Today my guest is Angel De Fazio, BSAT, President, Executive Director, and co-founder of the National Toxic Encephalopathy Foundation (NTEF). We’ll be talking about toxics that affect your brain, toxics activism, and what it’s like to have your brain affected by toxic chemicals. Angel, the NTEF, and other activists completed an onerous and highly contentious, two-year awareness campaign in 2013 supporting the right for Nevada’s energy ratepayers to opt out of the smart meter deployment. The campaign started in 2011. May is Toxic Encephalopathy and Chemical Injury Awareness Month. For over a decade, the NTEF has conducted outreach throughout the month including numerous proclamations from Nevada Governors, Las Vegas City Council, Clark County Commissioners, and the City of Henderson. In 2010, Las Vegas City Council participated by going fragrance and chemical free in support of creating awareness. Last year, in 2014, the NTEF was solely responsible for one of the Nevada State Offices going fragrance free. The NTEF is a non-profit organization whose core purposes are to provide education and services to the growing segment of the population who are adversely affected by everyday chemicals and toxins in our environment. NTEF-USA.Org | ChemicalFreeLiving.Com
The Toxins that Threaten our Brains
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
How Toxic Chemicals Affect Your Brain and What You Can Do to Reduce Exposure
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Angel De Fazio, BSAT
Date of Broadcast: April 30, 2015
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic free.
It is April 30th, I believe, April 30th, Thursday, April 30, 2015. And it’s a beautiful day here in Clearwater, Forida. We’ve had some rain this week, but today is a beautiful day.
And we’re going to be talking today about How Toxic Chemicals Affect Your Brain and What You Can Do to Reduce Exposure. There is an excellent website, and if you go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, you can see the description of today’s show and there’s a link there and it’s the National Toxic Encephalopathy Foundation. It’s a big word, ‘encephalopathy’. I had to look up that word, ‘encephalopathy’. It means brain. It has to do with things having to do with your brain.
This is a very well-organized, very well-written site. And if you want to know anything about what are the things that can actually damage your brain or have you not think so clearly or affect your nervous system, it’s all on this website.
And, in fact, I want to just mention right at the beginning of the show, there is an incredible article. There’s a link right on the homepage to this. It’s called The Toxins That Threatens Our Brains. And it’s so clearly written and it’s well-illustrated. You can just read this. It’s so easy to read. And it really shows you exactly what are the chemicals that are causing problems for our brains and our ability to think.
And in fact, our brains run our whole body. And our minds, and there are toxic chemicals that are affecting that. You can just read this article. It tells you exactly what the chemicals are, and so you can take steps to see where you’re being exposed to those chemicals and what you can do to reduce them. And this site also gives a lot of information on that as well.
So my guest today is Angel De Fazio. She’s the president, executive director and co-founder of the National Toxic Encephalopathy Foundation. She’s going to tell us a lot about the chemicals, what her personal experience what and about activisms, what they do. This group does a lot of activism to reduce public health exposure to these toxic chemicals that cause brain problems.
And so we’re going to be hearing about the kinds of things that they do and hopefully, inspire some of you to take more civic action as well.
Hi, Angel.
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Hi, Debra. Thank you for having me on the show today.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. Thank you so much for being here. And I should also mention, also at the beginning that tomorrow, May 1st, is the beginning of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Awareness Month, and this is something that I know your organization does activities for. But also, we’re going to be talking. I’m going to have some guests around MCS during the month of May as well so that we can really be getting much more awareness about that specific way the toxic chemicals affect us.
So what is your background in education?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, as a kid, I was always playing doctor and my family doctor was pushing me, which I didn’t find out until he retired when I went for my last visit with him. I had told him I was going to become a pharmacist, and he said to me, “You’ll wind up in med school.” He actually offered to get me into his alma mater in Italy. And he had admitted that I was the only patient he would allow to call in because he trusted my diagnosis. He was very, very natural in his treatment.
So in the early 90s, I went to UNLV in preparation to get my Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and planned on pharmacology school. I took one class and was hooked. I always had an interest in physical therapy.
