet…

Georgia loves to pretend. My husband Hova and I wake up to find our roles planned out for us and we have to be ready to switch from pirates to fairies to tigers to mermaids as the whims of our program director change. Often, we beg to just be ourselves for a meal or to go to the bathroom, but once we’re done with the deal we have to jump right back in. I don’t know how we got so compliant or who made the four-year-old boss, but at least it works our imaginations.

So since Christmas, when she got the classic, odd and delightful book, Pippi Longstocking [1], she’s added Tommy/Hova, Annika/Belinda and Pippi/Georgia to the character palette. And Georgia has been obsessed with having carrot colored braids that stick straight out from her head. She had an idea!

“Mommy! We can use pipe cleaners to make my braids stick out!”

“OK!” I agreed, knowing she’d never sit still long enough or tolerate the kind of hair pulling Pippi braids would entail.

“And we can go to the store and buy some red hair dye to make my hair red!” She said.

“Hmm, you know hair dye is really not for children.” I cautioned, adding further emphasis on the owie-factor. “It’s very bad for your head and can really burn and hurt. It even hurts adults’ heads, so it’s not made for children.”

She took that in, then exclaimed, “We can use spray hair dye!”

We had talked about spray hair dye before, around Halloween, and she’s always wanted to try it. But now she really had a rationale, and she could, with red spray hair dye, BE Pippi.

“When can we go to the store?”

I put her off for a week with excuses and distractions but finally there was no getting around it, spray dye was in our future. We went to the drug store, avoided most of the toys and candy (though we did run smack into the Princess and Dora and Cars Valentines) and we made our way to the hair dye section. There was no carrot red, so she chose pink and we went home to spray her hair.

I didn’t really think much about her health at the time of purchase — it was all about making the kid happy. But as the fine, pink fog filled the bathroom, leaving a light magenta dusting over the porcelain, and as we breathed in the fumes and mist I wondered about the terrible joke I was playing on myself. All the organic apples at $2.99 a pound were not going to make up for the things that would sneak by my radar. The nail polish, the VOCs, the wood burning stoves on a family walk. And here, by my own hand, my daughter would have pink hair, laden with all manner of chemicals. And she would sleep in that hair dye and breathe in the fumes all night. What kind of mother am I?

I looked up all of the ingredients in the spray dye and they are all worrisome enough, from carcinogenic [2] and reproductive toxicants, to respiratory irritants [3], but the biggie is a little item known as “fragrance [4].” Fragrance can be a veritable cocktail of potentially harmful ingredients and manufacturers are not required to list the ingredients that make up a “fragrance” even if the product is supposed to be fragrance-free. Consumers don’t know what’s in there but one of the sure-bet fragrance ingredients is phtalates [5], big news in the world of kid health these days. The worry is that phtalates might cause all kinds of developmental, neurological and reproductive problems and they are used in lots of baby body care products.

So is it hype or is there cause for worry? The official jury (the FDA) is out (I think the lone agent is a little busy trying to find out why bad meat packers [6] are distributing meat from downer cows to school districts), but there is enough concern and mistrust that I have to put on my Momster cape and start looking even more carefully at labels. I turn again to Earth Mama Angel Baby [7]’s Reading Room [8], a great place to find all the info you need about phthalates and artificial ingredients. Since I write for them too I am always learning something new about what I am slathering onto my or Georgia’s body. The upshot is I will be avoiding “fragrance” because of the great unknown and I just don’t want to Georgia used as a guinea pig.

I know I’m not always going to be able to keep Georgia away from “fun” things like spray hair dye but I can discourage its use and limit her exposure, and wash it out at the end of the day. I can rally myself to explain—again—why we shouldn’t put toxic chemicals on our bodies. I can buy less potentially toxic fun products, like nail polish and princess body wash, and train her nose toward truly natural scents containing real essential oils. And if anyone has any natural ideas for colorful hair, please let me know!