Does your child have a sandbox? If so, do you worry much about what's in it? You know, aside from making sure the cat didn't use it for a litterbox, of course. Even if there's only sand in there, you might want to look into what kind of sand it is.

According to a recent post at Green Daily, many sandboxes are filled with quarried quartz rocks and contains silica, all of which can give off dangerous dust. The State of California even requires a label on any sand that contains crystalline silica because it can cause lung problems.

There are sources for safe sand, however, like the cleverly titled Safe Sand Company. Their feldspathic sand is safety approved by ASTM (USA), Corporate and Consumer Affairs Canada and EN-71 (Europe), and is supposed to be great for building sandcastles.

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My treadmill has been sitting quietly for some time now, all alone in the corner of my kids' playroom, completely neglected and collecting quite a blanket of dust. I noticed the dust yesterday, just more than four weeks after our last run together, and I felt sorry for it. No, I felt sorry for me. It's been 30 days since my tummy tuck surgery, and the spotting the dust on my trusty treadmill symbolized just how inactive I've been. Doctors orders, I know. But I simply had to clean that thing off and take it for a spin.

My spin wasn't too much -- just a walk, at 4.5 miles per hour, with no incline. I managed quite easily for two miles, all the while dreaming ahead two weeks when my doctor gives me the OK to start running again. How great it will be.

Is your treadmill -- or elliptical, or stationary bike, or whatever it is you're ignoring in the corner of your house -- collecting dust? If so, give it a quick wipe-down, hop on, and take that thing for a whirl. It'll do you a world of good. It did me.

Hello, my name is Maggie and I'm a neat freak. My house is far from perfect, but everything has a place and that's how I like it. But the other day I got an itch to spring clean and I ventured into (cue scary music in the background)... the basement. Eew. It may look relatively neat down there, but I found boxes that haven't been moved in ages. There were dust bunnies that were mutating into dust elephants. By the end of it all, I was slightly disgusted at what was lurking in the unseen corners of my basement, but I was happy to have all that dust and dirt removed from my house.

While it's, of course, important to keep your home sanitary and clean year-round the spring cleaning ritual is a great time to get into all the spots you may overlook during regular house cleaning. Some ideas:

• Have your mattresses steam-cleaned.
• Empty closets/pantries and scrub down the shelves and walls.
• Vacuum underneath furniture.
• Move your fridge and scrub the back of it and vacuum any gathered dust.
• Wipe down tops of door frames and other places where dust can collect.
• Steam clean your carpets and furniture.
• Remove and wash drapes.
• Wipe down window blinds.

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All of my friends in the so-called "allergy capital of the country", Gainesville, Florida have allergies. I mean ALL of them. Growing up on the beach in South Florida, I didn't know a sole who spoke of the evils of allergies. Now, everyone on my speed dial is speaking with a raspy voice and choking up a lung.

Winter can be especially rough. If you're dealing with the aggravations of allergies or worse, the brutal side-effects that come with asthma...Women's Health magazine has a pretty great resource for you. The Women's Health Allergies and Asthma Clinic offers the full scoop on breathing easy through this winter.

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Regular exposure to bacteria and viruses is known to exercise our immune systems, as those that always protect themselves may not have the internal tools to fight something off when it comes.

When it comes to those nasty allergies, the same remains true. Recent research states that having too clean of an environment can be responsible for increasing allergy amounts in kids.

If, in fact, we are all living in cleaner places than we did in the past, the bodies of children are not receiving the necessary "workout" when it comes to fighting off the issues caused by allergens. Therefore, when those allergens cause problems, they are quite a bit more pronounced than with kids in the recent past, concluded the research.

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Asthma is a condition that affects hundreds of thousands of people out there. And though the symptoms are largely the same, the disease varies from patient to patient, each one having different triggers for attacks. This helpful video from Everyday Health helps explain asthma and its triggers, which can include:

• Exposure to cigarette smoke
  
• Allergens, particularly seasonal one
• Dust
• Plants, grass and other vegetation
• Mold
• Cardiovascular exercise
• Pets and animals
• Cold air

When you're suffering from asthma, it's important to talk to your doctor about your condition -- although the triggers might not be obvious to you, your doctor can usually determine what your triggers are through tests or even just dialogue.

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