Art | Resources
Unregulated Pesticide Additives
Pesticides are identified by their active ingredients, but they also contain so called “inert ingredients” that are not revealed on the label, nor are they even vetted by the EPA.
This article talks about two nanoparticle additives that are commonly used to boost the effectiveness of pesticides.
Mother Jones: Scientists Say Supposedly Miraculous Ingredients in Weed Killers Don’t Actually Work
That “New TV” Smell
Question from Sandy Van Wagoner
Hi Debra,
Hi…I read that some flatscreen t.v.s outgas the lifetime of the TV. Wondering what your input on this is.?? Is there a website that rates TV’s on the greenest etc. Thanks
Debra’s Answer
We’ll if you are up for reading a lot of complaints about plastic offgassing from tv’s, here’s a whole list of them: www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/sony-52-lcdtv-strong-acrid-smell-out-of-the-box-289843/
OK here’s what I think we’re looking for: the Greenpeace guide to greener electronics, September 2014
Here’s what the guide says about toxic chemicals in electronics (including TV’s):
The presence of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) results in the release of highly toxic dioxins, among other hazardous chemicals, when scrap is burnt. Other examples of hazardous chemicals commonly used in electronics also pose a range of environmental and human health problems.
Phthalates, used widely as softeners for PVC, migrate out of plastics over time. Some are classified as “toxic to reproduction” and are known to be hormone disrupters.
Antimony trioxide is recognised as a possible human carcinogen; exposure to high levels in the workplace, as dusts or fumes, can lead to severe skin problems and other health effects.
Beryllium and beryllium compounds, when released as dusts or fumes during processing and recycling, are recognised as known human carcinogens. Exposure to these chemicals, even at very low levels and for short periods of time, can cause beryllium sensitisation that can lead to chronic beryllium disease (CBD), an incurable and debilitating lung disease.
This guide is pretty long and technical, so here’s an easier-to-read summary.
Forbes: Greenpeace Updates Guidance On Green Electronics
I don’t see that there is any television yet on the market that does not contain these toxic chemicals. Some seem to outgas more than others. I have a Vizio brand flat screen and it has never has a smell that I can detect.
Shepherd’s Dream
Makes a complete crib set (mattress, bumper pads, etc out of organically grown wool and cotton). Family-owned by an experienced natural mother. This company is about wool–sleeping on it and under it, cuddling with it, and loving the wool and the sheep and the land. Founder Eliana Jantz has been working with wool as long as I’ve been writing about natural products (her daughter now runs the business). Eliana led the development of EcoDomestic Wool, “a collaboration which involves the sheep growers, wool processors, product makers and promoters in gradually developing an infrastructure which ensures environmentally friendly and sustainable practices and fair prices to the woolgrower.” All within a few miles distance, the sheep are pastured, the wool is milled, and the products are sewn by local women in a renovated storefront, all in site of majestic Mt. Shasta in northern California. Be sure to tell them “Debra sent me.”
 |
Listen to Debra’s 2013 interview with Shepherd’s Dream Owner Sarah Sunshine Smith. |
Organic Grace
Just about everything you might need for your baby, chosen to be safe by a real mother for her baby. Crib and mattresses, bedding, glass bottles, cloth diapers, baby blankets and clothes, herbal products, dolls, teethers, toys, pactifiers, pillows, and more–all made from nontoxic, natural, and organic materials. Even organic cotton baby carriers!
Toxics in the Air We Breathe—Indoors and Outdoors—and How it Affects Our Health
My guest today is toxicologist Steven G. Gilbert, PhD, DABT, He’s a regular guest who is helping us understand the toxicity of common chemicals we may be frequently exposed to. Today we’re going to talk about indoor and outdoor air pollution: the different types of pollutants, how they affect your health, how you are exposed to them, and what you can do to reduce your exposure. Dr. Gilbert is Director and Founder of 
the Institute of Neurotoxicology and author of A Small Dose of Toxicology- The Health Effects of Common Chemicals. He received his Ph.D. in Toxicology in 1986 from the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, is a Diplomat of American Board of Toxicology, and an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, University of Washington. His research has focused on neurobehavioral effects of low-level exposure to lead and mercury on the developing nervous system. Dr. Gilbert has an extensive website about toxicology called Toxipedia, which includes a suite of sites that put scientific information in the context of history, society, and culture. www.toxipedia.org
LISTEN TO OTHER SHOWS WITH STEVEN G. GILBERT, PhD, DABT
- Toxic Solvents and Vapors
- How Pesticides Can Harm Your Health
- Why Do People Doubt the Science Behind Toxics?
- There is No Safe Level for Lead Exposure
- Fewer Chemicals Make Healthier Babies
- Why We Shouldn’t Have Nuclear Power Plants
- How Mercury Affects Your Health
- Nanoparticles
- Persistant Bioaccumulative Toxicants
- How Endocrine Disruptors Disrupt Our Endocrine Systems
- The Dangers of Exposure to Radiation and How to Protect Yourself
- Toxics Throughout History—Exposure to Toxic Substances is Not New
- The Ethics of Toxics
- How to Determine Your Risk of Harm From an Exposure to a Toxic Chemical
- The Basic Principles of Toxicology
- Meet a Toxicologist
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Toxics in the Air We Breathe – Indoors and Outdoors – and How it Affects Our Health
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Steven G. Gilbert
Date of Broadcast: July 30, 2015
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic free. It is Thursday, July 30th 2015. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida with overcast skies, so it’s going to be cooler today. It’s only 80 today, that’s good.
Today, we’re going to be talking about air, air pollution and the air pollutants that can be making us sick both in outdoor air and indoor air. What’s toxic about air?
My guest today is toxicologist Dr. Steven Gilbert. He’s a regular guest on this show and he’s helping us understand the toxicity of common chemical that we’re maybe frequently exposed to. And if you’re listening to this show, you are being exposed to outdoor air pollutants for sure and indoor air pollutants if you don’t know about them and haven’t been doing things to clean them. So, we’re going to find out all about this today, what are the pollutants and what to do?
Dr. Gilbert is the author of a very good book called A Small Dose of Toxicology which you can get on his website for free. Everybody should have one. I just think that it’s the best way to start with toxicology. His website is Toxipedia.org. Dr. Gilbert, is it an .org or a .com?
STEVEN GILBERT: It’s .org
DEBRA: Toxipedia.org. I don’t have it right in front of me. So hi, Dr. Gilbert. How are you?
STEVEN GILBERT: Hi Debra, how are you this morning?
DEBRA: I’m good! And I actually start by saying something first. Usually, I let you talk but I have a post on my blog on my website that talks about air pollution is now the world’s single largest environmental risk to health. That was stated by the World Health Organization in March 2014. There may be more recent numbers about this.