Then in August of ’96, I enrolled at Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine in Arizona to become a naturopath specializing in their version of orthopedic and rehab.
DEBRA: You’ve had injuries. So tell us about what happened with that. How did you get injured?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, I got injured in a cadaver lab three weeks into school. They were renovating the actual building, so they put us in a temporary building with a makeshift cadaver lab that used a plastic sheet. The formaldehyde was being vented into the courtyard and came into our lecture hall. And then when we got into the new building, the door to the wet lab, the cadaver lab was always open and our lecture rooms had the open door.
So all the formaldehyde permeated us during our class time and unfortunately, they used the cheapest building materials with the VOCs that gave me an ozone generator and in three weeks, my life was destroyed forever.
DEBRA: I understand. So did you notice anything that led you to becoming sensitive or did it happen all at once?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, I guess in retrospect, when I was at UNLV, one of my teachers came down with chemical sensitivity. We were in a new math building. Now, she has left for Colorado and I thought this was a very strange health issue.
So one year after I got sick, another student from that building who is a close friend, got sick. And when I guess, of course, the formaldehyde from the bio lab could have been the low level that started this, that it was under the radar.
DEBRA: Okay! So could you explain to us, in a simple way, what toxic encephalopathy is?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, basically, it’s any toxin that impacts the brain, also known as neurotoxicity. And it seems that the blood brain barrier becomes compromised and what was normally filtered out now seeps it in.
Now, on the website, I’ve got the best definition for neurotoxicity from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders, and it basically says neurotoxicity occurs when the exposure to natural or manmade substances, neurotoxicants, alters the normal activity of the nervous system.
So it can eventually disrupt or kill neurons, the key cells that transmit all signals in the brain, and it can result from substances like chemotherapy, drug, organ transplant, as well as heavy metals like lead, mercury, cleaning solvents, pesticides and cosmetics. The symptoms tend to appear immediately after exposure or they could be delayed. It’s more of when weakness, numbness, loss of memory.
DEBRA: We need to go to break now. But when we come back, we’ll continue, and I’ll ask you some more questions.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Angel De Fazio. She’s the president, executive director and co-founder of the National Toxic Encephalopathy Foundation. We’ll find out more about that foundation and more about how chemicals affect your brain when we come back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Angel De Fazio. She’s the president, executive director and co-founder of the National Toxic Encephalopathy Foundation, and they are at NTEF-USA.org. And you can also go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com at any show that you’re listening to and I’ll always have the URL of the guest’s organization or the personal URL or whatever. It’s always there. You can always go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and find out how to reach the guest. You can listen to the show again, you can read the transcript of the show. Lots of information at ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. And you can always find out who the guest for the week as well.
So Angel, what made you start the organization? When did you start it and why?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, we started in ’98 when I started discovering the impact of the effects to my brain and nervous system. And then, I saw that it was a direct result from [inaudible 00:15:11].
So in the beginning, I spent a lot of time learning and trying to abate symptoms while trying to get accommodations and creating awareness. In 2012, we went and became a 501c3 and the people I brought in with me either are injured or they deal with people who are injured. But I would like to [inaudible 00:15:49] because a lot of people [inaudible 00:15:58] with it, but they don’t see the connection.
DEBRA: Yes, talk about that.
ANGEL DE FAZIO: What I noticed is everybody is having cognitive issues. You feel like you’re drunk or stoned. You’re in a cognitive fog with exposures. You tend to have short-term memory problems in finding the right words, your thought processes are scrambled.
When I explain it to people, I use an umbrella as an example. If you open the umbrella, the top is toxic encephalopathy and what’s soaked underneath are things like autism, ADD, Parkinson’s, fibro, [inaudible 00:17:02] syndrome. They all have an impact on the brain, but they all have different labels. They are subcategories of it. And the problem is, you are always one breath away from becoming injured.
DEBRA: Yes, I totally understand that. What’s the main thing that you would want listeners to know about toxic encephalopathy?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, what tends to bother me the most is that people can’t understand the impact of indoor air quality on their health. They don’t realize that they spend most of their time indoors.
