<$Thursday, June 26, 2008$>
Spill coffee on your wooden table.
| We're always on the lookout for non-toxic, natural alternatives to all the chemicals in our lives. This is especially important to my cancer survivor husband. I've been a little worried about this, wondering how, after we move, are we going to handle all of the paint jobs, furniture touch-ups, etc. that seem to go along with home ownership? So I'm pretty happy to have stumbled upon this Ask Metafilter article on non-toxic wood treatments. I'm especially intrigued--and a little squicked--by all of the info on shellac, where it came from and all of its uses: Pharmaceutical - shellac is used to coat enteric pills so that they do not dissolve in the stomach, but in the lower intestine, which alleviates upset stomachs. Its also used as a coating on pills to "time release" medication. Fascinating, huh? But then, there's this: If you use shellac, you have the added advantage of being able to tell your friends you painted it with an excretion of the female Coccus Lacca beetle, harvested from the bark of the trees where she deposits it to provide a sticky hold on the trunk, necessary during mating with the non-stick capable male. Bleah. But as someone else over there pointed out, honey is a bug excretion, too, and a mighty tasty one at that. At any rate, now I'm having visions of inexpensive unfinished bookcases naturally died with coffee and sealed with beetle juice dancing in my head, and no pesky carcinogens to ruin my fun. Labels: green, healthy living |