It says that there that there were deaths. They’re not just talking about runny noses and it’s hard to breathe. So here are the outdoor air pollution that cause deaths, 40% of heart disease, 40% of stroke, 11% of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, 60% of lung cancer and 3% of lower respiratory infections in children.
So here, what we’re talking about today is not just how this affects your health. It’s talking about people dying. That’s what I wanted to start.
STEVEN GILBERT: Yeah. That is really, really a great starting point. Air pollution is a worldwide issue. It’s a serious matter that everybody should thoughtful about. I have some statistics too about that.
According to what I have from Mother Jones article (there’s a great article there about air pollution), over 1.5 million of people worldwide die of heart disease, 1.4 of stroke, lung cancer, 222,000 die of pulmonary disease, 43,000 people die every year as a consequence of air pollution. So, it really is a very serious matter, both indoor and outdoor. I’ll just say it’s bad.
Air pollution, for a long time, we still have not talked about this issue. But yeah, I see it’s getting better in some countries. I’ll just read this little quarter:
“As soon as I had gotten out of the heavy air of Rome and from the stink of smokey chimneys thereof, which, being stirred, poured forth from whatever pestilential vapors and soot they had enclosed in them, I felt an alteration in my disposition.”
This is by Seneca in 61 BC.
DEBRA: Yeah.
STEVEN GILBERT: So, air pollution is a serious matter as our population has increased for a long, long time.
DEBRA: Yes, it has. So, what I’d like to do is I’d like to do the first half of the show on outdoor air pollution and then let’s move to indoor air pollution. Instead of mixing them up, let’s separate them out.
So, why don’t you start by telling us what are some of the air pollutants that people are being exposed to outdoors?
STEVEN GILBERT: Well, outdoor, probably the most serious one is ozone, which is O3. It can be a very serious pollutant. Ozone at the upper stratosphere is very important. You’ve probably heard [inaudible 00:05:34] ozone hole in the upper stratosphere. Ozone at the upper stratosphere is very important. It protects us from ultraviolet light. But that’ll also be a serious lung irritant. So, it’s very important that we control that.
It’s produced by high nitrogen oxide. For example, produced from cars (too many cars on the road). I think that that’s where a lot of air pollution comes from, cars. Industrial pollution such as coal-fueled utility plants are a very important producer of air pollution and particulate manner. Diesel particulate matter is important. If you live near a port or a very active port, you know all about the air pollution that comes off of ports from the diesel engines that run the big ships that are coming out.
Here in Seattle, you’ll certainly see a lot of that. We’ve tried hard to reduce the amount of soot that’s produced by these generators that are on these ships. They plug in to the grid. They’re not running their big engines right next to the city.
So, I think another for outdoor air pollution are sulfur dioxide. They are an important air pollutant that produces acid rain and really clogs the atmosphere.
A pollutant that come out are also mercury, for example, with coal-fired utility plants. They produce mercury. It gets into the atmosphere, then mercury comes down as rain. And with rain, it enters the dirt, it enters the soil. It ends up in the rivers and the ocean. It gets into the fish we eat.
So, there are all kinds of outdoor air pollutants that are really critical. And of course, it all leads to climate change.
We get too much carbon dioxide from pollutants that come out of cars, from our industrial systems. It is causing global warming and global climate changes that we’re all becoming more and more familiar with.
And I think [inaudible 00:07:22], for example, that’s going to be really serious because it’s starting to melt the ice in the poles of the earth and it’s going to cause great increases in sea level. If it continues to rise, it will flood many things.
So, air pollution really has many, many different effects. It’s also affecting our health and well-being. It’s really important to pay attention to air pollution. UK is trying to regulate more of that. The United Sates actually has pretty good, clean air. They’ve done a really good job in trying to clean up the air, but it’s still a big issue.
In fact, the consequence of India and China and other developing countries that have a lot of coal burning plants and the air pollutants comes off of those in the air. It gets into the upper atmosphere and it ends up in the West Coast here. We see the pollution from China and other developing countries in our atmosphere.
So, it is something we really got to look as a global issue. We have done that in the past with ozone, for example, and volatile organic compounds and trying to reduce the amount of ozone contaminants that are killing off the ozone in our upper stratosphere.
We can do this. I think climate change [inaudible 00:08:35] air pollution goes.
DEBRA: Well, what can individuals do at home or in their personal lives to help reduce air pollution? I think it’s pretty clear that almost anywhere you are, particularly if you’re in a city or in a place like you are from Seattle where the pollution is coming from other countries across the Pacific that there’s going to be more air pollution.
And if you’re out in the country where you’re not next to so much cars and some things like that and industrial pollution, the air is going to be cleaner. But I think it’s probably safe to say that there probably isn’t a place on Earth where the air is actually clean.
STEVEN GILBERT: You’re absolutely right, Debra. It is really a serious problem, industrialization of the globe. It’s causing more and more air pollution. If you look at it historically, outdoor pollution, the Donora smog that occurred in 1948 in Donora, Pennsylvania was produced by a US Steel Corporation, Donora Zinc Works and American Steel.
The air [inaudible 00:09:44]. It was cold air that stuck the bottom air, so the air pollution stayed very low. Over 7,000 people died in this period of time.
DEBRA: Yeah.
STEVEN GILBERT: So, we’ve moved away from this gross example of pollution in the United Sates. But we can still issue. When you go out and look out in the ocean out in Seattle here, you see that pink sunsets, that’s the particulate matters in the air.
So, we’ve learned that these particulate matters, [inaudible 00:10:15]. They’re very small, fine particles. They’re a serious part of air pollutants. They enter our lungs, deep into our lungs. It can cause heart disease and other disease that can actually lead to death as well as asthma and things like that.
It’s very important that we can cure air pollutants and look at ways we can reduce it. For example, I’ve moved…
DEBRA: Wait! Hold on, we need to go to break. So, let’s go to break and when we come back, you can tell us how we can reduce it. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Dr. Steven Gilbert.
He’s the author of A Small Dose of Toxicology which you can get at Toxipedia.org. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. I’m sorry, I’m a little distracted here.
During the break, I was looking up the article you’ve mentioned, the Mother Jones article about air pollution. Well, I found five articles in Mother Jones. It was like a big thing, just now in June 2015. The one I have in front of me now is about our national parks. They rated 12 parks most harmed by air pollution. I’m looking at this picture of Yosemite.
I used to live in California and I’ve been to Yosemite National Par. It’s absolutely gorgeous! And when you go there, it’s way high in the Sierra Nevada mountains. It’s got these gorgeous mountain peaks. And you’d thinks if there’s any place in the world where there’s going to be clear air, it would be Yosemite. It was one of the four national parks to regularly have unhealthy air pollution levels, Yosemite National Park!
