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Toxics in Your Body? Tests Can Tell You the Truth
My guest today is Wendy Myers, CHHC, NC, FDN, founder and head writer of Liveto110.com. Wendy has been on the show before talking about the many tests she offers, but today we’re going to talk about results. We talk a lot about exposures to toxics, but are toxics really in our bodies? We’ll take a look at what Wendy sees in her tests and also the test results from the Centers for Disease Control report Fourth National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals, Updated Tables, September 2012. Wendy is a certified holistic health and nutrition coach in Los Angeles CA. She is also certified in Hair Mineral Analysis for the purpose of designing Mineral Power programs for clients to correct their metabolism and body chemistry. She is currently seeking her masters in clinical nutrition at Bridgeport University in Connecticut. Wendy hosts the weekly Live to 110 Video Podcast and the Modern Paleo Cooking show on her Live to 110 Youtube Channel. www.liveto110.com
Toxic Free Body: CDC Says Toxic Chemicals are in Our Bodies
LISTEN TO OTHER SHOWS WITH WENDY MYERS
- Tests You Won’t Find at Your Doctor’s Office
- Choosing and Using Home Saunas to Remove Toxic Chemicals From Your Body
- Deep Detox With Minerals
- Health and Nutrition Coach on Diet and Detox
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Toxics in Your Body? Tests Can Tell You the Truth
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Wendy Myers
Date of Broadcast: October 06, 2015
DEBRA: Hello, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic-free.
It’s Tuesday, October 6th 2015. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida.
I’m happy to report that the weather is cooling down in Clearwater, Florida. I was actually able to open my windows the other day over the weekend and I could actually tolerate the temperature. It’s getting down to mid-70s in the mornings here and we are all relieved in Florida that fall and winter is on its way and things are cooling off.
Anyway, another thing I’m excited about today is that I just launched a new blog this morning. Actually, you’re the first to hear about it. I haven’t even sent out my newsletter yet that’s going out after the show. The name of the blog is called Shop with Debra. You can just go to ShopwithDebra.com actually. I tested it and the URL works. I hope it’s going to work for you, ShopwithDebra.com.
The point of this blog is because I have lots of recommendations that I give on the show and on my website of places to buy products. But the reality is most of us are walking around wanting to buy products in our local stores (I do that too) and I actually find toxic-free products everywhere that you don’t have to go to a special online place to get something that’s toxic-free. It’s wonderful to do that and there are a lot of toxic-free products that are only available online. It’s more difficult to find them in local stores, but I do find them.
I was talking about this in my newsletter last week and I said, “Would you all be interested in knowing how I shop and how I make decisions?” and I got so many emails saying, “Please, please, please do this. We want to look over your shoulder. We want to know what you’re buying. We want to know how you’re making these decisions, how are you finding these products in local stores.”
And so I launched that blog today. I think it has six or seven posts on it already. And what I’m doing is really paying attention to when I go out shopping, I’m bringing my camera now so that I can take pictures. And if I’m looking online, whatever I’m finding, I’m putting things that I buy or things that I buy.
I’m sorry. I’m getting some little notes here on Skype, so I’ve been getting distracted. But I think everything is okay.
So as I’m window shopping, whether it’s online or looking in local stores, if I’m buying things or something I want to buy or something I think you might want to buy, this is all about shopping. This new blog is all about shopping. I’m very excited because I get to take pictures and make videos and just give you information on the spot.
So we’re going to find a lot of toxic-free products. And if you have questions about what it is I’m saying on the blog and what I’m recommending, please ask them. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s going to be really great.
So let’s get on the subject of today. Today we’re going to talk about toxic chemicals in your body. Now, I’ve been doing a lot of research for more than 30 years and I’m familiar with a lot of tests that have been done and studies that have been done. And so I know that you can actually measure toxic chemicals and heavy metals and all those things in your body from different kinds of tests. It shows that our bodies have these chemicals.
All these chemicals we’re talking about on this show that are in products are also in your body. And so today, we’re just focusing on what’s in your body. This is the reason why you need to be doing all these things to reduce your exposure to toxic chemicals. As the toxic chemicals build up in your body, that’s when illness starts occurring.
We know from cigarettes, for example, you can some cigarettes for years and years. And then 30 years later, you get cancer. So being exposed to all these chemicals in daily life, if you say, “I’m not getting sick,” that doesn’t mean that the chemicals aren’t there and they aren’t creating a long-term situation where you will get sick. A lot of people are getting illnesses at early, early age and it’s because of these toxic chemicals in your body.
So I invited Wendy Myers to come on the show today to be the guest, to discuss this with me. She’s been on before. What she does is that she is a – well, she does a lot of things. One of the things that she does is that she offers a lot of tests that could show what’s in your body. But she also offers very specific tailor-made detoxes that will remove exactly the toxic substances that she finds on the test.
So it’s not a hit-and-miss kind of thing. It’s a very well thought out, well documented and researched detox program that is very specific.
So she’s going to talk about what she’s finding in the tests. They’re not blood tests that she does. We’re going to talk about what she’s finding in the tests that she does. We’re going to talk about what the Centers for Disease Control is finding in the tests that they do.
I found another study just right before the show online. We’re going to talk about that study. We’re going to talk about can you get tested and all these kinds of things that have to do with you finding out what’s actually in your body and what you can do. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. Hi, Wendy.
WENDY MYERS: Hi, how are you doing?
DEBRA: I’m doing fine. That was a very long introduction. So I should give you the formal introduction. This is Wendy Myers, CHHC, NC, FDN, founder and head writer of Liveto110.com. You can go to her website Liveto110.com and find out all about everything that she is doing.
So Wendy, how are you doing today?
WENDY MYERS: I’m doing fantastic! I just got out of my infrared sauna.
DEBRA: Ooh…
WENDY MYERS: I’m doing great!
DEBRA: You know, I decided. I wrote the other day that I think I need to really get serious about getting a sauna. I go to a gym and I can sit in the sauna in the gym, but I think I really want for my own. I wrote a piece for my Toxic Free Body blog and it was about RoundUp. I finally just got disgusted with the fact that you can – how do you pronounce that word, glyphosate?
WENDY MYERS: Yeah, glyphosate.
DEBRA: Is that how you pronounce it?
WENDY MYERS: Mm-hmmm…
DEBRA: Glyphosate has now been tested and found in organic grains. If it’s in organic grains, how can we assume that it’s not in organic everything else? It’s just a matter of it hasn’t been tested.
So I was trying to figure out how to get glyphosate out of my body because it’s getting harder and harder to avoid it or know where to avoid it. And what I came up with was that I needed to sit down in a sauna and that was the way to detox it.
WENDY MYERS: Yeah, the infrared sauna (there are near and far infrared saunas), these are going to be the keys to disease prevention and longevity especially as more and more chemicals are unleashed into the environment with no testing whatsoever. The people that are regularly using a sauna on a frequent basis, two to a couple of times a week, those are the people that are going to enjoy health and longevity.
DEBRA: I agree with that. There are so many different ways that one can detox and I think that they all do what they do. But I think that if people really want to do it, it comes down to a sauna.
WENDY MYERS: Oh, yes. I absolutely agree. My detox program is called Mineral Power. I have all my clients use an infrared sauna for about five days a week for two to three years initially. And that’s really what it takes to get all these garbage, the 500 that the CDC has established we have on average in our bodies. And heavy metals, you’ve got to do a sauna to sweat all these garbage out. That bypasses your liver.
Our liver is so overloaded today. The sauna bypass that really by just sweating everything out through your skin. So you really want to just burden off your detox organs.
DEBRA: Oh! Well, here we are to the first break already. So we’re going to go to break. And then, we’ll come back. Let’s talk about body burden when we come back, so that everybody knows what that is.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Wendy Myers. She’s the founder and head writer at Liveto110.com. When we come back, we’ll talk about what’s going on in your body and why you need to detox.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Wendy Myers. She’s the founder and head writer of Liveto110.com. We’re talking today about what are the toxic things about our bodies and what we can do to remove them. But mostly, we’re focusing on what are these things and are they actually there.
I think that for a lot of people, it’s hard to make that connection between, “Yes, there are toxic chemicals out there, but are they in my body?” and Wendy and I want to say yes. They are in your body. We absolutely know they are in your body. There’s actually a word for this.
It’s called ‘body burden’. And I think that word came from the CDC. I’m not sure. But it’s very commonly used.
And so what happens is our bodies have a detox system that are made up of organs liver, kidneys, sweat and all these different parts. And when our body’s detox systems are insufficient to remove the amount of toxic chemicals that you’re exposed to, then the toxicants that come into your body will not be excreted. But instead, they’re stored in your body and they’re stored in fat, semen, breast milk, muscles, bones, brain, liver and other organs.
And so it’s just because we’re being exposed to too many chemicals more than our bodies can handle that we then end up with what’s called ‘body burden’. The total amount of these chemicals that are being stored in your body at any given point in time is called the ‘body burden’.
Do you want to talk about the CDC tests, Wendy?
WENDY MYERS: Yes!
DEBRA: Okay, I’ll let you talk. I have so much to say about this. Okay, you talk.
WENDY MYERS: Yes. Well, there is a study done in 2012 by the Centers for Disease Control, the CDC. They do a report about every five years. This one is called The 4th National Reort on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals.
What this study found is that, on average, we have about 500 chemicals in our body. That’s really profound. It’s not really a big stretch of the imagination given that we have (estimates vary) between 80,000 to 100,000 chemicals in our environment. So granted, you’re probably going to have some of these in your body no matter where you are in the planet.
Even Inuit mothers in the arctic have 70 chemicals in their breast milk. And these are people that live in a very, very remote part of the world with no industry. These chemicals will travel in clouds and through weather patterns and they’re absorbed into the ocean and then into the fish. They’re just everywhere.
It’s kind of like this silent killer because people aren’t aware of it, they come with these very vague symptoms initially like fatigue and brain fog and just general malaise, depression, things like that. People go to their doctor and they just get a medication, “Here’s a pill. Here’s your prescription” and people just get sicker and sicker and sicker until they develop a diagnosis or disease or a cancer.
So that’s what you and I are trying to do. We’re trying to inform people about these very real dangers to our health.
DEBRA: Yes, exactly. I actually read that whole report when it came out and I picked up a few chemicals that everybody has in their bodies, everybody. A hundred percent of people tested by the CDC had these chemicals. And this is not the whole, entire list, but it’s just a handful. I just want to mention these because I think that our listeners will recognize some of these chemicals.
So the first one that I picked was PCBs, which is polychlorinated biphenols. Those used to be in the news a lot. I haven’t heard it so much recently, but it used to be mentioned a lot. They’re on things like carbonless copy paper, they’re in flourescent light bulbs, they’re in inks, paints, pesticides, plastics. They haven’t been manufactured or widely used since 1977.
But still, as of the last CDC test, 100% of people tested still had them in their bodies. One of the reasons why it’s of concerned and why it’s no longer being manufactured is because of its persistence.
Now, Wendy, why don’t you tell us about persistent chemicals and why those are worse for body burden?
WENDY MYERS: Yes! Well, the problem with these PCBs, they just don’t break down. They are some of these plastics. These plastics can persist for decades in our environment. They’re going to landfills and then they get into water and they just never degrade, so they can just lodge in your body and persist for many, many years.
And so, it’s good to stop manufacturing them or using them in manufacturing. However, they are persistent in our body burden and our environment because they never break down. Now, some companies are trying to use products where the plastics break down quicker and they’re not so persistent in our environment. But there are so many chemicals – I don’t really know how much this is going to help. But that’s a step in the right direction.
DEBRA: Yeah. We need to keep in mind that things like PCBs are persisting in the environment. And so everything that comes in the environment like the food we eat and the water we drink can potentially have PCBs in them. And so it’s not like something you’re going to find on the label. It’s something that we’re being exposed to from the surrounding environment. As those products like food, fish, water comes into our homes, then they would contain those. And of course, they don’t have warning labels on them.
I know we’re coming up in a few seconds on the next break, so I’m not going to go on to the next item on the list here. Oh, well, I’ll just say it really fast because it’s a really easy one. We all have styrine in our bodies and this is from styrofoam coffee cups and takeout food containers. They’re just so ubiquitous and we don’t even think about them.
All these chemicals, the PCBs, styrine and the other ones I’m going to mention, they all cause cancer and other illnesses. And so, we need to be concerned about styrine and when you start thinking about styrine in our bodies and PCBs in our bodies and the mixture of that.
Anyway, we’ll be back after the break and talk about this some more. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Wendy Myers, founder and head writer at Liveto110.com. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And today, we’re talking with my guest, Wendy Myers. She’s the founder and head writer of Liveto110.com. Wendy has so much experience with detox and she also is testing people.
I want to tell you a few more from the CDC that they’re finding. And then we’re going to find out what Wendy is finding in the tests that she’s doing in her clients.
So another thing is dichlorobenzene which comes from breathing air fresheners, moth balls and things like toilet deodorizer blocks. Again, we all have these chemicals. These are chemicals we all have.
Then we also have xylene in our bodies from breathing gasoline. Now, you might think, “Well, I’m not breathing gasoline,” but yes, you are.
Are there any gas stations anymore? When I was a kid, when you go to the gas station, you had an attendant pump your gas. And now, we’re all pumping our gas. We’re all breathing xylene which is a very toxic chemical. And paint varnish…
WENDY MYERS: Yeah. And xylenes are also in perfumes.
DEBRA: Yes, they are like cigarettes and smokes. They are actually no longer in permanent marker. They used to be in permanent markers, but they aren’t anymore. All the ones that I could find had switched to alcohol, which is a good thing but still toxic. It’s less toxic than xylene, but still toxic.
And then we all have dioxins in our bodies because dioxin is one of those bioaccumulative fat-soluble chemicals and it climbs up the food chain. And so if you are eating something like animals and fish, it’s got dioxins in it just because it’s the environment. They’re not adding these chemicals. Those are environmental things.
So, those are chemicals that the CDC – that’s just part. How many did they find? I don’t remember how many. It was like several hundred that they tested for. These are the ones, the top ones, the most common ones that came out that are in 100% of people.