For example, if you need an air freshener in your home or office, don’t mask it. Find the cause of it. Everything you put on your body or you inhale, it goes into your system. There is no escaping it. So the cleaner and greener you can keep yourself, the better off in the long run you are.
DEBRA: I think that applies to everybody. We’re talking today about chemicals that affect your brain and specifically, the nervous system. But I realized many, many years ago that it doesn’t matter. As you’ve said before, these specific illnesses all come back to the main problem of it being the nervous system. I realize many years ago that the root cause of every illness is our toxic chemical exposures.
And even if we don’t know what a diagnosis is, if everybody would just start to live in a more healthy way, and more natural way with fewer toxic chemicals, regardless of what your illness is, it’s going to get better.
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Very true.
DEBRA: Yes, yes. Up to this point in time, what have you and the organization accomplished?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, last year, I forced a state agency to go fragrance-free. I filed the complaint with the Nevada Attorney General’s office and the attorney for the Public Utilities Connection thought she knew more than me about the ADA. And now they’re fragrance-free.
I’ve been working on trying to have stable people to appear telephonically at state meetings. I feel it’s time to stop overt and concerted discrimination of those with certain invisible disability. We have a right to reasonable accommodations. My approach now is either they comply or be prepared for a battle that they most likely won’t win.
Last year, we came up with a lab for people to go and order their own blood test at a discount – things like CBC and molds, allergen, environmental chems, adrenals, stress. My view was if the CBC has determined that pesticides, fragrance, air fresheners are problematic and they’re banned from all of their offices, then it should be enacted especially here in Nevada when everything they cite is the CBC for medical and health issues.
The question is what do they know because they aren’t making public. We created a safer lunch kit program for low income K-6 elementary students.
DEBRA: I need to interrupt you, I’m sorry. I need to interrupt you because we need to go to break. But we’ll be right back and we can continue talking about this. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Angel De Fazio. She’s with the National Toxic Encephalopathy Foundation. And we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Angel De Fazio. She’s the president, executive director and co-founder of the National Toxic Encephalopathy Foundation, which is at NTEF-USA.org.
I just want to say, again, Angel, just what a fabulous job that you’ve done with this website. It’s very professional and it’s very well-designed and easy to use and well-written. And there’s just so much information on it. I just wish that there was a website like yours for every body system. All of this toxic information all needs to be presented as well as you presented it.
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, thank you. That’s very much appreciated. We did spend a lot of time on what we wanted to cover and we wanted to make sure we get every area.
DEBRA: And you’ve done a fabulous job, just a very good example.
So since you’re in Las Vegas, what are you finding is the attitude towards people with chemical sensitivity issues?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, surprisingly, there seems to be more and more of someone who knows someone with the problem.
Now, I was at a state legislative hearing a couple of weeks ago and I was dying in the room. A guy took a bath in cologne. So I complained and the lady they sent over actually had a fragrance issue. So they had learned to deal with that issue. And now, they are accommodating by allowing me to testify by phone.
And we received communications from a lot of people who are in what we call the ‘beginning’ stages. They claimed they aren’t sick, but only a few fragrances bother them. It gives them a headache or they notice they only feel sick at work or their asthma kicks in.
But the problem is they’re really in denial. They thought what they’re showing is – I equate it to someone knocking at the door, a very light rap, and you don’t hear it. Then they knock harder and harder. They just do not want to accept the fact that they’re going to wind up like everybody else who is environmentally ill.
DEBRA: I understand that, I see that and I know over all the decades that I’ve been doing this work, a lot of times people will say, “But I’m not sick right now. I’m not one of those people.”
What I’ve learned is that the people with MCS or toxic encephalopathy, it’s not “We’re not those people.” It affects everybody. It affects everybody, every single person, every man, woman and child on the planet, every animal, every tree. Every living on the planet is being affected by toxics. It’s just a matter of degree and it’s a matter of recognizing it and it’s a matter of knowing that if you’re not being disabled by it now, or being made ill by it now, it’s coming. It’s coming.