STEVEN GILBERT: Yes.
DEBRA: So, this is what I was talking about earlier. There isn’t a place on Earth where you can go and breathe clean air. That’s just astonishing to me.
STEVEN GILBERT: Yeah, it really is depressing! I think that, you asked earlier, “What can we as individuals do?”,
I think it’s a little bit of politics. But also, I think we can do some things and one is solar panels. We need to stop producing electricity from these large centralized systems that produce live air pollution on their own like coal-fired utility plants, even the gas plants. There’s a lot of air pollution from that.
I’ll just give you an example. I’ve put solar panels in my house about a year ago. For the last 30 days, I’ve generated 1.2 megawatts of electricity. Right at the moment, I’m generating over 3000 watts of electricity. And yesterday, I generated 47 kilowatts of power. It doesn’t sound like a lot. It’s not a lot for a house. [inaudible 00:15:54] to utility company 24, almost 25 kilowatt hours of electricity back to the power plant.
So, it’s really important for us as individuals. I also got an electric car this year. I tried to plug in my electric car and charge it off to solar panels from the grid. It’s [inaudible 00:16:16] have gotten great opportunities to move towards solar. But we’ve got to have better laws that encourages [inaudible 00:16:23] great incentive towards solar. [Inaudible 00:16:26]
DEBRA: That’s exactly right! First of all, I just want to remind the listeners that you’re in Seattle and the percentage of cloud cover days because it’s raining so much is enormous and you’re still getting that amount of energy that you just described.
Here in Florida, we have so many sunshine days. There’s so much sunshine here that actually – I think it was back in the ‘20s or something. There was actually a lot of solar. It was like almost everybody had solar hot water. That as the way they did it. We’ve lost all that easy, solar technology. It’s all been replaced by these pollution energy technology and we could easily do this.
For me, I would have solar panels on my house in a minute if I could afford it. If there was government incentive here, I’d do it in a minute!
STEVEN GILBERT: It’s that great incentive. And back into the politics, we have to talk to representatives, “We want solar! We want distributed power generation and move away from this large centralized systems.”
DEBRA: I totally agree! Another thing would be – how can I say this? If we use less energy in our homes, then are the power systems still going to generate that energy whether we use it or not?
STEVEN GILBERT: Yeah! I generate it. The systems are set up so that all the excess power generated goes back to the grid, so my neighbors are using the powers I generated.
Yesterday, I sold 25 kilowatt hours back to the electric company. I have not paid an electric bill since last July when I installed the system on my house.
DEBRA: Wow!
STEVEN GILBERT: The power companies have to get onboard with allowing us to do this and adapting to the fact that as individuals, we can generate a lot of power in our homes. It’s very important we do that because that reduces the pollution and modern powers required from the utility plants.
And if it moves to electrical currents, we also use power from those plants in our house that we generated ourselves, but also, we reduce pollution that we’re putting out in the atmosphere from our cars because we have a whole bunch of cars that are pollution free, which is just great. I think…
DEBRA: I think that’s great! I would do exactly what you’ve done. I just need to figure how to make that work financially for me. I got a smaller car this year because my other car totally broke down and so I bought a very fuel-efficient car and I’m very happy I did that. Even if people were to move to having more fuel economic cars, that would reduce it a lot.
STEVEN GILBERT: Yes, it would! Unfortunately, gas prices have dropped, so people are moving back to the less fuel-efficient cars. It’s very important. And I really honor your decision to buy a fuel-efficient car. That might seem like a small thing, but it’s actually a big thing that we can all do to reduce pollution in the atmosphere, reducing greenhouse gasses.
It’s really important for us to reduce the use of greenhouse gasses so we’re not contributing to climate change and we’re starting to be thinking of future generations, of our children’s children, of what kind of globe we’ll leave them.
If we’re not careful, we’re going to end up with a lot of ocean rises, increase in ocean levels. It’s going to flood out a lot of properties. A lot of people live on the coast. It’s going to cause all kinds of problems. Florida, in particular, will be vulnerable to this.
DEBRA: Yes. I just want to ask you quickly because we only have about a minute before the break, “What kind people do to protect their health from outdoor air pollution when they’re walking around?”
STEVEN GILBERT: Well, that’s more difficult because we don’t have a lot of control of the outdoor air pollution. But I think the important thing is to look out for ozone, in particular, if it’s a high air pollution day. And then, don’t exercise if there’s a lot of pollution in the atmosphere.
But the main thing is we’ve got to reduce, we’ve got to ask our representatives to reduce our air pollution, to support the Environmental Protection Agency. It’s very discouraging to see this. Some of the republicans I met are going to wipe out the EPA or to reduce its authority. We’ve got to give our government agencies more authority to help reduce the air pollution that we inhale. We’re inhaling air pollution.
DEBRA: Yeah. It’s just way too much air pollution. So, I just want to mention before we go to break that one of the things that I recommend is to take Liquid Zeolite. The brand that I like is Pure Body Liquid Zeolite because it removes heavy metals and other things in your body in situations where you can’t control the exposure. And this is just one of those situations.
Outdoor air pollution is one of the reasons why I take this every day. And if you go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and look up this show in the archives, there will be information there about how you can order that if you decide to do that.
So, we’re going to go to break, but we’ll be back. And when we come back, we’ll talk about indoor air pollution with Dr. Steven Gilbert, author of A Small Dose of Toxicology. You can get that free at Toxipedia.org. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Dr. Steven Gilbert, author of A Small Dose of Toxicology, which you can get free at Toxipedia.org.
So, I want to start this segment with the statement that according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, they have called indoor air pollution the nation’s number one environmental health problem. So, now we have the World Health Organization saying that outdoor air pollution is the number one environmental health problem in the world. And then, the EPA says that indoor air pollution is the nation’s number one health problem.
They say that people spend more than 90% of their time inside. The quality of our indoor air impacts our health far more than our outdoor air. And so, some things the indoor air pollution can cause is irritation to the eyes, nose and throat, headache, dizziness, fatigue, asthma, hypersensitivity, pneumonia and long term effects can include respiratory disease, heart disease and cancer. It can be severely debilitating and fatal. This is what our United States Environmental Protection Agency has to say about indoor air pollution.
Okay, I’ll let you talk now.
STEVEN GILBERT: You made some great, great point there. Your indoor air pollution is really critical, especially for young children, because children are not like adults. They eat more, breathe more and drink more than their body weight. Their airways are not as big as adults. So, indoor air pollution is really important for young. They also spend more time indoors. And also for the elderly, they will often have compromised lung function and they also spend a lot of time indoors.