So Wendy, tell us about how you test and what you’re finding in your clients.
WENDY MYERS: Well, there’s a new test that came out by Great Plains Lab. It’s called GPL test. It’s a test for chemical toxins for the metabolites of chemicals. And so it tests about 160 chemicals and metabolites.
DEBRA: Wow!
WENDY MYERS: Yeah, it’s great. It tests for things like pthalate, vinyl chlorides, benzene, [inaudible 00:29:21], xylene, styrene, organophosphates like glyphosate, MTBE and ETBE and dichlorophenoxyacetic acid. It tests for a lot of different things including their metabolites, but the most common thing I’m finding is pthalates. These are probably about a thousand times more than other chemicals in the body. They’re highly prevalent. They’re the most widespread group of chemicals in our environment.
Pthalates are basically used to keep color and scent in products. So any time you have some laundry detergent or shaving lotion or perfume or a color. If your shampoo is pink and bubble gum flavor or smell a scent, those are using phthalates to hold them in those products and keep the scent in your clothes. If you are using detergents or dryer sheets, those are pthalates keeping that scent in your sweater or shirt for weeks afterwards.
They’re most commonly found in shaving lotions, aspirin, cosmetics, detergents, foods, microwavables with plastic covers, pharmaceutical drugs, intravenous products prepared in plastic bags, hair sprays and insecticides, nail polish, nail polish removers, skin care products, adhesives, lacquer, cleaning products, perfumes and varnishes as well.
These pthalates, they’re implicated in reproductive damage, infertility, depressed immune system function and cancer even.
DEBRA: Wow! So out of the people that you’ve tested, are you finding everybody?
WENDY MYERS: Oh, yeah, 100% absolutely.
DEBRA: Yeah, this is why we have to detox. This is exactly why we have to detox. That’s just one chemical that is being found in all of her clients that she’s tested.
So again, I want to let you talk, Wendy. I can do the whole show just by myself.
WENDY MYERS: I know!
DEBRA: So tell people what happens when you’re being exposed, you have more than one chemical in your bdoy. After you answer this question, you’ll tell us about some other chemicals. We’re not just walking around with one chemical. We’re walking around with multiple chemicals in our bodies. So what happens in our bodies when that happens?
WENDY MYERS: The problem is we don’t know. There are a handful of studies trying to show the connection between some chemicals and how they potentiate each other or increase the damage that one chemical does when the chemicals combine and react with each other to create a stronger chemical. There had been a couple of studies that do it with food coloring and preservatives, say, like in Mountain Dew.
They’re finding that use of FDNC color yellow, FDNC yellow and maybe some other chemicals and preservatives down in a lot of children, how those can cause ADD and ADHD and things like that.
But the short answer is we just don’t know because there are very few studies like that and there are so may chemicals in the environment that there’s never going to be enough studies that show the more damaging effects when these chemicals combine with each other and potentiate each other.
DEBRA: Yes. And I’ve read enough things that show that you can combine chemicals together and then they become more dangerous. It’s just a conclusion that I’ve come to. Number one, it’s just not possible to remove 100% of the chemicals from our lives because they’re just so ubiquitous now in the environment. But if we do everything that we can do to number one, reduce our exposures that we know about and have alternatives for and then do everything that we can do to detox, we can make a significant difference in our health and how long we’re going to live and how happy we’re going to be and how good our bodies are going to feel. We can make a difference. It doesn’t have to be 100%.
And so that’s what we’re really talking about here, how can we improve the situation, not how can we eliminate 100% of everything because that’s just not possible.
So we need to go to break again. When we come back, we’ll talk more with my guest, Wendy Myers. She’s the founder and head writer of Liveto110.com. She does a lot with testing for toxics and also for detoxing. She can design an individual, very specific detox program for you that is very effective and will really get the chemicals out of your body. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Wendy Myers. We’re talking about toxic chemicals in your body, your body burden, what toxic chemicals are in your body and by connection, the importance of detox.
We need to get them out. We’re exposed to more toxic chemicals than our bodies can handle. And that’s what’s causing a lot of our serious illnesses just as the everyday annoying kind of illnesses that are the toxic chemicals. As the years ago by, our bodies get more and more built up and built up with toxic chemicals. We see the effects all around us, the increase almost in our society.
Okay! Wendy, tell us some more of what you’re finding in your test results.
WENDY MYERS: A big one is organophosphate, one of the most used groups of substances throughout the world and are used in pesticides. So, even if you’re eating organic food, about 7% of the produce still has pesticides like if they’re grown in Chile, which a lot of our grapes and things are grown in South America. There’s not very much regulation down there. Those are the fruits [inaudible 00:40:21] during the winter time. Those aren’t grown in the U.S. so much as they are in other countries where it’s warm. So your bananas and things like that can have pesticides on them even if they’re labeled organic.
Same with China, a lot of vegetables, frozen vegetables are grown in China. There’s not a lot of regulation there. There isn’t produce grown here in the U.S.
So, organophosphates are used most commonly in pesticides. They’re inhibitors of [inaudible 00:40:57] enzymes leading to overstimulation of nerve cells. This can cause sweating and salivation, diarrhea, aggressive and depressed behavior. Children exposed to organosphosphates have more than twice the risk of developing autism spectrum disorders.
A study done in San Francisco found that in California agricultural areas, children born of mothers living within 500 meters from the field were organochlorine pesticides were used were six times more likely to develop autism than children whose mothers did not use to live near such fields.
DEBRA: And 500 meters, like a meter is like a yard. And so when we’re talking at 500 miles, it’s a very short distance.
WENDY MYERS: Yeah. And that’s just one chemical. I mean, there’s a reason autism spectrum disorders are now in 1 in 51 children including my own daughter. My own daughter had an autism diagnosis when she was three. She no longer has diagnosis because I detoxed her with my Mineral Power program. Now, she’s normal. However, with so many chemicals in our environment, it’s not surprising to me at all that we have such a large increase very quickly over the last decade in the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder, ADD, ADHD and all the other diagnosis that children are now receiving.
We have to detox. We have to do pre-pregnancy planning. We have to detox our children with zeolites and other things like this. I give my daughter every single day. And when they’re seven years old, they can begin using infrared saunas because it’s affecting our children’s brains and their behavior.
DEBRA: And children can start taking zeolite. Even newborns can take zeolite, pregnant women can take zeolite.
WENDY MYERS: Absolutely!
DEBRA: And zeolites primarily remove heavy metals and some pesticides, but it’s not complete spectrum. A sauna would be more complete. But zeolite really takes out those heavy metals which are just a foundation of dangerousness. If you just even were to only do that, you would improve your health a lot.
And so, if you’re planning on having a family, getting pregnant, you should start detoxing before you concieve. And if you’re already pregnant, it’s safe to take the zeolite. If you have a newborn, it’s safe to start giving them zeolite. They can’t do every detox, but zeolite is safe.
There’s been a lot of use of it in these ways.
I take zeolite every day. I would take zeolite every day for the rest of my life because it removes the heavy metals. Radiation is another thing that it removes. It removes these things from your body. And then when they’re all removed, you’re still going to be exposed to new heavy metals. You can’t walk around outside without breathing in heavy metals. Zeolite just absorbs them as soon as they come in your body.
That’s just one thing that everybody can do.
WENDY MYERS: Yeah. I recommend it to every single one of my clients. It’s just so easy. It’s just really easy for compliance. And from sauna, not as much. I don’t get involve a lot of [inaduible 00:44:49] and expense…
DEBRA: I know!
WENDY MYERS: A lot of people, they really need to get their own sauna to be able to use it five days a week. It’s very, very important. But zeolite is a very, very easy way to go.
And same with cilantro, I give a lot of my clients cilantro.
DEBRA: Mm-hmmm… plus, they’re just delicious.
WENDY MYERS: It will behind to heavy metals and other divalent heavy metals like cadmium and things like that, which are very common in our environment.
Another chemical I’m finding in clients is vinyl chloride also known as polyvinyl chloride (PVC). This is in a lot of piping. People, if they have plastic piping in their house, it’s going to be in the water they’re drinking unless they get a proper filter. It’s also going to be in any kind of plastic stuff, plastic material like shower curtains, rubber duckies and things like that.
It’s very, very toxic. Exposure to vinyl chloride may cause potential nervous system depression, nausea, headache, dizziness, liver damage, osteoporosis, enlargement of the spleen and lots of other illnesses. So it’s really, really toxic. It’s used in the synthesis of several commercial chemicals, including the polyvinyl chloride which is also known as PVC.
DEBRA: Yeah, yeah. So what are you finding in terms of heavy metals?
WENDY MYERS: Oh, gosh! Every single client has aluminum. I do hair mineral analysis, but I also do urine metals testing, [inaudible 00:46:42] testing and fecal metal testing as well. I prefer if clients do all three because I get the complete picture. But every single person is aluminum toxic. Most of my clients are also arsenic toxic.
But aluminum is present in all vaccines pretty much [inaudible 00:47:03] mercury toxicity in vaccines. But now, they have to have some sort of [inaudible 00:47:10] or irritant to the immune system to stimulate it to produce antibodies. So now, they use aluminum which is a well-known neurotoxin. It causes dementia, different forms of it like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. There’s a reason about 50% of people develop dementia eventually and part of it is that aluminum is the most common heavy metal in our environment.
It’s also on underarm deodorant, which we’re slathering on every single day. It’s used as an anti-caking agent in flour and salts. It’s found in cheap cookware. If you go to cheap restaurants, theyr’e using disposable aluminum cookware, not to mention aluminum foil, aluminum cans.
They’re just everywhere. They’ve got it in public municipal water sources because it makes [inaudible 00:48:02] sink to the bottom of the tap water. It’s in your [inaudible 00:48:07] water.
DEBRA: It’s just everywhere.
WENDY MYERS: It’s everywhere. And then, there’s arsenic. Arsenic is found in conventional chickens because it makes chickens grow 50% faster. Farmers are paid by weight for their chicken.
So everywhere on the planet, they feed the chickens arsenic unless they’re pasture or organic. So you want to be warry of regular chickens.
DEBRA: Time-wise, we’re only about a minute a half away from the end of the show. I know you could go on much longer to tak about this, but I’d just like to circle back to this new test that people can get for the chemicals. It’s like over a hundred chemicals that it tests for. How much does it cost?
WENDY MYERS: It cost $395. And then in addition to that, you have to pay the lab fee which is $219. It costs about $600, maybe $550 for the test. It’s not cheap.
DEBRA: It’s not cheap, but it’s a lot less expensive than what it used to cost in the past. I mean, it used to be that people couldn’t get tested at all because it was so prohibitive. They would do these tests as part of studies and then people couldn’t get the test. So that’s really good that they’ve come out with this.
Okay! Well, we’re coming right up to the end of the show. So thank you so much, Wendy. My guest is Wendy Myers. Her website is Liveto110.com. Go visit her website. Go to my new blog, ShopwithDebra.com and find out how I’m shopping and how you can find toxic-free products everywhere.
This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well!
Minnesota Nice Spice
Organically-grown, hand-blended, globally-inspired seasoning blends. Proceeds are donated to help artists with disabilities. But these are no ordinary seasoning blends. I tried them and every single one I tried gave me a burst of fresh flavor that made me say “wow!”. They are just perfectly blended. Blends feature flavors from all over the world. My favorite was the Island Spice Dessert Blend, which contains all the warm winter spices.
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Toxic Chemicals in “Untreated” Framing Lumber
This post started as a comment posted this week on Q&A: Is Fresh Cut Lumber Toxic?
My wife and I have done a fair amount of home improvement over the years and we have purchased our share of lumber from big box stores but have also supported a local sawmill buy purchasing wood from them. The wood we purchase directly from the sawmill does not have the chemical smell we always notice when we buy from a big box store (or even a lumber yard).
Lately we have been wondering if big lumber producers try to cut down on the time lumber spends drying in the kiln by applying some undisclosed chemical to prevent mold. Are they required to disclose every chemical they might apply to their wood products?
But I pulled this comment out and made it a question because the answer turned out to be so important.
I’ve purchased a lot of framing lumber at places like Home Depot and Lowe’s. I’ve not purchased lumber at a local sawmill, so I didn’t have anything to compare it to. I myself didn’t notice an odor and I didn’t have any symptoms. And of course there is no label, so you think it’s 100% untreated wood.
But once I received this comment, I starting researching and here’s what I found.
There’s an answer to a question on the website The Chimney Sweep (of all unexpected places) that exactly answers the question of chemicals in framing wood. It’s in the context of what happens to a wood stove when you burn framing wood, which chimney sweeps would know.
The trip through the sawmill can also introduce chemicals to the wood. To combat “blade binding” and keep the sawblades sharp, sawmill operators must constantly keep the blades coated with liquid lubricant, using a sporadic spray-on or continuous drip method to keep the sawblade coated while the wood is being cut. A variety of chemicals are commonly used as sawblade lubricant, including diesel oil, antifreeze, paint thinner and kerosene. Trace amounts of these chemicals can be found on all surfaces of each piece of lumber that has been through the saw. Combustion of these substances produces a variety of corrosives, including sulphuric acid.
Another chemical that finds its way into dimensional lumber is polyethylene glycol (PEG-1000). In recent years, a process known as “dry kilning” has become the industry standard for drying lumber, as it enables much faster removal of the natural liquids contained in the tree. Dry kilning allows much more efficient processing of dimensional lumber, but it can cause excessive shrinkage and cracking of the wood: to prevent this, the green logs are soaked in a solution of PEG-1000, which infiltrates deep into the wood fiber and “bulks” the wood so it won’t shrink or crack in the kilns. PEG-1000 is sometimes used even in old-fashioned mills where dry kilning hasn’t yet been implemented, because after kilning, trace amounts of PEG-1000 migrate to the surface of the lumber, creating a “waxy” coating on each piece which inhibits oxidation and natural enzyme breakdown of the wood fiber. This waxy coating actually provided one of our first tip-offs to the emerging use of PEG-1000 several years ago, when a long-time employee at our local lumber yard complained that he had recently learned he must be extra-careful moving stacks of lumber with his forklift, because if he stopped too suddenly, the then-new “slippery” lumber would slide right off the forks. Thermal decomposition of PEG-1000 produces aldehydes in extreme concentrations, which combine with the natural aldehydes and water found in wood exhaust to create a corrosive acid bath inside the stove, stovepipe and chimney.
