I fled sweaty Brooklyn for the New Jersey countryside last weekend and
returned home Sunday night with fresh farm peaches and a hand-me-down
car seat from my friend and host. I love free stuff and have to admit I
probably wasn’t going to dig too deeply to find out how safe the
inherited model was, but then I checked my email and saw that the
trusty Ecology Center had just released their second annual car seat toxicity ranking. I went to Healthy Car.org and searched the convertible Britax car seat by model (Marathon Tan Swirl) and was psyched to find it got a pretty low rating for toxicity (0.6). (A very similar seat, the Britax Marathon Onyx, did much worse with a 4.4.)
The non-profit Ecology Center (out of Ann Arbor) is very invested in the struggle for clean air, safe
water, healthy communities, and environmental justice, and has included
more than 200 of the most popular 2008- 2009 cars and over 60 car
seats in their study. The database is exhaustive and easy to peruse,
with lists of chemicals, numerical ratings, photos, and explanations of
health concerns. The average American spends more than 1.5 hours in
cars (gas prices have only reduced driving under 1 percent nationally),
so it’s smart to seriously consider the polluted air inside –
particularly for kids and their still-developing systems.
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