So, indoor pollutants are really important. A lot of it are comprised of outgassed chemicals. For example, if you go the store and buy one of your plastic, rubberized shower curtains, that shower curtains will offgas phthlates and other chemicals. Even that new plastic smell is an important source of air pollutants that we inhale.
So, if you have that in your bathroom, you don’t have a fan, you increase humidity in your bathroom, you get mold in the bathroom, that mold outgasses particulate matter and you also inhale that. You get asthma and other conditions from that.
So, there are lots of indoor air pollutants. It’s actually hard to know where to start. You’ve got things like radon in certain places in the country. [Inaudible 00:29:30] I don’t about Florida so much.
DEBRA: We don’t have it here.
STEVEN GILBERT: You don’t?
DEBRA: No, we don’t.
STEVEN GILBERT: Yeah, radon causes lung cancer if you can inhale. There are all kinds of different aspects of air pollutants. If three billion people around the globe have used wood, animal bones, crop waste, coal for cooking, if they’re heating their homes, those will produce lot of indoor air pollution.
People that use wood in certain places like Washington state. People still have a wood burning stove. There’s actually a little community. In Seattle, there’s still a lot of wood burning stove. [Inaudible 00:30:15]. That can be very reactive for some people. They’ll have really troubled breathing in wood smoke filled air. It causes a lot of problems in both outdoor and indoor pollution.
I have to mention lead for a second.We added lead to gasoline in the 30s and we produced a horrible mess of lead pollution which goes indoors and outdoors. Kids are exposed to lead from cars that once burned lead, of course. We got rid most of the leads from gasoline in 1990, which is a great move.
It’s still used, for example, used in airplanes, propulsion of airplanes. They have leaded gasoline. There’s lead around the outdoor. But indoors [inaudible 00:31:00].
For example, with pesticide, it’s the same thing. You use a lot of pesticides outdoors, you bring them indoors. It gets into carpets. The carpets has dust in them. Who’s going to breathe down the carpet? Kids again.
DEBRA: Right.
STEVEN GILBERT: So, kids are exposed indoors. Pesticides and lead are two good examples. There’s a whole other bunch of other examples.
So, it really is a complicated thing. I think indoor pollution is an underrated problem.
DEBRA: I totally agree with you! So, I’ve been writing about indoor air pollution for a very long time. I’ve been writing about the whole subject of toxics for more than 30 years. And indoor air pollution was one of the first things that I started writing about.
And at that time, it wasn’t even called indoor air pollution. They haven’t even done the studies yet. But I knew from my own experience (and the experience of others) that when we were breathing these things, then we felt sick. And when we didn’t breathe them, then we didn’t feel sick. It was pretty clear even though studies have not yet been done at that time.
So, things like carpets give off fumes that are very toxic. I know in my particular case, I was being made very sick by the chlorine fumes that were coming off of the water in my shower. And it’s not just chlorine. It mixes with other things in the water, so it actually turns into chloroform. And chloroform is that thing in old movies where the villain would put this cloth over the heroin’s face to knock her out. That’s chloroform. It just really does knock you out.
So, I would actually faint when I would take a shower from the amount of chloroform that was in my water. And all of these were considered to be indoor air pollutants.
I want to mention that there are two things that people can do with indoor air pollution. One is my website is full of products that don’t emit toxic chemicals, things like paints and even like the materials used to make your bedding and clothing. All these things, they are all emitting toxic chemicals into the air. And so…
STEVEN GILBERT: Yeah, things like that and perfumes, deodorizers. Absolutely deodorizers, they’re all outgassing.
DEBRA: Yeah, I remember when I first started being interested in these. One of the things that I had just done is taking vinyl shelf paper that’s sticking on the back. I thought it was so pretty. And so, not only did I put it on the shelves, I lined my whole cabinet with vinyl shelf paper. And then, I learned that it was out-gassing toxic vinyl and I’m like, “Oh, my God!” I ripped it out.
But I do a lot of consulting were people have me come to their homes and find the toxic chemicals. I can’t tell you how many times they’ve got these built-in closets with these cabinets and these shelves and stuff. Those are particle boards. They’re just wreaking formaldehyde. It just goes on and on like this.
So, one thing to do is to start identifying where are those sources of indoor air pollution are. There are a lot of information on my website and in my book about what that is.
But the thing that I would really recommend is just right away, get an air filter. Get an air filter that is really going to do their job. That way, you start reducing the air pollutants while you’re removing the sources. You can just immediately improve your air quality with the right kind of air filter.
And again, I’ve put some information if you go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. Look for today’s show and in the archives. There are some information there about the air filter that I use in my home. Even though I don’t have any toxic things in my home, toxic stuff is coming in from the outside. You can’t keep it out. So, this is something that we all need to be considering and taking care of in order to be healthy.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Dr. Steven Gilbert, toxicologist and author of A Small Dose of Toxicology. He’s at Toxipedia.org and we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Dr. Steven Gilbert from Toxipedia.
So, we’re in our last segment. It always goes by so fast. There’s always so much information. So, what else would you like to make sure we say about indoor or outdoor air pollution?
STEVEN GILBERT: Oh, yeah. It’s really short. We should have divided this in two parts and done indoor air pollution one week and outdoor air pollution next week.
But it is a big, complex thing. We all need to be paying attention to what we breathe in. We’re only given one set of lungs that we start off with and it’s really important to protect our lungs.
One of the biggest issues that I can’t help but mention is tobacco products. We need to never smoke indoors. It really pollutes the indoors. You get not only the tobacco smoke, second hand smoke form indoor pollution, but you also get a third hand smoke through the walls, your clothing. It gets covered with tobacco products which outgasses it. So, the child, in particular, will inhale those products that are stuck on your clothes or in the walls of indoors.
DEBRA: Yeah.
STEVEN GILBERT: So, do not smoke indoors. Do not smoke to start with.
DEBRA: Do not smoke, yeah!
STEVEN GILBERT: Don’t smoke. Think about this. [Inaudible 00:40:13] The smoke that enters your lungs are all particulate matter [inaudible 00:40:17]. It is not good for you.
The other thing is I want to just hit on really quickly is industrial issue because I think the workplace is a really important part. A lot of the adults spend quite a bit of time in the workplace. It’s a very serious source of potential contamination especially, for example, silica, asbestos (you’ll really want to avoid asbestos). A lot of some older homes have asbestos. They wrap the ducting for their furnaces. So, be really careful about that for older homes. You want to watch out for asbestos in the workplace also.
Silica is another big issue. Silica will be from sand. It goes from cutting concrete, from grinding parts like that. It causes silicosis which can also be fatal in the lung damage. [Inaudible 00:41:09] So, take home products end up in the home can contribute to indoor air pollution.