For various reasons, including the waxy surface situation, furniture-grade lumber is not typically soaked in PEG-1000. But that doesn’t mean the leftovers from your local cabinet shop are chemical-free. Once out of the kiln, lumber is stacked in bunches separated by wood slats called “stickers”. Over time, these stickers can cause discoloration of the wood, resulting in off-color stripes across the grain known in the industry as “sticker stain”. Affected lumber is sometimes treated with “wood wash”, a solution of oxalic acid, which bleaches out the stains. In weak solution, oxalic acid is commercially used as a rust-remover: at temperatures above 110° F, the corrosiveness of this organic acid triples.
Another source of chemical content in dimensional lumber is the use of fungicides. Prior to storage of green lumber, especially in wet or humid locales, chemicals may be applied to prevent growth of fungi which stain wood blue or black, a phenomenon known as “sapstain.” Fungicides may be applied in the production line (usually by spraying) or after the lumber is bundled (usually in dip tanks). Chemicals used include didecyldimethyl ammonium chloride, 3-iodo-2-propynyl butyl carbamate, azaconazole, borax and 2-(thiocyanomethylthio) benzthiazole.
It should be reiterated here that the above list includes chemicals that might be found in untreated dimensional lumber. For example, most inland mills don’t start with logs that have had a saltwater bath: many mills have not yet adopted the “dry kilning” method, and don’t soak their logs with PEG-1000: not all furniture-grade lumber has been treated with oxalic acid, and not all mills dip their lumber in fungicides. The problem is, you can’t tell if a truckload of mill ends contains any of these chemicals by looking at it, and the woodseller who’s delivering it isn’t likely to know either.
A woman recently called me for a consolation and told me she was building a log cabin out of logs from the local forest that were being felled and cut into logs by one person. Nothing added. That would be the way to get actual untreated lumber.
We apparently need the same kind of paper trail that exists for certified organic food with wood products in order to even locate toxic free lumber.
Read the rest of the article at The Chimney Sweep: Why do they say not to burn mill ends in a wood stove?
Toxic Free Car Re-upholster
Question from Diana
Hi Debra,
Can you share how you re-upholstered a car to make it non toxic? Thanks!
Debra’s Answer
Many years ago I re-uphostered the bucket seats on my Fiat X-1/9 to remove the vinyl seat covers. That’s all I did.
I just took the car to an auto upholsterer, asked how many yards of fabric to get, then went and bought that amount of cotton canvas and prewashed it. They did a great job.
If I had wanted to, they could have replaced all the vinyl in the doors and I could have swapped out the carpet, but it was enough for me to replace the seat covers.
But I have another article for you about creating a toxic free car from an old 1986 issue of my newsletter. A reader submitted this very complete article about how to create “The All-Cotton Car..”
I scanned it for you and made a pdf: The All-Cotton Car
Cotton Rugs
Question from Stacey
Hi Debra,
I found some cotton rugs at Crate and Barrel that are reasonably priced and match my kitchen decor perfectly. They are 100% cotton, black and white striped dyed, with no rug pad or backing. Are these safe enough, especially with small children sitting/playing on them? I know you recommend washing all conventional cotton items before use, however, I cannot wash these rugs (too cold now to even wash outside). Would you say that these cotton rugs, or any 100% cotton rugs, are still safe to purchase and use in my home?
Thanks so much!
Debra’s Answer
I think you are talking about the Olin Black Striped Cotton Dhurrie Rug.
These cotton dhurries are generally fine in my experience, but I once had one that had an odor and I bought it, thinking I could remove the odor. Big mistake. I could never get it out.
But if there is no odor when you buy it, it should be fine.
I can’t vouch for how it’s made or chemicals that might be used. Use your best judgement.
Choosing and Maintaining A Toxic Free Cutting Board
My guest today is Michal Gal, founder of Urthware. His wooden cutting boards are made with exactly the materials I would choose if I were designing a cutting board, and they are beautiful. Michael is a proud husband and father of three, who decided to look deeper into companies and their products. After a lot of researching outfitting his kitchen with more natural and safe cookware he found that there were no cutting boards that were up to his standards. So he made one for himself using no petroleum based finishes and no glues, just natural wood and oils. People kept asking him if he could make one for them, and Urthware was born. www.urthware.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Choosing and Maintaining A Toxic Free Cutting Board
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Michal Gal
Date of Broadcast: October 01, 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’s Thursday, October 1st 2015. Wow! October 1st already. It’s almost Christmas. It just seemed like this year has gone by so fast.
We’re going to talk today about cutting boards. I know that might sound a trivial little thing around the house, but cutting boards are very important to people who cook. And when you put food on a toxic cutting board, those toxic chemicals get into the food and then you eat that food. So today we’ll talk about choosing a cutting board that is toxic-free and also caring for a cutting board in a way that isn’t going to add toxic chemicals to it.
My guest makes cutting boards. He started his own company because he wanted to live without toxic chemicals. And after he did a lot of research outfitting his kitchen with more natural and safe cookware, he found that there were no cutting boards that were up to his standards.
And I’m smiling as I say that because when I looked at his cutting boards, I said, “Yes, if I were designing a cutting board, this is exactly how I would make it.” And not only is it as toxic-free as I would specify, but they are also beautiful. I actually have one in my hand right now and it is just as gorgeous as I thought it would be after looking at the website.
So my guest today is Michael Gal. He’s the founder of Urthware. Hi Michael!
MICHAL GAL: Hello! How are you?
DEBRA: I am great! How are you?
MICHAL GAL: I’m doing great. I’m glad to be on your show.
DEBRA: And I’m so glad to have you. So let’s start out. Why don’t you tell us your story of why did you decide that you wanted to have a toxic-free kitchen?
MICHAL GAL: Well, like many people, when you have kids, you start to look around yourself and you start to see different chemicals in everything in the world. You’re trying to keep them safe, right? The more you research in the Internet age we are in now, there’s a plethora of information. And as you research more and more, it becomes more and more confusing on what’s safe and what’s not.
So I retrofitted my kitchen because I started eating organic and feeding my kids organic food. But then you hear about all the chemicals in all your pots, pans and everything in your kitchen. I wanted to simplify.
As I retrofitted my kitchen, I couldn’t find alternatives for cutting boards that didn’t give me pause, that didn’t give me any questions.
DEBRA: And I actually want us to talk about that after you tell us your story. We need to discuss what are those aspects that gave you pause.
But go on with your story.
MICHAL GAL: So, as I retrofitted my kitchen, I couldn’t find an alternative for cutting boards that either wasn’t plastic or coated with something I didn’t want in my kid’s food. And when you’re putting your food on a surface, you have to expect something is going to leech from it. So you want to know what that surface is.
I just couldn’t find any good information on anything that would fit the bill. So I made my own cutting board.
DEBRA: And I’m so glad you did.
MICHAL GAL: Oh, thank you. People liked it and family members liked it and I figured, “Well, you know what? I might as well try this out on the market.” They’re beautiful (if I may say so myself) as well as non-toxic. I can’t see why not. So that’s where I started.
DEBRA: That’s so wonderful. Okay, tell us about the chemicals. Well, off the top of my head, here are the cutting boards that I can think of.
I can think of plastic ones. I can think of all those plastics that are different colors. You buy a whole set because one is for vegetables and one is for meat, et cetera. I think those are used a lot in restaurants.
And then, you can buy glass ones actually. Then there are wood cutting boards, solid wood cutting boards. I’m looking at this and it’s solid wood. It’s a solid piece of wood. And then there are cutting boards that are made from strips of wood that are glued together.
Those are all the ones I could think of. Are there more?
MICHAL GAL: Oh, there’s bamboo as well. You could actually use rubber. I’m trying to think of anything else. That’s the general list of what people would use.
DEBRA: So in looking at those, what were the things that gave you pause that you didn’t want to use in those? What are the chemicals that you identified?
MICHAL GAL: Chemicals in plastics, there’s just so many of them and we all know they leech. They’re replacing BPA with BPS and BPF.
Who’s to say those are any better? And they’re finding out slowly that they’re not. They’re just to replace. In a couple of years, we’ll see BPS and BPS-free on the packaging.
DEBRA: Yes!
MICHAL GAL: So, plastic boards were just out of the question.
DEBRA: What type of plastic did they use to make cutting boards? I never researched that. I just eliminated.
MICHAL GAL: What’s that?
DEBRA: What type of plastic do they use to make plastic boards?
MICHAL GAL: Honestly, it’s been a while since I’ve researched plastic cutting boards because they seem off the table very early in my research of what I wanted to use.
DEBRA: Me too!
MICHAL GAL: I was retrofitting my kitchen to not have plastics in it because of all the questions surrounding plastics and what they’re leeching. They’re disrupting your system. You could get all kinds of plastics. I’m not a big chemist in the plastics field.
DEBRA: It’s okay.
MICHAL GAL: I disregarded plastics pretty much right away because that’s just not something I wanted to cut on. Plus, if you look into it, you can find out that there’s a study done by Dr. Cliver in UC Davis Food Safety Laboratory. And everybody else thinks plastic is more sanitary than wood. Well, it’s not actually the case.
People say if you can put it in the dishwater, the dishwater is hot and you must get rid of all the bacteria. But what they found is that when plastic cutting boards gets scarred, not even a dishwasher kills all the bacteria. Whereas woods, what they do is they actually absorb the bacteria. They starve it and the bacteria can’t procreate and they die.
So wood is what I wanted to have. It’s what I’m going with. It’s harder to make a one-piece wooden cutting board.
DEBRA: Why is that difficult?
MICHAL GAL: One of the reasons is they tend to have movement. They tend to warp.The larger you make it, the more propensity it has to warp. So what I’ve done is reinforce them is with food-grade stainless steel rod down the center.
DEBRA: Oh!
MICHAL GAL: The board you actually have is one of the smaller boards. It’s a light-duty board. It’s wide not enough to need them in my research.
DEBRA: Yeah, I was just picking it up for the steel rods. And then, I thought, “Oh, it must be only in the larger ones.
MICHAL GAL: Yeah. As boards get bigger, we added more reinforcing to stop any movement. Obviously, all wood boards can move. That helps a lot.
DEBRA: Yeah.
MICHAL GAL: Sorry, what was the question? I get off on tangents, so you got to keep me in line here.
DEBRA: It’s okay. The question was about – let’s see. I don’t remember. But here, let me ask you another question that’s related. And we need to go to break pretty soon, but let me ask you the question and even if we don’t have time to answer, we’ll get started to put the question.
So there are a lot of cutting boards that are made from pieces or strips of wood. I think what we were talking about was you decided that you wanted to use wood and then you said something about needing to reinforce it, that if you just had a solid piece of wood, that it tends to warp. So I think the next logical thing is to be looking at that a lot of wood cutting boards are made of little, small pieces of wood that are then glued together.
That’s where we start having a concern about adhesives and finishes on the wood, which we can talk about when we come back!
MICHAL GAL: Okay!
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Michal Gal. He’s the founder of Urthware.
They make the most toxic-free cutting boards that I’ve ever seen and they’re so gorgeous. The way it’s spelled is U-R-T-H-W-A-R-E, Urthware.com. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Michal Gal. He’s the founder of Urthware. He makes beautiful cutting boards out of wood because he doesn’t want plastics in his kitchen and he couldn’t find a cutting board of any kind that met his toxic-free standards.
Okay! So Michal, tell us about how they actually make those cutting boards that are all those strips of woods put together.
MICHAL GAL: What they do is they take the smaller pieces of wood. My major concern when I was looking for a cutting board was when they were coming out of a foreign country, I don’t know what glues they’ve used or what coatings they’ve used on the board. A lot of the cheaper glues are phenolic resin. These are formaldehyde-based resins. I really didn’t want to be cutting on them.
Bamboo boards as well, they’re small strips of wood. They’re really small strips of [inaudible 00:14:56]. So they take a lot of glue to manufacturer. And of course, those glues are really cheap. They’re inexpensive glues. But they’re also toxic. So they can tout the ecobenefits of bamboo, but they’re negating it by putting in the toxic chemicals as glues.
DEBRA: That’s right.
MICHAL GAL: The other major factor was they’re not coating them – most manufacturers can’t tell you what they’re coating their boards in. Any wooden board, including bamboos, are going to need some sort of oil to keep them from cracking and drying out. A lot of manufacturers can’t tell you what oils they used in it. And normally, it’s either an undisclosed oil or most likely, it’s mineral oil.
Well, mineral oil is low on the toxicity scale. It’s still a petroleum-based product. It’s a byproduct of gasoline. So I really didn’t see the point of having to cut my expensive organic food on a petroleum-based product when there are natural alternatives as well as to the glues.
We do make some larger boards and they do use glue. We make them with FDA-approved glue made in the USA. It’s not a phenol resin based glue. It’s far more expensive to produce. But all the all-natural series contain no glue because of the wide pieces of wood.
The other reasons manufacturers make them out of small pieces of wood is because they’re a lot more cheaper to manufacture. And normally, they don’t care. They only care about end mark-up, what they could make on the board.
Whereas with those coatings, those glues, once they take them out of the equation – and I found an actual alternative, which I have. It’s the organic walnut oil and beeswax. It works just as well as the synthetic, it just costs a hundred times more expensive to coat a board. Mineral oil is so cheap and that’s why manufacturers use it because they don’t care. They’re just sending whatever will sell.
When you look into things, we can’t even find out what the coating was, which is why I decided I’ll make a product. And it’s hard to actually simplify things. It ends up being more expensive to make something simple than it is to make something more complicated for some reason. It’s harder to do, but you end up with a better, more solid product.
