My name is Alicia Voorhies and I’m a RN who left the work force to spend some time recharging. I enjoyed working as Director of Nursing for a non-profit organization to care for people with developmental disabilities in a home-based setting. But I began to suffer from that old familiar burn out, so I decided to take a nice long sabbatical – and ended up never going back. So how do you take a break from nursing and then somehow end up starting a hybrid information/product-based business anyway? Fast forward to December 2006, when I was first introduced to Bisphenol-a (BPA) . . .
It all started when my sister moved with her family from our Midwest town to the East Coast. She called me one morning after taking her son to their new doctor, where she was promptly told to immediately throw out the clear, hard plastic baby bottle she was using in his office. She was seriously concerned that she was dealing with a doctor who was off his rocker, so she turned to me, the medical research geek for help. I set out that day to prove him wrong. Instead, hundreds of medical studies would only prove him right. The more research I poured over, the more I began to see a pattern of chemicals leaching from plastic to disrupt the delicate endocrine system – especially in children. I knew we needed safer options right away and began searching for a non-polycarbonate baby bottle. I quickly realized how limited the information was and how few options were available. At that time, there were only two brands being marketed as BPA-free. Beyond that, I was left swimming in an endless sea of unlabeled plastic! My mission became clear and we opened the doors to The Soft Landing in April of 2007. Now I work with my team (my three sisters and our Mom) to educate parents about the most prevalent environmental toxins harming our children today.