Paint, formaldehyde, glue, you mentioned indoor cabinetry. That stuff will outgas for quite a while formaldehyde, another two three years to make those products.
Then, you have commercial cleaning products, also personal care products. Those things are very important.
Anything that’s got some kind of perfume on it is out-gassing chemicals. You’ve got to be thinking about that. If you have something that has perfume in it, it is built to offgas chemicals. Some of those chemicals they use are phthalates as well as other complex chemicals that make up perfumes. Air Fresheners, tire sheets…
DEBRA: There’s thousands, thousands of toxic chemicals in perfume, anything that is perfumed or scented or anything. That’s one thing you can do. If you were to just remove all the scented products from your life, you will greatly reduce indoor air pollution.
STEVEN GILBERT: Yeah, things like that. If you have garage attached to your house or indoor garage or something, you drive your car in that garage, the car is offgassing a whole bunch of chemicals, oils and gasses and things like that, which contribute to the indoor air pollution of your home.
So, it’s really important to be thoughtful of where the pollution is coming from – cars, mold, dust. You really got to be careful about mold. You want to reduce the amount of mold. You don’t need to clean molds. If you do have molds in your bathroom, just use soap and hot or warm water on the mold.
Do not use chlorinated products on mold because it does not clean them off. It’s just bleaching, so you can’t see it.
So, just get down there and scrub away and then reduce the moisture. Mold feeds on moisture, so you just want to reduce moisture or you reduce the food source for all kinds products like that.
DEBRA: I think we’ve given a good overview. We still have about five minutes left. Let’s see what else can we say about indoor air pollution. What else would you like to say?
STEVEN GILBERT: Well, I would to just say you have to be really careful indoor and outdoor pollution. I think to come back to outdoor, I think it’s really important we try to figure out how to reduce greenhouse gasses in our materials that’s contributing to greenhouse gasses and then contributing to global warming and climate change.
The EPA has been doing a lot of work on that, trying to reduce the amount of fumes from the large industrial manufacturers, electricity-producing companies like goals and gas. Electric utilites are major source of pollutants and we really need to reduce the long run, the long term. We need to figure out how to do that. We need to start producing indiviually our own electricity because that will reduce outdoor air pollution.
I think reducing air pollution is everyone’s responsibility. Driving less, mass transit is really important. How do we increase mass transit in our society, so we don’t have to drive our own personal cars anymore. Walking is really important. I have a meeting in 10:30, I am [inaudible 00:44:21]. As soon as I get out of this call, I’m going to walk to my next meeting.
How do we do things like that? How do we reduce our contribution, our carbon footprint so we are not producing those greenhouse gases? In the long run, it’s going to cause us a lot of pain and trouble.
DEBRA: I know that at different times in my life, the choice about where you live and how you organize things in your life – like I work at home, so I don’t have any commute at all. I don’t need to take a bus, nothing. I just go from the bedroom to the kitchen to my desk.
And earlier in life, I lived in San Francisco. I worked downtown. And so, I lived in an area where I could walk to work in San Francisco. It took me about 20 minutes to go downtown, but I walked every day and I walked back. And now, where I live, I don’t have to go to work. But I have other activities that I do.
How much do I drive? I mean, everything that I do is within about a five mile radius really. So, it’s very rarely that I will drive across the bridge to Tampa, maybe once a month. But otherwise, I’m just in this little, tiny radius. It’s a little wide for me to walk it, but if I have maybe an electric scooter (which I am seriously thinking of getting), if I had an electric scooter, I could just scooter around to these places because they’re so close to each other.
So, that’s very different from people who are sitting in commute traffic for two hours every day.
STEVEN GILBERT: Yeah. That’s a really great point. [Inaudible 00:46:11]. I also work from our house too, so it’s really important to make your life something like that so you try not to contribute to the air pollution that’s out there already.
DEBRA: Yeah! I think that with wise decisions like that, we can reduce the outdoor air pollution that we are creating or experiencing.
I remember there was a time I was working in San Francisco and I was living in Oakland, which is across the bay bridge across San Francisco and I was driving a little Fiat X19 sports car. I do this commute with the top off. I’d just be sitting there for hours in the commute traffic breathing all of those exhaust. I mean, things that I used to do just horrify me now that I know what the consequences are. But I know that there are millions of people who are doing this.
STEVEN GILBERT: Yeah, there are. There are all kinds of people that are just sitting in a lot of traffic and really breathing in the fumes from the cars all around them, which in the long run is not good for our lungs and not good for the future of the Earth and the planet and they’re not good for our children.
So, we’ve got to be thoughtful about that. We need to be me more considerate of our lungs and everybody else’s lungs. So, if you’re out there driving or polluting or even electricity, think of the pollutants that’s coming from that and all the pollutant that you’re producing and you’re breathing in at the same time.
It’s really important to be thinking about that, thinking about our homes, a lot glues and other solvents in our home. Our cars are manufactured with a lot of solvents, even the paint in the car. Paint produces a lot of chemicals. We need to be thoughtful about that and reducing our paint usage. Use only water-based paints. Stay away from all oil-based paints because there are a lot of oils and solvents in them. We need to reduce the amount of oil and petroleum products we’re using.
And we need to have regulation. I hate to come back to politics again. But again, we need to have those regulations.
DEBRA: We do.
STEVEN GILBERT: Know what’s in the products we’re using, know what chemicals are in the dryer sheets, the air fresheners and perfumes, so we know what to avoid and how to do that better and know what to buy.
DEBRA: That is a really big problem. Manufacturers don’t disclose what’s in their products. And that’s a topic for a whole show in and of itself. I’ve been a consumer advocate for more than 30 years now and the biggest problem I always have is I can’t find out what’s in the product. And if I can’t find out what’s in a product, then I just don’t use it.
There are ways that you can get around and find some of the ingredients. But the difference is that now, I’m starting to see that there are websites that fully disclosed their ingredients. And not only that, they tell you where they’re from and all about each ingredient and they’re very open about that. I think that that’s the world that we’re moving, that direction because how can we make decisions as consumers unless we know what’s in the product.
STEVEN GILBERT: Yeah, [inaudible 00:49:35] The American Lung Association is great. My book has a big chapter on air pollution and other materials about that. But I think we need to educate ourselves about the products that are produced and that we’re using
DEBRA: And we need to go because it’s the end of the show. Thank you so much Dr. Gilbert! I know, it goes by so fast! You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well!