People that buy our boards, they’re always raving about the fact that they’re beautiful as well as functional. You can have both, right?
DEBRA: You can, you absolutely can. I read a quote by Buckminster Fuller many years ago. I can’t remember it exactly. He was a big sustainability designer. He said that he wants it to be functional and everything. And then he said, “If it’s also beautiful, then I know I got it right.”
You can just look around in nature and see that nature has designed all these beautiful farms and colors. Everything is just gorgeous in nature. It’s all part of the design. And so I feel like you’re really honoring the materials and that you have brought this element of beauty and carefulness and high quality to your product that goes along with it being also safe for use and nurturing of our senses as well.
MICHAL GAL: Well, thank you. That’s what I’m trying to do. I’m a graphic designer by trade. I try to bring in my eye not just for function, but for beauty.
The other great thing about wood versus plastic is they’re biodegradable. So when you do eventually wear out your cutting board (because obviously, it’s a cutting surface, those wear out eventually), it doesn’t have an impact on the environment in the end of its life. It can go right back into the environment. And even down to the gum rubber feet, they’re not PVC or plastic-based feet that are natural products. So everything about the board is good for the environment in that respect.
Obviously, you have to use materials to make that. You try to be as eco-friendly as you can like using an FDA-approved mill to down trees.
I’ll use any woods that I know are clean woods that were harvested using good practices. I’ll do anything I can to get lumber that way. That’s hard too. Whereas most of the boards coming out of poorer country, you don’t actually know what the board is made of. It’s just whatever scrap from the company that had reclaimed the wood.
Reclaim work sounds nice. But really, I don’t want to be cutting on that since I don’t know where it was in its previous life.
DEBRA: Yeah, I totally understand. I like the idea of reclaimed wood, especially if you’re cutting food on it. If somebody was making something else and they just threw the piece of wood in a corner and someone came along with a cleaning product, wood is very absorbing and anything that it comes near will go into the wood and then it will come back out.
MICHAL GAL: Absolutely!
DEBRA: Anyway, we need to go to break again. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest is Michal Gal.
He’s the founder of Urthware. And again, that’s Urthware.com. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Michal Gal, founder of Urthware. He’s at Urthware.com. You know, Michal, during the break, I’m just sitting here feeling the board. It’s so tactically pleasant to just run my hand over the finish and over the wood and all the corners are so nicely sanded. Everything is just so pleasant, just to sit here.
MICHAL GAL: Thank you. A lot of people say, “Uh, I don’t want to cut on this.” I say, “Well, then buy two. One for show and one for you.”
Obviously, because they’re not coated in anything toxic, they need to be taken care of a little bit more than a regular glass board or bamboo board.
DEBRA: Let’s talk about care. I, myself, have an old maple board. I don’t even remember when I got it. That’s how old it is, so it’s maybe 10 or 15 years old. I actually don’t do anythign to care for it. I’m chopping on it all day long and I just run a sponge over it.
So for those of who have wood boards already and for people who are about to purchase your beautiful wood boards, how should we be taking care of them?
MICHAL GAL: Well, in general, it’s not that complicated. Any wood board (this goes for any wood board), you can’t put it in the dishwasher. They have to be handwashed. You’ll end up with a very expensive piece of firewood if you put in a good woodboard into a dishwasher. But in general, you’re just using regular dish soap and warm water to wash a board.
To disinfect it, there are natural ways to disinfect things. There are natural ways to disinfect things. You can use vinegar and a coarse salt scrub, baking soda, a little bit of hydrogen peroxide. If you get some odors on (you know when you’re using onions, you’ll actually get a little bit of an odor on the board), half a lemon will clean the smell out of a wooden board. So there are natural ways to clean them.
After that, in general, normally, just soap and water clean-up if you’re just doing vegetables and meat on them. The only time you really have to use a vinegar is when you’re sanitizing and that can actually be done periodically or after you’ve used raw meat on the board.
DEBRA: So let’s talk about raw meat for a minute. What I do is that I kind of follow the lead of the restaurants where they have different colored plastic boards, but mine aren’t plastic. I have a big board that’s maple. That’s where I cut my vegetable. When I cut meat, raw meat, I have another smaller board hanging on the wall. I think it’s bamboo. I got it more recently. It’s just a little inexpensive wood board. And so I just take that off the wall. I cut my meat and it goes straight into the sink with hot water and soap. And then it hangs back up on the wall so that it’s air dried. So that’s what I do. But I think that it’s important that people not cut raw meat on their board. What do you think about that? You just sounded like you thought it was okay.
MICHAL GAL: I personally agree with wanting two cutting boards, one for non-cooked items like vegetables and fruits and one for raw meat, poultry, fish, raw red meat only because of cross-contamination. If you don’t clean the board well enough and it doesn’t have sufficient time to dry enough to kill all of the bacteria, you could run into cross-contamination issues. So it is bestto run two cutting boards, but that’s not necessarily a must. As long as you’re disinfecting a board after you’ve used it, you could use it for both purposes. I don’t recommend it. It’s a lot safer to do the other way. And that’s exactly what I do. I just have a different board for meat in my kitchen because then there’s no chance you missed anything.
DEBRA: That’s right, that’s right.
MICHAL GAL: And that’s the best way to do it because then even if you did mess up when you’re cutting raw meat again on the raw board, that gets cooked. You could kill off the bacteria by cooking. So that is definitely the best way to do it.
And wooden boards, you should be oiling your wooden board, your poor wooden board. Normally, the best way of taking care of a wooden board, a lot of people use the mineral oil, which is hypoallergenic and everything, but then again, it’s a petroleum-based product. So there are natural alternatives.
Don’t use normal oils like vegetable oil or olive oil. They will go rancid. You wil actually get a bad smell in your board from using those oils. I saw people using olive oil and stuff. After a time, it does go rancid.
So your best bet (and the best bet I’ve found) is walnut oil. It is actually a drying oil. It pulverizes. So it’s not a chemical process. It’s oxidizing. It ends up with you getting a semi-hard coating on the board. So basically, like your cast iron pan. You see this in a cast iron pan.
Over time, your board will become saturated and the walnut oil will harden.
DEBRA: Oh!
MICHAL GAL: That’s one of the reasons I really recommend walnut oil because it does dry. And because it’s a cutting board, it does get air all the time. So, it will oxidize and will polymerize and become a protective coating on your board. So over time, your board becomes seasoned just like your cast iron pan wood.
DEBRA: And you can use just regular, culinary walnut oil? I’m just being cautious to think. Would somebody go to a hardware store and they would have denatured walnut oil with lots of chemicals in it or something?
MICHAL GAL: Never go to the hardware store to get anything. See, I only use anything you could eat. People get confused on the terminology. Linseed oil is another one you could use on the board. It does have a smell to it. But do not ever go to the hardware store and get linseed oil because it’s going to have chemical dryers in it. That’s why it hardens in a day or two. It’s a chemical process now instead of natural oxidization process. It’s natural polymerization. If you use actual edible linseed oil, it would take 30-60 days to try. That’s why they add the chemical heavy metal dryers to it.
So always get food-grade things to coat your board. I recommend obviously walnut oil. For people with walnut or nut allergies, you can use coconut oil. It does resist rancidity. It has a really high saturated fat content. It takes a long time to actually go rancid. I never actually had a board go rancid because it gets washed all the time too.
DEBRA: We need to go to break again. We’ll be back and talk more about cutting boards and how to care for them (and other related items) with my guest, Michal Gal, founder of Urthware, Urthware.com. Your’e listening to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd.
We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Michal Gal, founder of Urthware. That’s Urthware.com. Michal, I want to ask you a question about a subject that is one of my pet subjects. As an artisan manufacturer of a product, obviously, by looking at your website, you think that it’s important for you to disclose all the materials.
MICHAL GAL: Yup!
DEBRA: Tell us why you think that’s important.
MICHAL GAL: Because most companies either won’t disclose their materials or they don’t know what they are. Manufacturing has become so complicated that, honestly, if you call most companies on most products, they can’t tell you what the products are. There are so many thousands of chemicals getting into the flow of manufacturing every year, no one has an idea of their combination of those chemicals, how they’re reacting with their environment with you.
I just think it’s important if you’re using something, you know what it is. In generally, we’re obviously going to be exposed to tons of chemicals daily. But why do it when you have a choice. We have a choice, look into it and reduce the amount of chemicals you’re exposed to.
So if I tell everyone what’s in it or what’s actually not in it, that’s the major thing about my products, it’s very simple. You’re cutting on a natural wood and a natural oil. There’s nothing leeching in your food that you couldn’t eat.
And a lot of people, they just want to know what’s in something. It’s still hard to find out. I became really frustrated with this. I don’t want to frustrate a lot of customers. I just tell them what’s in it. I have nothing to hide about it.
DEBRA: Exactly!
MICHAL GAL: And when I was researching different cutting boards, some of them sounded really good on the surface. I don’t want to say brand names, but the skin cutting ones that you can put in the dishwasher and everything, hard surface, basically, you’re cutting on paper mixed with glue. So the surface you’re cutting on is basically just glue. It’s a plastic board with some wood product in it.
I just became frustrated when people through out the word ‘green’ and ‘organic’ and ‘eco’ when it’s not. In my opinion, it’s not when you’re using synthetics constantly and you don’t say that you are.
Like I said, some of my boards do contain glue and it’s totally disclosed. You can even get the MSDS on the glues.
DEBRA: And that’s the way it should be. I think that’s the way it should be. I’ve been a consumer-advocate for over 30 years. My most frustrating, the reason I like to talk about this so much is because if what you want to do is avoid toxic chemicals, it makes it very, very difficult to do so if you don’t disclose that they’re there on the label.
I’ve said many times on this show an example of if you have apple sauce, it has to be labeled organic apple sauce and instead, having the supermarket apple sauce be labeled apples and pesticides.
MICHAL GAL: Yes, yeah. It’s frustrating out there. It is. It’s just frustrating. The easiest way is to just simplify anything. Eat more raw food, organic food. The labels, most people can’t decipher those. The simpler, the better.
So back to simpler times, when people are adding all these things to cutting boards to make them better, it’s a trick. The natural product is just as good or better. There’s no reason to change what used to be how things were made.
Bamboo boards as well, the glue is in the coatings. If you can’t know what’s in those in whatever type of wood it is, it’s a problem. It should be labeled.
DEBRA: It absolutely should be. I think consumers can learn. I know that as a consumer, I’ve learned. But here, I’m just enjoying talking to you today so much because as I’m sitting here with your cutting board next to me, I know what’s in it, I know what the materials are, I now know the person who made it with his own hands. And when I use it, that’s what I think of. I know this product. That’s hard to say for most cutting boards.
MICHAL GAL: It’s comforting to know…
DEBRA: It is!
MICHAL GAL: …instead of the question mark there. The question mark, it gets frustrating especially if you have kids and you don’t want to add anything to their – you know, you want to be the helicopter parent. But one of the reasons I did want to cope is because it’s not something you come into contact with infrequently. It’s every day. Your food is on it constantly. So it’s not one-time thing. You’re using that all the time with your food and you’re actually cutting into it.
And that’s another big thing. When you’re cutting into something, you’re scarring the surface. It has toxins in it, you’re bringing them.
You’re adding liquid to it with the fruits and vegetables. You’re cutting into the board, you don’t want there to be anything in there. The cleaner, the better.
DEBRA: I appreciate you disclosing – well, first of all, that you’ve done such a great job and that you’re disclosing everything so that everyone can feel confident about what your product is. That’s really great.
We only have a few minutes left, about four minutes. What else would you like to talk about?
MICHAL GAL: I don’t know. Is there any questions you have?
DEBRA: Well, I asked all my questions about cutting boards, but we can talk about any message you’d like to get out in the world, especially your views as a toxic-free parent or as a manufacturer, anything you’d just like to say?
MICHAL GAL: Oh, I don’t know. Just simplify. We’re all going to come into contact with tons of toxins in this world. Just simlify everything, especially in your kitchen because it’s one of the major ways things get into your system.
DEBRA: Oh, I know! Tell us what you did to retrofit your kitchen.
MICHAL GAL: Oh, obviously, the first thing is to switch all your cookware over. I switched to glass and got rid of the plastics. One of the major things is taking all the plastic containers that we had and storing things in glass because glass doesn’t leech. A clean glass doesn’t leech. So, getting rid of all of that stuff.
And then cooking on cast iron was a major difference to me. Once you look into actually what’s on pans, you find the warnings, “Do not overheat. The pans causes toxic fumes.” it’s good to just switch over to things, to enameled cast iron if you need crock pots and stuff.
DEBRA: So did you change your dinnerware, plates and bowls and stuff like that?
MICHAL GAL: No, because I was already using glass for those things. I didn’t have to change those over. But changing from plastic spoons, plastic cookware utensils to wooden ones. Actually, that’s what started the cutting board thing because I didn’t know what the wooden spoons were coated in. I was wondering what the coatings were.
DEBRA: Well, yeah. There are a lot of wooden spoons for cooking and things. If you go to a cooking store, they’ll just have these wooden things. They won’t know what type of wood it is and if there’s any finish, where it came from. It’s just a wooden spoon.
But I love wooden spoons, but I’ve actually purchased a fair number of wooden spoons at craft fairs where I can talk to the person like you who is the artisan who has made the spoon and they know all about it.
MICHAL GAL: Absolutely! That’s probably the best. On FB, find someone. And then, just tell them either uncoated or coated in a preferred coating like a walnut oil or a coconut oil. Most people will use mineral oil to coat things. They’re calling it butcher block oil or natural oil. Technically, crude oil is natural I guess if you want to go there.
DEBRA: Well, petroleum is natural. Where do you live?
MICHAL GAL: Paris, Ontario, Canada. –
DEBRA: Oh, that’s right. You’re in Canada. In Los Angeles, there’s a wonderful place called the La Brea tar pits, which is a tourist attraction and museum. They have these natural tarpits. The animals would come in back in prehistoric times and they’d get stuck in the tar and so there are all these animal bones in the tarpits. They’ve been pulling them out and reconstructing them. That’s what you see in the museum.
