Hawken parent to explore effects of toxic environments

Hawken parent Robin Selznick Hoffman will speak on the topic \"Where is the Science? asked the Canary: A Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Saga and It`s Teachings about Safe and Non-toxic Environments\" at the Cleveland Botanical Gardens, during Wellness Weekend, on Saturday, February 3 at 10:00 a.m. and at the Home and Garden Show at the IX Center on Tuesday,February 6 at 11:30 a.m. and Friday, February 9 at 7:00 p.m. in the Green Pavilion. The road to such a presentation began with an exterminator. When Hoffman moved to a wooded area of a local suburb, she hired one to safeguard her family and dream home against any possible pest invasions. What she didn`t count on was being poisoned. It turns out the exterminator was spraying a noxious mixture of chemicals including Dursban, a chemical now banned by the U.S. government. Slowly, Hoffman began to realize that not only were the pest control chemicals detrimental to her and the family, but other materials in the house were also. \"My geothermal heating systems were molding and the air was increasingly worse,\" she writes on her company`s Web site, RiverwoodNaturals.com. \"In addition, the synthetic carpet laid in our playroom, some 2,000 square feet of it, was gassing out something that surely was attacking my joints.\" She soon developed allergies. She ached all over. Her family suffered. And she wanted answers. When Hoffman embarked on her quest to make sense of her family`s plight, she found that because of her environment, she`d developed a sensitivity to the toxins in her home, which was causing the allergies, aches, pains and fatigue. Her life had been changed forever, but she determined that other families shouldn`t have to experience what she had. So, she founded Riverwood Naturals, a company which sells toxic-free products for homes, offices and schools. \"Become aware of the environment you live in and create a safe space to always return to-to revive,\" she writes on the company`s Web site. Her talks at the Botanical Gardens and IX Center will center around her experiences. She`ll explore how our environments could be health hazards and detail what we can do to free our homes of harmful toxins.