How to Protect Your Health From Toxic Mercury Dental Fillings
Today my guest is Pamela Seefeld, R.Ph, a registered pharmacist who prefers to dispense medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs. We’ll be talking about mercury dental fillings, which were front page news in our local newspaper last week. Senior US health officials stopped a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposal that would have told dentists they should not use mercury fillings in cavities in pregnant women, nursing moms, children under 6 and people with mercury allergies, kidney diseases or neurological problems. It also urged dentists to avoid using fillings that contain mercury compounds in any patient, where possible. Pamela and I will discuss the toxic effects of mercury in your body and what you can do to protect your body from the dangers of mercury fillings. Pamela has more than 25 years experience choosing and selling top quality medicinal supplements, so she’s seen it all. Pamela is a 1990 graduate of the University of Florida College of Pharmacy, where she studied Pharmacognosy (the study of medicines derived from plants and other natural sources). She has worked as an integrative pharmacist teaching physicians, pharmacists and the general public about the proper use of botanicals. She is also a grant reviewer for NIH in Washington D.C. and the owner of Botanical Resource and Botanical Resource Med Spa in Clearwater, Florida. www.botanicalresource.com
LISTEN TO OTHER SHOWS WITH PAMELA SEEFELD
- Vaccines: Harmful or Necessary?
- Evaluating A Study and Testing a Test
- Seven Deadly Drugs
- The Hidden Dangers Affecting Your Heart and How You Can Protect It Naturally
- What We Can Do About Cancer
- The Power of pH
- Pharmacology 101: How to Use What Pharmacists Know to Take Supplements to Best Advantage
- Are You Heading For Kidney Failure? Natural Remedies Can Help
- How to Keep Your Blood Vessels Open and Flowing With Supplements
- How Inactivity Leads to Illness and Drug Use—And How Exercise Can Get You Off Drugs and into Health
- How to Protect the Environment from Pharmaceutical Pollution by Using Natural Medicinals
- Hidden Toxic Dangers in Common Dietary Supplements
- See More Clearly with Natural Remedies
- Hidden Mental Health Dangers in Common Drugs
- Different Types of Detox
- Getting Off Prescription Drugs with Natural Remedies
- How Natural Remedies Could Have Saved A Life
- Natural Alternatives to Sleeping Pills
- Natural Back Pain Treatment Options That Work
- How Toxics Age Your Body & What You Can Do to Stay Young
- You CAN Lose Weight—Even if You’ve Had Difficulty Losing Weight Before
- Calcium—Is There Really a Deficiency in America?
- It’s Cold and Flu Season—How to Support Your Immune System and Why You Shouldn’t Get a Toxic Flu Shot
- How Eating Fruits and Vegetables Help Your Cells Create Health
- Toxic Psychiatry and How to Have Mental Health Without Drugs
- Why You Should Take Fish Oil and How To Choose the Right One for You
- Medicinal Plants Can Replace Toxic Drugs
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
How to Protect Your Health from Toxic Mercury Dental Fillings
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Pamela Seefeld, R.Ph
Date of Broadcast: July 29, 2015
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio, where we talk how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic free. It is Wednesday, July 29th 2015, I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. And today, we’re going to talk about, actually, some news, something that was in the newspaper.
My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She’s on every other Wednesday because she has so much information. She’s a registered pharmacist, first to dispense medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs.
But she knows all about drugs. She knows all about how toxic chemicals work in the body, what kind of things happen in the body because of our exposure to toxic chemicals and to drugs, and she knows what the natural solutions are.
So, every time she’s on, we talk about a different subject. This week, we’re going to be talking about how to protect your health from mercury fillings. The reason that we’re talking about is because Pamela actually alerted me to an article that was front page news here in Tampa Bay area, where I lived (although it wasn’t in any other papers across the country).
It was on the news service, so anybody could have picked it up, but not very many did. I also subscribed to a lot of newsletters concerning health and toxics and I haven’t seen it in one of them yet. But that doesn’t mean that that it’s not an important issue.
So, what you’re getting here is actually information that’s not being picked up in mainstream media and not even, alternative newsletters, but nonetheless is extremely important.
So, what happened last week was that it was found out that the FDA has a document which recommends against using mercury fillings and that they wanted to actually make that official. It was turned down by the Department of Health and Human Services.
So, what we’re going to talk about today is mercury fillings, that the FDA is now recommending against them and what they’re doing to your body and what natural things you can do in order to protect yourself if you have mercury fillings in your mouth.
Hi, Pamela!
PAMELA SEEFELD: Hi!
DEBRA: Thank you so much for letting me know about this article because I don’t know that I would’ve seen it without you.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes, you’re still really sweet. I read three newspapers a day. And you’re right, this article is not showing up any place else. I’m very surprised.
DEBRA: I’m very surprised too! Because actually, I think it’s historic that the FDA has reversed their position on the danger of mercury in your mouth.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Correction, this is really all about economics. If you look at the article, which is saying that, they don’t actually list the person or the committee that decided to not go through with recommending against using these mercury fillings. That’s really the problem too. Basically, the whole thing is being covered up.
DEBRA: In the article, it says it has been covered up for the last three years and it concludes, the article, that during that period of time, millions of people could have been affected, their health could have been affected. I’m just shocked! Isn’t the whole point of the FDA is to be alerting us to the dangers of toxic chemical exposures and then, recommending to the government that something be done about them?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Most definitely. And if you actually look at some of the statements that they’re saying in the article, Norway, Denmark and Sweden, they’ve banned use of these mercury and amalgam fillings for a long time. So, it’s not a new concept that other countries are trying to dispose of these dangerous fillings.
And I think it’s interesting too. Today, we’re going to be talking about this. Not only are these things being covered up. The fact that they we’re concern that low income individuals would not be able to afford more money, perhaps, or maybe Medicaid should pay for it (it costs a $100 more on average to fill the tooth with a different composite other than amalgam filling), really, we are trading cost for somebody’s life. That’s really something that, to me, is very frightening.
DEBRA: Well, to me too. Especially since it might cost a $100 more initially to fill your tooth with something else, but if you continue with the mercury and amalgams, you’re going to spend way more than $100 on health effects.
PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s actually right! And this is really interesting. Just reading this and being pretty upset about the situation, I went and did a full Medline search quite a long time to look at what is the new evidence about what does mercury do to the body, how do the vapors get into the body. There were some interesting articles. This is all stuff from the last year and a half that we’re going to be discussing today in relationship to this. But it’s important to realize that the definite link between these amalgam fillings and chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, depression, anxiety and even suicide in some cases. These vapors are being release out of the tooth.
And even interesting to note is there’s one study here that I was looking at that I really had not even any idea. When you go for an MRI (so if you have MRI), it releases the vapor in a much more significant amount.
DEBRA: Wow!