What happens is these chemicals that you’re being exposed to build up in your body and they reach a certain tipping point and then you get sick. Or you can be exposed to a whole bunch at once or some over a period of time. I know that I first started having problems with my immune system when I was only 24 years old. That’s not very much of a lifetime to already have toxic chemicals built up so badly that your immune system gets affected by it – and then my endocrine. Even though I live a very toxic free life, there’s a lot of chemical exposure out in the world. There just is.
One of the things that I really admire about what you’re doing is that you’re going beyond saying, “Let’s clean my house.” You’re saying, “We need to go out in the world and make more people aware and make safe environments for everyone.”
So how do you do that? What if somebody wanted to be able to have a public space or the place where they work not have perfume, for example? What would you tell them to do?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, they have no protection because employers are only obligated to deal with the ADA. But if they had a diagnosis and they fit the criteria of being disabled, then they can go and approach HR, et cetera. But without a diagnosis or being declared disabled, all you could do is hope, speak to your fellow employees and see if they will accommodate you. But they’re not required to.
DEBRA: It’s so interesting to me that you say you have to show that you’re disabled in order to be able to do anything about it. Why do people have to become disabled? I’m just asking this as a rhetorical question. You don’t need to answer it unless you want to. But why do people need to become disabled before any action can be taken about these things?
You and I have seen piles and piles and piles of studies which show that these chemicals are toxic. Why can’t we just say, “Look, these chemicals are toxic. We don’t want them in the environment. It will help everybody. So let’s just remove them.”
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Because we cannot compete with [inaudible 00:33:19] and the advertising. All you see on TV is, “You must, in order to attract the opposite sex, wear this or that,” whatever. Your home has to smell like a foyer of all these products.
And so people buy into that. They do not want to have to stand out from the crowd. “Oh, I [inaudible 00:33:56] shower. Am I going to smell good when I deal with people at work?”
It’s just propaganda that they have bought into.
DEBRA: Yes, I would totally agree with. Well, we need to go to break again. When we come back, we’ll talk more about this.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Angel De Fazio. She’s the president, executive director and co-founder of the National Toxic Encephalopathy Foundation. And their website address is NTEF-USA.org. And in particular, go there and take a look at this fabulous, fabulous article that they’d done about, and let me give you the exact name. It is the Toxins That Threaten Our Brains. And if you just go to the homepage in their website, it’s about halfway down the second column. It’s near the top of the second column. There are so many articles.
So we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and today my guest is Angel De Fazio. She’s the president, executive director and co-founder of the National Toxic Encephalopathy Foundation.
Angel, what is the organization doing for MCS Awareness Month?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, first of all, we don’t recognize MCS. It’s a catchall phrase. So what we do is we address it as Toxic Encephalopathy/Chemical Injury Awareness Month. And for over a decade, we received proclamations from the governor, mayors of various cities here in Nevada. We actually made the New York Times a couple of years ago when we asked the city to go fragrant-free.
This year, we’re going to concentrate on healthier pregnancies.
DEBRA: That’s good.
ANGEL DE FAZIO: With all of the research coming out about pregnancies, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, air pollutions, we figured pregnant women need to be educated. But we’re also reaching out to veterans because [inaudible 00:40:29] syndrome most of the time is chemical injury. And the problem is, the environmentally-ill appear to have psychological problems when in reality, it’s the chemicals that are to blame that are mimicking it. And once people identify the chemicals and eliminate them, all the so-called psyche issues tend to disappear.
We’re also going to be reinforcing that people need to avoid RoundUp along with using [inaudible 00:41:15] pesticide, pushing for organics in the diet and [inaudible 00:41:25] impacts health especially with air fresheners and pesticides because a lot of people who are injure at work tend to have what’s called pre-absenteeism, which means that they’re at work but they’re less productive.
We’re also pushing for people to eliminate the use of essential oils.
DEBRA: Good. So you have an online store. The organization has an online store called Chemically Free Living, where you sell some products that are not toxic. What kind of products do you sell?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, we walk the walk, and talk the talk about alternatives. So with everything about the EPA, we went for stainless steel kitchen storage containers for our lunch kit program, organic linens, mattresses, mattress toppers water and air filters. I even have incandescent bulbs. My favorite is the reusable ice cubes. I just love them.
