Last year my son Theo was exposed to lead dust so I am particularly aware of new ways I can cut out additional lead exposure. Here is new one for my to do list.
This month a new law went into effect in our home state of CA lowering the amount of lead that a faucet may be made of from 8% to less than 0.25%. Hopefully this will help to protect drinking water. As it turns out, brass faucets contain lead to  - lead is a key ingredient in brass.
All California schools, businesses and homes will have faucets that are effectively obsolete due to the Assembly Bill 1953’s strict requirements.
Cole Hardware emailed me a 25% coupon for new compliant faucets... once they get some in stock. Here is the coupon for you.


I will keep you posted on my faucet plans.
more info:
www.noleadfaucet.com

New toilet seats for our tooshies! Bobby was motivated, after a long sit on the cheap plastic toilet seat, to upgrade our loo situation. Our upstairs toilet seat was wood with a nice big crack down the middle and loosely attached with only one screw. Plus, potty training Theo has taken to closing (slamming) the toilet seat cover after flushing.

To our delight we found Bemis Whisper Close toilet seats, a green option at Home Depot. Now our bathroom looks so nice - it looks like we installed a new toilet. Theo and I also spent some quality time tapping the seat down and watching it close ever so smoothly and quietly. All this reward for about 30$ each.

I would like to claim that I researched toilet seats before our trip to Home Depot, but with a 2 year old and another on the way, some days we are operating by the seat of our pants.

I was delighted to discover our new seats are made from salvaged wood, certified by theRainforest Alliance and their Smartwood Rediscovered Wood program.

"More than 4 million pounds of post-industrial wood shavings each month become recycled wood composite seats, marketed worldwide by Bemis. Use of post-industrial wood eliminates 800,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the environment. That's similar to powering 96,126 homes for one year or eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from 132,921 passenger vehicles.In addition, Bemis uses environmentally friendly water based paints, significantly reducing VOC emissions. Our packaging, is even environmentally friendly, using more than 75% recycled content, and is fully recyclable."
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Go Bemis!