But as you enter the museum, you see around the edges of where the sidewalk meets the grass, tar bubbling up. That’s natural tar. It’s natural. That’s a petroleum product. That’s what all these things are made of. You can actually see.
But the problem that I see is that the products aren’t being made out of natural tar. They’re being changed. They’re being chemically altered.
It’s these man-made things that our bodies don’t know what to do with.
MICHAL GAL: Absolutely! A lot of natural things our body doesn’t want to deal with either.
DEBRA: Sure! Like I wouldn’t eat tar, for example. Anyway, we only have about 20 seconds before the music comes on. So thank you so much, Michal for being on. It’s been a pleasure to talk to you and a pleasure to be sitting here with your cutting board.
My guest is Michal Gal from Urthware, Urthware.com. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well!
Wireless 101
My guest today is Oram Miller, a Certified Building Biology Environmental Consultant based in Los Angeles. He will be giving us a basic primer on the different types of wireless and their health effects, so we can navigate intelligently through this wireless world and make good decisions. The other day I had a computer technician at my house and he asked me why I didn’t have wireless. He said he researched it and it’s perfectly safe. At that moment I realized that I didn’t know enough about wireless to 1) make an informed decision and 2) educate him on the dangers of wireless. So I contacted Oram and asked him to give us the basics. Oram received his certification from the International Institute for Bau-biology and Ecology. He provides healthy home and office evaluations for clients throughout Southern California who have electro-magnetic sensitivities, as well as those who just want a healthier home. Oram also consults on the healthy design and construction of new and remodeled homes. Oram specializes in the effects of EMFs from cell phones, cordless telephones, Wi-Fi, tablets and smart meters, as well as health effects caused by basic EMFs from house wiring, including wiring errors and unwanted current on water pipes and other parts of the grounding system. Oram is available for on-site EMF consultations in Southern California and provides telephone consultations for clients nationwide. He writes extensively on the health hazards of EMFs on his website,www.createhealthyhomes.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Wireless 101
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Oram Miller
Date of Broadcast: September 30, 2015
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic free. It’s Wednesday, September 30th – wow, September is fun already, September 30th, 2015 and I’m here in Clearwater, Florida where the sun is shining.
It’s sunny Florida although it hasn’t been so most of the summer, but now it’s getting into our fall and winter time. So if you’d wanting to come to Florida, now is the time. This is why people live in Florida, it’s for October, November, December, January, February, March. It’s just beautiful and not snowing and 70 degrees.
So anyway, today what we’re going to do is a show about wireless, just a basic wireless 101 to really understand what wireless is and how it can affect your health and how widespread it is and different kinds of wireless. The reason I was prompted to do this show and invite my guest on today is because a few weeks ago, I got a new computer and I had to because my computer totally died after eight years. And when he came to work to help set things up, he said, “Why aren’t you using the wireless keyboard and the wireless mouse?” And I said because I don’t do wireless. He says, “You don’t do wireless.” He couldn’t figure this out. Everybody does wireless.
And I said, “No because I don’t want to have the health effects of wireless.” He says, “Oh, it’s perfectly safe. I have worked with it for a long time and I have done a lot of research.” And he says, “There are different types of wireless and this one is totally fine.” And I just realized that I didn’t know. I know a lot about toxic chemicals because I’ve been studying that for 30 years and I have reviewed so many products, et cetera, but wireless is an important consumer health issue and I don’t know as much about it as I should.
So I thought we could all learn together. When you see the word “wireless,” what does that mean? When you see the word “Wi-Fi,” what does that mean? How are these things affecting our bodies? So I brought in somebody who knows the answers to these questions to talk to us.
My guest today is Oram Miller. He’s a certified building biology environmental consultant based in Los Angeles and he specializes in all these electromagnetic things. Hi, Oram.
ORAM MILLER: Hi Debra.
DEBRA: How are you today? How’s the weather at LA.
ORAM MILLER: Just as sunny and warm as it is in Florida.
DEBRA: Yeah. Exactly it would be. Okay, so let’s just start at the beginning. I have a list of words here that I’d like you to define. You know more about this subject than I do and I realized that I don’t even know enough to organize my thoughts about it. So if you think that I’m asking you questions and if you should tell me things in a different order, feel free to just say what makes sense to you even if it doesn’t answer my question.
ORAM MILLER: All right, go ahead.
DEBRA: Okay, so the first question is define the word wireless. When we see “wireless,” what does that mean?
ORAM MILLER: Basically it means communicating between devices without cords or without wires.
DEBRA: And so could that mean that it would be communicating in many different ways?
ORAM MILLER: The only way that that’s done now was radio transmission although your remote control device for your TV and entertainment center can be programmed to either use infrared light, but you can’t see if it’s in the infrared spectrum. It’s not radio frequency based and it’s safe. And you know that because you put your hand over the top of it as you hold the remote control in your hands face up and you put your hand at the end of it and then you try and change the channel or change the volume and nothing happens. Take your hand away and then the beam of light that goes at the top of that remote is picked up by a little eye on the TV and then the channel changes.
Now if it’s radio frequency, which bothers some of the clients that I work with, then when you change the channel and put your hand over the end of it, the channel does change because the wireless frequencies are going right through your hand.
DEBRA: Okay. Just to reiterate what you just said, when you are talking about remote controls for television or I assume a stereo, anything with a remote control, the ceiling fans sometimes have remote controls. So those could be either infrared or radio frequency.
ORAM MILLER: For TV and the entertainment center, yes, but not for the fan. That would be radio. And your garage door opener is another wireless device.
DEBRA: And that would be radio.
ORAM MILLER: Yeah, it would be radio. It’s not infrared. You pull your visor down as you’re approaching your garage and you press the button and it sends out a radio signal in 360 degrees, but it goes out far enough right through the windshield and through the garage door and it is picked up by the radio receiver that’s mounted on the garage door opener, which opens the garage door.
DEBRA: Okay, so let me ask you a new question. What does wi-fi mean?
ORAM MILLER: I think it means wireless fidelity as opposed to Hi-Fi. I think somebody got clever and thought to put W instead of the H. Remember the old…
DEBRA: Yeah, I used to have Hi-Fi.
ORAM MILLER: Yeah. High fidelity back in the ’50s and ’60s distinguish it from the old mono with tubes and such that didn’t sound very good, but when stereo came along, they called it high fidelity or Hi-Fi. I remember that in the ’60s when I was a kid.
DEBRA: I do too. Me too.
ORAM MILLER: Okay, so 30 years later, 40 to 50 years later, they developed wireless communication between computers and printers and the router and so they called it the Wi-Fi. By the way, for those of your listeners who already know about this, there is a technology that uses infrared. I don’t want to forget this. It’s called Li-Fi and it means light fidelity or light communication.
There is a company BeamCaster from Russia that sells a unit that is used in offices in the US and Europe where they have open platinum or they have an open ceiling where they have dividers for the cubicles, but it’s all an open space overhead and they have a unit in the middle of the ceiling, in the middle of the large room with receivers and transmitters that are light-based, using infrared beams in the corners of the room and so the internet signal is transmitted on this light signal, which has no radio waves at all. It’s just purely infrared light and it has direct connections there.
That’s safe from our standpoint and it’s four times faster than Wi-Fi and you can’t hack it. We’re then moving in that direction. And this gentleman who’s developing this is actually trying to integrate this into the light beam that comes from overhead LED light. You can bond or marry the infrared signals on to the light signals as long as you have a receiver that picks it up down underneath the light beam on the desk.
So you can move around in a room if you have overhead LED lights and the idea is to integrate this throughout the house as you move from one room to another because the big problem is portability.
And the problem that I deal with, with this issue when I go to people’s homes is they will call me for one particular EMF. They’ll say, “I have a trimeter,” which is the trifield meter, which measures magnetic fields. It’s not so sensitive in the electric and radio frequency spectrum, so we don’t really recommend that meter for those purposes because the safe exposure levels that we feel are important are way lower than what the trifield meter can measure in those two settings. But for magnetic field, it does measure the magnetic field.
So people will say, “The needle is going up. I have high magnetic fields in my home. Can you come and evaluate it?” So I do, but when I’m there, I say or I tell them on the phone ahead of time that there are three other types of EMFs besides magnetic field. There are electric fields from house wires, which are different than magnetic fields and need a different meter that is more sensitive than the trifield to measure and they affect your sleep. That’s where they are a problem primarily. I think we talked about that on the first time you had me on your show.
DEBRA: Right, but you should say it again because I am sure not everybody has heard this.
ORAM MILLER: Yes and it’s very important. It’s important for people to know that there are four types of EMFs.
The electric fields are the unknown EMF and they affect the quality and depth of your sleep. And nobody really knows about them in our profession. And in fact, if you use an earthing mats, which are very popular. There’s a difference opinion in my profession about that. But if you get the electric field level down and you have to do with a test that we can do for people and then they can shut off the breakers that need to be shut off to reduce the electric fields in their bedroom because the voltage comes out of the walls, six feet. The electric field from the voltage comes out six feet even if the current is not present, even if the lights are off.
DEBRA: We need to go to break. We need to go to break.
ORAM MILLER: Okay.
DEBRA: So let’s get to break and come back and I want to hear more about this because you’ve been saying a lot of things, four types of fields. I want to make sure we cover all four and I want to hear the difference of opinion about the earthing mat. I’m sure people’s ears are perking up.
All right, we’re going to go to break. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Oram Miller, certified building biology environmental consultant. And this website is CreateHealthyHomes.com. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Oram Miller. He’s a certified building biology environmental consultant and his website is CreateHealthyHomes.com.
So Oram, we were talking about these different types of fields. You said four types of fields. So what are the four types of fields? Magnetic?
ORAM MILLER: Magnetic fields from house wiring, anything current house wiring. And then there are electric fields from house wiring, which are present even if you turn the light off. If there’s no current flowing, there won’t be any magnetic field, but the voltage is still there coming out of the lamp cord and out of the wall from the plastic room circuits that we have in our homes, six feet.
And what that does is that is oscillating the field. The electric field comes out six feet and it’s only measured with instruments that can measure electric field. It comes out positive and then it receives and then it expands again with a negative polarity and then it collapses. It expands and collapses and expands and collapses, but it’s positive, negative, positive negative. And that goes on 120 times a second, so it’s very rapid.
What happens is all the ions in yourself, the calcium ions, the potassium and sodium ions are all polarized, they’re all charged and they either have a positive charge or a negative charge. And those ions are alternately attracted or repulsed from the wire in the wall or the cord that you have by your bed that’s within that six foot bubble around your body, if you will, in all directions, up-down, left-right, be on the head or be on the foot.
If you’re in that field, then you don’t get a good night sleep because these ions are ultimately being attracted or repulsed like you’re drunk and you’re trying to walk down the street and you just can’t walk straight because there are these winds coming out from the left and right – well, that’s another example. I’m mixing my metaphors. But do you see what I mean?
DEBRA: I see what you mean and that begs the question. I don’t know how big my bedroom is right now, but I’ve slept in smaller bedrooms. I remember when I was a child and I just lived in a regular suburban house that had a standard 9 by 12 bedroom. How can you not have electricity in the room?
ORAM MILLER: Right. And even if you have a big bedroom, I go to clients’ homes here in Los Angeles that are large, as well as small and people don’t move their bed into the middle of the room and that’s not the solution that we recommend. What we recommend is having a professional assessment or people can do this on their own.
On my website, CreateHealthyHomes.com, in the Articles on EMF section, you can see separate articles that I’ve written on these four types of EMF. The third is radio frequencies or wireless. And the fourth is dirty electricity. And then under EMF Meters and Instruments, I have my recommended list of meters and instruments that you can purchase as well as information on how to use them.
There are also links to a separate website that belongs to Jerry Day who is the smart meter activist here in Southern California. He approached me a year ago and he said, “Can you recommend some inexpensive and affordable meters that I can recommend to my website of yours?” So I did. And he arranged to get some wholesale and [inaudible 00:17:14] amount of money selling them retail. And I have a link to his website.
And then he said, “Can we do some videos to show people how to use these meters?” So we did that. We did it in documentary format anyway. And so we spent over two days at a friend’s home of his actually shooting footage of me showing people how to use the particular meters that I chose for him. And at the same time, it gives me a chance to educate people on what the EMFs are and where you’ll find them.
DEBRA: That’s a really great resource. I think that that’s really needed because this is so important. I think that this is, in terms of health, as important as toxic chemicals, but it’s even more difficult to understand. And so anything that you can do to educate people so that they can help themselves in this area to understand the issues and also the meters and how to use them I think is fantastic.
ORAM MILLER: Yes. I have links to that website, which is www.EMFHelpCenter.com. I have links to that website from the little red banner with that web address from my website, CreateHealthyHomes.com.
Just to comment on what you just said, Debra, it’s very true. There is a growing awareness of EMFs, thanks to smart meters and cellphones.
And most people out in the world who don’t know a building biologist or haven’t gone through training that we provide, I am part of the faculty now for that, what they know is cellphone, smart meters, earthing pads and their electricity with special filters and also these chips and pendants.
The interesting thing about all that is that covers a certain portion of the EMF spectrum and the EMF field or range of possible sources that you can have, but it does not acknowledge or take into consideration really the magnetic fields, the electric fields or even some components of the radio frequencies. And so the advances are a little skewed on portions of this topic that are part of the picture, but not the entire picture. So that’s where we come in. And I’m not trying to say that we are better or any judgment like that. It’s just that we have a very comprehensive knowledge with technology [inaudible 00:19:47].
DEBRA: Yes, you do. I’m familiar with your program, so I can vouch for the fact that it’s been comprehensive.
ORAM MILLER: We’ve had this conversation before. Helmut Ziehe came to Clearwater 27 or 28 years from Germany and founded the North American Chapter of the Building Biology profession, marrying an American woman. He passed away two or three years ago from a stroke. But his widow, Susannah is still there in Clearwater. And that was our headquarters for many, many years.
DEBRA: Yes. I knew Helmut and I still know Susannah.
ORAM MILLER: Right, right.