PAMELA SEEFELD: What they found (and this just came out less than a year ago) is high-field MRI and mercury release from dental amalgam fillings. They’re suspecting it could even be from mobile phones, but maybe not that extreme. Any kind of magnetic field that’s produce around the mouth, if someone has an MRI of their head or their body and especially people that have cancer already, what they have found is even 72 hours after the MRI, the difference in the urinary mercury that was excreted (and they could tell that the vapor coming right out from the amalgams) was significant.
So, this is something to think about. It’s not just, even, “Okay, I have mercury fillings. I shouldn’t be concerned. They said it was safe.” There are things like small amounts of magnetic fields around you that are actually affecting the vapor release as well.
DEBRA: I have never heard that before, but that seems likely to me. I don’t know if you read this, but in the article, it was talking about the proposal. But I think maybe on the day – I don’t know if you read it on the paper online…
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes.
DEBRA: But online, now, the word proposal is linked to the actual document from the FDA. And in the FDA documents, it talks about how the mercury is being given off into your mouth on a continuous basis. It’s more when you first put it in the fillings and then, it’s less over time. But you actually breathe the vapors of mercury into your lungs and that’s how it gets into your body. The FDA is saying this.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yeah. This is the most shocking part, which we’re having a discussion. People, they really need to think about what’s happening here. We are not being protected in this manner especially when they’re coming out with a position paper. And then, all of a sudden, it’s retracted because of the fact that, first of all, they don’t want to warn people and secondly, they don’t want to have increase cost of fillings. This is really pretty bad!
Now, some other interesting things, it looks like there’s variance. We’re going to talk about some the genes and keep going back to the articles here. But it looks like boys are much more susceptible to the effects of the mercury vapors than girls because of the way genes are turned on. And what happens with mercury in the body is it’s not only causing central nervous system problems, kidney problems, liver problems, immune problems, of course, fetal development problems and of course, cognition, the CNS cognition.
DEBRA: Right.
PAMELA SEEFELD: …but the big things we’re looking at is it affects methylation in the body.
DEBRA: What is that? What’s methylation?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Methylation is why we want to take SAMe or folic acid especially (I use a lot of that). Methyl donors are like anti-oxidants, kind of think of it that way. When you take a supplement (and it’s a methyl donors), what it does is it helps to keep some of the damage done of free radicals in the body.
Methylation is very, very important for cells to work correctly. If methylation is taking place correctly in the body and the cells, it changes your aging process and helps you not age as fast. Exercise increases methylation. And this is all coming down to methylation and what’s called epigenetics.
Epigenetics is a science of…
DEBRA: Wait, Pamela, we need to take a break.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Okay.
DEBRA: I know! We could just talk, talk. Anyway, you’re listening to Toxic Free talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd.
My guest today is Pamela Seefeld, she’s a registered pharmacist who’d rather give out natural supplements. Her website is BotanicalResource.com. I don’t have my page open to that. It’s BotanicalResource.com. And we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist who has her own natural pharmacy at BotanicalResource.com.
Pamela, before we go on about mercury fillings, do you want to just tell people that they can call you?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes! So, my pharmacy has natural products and we specialize in medical homeopathy. You ou can call me here. It’s a free consultation. Today, we’re discussing mercury and the implications of such, but I cover everything from pet homeopathics to adults. If you’re interested in getting off your medications, either mental health or otherwise, blood pressure, cholesterol, I can help you with that from a pharmacist’s perspective. The products work very well, they are reasonably priced and we keep a chart for you. It’s very professional.
You can call me here at my office, it’s 727-442-4955. That’s 727-442-4955, I’d be very honored to help you and your family with any questions you might have about your medications or treatments.
DEBRA: She’s helped me with some things that I was not able to handle otherwise. She’s right here in Clearwater, Florida, where I live and she’s very well-respected by the doctors here. I know a lot of people who have been to her with excellent results.
If you do have any question about your medications, you’re taking too many medications, you want to be more natural, please do call Pamela because she can help you with this.
Okay, let’s go back to dental fillings.
PAMELA SEEFELD: So, I was talking just a little bit – this is really how it’s going to tie in with these articles about the mercury fillings. Epigenetics is very important. This is really a new science. It’s the study of mechanisms that turn and switch genes on and off.
We’re concern about this mercury and how this is affecting our bodies. Well, it’s affecting our bodies by changing which genes are being turned on and turned off and this methylation or this process to protect the body.
There are two different things going on here. And when I was looking at this particular study, I was talking about boys, it seems that young boys that are exposed to mercury, they can have these genes that get turned on, the genotype for 27 variants in 13 genes. What this means to people is that it looks like it can be more so for males than for women, but women are also affected.
What’s happening is the mercury is causing an epigenetic change, meaning that is changing the way that genes are expressing themselves and this change is leading to disease. That’s important to realize. And this can be even mercury exposure to some degree from too much fish, but more often than that, what you were describing in the continuous release of the vapors out of the teeth, it’s important to realize there’s a chemical function with the genes being changed the way they are expressing themselves in a very negative format. That’s really harming people.
And the problem with this mercury exposure is (and this is what I like to say to people), it is variable and non-specific. It’s different for every person. This is why we’re having trouble with the FDA making position statements on these things. It’s because the symptoms are variable.
If you have the fillings, you might have different symptoms as somebody else. And the reason why this is, is because of the epigenetics, how it’s affecting the way the genes are changing because your genes will react differently to mercury exposure than my genes.
DEBRA: Yeah.
PAMELA SEEFELD: And this is why this variability is leaving this to be an open case that people say, “Well, it’s all in your head. You’re really not sick.” It’s because these genes are being affected for different people.
DEBRA: But isn’t that true for any chemical? I think there are a lot of chemicals that are allowed and I look at this and I go, “Why? These are toxic substances.” I can just go to any toxicology book or online and see, “Here’s a study that says it cause this and it causes that,” but it’s not getting cause these symptoms in every single person. So, you could either look at the group that is not responding or you could look at the group that is responding and say it’s safe or it’s not. Is that the way it goes?
PAMELA SEEFELD: You’re absolutely right! That is why (let’s say in a very easy to understand statement) that this has become oversimplified as being safe and it’s very difficult to prove the dangers and the problems that are associated with some of these things because of the variability of the individuals. It’s not the same for every person.
If we see a pattern and it’s pretty much turning on genes the same way in every person (there are things that do that), then we’re saying, “Okay, there’s an outcome, a coincidental outcome and there’s statistical significance.”
I think if they looked further, they would see more statistical significance than they actually think so. But really, the studies are pretty limited. I mean, I found a bunch of different studies that some are saying yes, some are saying no.