DEBRA: What’s a reusable ice cube?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: It’s a stainless steel, one-inch square, filled with distilled water that should pop in the freezer, and then you throw in your drink. So it keeps the drink cold, but it doesn’t dilute it. And then you rinse it off and pop it in the freezer again.
As a kid growing up, we all had mothers who make us popsicles. And so, we found stainless steel popsicle makers.
DEBRA: I’ve seen this.
ANGEL DE FAZIO: I thought that’s some great idea. And even with my [inaudible 00:43:38]. I’m not going to have him get sick. They’ve been partially tested. No fragrances, no [inaudible 00:43:58]. The steels on the stainless steel containers are silicone. It’s just very healthy.
DEBRA: Yes, I see you put a lot of effort in research into this to bring together a collection of products.
We’re almost out of time here. But I want us to talk about the Vegas hotels going fragrance-free. Tell us what you’re doing about that.
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, there is one hotel, the Red Rock Hotel, that is not using any of the scent branding. They increased the number of air exchanges. Wow! What a novel idea. So I checked in there for two weeks. They had no idea I was there. I was able to stay in the room, room service was great, their linens had nothing on it. Even addressing my food allergies, their café was very airy, and I asked them to move me and they put me in a closed area. But the other hotels, no. They’re toxic.
A while back, I wrote as a press release that one of the high end properties, the Wynn Hotel, smelled like a well-maintained drier vent. And that was a quote from a travel magazine. They just pumped it in so heavy. They claim to be green, but that’s more towards water and energy conservation. In showrooms, you’re trapped because they close the doors, they pump in the air conditioner and even people who are not sensitive actually taste the chemicals.
But what they do is they use, “Oh! Well, we’re certified.” And so people think, “Oh, it’s healthy.” They don’t understand with re-certification, you can reach a platinum level and not have one single point on indoor air quality.
I even created a toxic hotel list on the foundation’s website.
DEBRA: I think that’s a great idea so that we know which ones are the most toxic. I would really like to see a hotel chain, especially one that has a lot of smaller hotels across the country that travelers are staying in really do non-toxic rooms so that a traveler, especially on business or going on vacations or traveling a lot, that they know if they stay at that hotel chain, they’re really going to have a clean room. And I’d really like to see that happen because it’s really needed. It’s really, really needed.
I used to think about years and years ago, I used to only think about myself. And I thought I have to put myself in this clean, little house so that I’m not being poisoned. And then I thought, “Well, I should tell more people about this so that other people, we can all share information.”
But now, I really think that the thing that needs to happen is that we just need to have a whole toxic free world where all the public spaces are not toxic and the people need to understand how we’re being poisoned, how all of us are being poisoned. And we can turn it around. We can all turn it around together.
ANGEL DE FAZIO: But people do not want to give up their products.
DEBRA: I know. I understand that. And that’s why you have your online store and that’s why I keep showing people that there are great toxic free products that they can use instead. And I know in my life that I needed to have things to replace the toxic products before I would give them up even though I knew they were making me sick.
I remember I finally found this shade of red lipstick that I thought was perfect and that was the last toxic product to go because I just couldn’t give up the color. It doesn’t make sense. But I knew that it was toxic, I knew that it could be making me sick, but I had to have that shade of red lipstick. And I finally gave it up and got to a point where the most important thing to me is health and I’m going to do whatever it takes to organize my life around having good health. And everybody can do that too and have a wonderful life.
So Angel, we’ve only got about a minute left. Any final words you want to say?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, we’re considering this summer doing a fair with kids to teach them how to create their own non-toxic products. I figured teach them young. But the thing is never say never or it can’t happen to you. No one’s immune. And with the increase from olfactory chemicals assault that people in businesses they’re using, it’s not if, but when.
DEBRA: I totally agree. We’re at the end of our time. So thank you so much for being on today, Angel. And again, you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and find out how to contact Angel. Go to her website and get more information about this. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Thanks for listening. Be well.