DEBRA: In fact, I have a funny story about how I met him many years ago when he first came to America at some conference. And we only met once and then I moved to Clearwater, Florida. And I wasn’t thinking, “I could see Helmut.” I hadn’t seen him in years and then I went to a supermarket and I was reaching for a carton of organic eggs and he was reaching for the same carton of organic eggs.
ORAM MILLER: A little divine intervention there.
DEBRA: Yeah. And we just looked at each other and he said, “Debra,” after he had met me once 25 years ago.
ORAM MILLER: He was a remarkable man.
DEBRA: Yes, yes, very much so.
ORAM MILLER: He recruited every one of us.
DEBRA: Yes.
ORAM MILLER: Great organization, I’m so proud to be part of it.
DEBRA: Yes. Yes. I’m so glad that you all are doing what you’re doing about building biology, very much so.
ORAM MILLER: Thank you.
DEBRA: All right, so we need to go to break again. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Oram Miller. He’s a certified building biology environmental consultant. His website is CreateHealthyHomes.com.
When we come back – I’m scribbling things down as you’re saying them – I want to hear about and I still need to talk about the earthing mats and also dirty electricity and I want to hear about the chips and pendants because people are always sending me things and I’m saying, “Do these work?” So let’s find out the answer to that question with you. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Oram Miller, certified building biology environmental consultant and his website – he’s got lots of articles on his website and you should go there – is CreateHealthyHomes.com.
So tell me what is the controversy about earthing mats?
ORAM MILLER: The problem is if you don’t eliminate the electric fields that comes from the plastic wiring in the circuits, in the walls and of course next to your bed, which are just inches from your body on multiple sides, then you actually are an antenna, your body is an antenna fat enough to be in that field without earthing mat because it does affect and diminish the amount of melatonin that your pineal gland releases in the middle of the night and it prevents you from getting deep stage for sleep for every sleep cycle, every 90 minutes of the cycle. So you’re not getting the deep rest and rejuvenation and recuperation that you need.
So if you go to my website, CreateHealthyHomes.com and you click on Comments from Clients, you’ll see real testimonials from people that I’ve worked with over the years where they say that they’re sleeping through the night, they’re awakening more refreshed and the kids are not falling asleep in the class. So these are all benefits that come from learning how to evaluate just for yourself or have a building biologist to do this for you to see which circuits to shut off, making sure you don’t shut off the refrigerator and the smoke alarms and so on.
And there are convenient ways of turning that off from inside the bedroom rather than having to go down to your breaker panel.
DEBRA: So the solution is to turn off circuits at night so they’re not right in your bedroom.
ORAM MILLER: And we identify.
DEBRA: Yes, the correct ones so that they’re not in your bedroom at night, but they’re still on in the rest of the house. You need to get those wires.
ORAM MILLER: Yeah, we don’t turn them all off, just the ones that raise the level. And you don’t want to just turn off the breaker for the [lights?] in your room because you can have one or two more circuits coming under the floor or in the wall that you don’t know about that keep the level up. So it’s really necessary to have a proper evaluation, then you know what’s going on.
DEBRA: So why would you even turn them back on? Why not just create a bedroom? I mean you’re just going there to sleep anyway.
ORAM MILLER: No, but you need them for your lights. I mean it’s the last thing you do before you go to sleep because otherwise, your room is totally dark when you’re in it.
DEBRA: Right, okay, I got it.
ORAM MILLER: And then we deal with sometimes you have a breaker that does two bedrooms, the mom and dad, but their son who’s 18 is next door or underneath and they’re on the same circuit or the field from their circuit goes into mom’s room. So who goes to bed first? It’s really quite a challenge to do this on a daily basis. Every house is unique, but we work through it.
And I work with people long distance over the phone by the way to help them if they have no building biologist where they live. I’ll do it over the phone with them, by phone or e-mail. They send me photos and they get meters and I teach them how to use them to do their own readings under my own guidance and then with the knowledge or information that I get from them. And then we can come up with a mitigation plan for all these EMFs.
So relatively the earthing mat, if that field is there and you lay on an earthing mat, which is there to provide a pass for beneficial negative ions or electrons to come from the earth, which is a big donor of electrons, which are beneficial in this case, to our bodies, which we all got naturally when we talked barefoot on the earth for millennia. We got into modern times and we live in the structures and wear shoes with synthetic materials, not leather, but synthetic materials that insulate us from the ground. We’re not getting the beneficial ions, so we’re electron-depleted and all these diseases. Clint Ober, the book Earthling talks about this by Martin Zucker.
So basically that’s what the earthing pad is for. However, if you have these fields in your room, which everyone does – everyone unless you live in Chicago or New York and you don’t have anything plugged in, then you have metal wiring in your walls by code in those cities, but that’s whole another story. So everyone has plastic wiring and everyone has electric fields where they sleep, everyone.
So if you have those fields in your bedroom and you are lying on the earthing mat – Clinton knows this and we talked to him about it because he was actually at our conference and one of our building biologist worked with him for a while – these fields get picked up by the body, the electric field, and then they run through your body or on the surface of the [inaudible 00:31:22] on to the sheet and down that wire in the process of grounding of the manmade electrons that are not healthy coming through the air from the circuits in the wall and the cords that are on the bedside table. That’s a deleterious effect on our physiology and a lot of people who are electrically sensitive, clients if mine, say they feel buzzed when they get on one of these sheets.
Now the reverse is what should be happening, which is the bringing up of beneficial ions from the soil and that’s the process of earthing. But you want t get rid of the manmade electric fields from the circuits. So we say, as opposed to the German building biologists who say never use the earthing, we say, “Hold on just a minute. We don’t know how to use this properly. We go ahead and we reduce the electric fields level through the techniques and particles that we use. And then if you want to add the earthing pad, that’s fine because there are no fields to be amplified or to run through you.” Then you can have the best of both [rows?].
DEBRA: Yeah, that makes sense. I’ve read the Earthling. I think it’s a really good book and I totally agree with the concept that we need to be connected electromagnetically to the earth, but my viewpoint was that I didn’t want to buy another device that would do this when I could just go out in my backyard and put my feet on the grass and lie my body down on the grass.
ORAM MILLER: But you can do that both. You can do that in daytime.
DEBRA: Yes. Yes.
ORAM MILLER: And you and I live in warm climates, Florida and California, so we can do that most of the year, all year-round. But at night, you can do it too if you’ve gotten rid of the electric fields and you should do that anyway. No one should sleep in an electric field environment at night.
DEBRA: I’ll go to your website and get those articles and take a look at that because I think I need to do that to my bedroom.
ORAM MILLER: Right.
DEBRA: So go on, what are you going to say?
ORAM MILLER: I know we want to talk about wireless.
DEBRA: I know, but all of this is good too.
ORAM MILLER: I know.
DEBRA: So let’s go back to wireless because we only have one segment left. We’ve got about a minute right now and then we’ve only got one segment left.
ORAM MILLER: Great. Let me answer the chips real quickly before the break.
DEBRA: Yeah, let’s do that.
ORAM MILLER: We have a position paper on our professions website, HPELC.org. And I have a position paper on them, on my website on this chips and pendants and home harmonizers. And basically we feel that they have value because studies do show that they do benefits to physiology, but we do not believe that you should use them as your sole or exclusive way of protecting yourself.
It’s like a guy who has four ashtrays with branded cigarettes in his room and he’s filling the room with smoke. And then someone comes along and says, “I can sell you an air purifier that will clear the smoke.” It does, but the ashtrays are still producing the smoke. We know how to identify the ashtrays and get rid of them or convince the client to change – you’ll hear in the final segment – to hard wired ways of connecting instead of wireless. So that’s the analogy.
We say find the EMF and reduce them, increase distance for the wireless devices. We do fuse, favor hard wired alternatives. And that protects your home environment, but then use the chips and pendants when you go out because you can’t control that environment.
DEBRA: That’s a really good balanced answer and it parallels what I talk about with chemicals because you can just put an air purifier in the house and it will remove the chemicals, but you really need to remove them at the source and use the air purifier when you need to. We need to go to break.
ORAM MILLER: Exactly true.
DEBRA: We need to go to break.
ORAM MILLER: Okay.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Oram Miller, certain building biology environmental consultant. His website is CreateHealthyHomes.com. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Oram Miller, certified building biology environmental consultant and his website is CreateHealthyHomes.com. So let me just ask you one more question and then I want to hear the solution to wireless. So what is Bluetooth?
ORAM MILLER: Bluetooth is just another frequency and another technology. It’s just not as strong as the Wi-Fi nor it is as strong as cellphones. You have frequencies and then you have power density. And the power density is a term in South Florida [signal goers?].
So Bluetooth is a technology that uses relatively low power transmitters in the computer and in the thing in your ear or your mouth or your keyboard that’s cordless. And so they are talking to each other. And the harm by the way comes from the transmission, not the receiving.
So you can have an AM or FM radio next to your head all day long and if [inaudible 00:39:49], it wouldn’t really cause any harm to the cells.
But nowadays, we have portable transmitters in the form of cellphones, laptops, the Bluetooth things that you put in your ear and they’re transmitting and they transmit much more often than you realize. That’s where the harm comes.
DEBRA: Okay. So I have a Mac and it comes with a wireless keyboard and mouse, but I’m not using them. Is it still transmitting?
ORAM MILLER: Yes. Are you sitting in front of your computer now?
DEBRA: I’m sitting in front of my computer now, so I am not having any gain by not using the keyboard, right?
ORAM MILLER: I’m sorry. Say it again.
DEBRA: I am not having any benefit from not using the keyboard because the computer is still transmitting. Is that right?
ORAM MILLER: Well, actually true. I’m looking at my Mac as well right now. On the toolbars at the top, you have the day and the time.
DEBRA: Yes. Go ahead.
ORAM MILLER: To the left of that, in the upper right corner is the speaker and the sound, at least on mine. To the left of that is the Wi-Fi icon, which looks like a piece of pizza.
DEBRA: Yes.
ORAM MILLER: It’s a V with curve line at the top.
DEBRA: Yes.
ORAM MILLER: Well, mine doesn’t have any curve lines inside of it because I clicked on that and I scrolled down and it says, “Turn Wi-Fi on” on mine because it’s off.
DEBRA: Okay, mine is off too because I clicked on it and it says, “Turn Wi-Fi on.”
ORAM MILLER: That means that it’s off. And the other way you know it’s off is because that piece of pizza is empty, devoid of curve lines.
Now if the curve lines are there, but they’re gray, it means that you’re not picking up a Wi-Fi signal, but your computer is sending out a Wi-Fi signal looking for a router. And if they’re black or the first one or two are black, it tells you how strong the connection is to the router on a Wi-Fi basis.
Now, the emblem to the left of that, which on most Mac is a straight vertical line with then little triangles to the right and also lines to the left, that symbol is for Bluetooth.
DEBRA: I don’t have that at all.
ORAM MILLER: You don’t?
DEBRA: No.
ORAM MILLER: Well, it’s in there somewhere and it may look different on more modern – I’ve got a pretty recent, in fact many. But still, I see the Bluetooth symbol looks a little different in some more recent Mac models.
DEBRA: Okay.
ORAM MILLER: Anyway, you click on it and the drop down menu says, “Turn Bluetooth on” or “Turn Bluetooth off.” If that icon is dark, then it means that it’s on and if you don’t have a cordless mouse or keyboard, then you want to go to that icon up there and then click on it and the drop down menu appears below it and you scroll down and left click on “Turn Bluetooth off.” And then it goes gray, instead of black, it’s gray, whatever shape it has and the Bluetooth is off.
We can determine this with the radio frequency detectors that we carry with us on the job as building biologists. You can purchase radio frequency meters as well and you can tell whether that’s on or off, depending on the reading you get on the meter. And some of these meters have sound. The Bluetooth has a particular sound and Wi-Fi has a different sound. It sounds like a helicopter. “Tug, tug, tug,” that’s what Wi-Fi sounds like.
Of course with telephones, these units, also in it are continuous signals. So when you hang up the phone, the radio frequency signal from the cordless handset in your hand next to your head is huge. It’s very potentially harmful. That’s whole another part of our story. But when you hang that up, when you hit off and stop the call and put it in this charging cradle and it happens to be the base unit with the cords that go to the telephone jack. That base unit is continuously putting out radio frequency signals 24/7, filling that room with these signals. You should not definitely have that in your bedroom.
DEBRA: Some years ago, I had a whole team of bau-biologists come to my house and do the whole chemical and EMF. It was one of the causes I saw. I had everybody in [inaudible 00:44:20] came to my house. I was the house.
ORAM MILLER: We did the same thing when we were down there. Yeah.
DEBRA: Yeah. And there were two things that read on the EMFs. We have a lot of lightning here and so a lot of people have – I forgot what they’re called – this backup thing so that we still have electricity.
ORAM MILLER: Backup generator?
DEBRA: Yeah. And I had one sitting right under my desk and I just put my feet on it all day long.
ORAM MILLER: Oh, you’re talking about uninterrupted power supply for your computer.
DEBRA: Yes, yes.
ORAM MILLER: That’s a huge emitter of magnetic field.
DEBRA: It was huge. And the other one was sitting right next to me. It was my cordless phone. Those were the only two things and I was sitting right next to them all day long. And as soon as they told me that, I took both of them out and I never had them again.
ORAM MILLER: Well, you can have the UPS or uninterrupted power supply. Just move it. Get a Gauss meter, Debra and people, the listeners.
DEBRA: I have one.
ORAM MILLER: Okay. And then all you do is just put it next to the device and see the power supply and see how strong the field is. And you’ll notice with point sources, which are in transformers and motors like that, the field is very strong upclose, but it drops off exponentially, very quickly as you pull away.
You pull it away and within one or two feet, it goes down to the ambient level of the room, which should be below one [inaudible 00:45:42]. So you just push that thing over, get it away from your feet, two or three feet and get a longer cord. You know what I am saying here.
DEBRA: I know what you’re saying, yeah.
ORAM MILLER: Well, I spend an hour at the computer desk of my client just going through all these things. And in fact, on my website, I have a page called Safer Use of Computer. And on that page, I have broken down how to clean up that place for each of the four types of EMF. Not just including your computer, but it’s good for all equipment.
DEBRA: That’s great.
ORAM MILLER: Yeah. So in the remaining minutes, let me just say that the whole issue of wireless and radio frequency exposure is a real conundrum and I will tell you why.
On one hand, we have not only industry that is following the exact same playbook that the tobacco and asbestos and lead and gasoline industries did decades ago. In fact, they are hiring the same PR firms, public relations firms to help them with this to obscure the truth and distort it and attack the messenger and just say that there’s no evidence of any harm when in fact just thousands of studies have shown that there is.
So that’s going on. And at the same time, people love the portability and the accessibility. And the majority of the people don’t feel the symptoms, but everyone is affected on a cellular according to research by people like Martin Blank, PhD who retired from Columbia University who wrote a book called Overpowered and he has spoken at our conference for our profession and also at the Cancer Control Society here in Los Angeles where I spoke.
We had lunch with him and he said, “I was skeptic until I did my own research for Columbia on the DNA effects and everyone is affected on a cellular level.” But most people, Debra, can feel the damage that’s done when they sleep at night particularly if they have electric-filled environment.
But the point is a third of the population worldwide is known to have symptoms right now from these technologies. And we’re in this grace period, this window during which the tumors are growing and we have industry in this country saying that there’s no harm. And they control Congress and government regulatory agencies like the EPA and FCC who say that there’s no harm. But they’re only looking at outdated research methods, based on thermal effects only and they are completely ignoring the biological effects at much lower levels where there are thousands of research studies overseas that show that there’s a problem.
So what’s happening is in those countries around the world where the governments pay for the healthcare delivery for their population, they see the hand running on the wall, the see the [booming?] health crisis that’s going to strain their budgets just like what happened with the other problems with tobacco, asbestos and lead and gasoline. They see that this would be the fourth health crisis in 60 years. They want to get ahead of the curve. So France just voted in January to ban Wi-Fi in daycare centers and nurseries.
DEBRA: Good for them.
ORAM MILLER: So my question to the people in this country who say that there’s no problem with this is why would this country decided to do this? It’s because of the overwhelming research that they are allowed to see that’s in the media.
The Council of Europe, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Committee Resolution 1815 was released in 2011 where literally this government agency, which is like our Consumer Product Safety Commission in this country, said to the European governments of all the member states, 47 member countries, “You have to establish a public awareness campaign particularly for people at child-bearing age and teenagers. Tell the public about the harmful effects of continuous emissions from these devices, especially baby monitors and Wi-Fi and cordless phones. Take them out of classrooms and favor hard wired connections. Pay attention to the whistle-blower scientists. Set up wave-free areas for the electrically sensitive population.”
DEBRA: I need to interrupt you because we’re going to come up on the music. It’s going to happen in about five seconds. So I want to say thank you so much for being on the show. You have so much information.
You can go Oram’s website, which is CreateHealthyHomes.com. And get a lot more information on his website about what we’re talking about today.
ORAM MILLER: Thank you, Debra.
DEBRA: Thank you, Oram. We’ll talk again.
ORAM MILLER: Thank you so much.
DEBRA: This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. Be well.
Chemicals That Don’t Cause Cancer Themselves Can Cause Cancer When Combined
Today my guests are Ken Cook, President of Environmental Working Group and Curt DellaValle, Senior Scientist at EWG. In August, EWG released a new guide called Rethinking Carcinogens which summarizes new research about cancer from the Halifax Project. This collaboration of more than 300 scientists are investigating ways in which toxic chemicals we are exposed to every day may cause cancer. This includes 85 common chemicals not known to be carcinogenic on their own, 50 of which were found to disrupt cancer-related pathways at low doses typically encountered in the environment. We’ll learn more about this in today’s show. www.ewg.org
Ken Cook, president and co-founder of Environmental Working Group, is widely recognized as one of the environmental community’s most prominent and influential critics of the nation’s broken approach to protecting families and children from toxic substances. Under Cook’s leadership over the past 20 years, EWG has empowered American families with easy-to-use, data-driven tools to help reduce their exposure to potentially harmful ingredients in foods, drinking water, cosmetics and other household products. These unique digital resources are searched hundreds of millions times by consumers, journalists and policy makers.
Curt DellaValle, Senior Scientist at EWG, brings his background in epidemiology and cancer research experience to work on the development of EWG’s Cancer Prevention Initiative. He holds a BS in biology from the University of Connecticut and a Ph.D. in environmental health from Yale University. Prior to joining EWG, Curt was a fellow at the National Cancer Institute where he conducted research evaluating exposure to environmental contaminants and risk of cancer, with a particular emphasis on the improvement of exposure assessment methods in epidemiologic studies.
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Chemicals That Don’t Cause Cancer Themselves Can Cause Cancer When Combined
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Ken Cook
Date of Broadcast: September 29, 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’s Tuesday, September 29, 2015, and I’m here in Clearwater, Florida, where the sun is showing, and there are no thunderstorms, so we should be fine and have no interruptions or background noise.
Today, we’re going to be talking about a very, very, very – this might be one of the most important shows that I’ve ever done or may ever do.
I’ve been studying toxic chemicals and their effects for more than 30 years, and what I’ve learned is in the field of toxicology, they divide up chemicals and they say this one causes cancer. This one causes birth defects. This one causes headaches, et cetera.
They even name – have a category like neurotoxic, which means that it’s toxic to your nervous system.
Now, there’s a new study that’s going on, I don’t know how long it’s been going on, but it’s what their finding is that chemicals that were thought to not cause cancer by themselves, when they combine together in your body, do cause cancer.
They’re still doing this investigation. They’re still doing the scientific work. But this is extremely, extremely important because we tend to think that – we’d look up a chemical like formaldehyde, and we’ll see here are all these studies, and these tests have been done, and they say, “Okay, formaldehyde has these health effects. They’re safe or dangerous in these amounts.”
But that’s only looking at it in isolation. What this study is showing is actual scientific proof that when you combine chemicals together, they have totally different effects.
So this means that you can’t just let that chemical in isolation and say, “This chemical causes this effect” because you don’t know – we’re exposed to so many chemicals in the world that you don’t know what the combined effect is going to be.
This is why I’ve been saying for years and years and years that what we need to do is reduce our exposure to all toxic chemicals because we don’t know what the combinations are, and now here’s the science about it.
This study is being done by an organization called “The Halifax Project”. It’s called “The Halifax Project.” They published some papers this summer, and I went and looked them all up. They’re very lengthy and have a lot of big words in them and very difficult to read.
But fortunately, the Environmental Working Group read them all and translated them into language that we can understand. And so I have today with us Ken Cook, who is the president and co-founder of the Environmental Working Group, and Curt DellaValle, who is a senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group.
They’re going to talk with us about what’s going on with this study.
Hi, Ken and Curt.
KEN COOK: Hi, Debra.
CURT DELLAVALLE: Hello.
KEN COOK: Glad to be here.
DEBRA: Thank you.
CURT DELLAVALLE: – [cross-talking 00:04:30] on the show.
DEBRA: Thank you. I’m very pleased to have you here because I just think that this is probably the most important thing you’ve ever done.
It’s that important.
So Ken, as the co-founder, why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about Environmental Working Group, what you do, and how you came to be.
KEN COOK: Well, Environmental Working Group started 22 years ago. It was a small group of us working on environmental issues, initially working on the connections between agriculture and the environment.
Once we’ve started doing that work, we started branching out to adjacent issues that obviously presented us with some serious problems that we thought are particular capabilities of scientific research, database analysis and communications lent themselves too.
So that took us from agricultural subsidies and how to reform them, to pesticide issues, and what should be done to reduce exposure, particularly to children. This was in the early 1990s, to pesticides and food and from other sources.
From there we branched out to the problems posed by other categories of toxic chemicals.
And so recently, we became aware of the Halifax Project which is one of the projects that was initiated by an organization, a very small, non-profit, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, based there, called “Getting to Know Cancer.”
We had gotten in contact with this organization because they had this very intriguing hypothesis, and I just want to emphasize, it is still a hypothesis from them. But they devoted considerable amount of scientific research looking at the published literature to verify that this hypothesis is very well worth now testing in future laboratory studies.
The hypothesis is pretty much as you suggested at the top of the interview, which is we have always thought of carcinogens in the context of individual chemicals that by themselves would cause cancer.
And so what we’ve now done with the Halifax Project, we’ve seen them do, and these are dozens and dozens of scientists from around the world, is suggest that if you take closer look at the processes that we now know contribute to the formation of cancer that turn normal cells into cancer cells. Each of those various processes can be affected by chemicals even if they are not carcinogens in the regulatory sense.
So this opens up a whole series of important questions about how chemical exposures of all kinds might be affecting our bodies in ways that aren’t, strictly speaking, one chemical equals a carcinogen, but more one chemical might be contributing in ensemble fashion, in combination with other chemicals. It might be contributing to the risk of cancer.
DEBRA: I’m just so happy this is being done. I write so much about the subject. I’m always trying to understand the chemicals better. I’m particularly from a consumer viewpoint. I have no scientific background. I just have been studying it for many years as a consumer.
And so I want to think that if – what I need to do is I need to establish, as a consumer advocate, which are the chemicals that we should not be using, and that we should be finding safer alternatives for.
And so over the years, I’ve collected my own list of what I think that is. And so when I write, I write about how can we stay away from formaldehyde, for example.
I have a list of carcinogens which I’ve gathered from all different places that list carcinogens and have determined that. That is a category.
I also did an organization of symptoms and illnesses and things. Several years ago, I just looked at all the different body systems and I said, “What are the chemicals that affect the nervous system? What are the chemicals that affect the digestive system? The endocrine system, et cetera?”
And some of those chemicals are affecting more than one system. They just don’t go into the body. Some of them go in and target certain things, certain parts of the body, or they cause certain illnesses. But that’s not always the case.
So this is so important.
We only have just a few seconds left before we need to go to break. When we come back, what I’d like us to do is have you start telling us about the study itself, and you have this on your website. I have a link to it, if you just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and find this show. The link is there.
But there’s a section called “Rethinking Carcinogens.” And I think if you just type in “rethinking carcinogens” in any search engine, it’ll take you to this page.
So the things that we’re going to be talking about today, you can then find them on the website and go over them as carefully as you’d like to.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guests today are Ken Cook and Curt DellaValle. They’re from Environmental Working Group and the Environmental Working Group website is EWG.org.
We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guests today are Ken Cook, who is the president and co-founder of Environmental Working Group, and Curt DellaValle. He is a senior scientist at EWG. And he’s working on the Cancer Prevention Initiative.
Curt, since you’re working on the Initiative, why don’t you tell us about the difference between a complete and a partial carcinogen.
CURT DELLAVALLE: I think Ken touched on it before that complete carcinogens are what are identified now. These are chemicals that on their own, can cause cancer or cause progression of cancer.
You mentioned formaldehyde is an example of what we know as a complete carcinogen. Exposure to formaldehyde can potentially cause cancer.
Partial carcinogens are a term that is now being phrased just because of – largely, in part of this Halifax Project’s findings. But these are chemicals that we think, on their own, are not capable of causing cancer. But they can disrupt certain cancer-related pathways.
And given that we know cancer develops through a multistep process, in combination with other chemicals that might also affect other cancer-related pathways, whether it’s cell division or impacting the way our normal bodies get rid of old and dying cells, those chemicals in combination might present a carcinogenic mixture.
And so each individual component would consider a partial carcinogen.
DEBRA: So as the development of cancer is going through its process, then I think what you’re saying is that the different chemicals that may not cause cancer in and of themselves might affect some part of that process, and then together, they result – can you just outline what is the process of cancer developing?
CURT DELLAVALLE: Cancer, just in general terms, is just when a normal cell begins to act abnormally, and it begins to divide uncontrollably. This uncontrolled cell division ends up creating, in most case, a mass of cells, which we know is a tumor.
And that would be what we would consider cancer.
So that’s the general process. Along the way, there may be chemicals that can interact on certain parts of this process. There may be a chemical that comes in and interact with our cells in a way that super speed their cell division. So now they’re rapidly dividing.
If that now abnormal behavior is not detected by our body’s defense system, or [inaudible 00:16:48] our bodies are unable to handle that, then that uncontrolled division can lead to other problems where another chemical might come in and disrupt how blood supply is supplied to those cells, all this leading toward the mass of cells as we would know as a tumor.
DEBRA: This is just amazing to me. It’s amazing but it’s also – it makes sense to me that all of these chemicals in our bodies – do you have a number of how many chemicals might be in our bodies at any given time?
CURT DELLAVALLE: [inaudible 00:17:27] we’re actually working on a report just chronicling carcinogens that have been measured in our body. So it’s [inaudible 00:17:38] to say. For any individual, how many chemicals you would have in your body. But you would think it would be hundreds of chemicals.
Some of them may be harmful, some of them not. And of course, just because a chemical is present in your body, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be present at levels that will be harmful for you.
DEBRA: So if somebody is exposed to a carcinogen, what are some of the factors that might be going on, such as the dose, as to whether or not it would affect them? Because I know – one of the things I have on my website is a Q&A. And so people are asking me questions all the time.
One of the most frequently heard thoughts is, how can I – it’s said in various different ways. But basically the idea is how can I not be exposed to this chemical or whatever it is completely?
My dishes might have a certain amount of lead on them. Is it okay to eat off of them? Because I should have zero amount of lead.
What are some of the factors that people should be considering when they’re thinking about [inaudible 00:18:46] may be exposed to these chemicals or not, and how much?
CURT DELLAVALLE: It depends on, I guess, what the chemical is. In general, if you’re trying to say, “I’m going to eliminate all bad exposures from my life.” That’s not going to be possible, unless you live in a bubble.
So that’s not possible. And obviously, people are living – our life expectancy is increasing. So it’s not a necessarily harmful thing that we’re being exposed to through all these chemicals, but certain chemicals and certain chemicals in too much of a quantity that are really the problem.
There are a lot of factors that are going to influence whether an individual is highly susceptible.
Just the other day, I saw a news article about – there have been certain genes identified for smokers that increase or decrease their risk or susceptibility.
Smoking, we know, is highly carcinogenic. It causes a lot of cancers, lung in particular. But some people can smoke all their lives and never develop cancer. And some people smoke just a little bit and they’re the unlucky ones that do get cancer.
DEBRA: My great uncle lived to be 99 and he was a chain smoker.
CURT DELLAVALLE: Exactly. So they’re not identifying certain genes that are protective against the effects of smoking.
We don’t know if we have those genes or not at this point in time, but certainly genetics is going to play a factor.
There’s even just random chance. Our cells, we have trillion of cells, they’re all dividing. Each time they divide, there’s a chance of an error, even though it’s minutely small. There’s a chance that that error won’t be caught, and if those errors propagate, then that’s when we have a problem.
So there is that factor too.
And then of course, the amount of exposure you have, the dose you are receiving.
DEBRA: So is your conclusion that if we know something causes cancer that it would probably be a good idea to be prudent and avoid it to the best of our ability, just because we [inaudible 00:21:07]?
CURT DELLAVALLE: [inaudible 00:21:07] for sure, yes.
DEBRA: We need to go to break. When we come back, we’ll talk more about the study that is showing how chemicals [inaudible 00:21:20] cause cancer by themselves, can cause cancer when they are combined together.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guests are Ken Cook, president and co-founder of Environmental Working Group, and Curt DellaValle, who is a senior scientist at Environmental Working Group. He’s working on the Cancer Prevention Initiative.
The Environmental Working Group website is EWG.org, and we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guests today are Ken Cook, president and co-founder of Environmental Working Group, and Curt DellaValle, senior scientist at EWG. And their website is EWG.org.
So one of the pages that I thought that was the most interesting in your report, “Rethinking Carcinogens,” and by the way, during the break, I went to a search engine and typed “Rethinking Carcinogens” and EWG’s report came out right at the top. So that’s something that you can do to get to these pages that we’re talking about.
But there’s a page called “Hallmarks of Cancer.” And it talks about how the body has many layers of safeguards to control cell division and preventing [inaudible 00:27:21] damage. And that a chemical that interferes with this single cancer-related hallmark process is unlikely to cancer. But combine the chemical that interferes with cell division cycle with one that interferes with the cellular dead cycle, and you begin to see how exposures to chemical mixtures have the potential to overwhelm the body’s defenses.
I’d like for us to talk about this page and this idea during the segment. Who would like to go first?
KEN COOK: I’d let Curt take the first swing at this because the Hallmarks of Cancer framework was really the inspiration for the Halifax Project because that is a couple of essays actually by that name that sought to organize what was understood around the year 2000. And then they issued this follow-up review in 2011.
How do you make sense of what we’ve learned from cancer biology over the past 25 years or so? That’s what the Hallmarks of Cancer framework was designed to do, is give some structure to that and yield an important insight that resulted in what we now know and discussing is the Halifax Project.
But I’ll let Curt speak to these hallmarks.
DEBRA: Before you start, I just want to also mention to our listeners, encouraging you to go to this page that – what’s on this page is a list of the different hallmarks which we’ll hopefully talk about a little. But then there’s a table at the bottom that says “chemicals with evidence affecting cancer hallmark processes” where you have this list of 10 different steps or hallmarks that contribute to the formation of cancer.
This page also lists individually the chemicals that contribute to each one of them. So it’s so interesting to me.
Most people have heard of Bisphenol A, and here, BPA contributes to – here’s the first one and the second one. It’s all over this list.
And so BPA isn’t just – it does a lot of damage.
So Curt, tell us about the Hallmarks of Cancer.
CURT DELLAVALLE: So Ken had mentioned that these were the ideas to – the structure to what we know about the biology of cancer.
So the Hallmarks of Cancer were just the characteristics that distinguish cancer cell from a normally operating cell. These things include self-sufficient cell division, which is normally our bodies control the division of cell. They tell when to divide, when to stop dividing. Cancer cells stop listening to our body signals, and they just divide on their own.
Resisting cell [inaudible 00:30:36]. As I said, when our body detects that a cell is either old or damaged or during the division process, DNA has been corrupted to some degree, it will act to self-destruct that cell. But cancer cells can avoid that process and continue to proliferate even though they’re damaged.
So these are just the three of those eight characteristics that distinguish the normal cells. And they also define – the reason there is 10 because there are two of them that they consider initially hallmarks of the cancer cells themselves, but things that enable those eight characteristics to arise like inflammation.
Inflammation creates an environment in which these cancer hallmarks are likely to arise.
DEBRA: A lot of people have inflammation.
We’ve talked about inflammation on other shows and here it is again.
Can you tell us about – I’ll just look at this page here. The first one is self-sufficient cell division. And so it has a low dose effect, threshold effect and low dose effect unknown.
When people come to this page and read these, what do those terms mean?
CURT DELLAVALLE: Those are just classifying what dose you would need to have to – of this chemical for it to have that effect on whatever particular process you’re talking about, that specific hallmark.
If it has a low dose effect, then that means there’s no known safe level. Even a very small exposure can have an effect on this cancer-related process.
A threshold effect means that you need to reach some sort of threshold of exposure. So you need to be exposed to at least a certain amount before that effect happens.
And then the effect unknown just means there hasn’t been enough research on this particular chemical to know what dose it’s acting at. We just know that there are some doses which it does behave in this way.
DEBRA: Some of the – like Bisphenol A is on the low dose effect [inaudible 00:32:55] for self-sufficient cell division. So even doing something like handling cash register receipts on a daily basis would give you a low dose.
CURT DELLAVALLE: It’s funny too. That is one of the things that I have – in my head, I stopped doing it, even though I know it’s a very small exposure. I usually turn down a cash receipt now.
DEBRA: I do too. And I’ve actually just started doing that in the last couple of months. And I’ve also started – because I actually realize that the reason that receipts are given goes way back pre-digital age, where you have to have a piece of paper to show that you paid for the item that you purchased.
But now you can walk into any big box store and say, “I bought it here. I’m bringing back my whatever.” And they can just look it up on the computer, and you don’t even need a receipt.
So our digital age has changed all that. And so I’ve been doing two things. One is I’ve been refusing the receipts, or if I think I need it, I have them put it in a bag and I don’t touch it. Or the third is I ask them, “Are these BPA free receipt?”
And I am just [inaudible 00:34:15] at how many people don’t even know what I’m talking about. They look at me strangely and then I go and I ask the manager. I’m making this big deal as I go around from store to store about these BPA-free receipts.
People don’t even know what it is.
We need to go to break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guests today are Ken Cook, president and co-founder of Environmental Working Group, and Curt DellaValle, senior scientist at Environmental Working Group, who is working on the development of the Cancer Prevention Initiative.
We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guests today are Ken Cook, president and co-founder of Environmental Working Group, and Curt DellaValle, senior scientist at Environmental Working Group, who is working on the Cancer Prevention Initiative. Their website is EWG.org.
For both of you, I know one of the things that Environmental Working Group has been doing is focusing on – well, you have a lot of consumer recommendations who also are focusing on the legislative side of it, which is something that I don’t do. I’ve just been working on the consumer side of it for the last 30 years.
So I really appreciate all of the legislative [inaudible 00:39:35] that you do, and I’d like to know what are your recommendations, given this new information about cancer. But also just the fact that – when I started, I used to think that I could say, okay, here’s a toxic chemical, formaldehyde. We’ve been using that throughout the show. So let’s just continue.
So here’s a toxic chemical, formaldehyde, and you can avoid being exposed to formaldehyde by using solid wood instead of particle board, for example.
And so that was a very clear cut choice. But the problem that I see that we’re running into now, and I don’t know really when this started, but it seems to be getting worse and worse, is that there are some things that you can’t avoid because they are now ubiquitous.
So where do you think we need to go from here? Ken, why don’t you answer first?
KEN COOK: Well, to start with, I think the notion of giving people practical advice that doesn’t require them to abandon life as we know it in the modern world, but gives them options to avoid exposures to toxic chemicals. That kind of advice is very, very important.
There’s a lot of it out there. We advise people to take a careful look at their sources before they make decisions. But I don’t think there’s any question that we really do benefit when we are open to information that informs us about where toxic exposures might be happening because it’s often very straightforward and easy to avoid them.
DEBRA: Yes, it is. I would agree with that.
KEN COOK: So that’s the first step because when I’m sitting – I’m up giving a talk to an audience, and I look out and I see – it seems like every woman in the audience is pregnant. And I’m about to give them some really worrisome information about toxic chemicals including that babies are exposed even while they’re in the womb.
In my mind, I’m thinking I can’t give the answer to all of the questions that I know are coming as wait for the government to solve this problem for you because we know that the government not only not going to do it soon, but there are economic vested interests out there pushing very hard to make sure the government doesn’t take action.
So the personal steps and those can be done with, I think, in a very ordinary way to dramatically reduce a lot of these exposures. But at the policy level, a couple of things are important. One, it’s really important to pay attention to what may be happening in your state, to make sure that if there’s legislation moving through in the state capital that might help reduce chemical exposures, take some worrisome chemicals off the market or issue warnings, give you information about them, on product labels and so forth.
That kind of right to know transparency and state regulatory action, it’s important to be aware of that happening in your state.
California, for example, where I live, there’s a lot of action in that realm. And when California takes action, for example, restrict Bisphenol A in sippy cups and baby bottles, it can have an impact across the whole economy because of the size of the California economy.
First, pay attention to the state level action.
Secondly, if I were to give one recommendation, it would be, stay tuned to Environmental Working Group. Go to EWG.org. If you’re inclined, get on our e-mail list. We will keep you up to date on some of the most important debates unfolding in Congress that have to do with efforts to protect us by regulation and better, stronger laws on toxic chemicals.
It’s a very tough fight. We’re up against an enormous well-funded chemical industry that has spent tens of millions of dollar in recent years pushing at the legislature to establish weak rules and regulations around toxic chemicals.
We’re in a constant battle both at the regulatory agencies like FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA. We’re fighting in the halls there.
We’re also fighting back against these interest in Congress to make sure that if Congress passes a new law, to regulate toxic chemicals, it’s going to be a strong one.
But we’re really up against a lot of money, a lot of suits, as we say, a lot of lobbyists for industry walking the halls, and button holing legislators, and giving them campaign contributions. But we’re on the front lines at EWG.org to do that. And we would really appreciate your help.
DEBRA: Yes, well, we do need to be addressing these issues on all levels. Absolutely. I used to think in the past that if consumers would just make the right choices that it would all turn out fine. But I do see that we need to be – in my best of all possible worlds, the way it would go would be that everybody would think like we think.
Everybody would look at the toxic evidence and that they would say, “We shouldn’t be using formaldehyde. It shouldn’t be on every permanent pressed bedsheet.” Just embalming people every night.
And that it just makes common sense to give consumers products that will enable their health and happiness, and that everybody who produces toxic chemicals and products made from them would just stop because it is common sense, and we have the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And toxic chemicals doesn’t contribute to that.
KEN COOK: I agree with that. I think – not everyone is going to obviously go at this with a kind of training and background that Curt has, for example. He really understands the science here. So there’s an important need to translate. I think from our standpoint, there are a couple of principles that we apply.
First of all, we don’t have all the answers. We can’t tell you that a chemical that’s in a sippy cup or a baby bottle or that is even in your bloodstream because you’ve been exposed from some source. We can’t tell you that that exposure is definitely going to cause a health problem. We know there’s a great deal of uncertainty.
What we can say is if you can avoid those exposures, and can do it in a way – sometimes, it might take a while to change your routines or your buying behaviors or what have you, give it a try because we know you can knock down thousands of exposure [inaudible 00:46:50] eliminate them from your routine and from your life just with paying a little bit of attention.
So that makes all the sense in the world. The bigger issue though is we need to re-tool and re-invent some major industries here that are [inaudible 00:47:06] consumer products and particle boards for homes and so forth.
When we’ve caught some of these companies doing things that are demonstrably bad for our health, they made change happen. We know that has happened with respect to lots of different areas, lots of different consumer product categories. But we need to do more.
Consumer pressure adds to that. It sends signals to companies that they need to re-invent how they make things, the types of products that they sell, and as that pressure builds, a lot of these things we’re seeking, I think, will come about into market pressure.
But one of the key components of creating these positive markets is a regulatory system that rewards invention for safer products, instead of slowing it down.
DEBRA: I totally agree. You and I have been doing this for a lot of years. And I think that both of us can see that there has been progress made.
When I first started, I remember the only clothes – let’s see. I didn’t start writing until 1984, but in 1978, I started looking at toxic chemicals and trying to find non-toxic products. The only thing I could wear was a tee shirt and jeans.
Now, we have organic everything. And there organic nothing in 1978. I couldn’t even find organic food in the stores. And there are all of these non-toxic cleaning products, great water filters, and people are talking about detox.
All these things weren’t happening before. I see a change in the right direction.
KEN COOK: I think that’s right. There are a lot of positive signs. It’s no time to be complacent not personally, and certainly, we don’t want to – even people who are turned off by government, and I know a lot of people are. They feel like nothing ever happens that’s good in Washington.
I am sympathetic with a lot of those views. But look at it this way. If you step back from these, what I think of is, civil obligations to engage with your government, the people who represent you, someone else is going to step in. That someone else is very likely to be a lobbyist for the chemical industry, a lobbyist for the coal or petroleum or oil industry. Fill in the blank.
They are very active in Washington. They will have their way if they can. And it’s very important for those of us who feel that we’re speaking on behalf of the public health to be there to contest these important policy issues.
DEBRA: I’m going to stop you right there because we’re at the end of the show, and the music is going to start playing. So thank you so much Ken and Curt for being here. Again, their website is EWG.org. And you can type in “Rethinking Carcinogens” into the search engine and come up with [inaudible 00:50:12] we’re talking about today.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. Be well.