But the biggest things that I saw in the last year were the DNA changes and the way the genes were expressing themselves and they’ve actually identified the genes. They know which one is turning on, which one aren’t.
This is pretty interesting. They studied mercury biomarkers among Michigan Dental Professionals. They took all these dentists and there were 131 different dentists. It’s a decent size group. They went and took the mercury, they took the hair and they did a mercury sample of it and they checked to see what was going on with these individuals and to see if there were altered DNA methylation and they did find that. Remember, I was talking about the methylation, the way these function groups. The best way for methylation really is folic acid, anti-oxidants, things of that nature.
They found that this particular process, epigenetic, most definitely, it’s called SEPW1 and SEP1. They found that they have hypomethylation with increased mercury in the hair. What this means is that when you have low methylation, you’re more at risk for the diseases to take place, for the chronic illnesses to take place and it was directly correlated with this particular gene. It being expresses specifically when the mercury levels were high.
So, that’s important to realize, that there’s a genetic component to this. In most people, when their mercury levels are high, they’re going to have genetic predispositions to more disease.
DEBRA: This whole thing about epigenetics, it is pretty new. How long have they have been having epigenetics studies?
PAMELA SEEFELD: I would say it’s been around for 10 years in discussion, but the last five years, they are starting to get it more significantly. I have attended quite a few conferences that involved epigenetics in medicines and nutrition in people.
Actually, what I think your listeners would find really interesting, it’s not just we’re talking about mercury and what’s going on a body, but we know (and there’s a new study that just came out that I found when I was looking through the Medline search, it just actually came out this year) that low fruit consumption and folic deficiency are associated with LINE-1 hypomethylation in women of a cancer-free population.
So, they took women that we’re really healthy, they were of average age of 35. You wouldn’t be expecting these types of things…
DEBRA: Hello. Well…
PAMELA SEEFELD: I hear the music. Is it time for a break? I’m sorry. I’ll talk about the study, but I hear the music. I’m sorry.
DEBRA: That’ll be fine. You’re listening to Toxic Free talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld, registered pharmacist who dispenses natural substances. We’re talking today about mercury in the body and particularly, that the FDA has reversed their position on the danger of mercury fillings from totally safe to don’t use them. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She’s on every other week, every other Wednesday, because she has so much information about drugs and toxic chemicals and their interactions in the body. Every two weeks, we talk about a different subject and how it affects the body and what we can do in a natural way to protect our health and be more healthy when these things are around us especially drugs that you may be taking.
But today, we are talking about mercury and mercury fillings. Before we go on Pamela telling us about the health effects and how it affects the body, the thing that is most dismaying to me (that’s not a strong enough word, but we’ll use it) is that we’ve been talking about mercury coming off of dental fillings and how it vaporizes in a continuous basis. We also talked about it’s difficult to make a connection sometimes with some people because some people, their bodies will respond to the mercury and others won’t.
But we’ve known that mercury is toxic for a very long time. In fact, I want to give you two examples from the past about mercury. One is you’ve all heard of Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland. Well, there used to be a phrase, “Mad as a hatter” and it is a very common phrase. The way that that phrase came into our language is because it used to be that people who made hats called ‘hat-makers’, called ‘hatters’, they had occupational chronic mercury poison because the work of belting the hat involve prolong exposure to mercury vapors and it had a neuro-toxic effect.
So, these are the same mercury vapors that are now being installed in our teeth where they are being released into our bodies on a continuous basis all day and all night. In the past, it was known (it has been known for hundreds of years) that these hatters had exposure to mercury vapors, that they had neuro-toxic effects including tremors and irritability and going mad. That’s where the word “mad hatter” comes from.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Correct.
DEBRA: And the other thing that I want to point out, because it was so poignant to me, is Mozart, the famous Mozart, the composer (if you’ve never heard of Mozart’s music, it’s incredibly sublime and wonderful), he died at age 36 or 37 I think (I don’t remember exactly). But he died, he had syphilis. He died not from the syphilis but from the mercury that was given to him to heal the syphilis. I think about how much more just incredibly gorgeous music could he have written if he hadn’t died of mercury exposure.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes, absolutely! Those two stories are very true and warnings to all of us that mercury exposure from these fillings in people’s teeth are extremely dangerous. Just because the FDA has reversed their position and just actually doesn’t even want to come out and say what’s going on, it should still have people in target mode to be cautious about having any of these fillings in their mouth. They’re very, very dangerous.
DEBRA: To me, mercury is one of those dangerous things that you can – even environmentally, that when mercury gets into an ecosystem, the fish die. I was born in the San Francisco Bay area and San Francisco Bay is having problems with mercury in the bay. And mercury in the fish all over the world is a problem. People are warned to not eat fish because of mercury. And then, dentists put this very same mercury in people’s mouths where they’re exposed to it by evaporation of the vapors of the mercury in their mouths 24 hours a day.
So, whether you happen to be a person who is susceptible to the negative health effects or not, this is one of those things where you just should say, “There’s a danger here. Let’s just be careful about this.”
PAMELA SEEFELD: Most definitely! If you look at what the proposal was, it basically was saying that they were going to recommend, “Do not use mercury fillings in cavities of pregnant women, nursing moms, children under six and people with mercury allergies, kidney diseases, neurological problems.” How many people that have Parkinson’s, MS, Alzheimer’s, dementia have mercury fillings? These things are contributing.
DEBRA: Probably very many.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Correct!
DEBRA: Yeah! And then, it went on to say that it also urged dentists to avoid using fillings that contain mercury compounds in any patient where possible.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Correct!
DEBRA: Any patient.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yeah. To me, the whole situation, I just can’t put my head around it really. I’m without words that this was just taken off there. And really, what we’re talking about is it seems to be more of a cost issue. They’re concern that people don’t want to pay more for the fillings, so they’re just going to say, “We’re not going to have a position against it. If they get hurt, they get hurt.” It’s extremely disappointing.
DEBRA: If they were to use that logic, then they would have to apply it to all the other rising costs that are going on in the world today. I mean how about – I’m not going to say this.
PAMELA SEEFELD: It’s true! No, you’re right. Healthcare problems are out of control and it’s not because of the mercury fillings.
DEBRA: Yeah.
PAMELA SEEFELD: The cost that we’re talking about versus the person chronically being sick and seeking extra healthcare because all of their obscure illnesses that they can’t figure out what’s wrong with them, I’m sure there are lots of people that have this like fibromyalgia, these kinds of things that a lot of doctors want to treat as psychosomatic, there’s probably mercury involved in some of the toxicity of some of these individuals.
DEBRA: Well, it’s a chronic exposure and it just goes on and on. It’s not one-time exposure. It’s everyday every night, day after day after day. That builds up in your body.
So, tell us more. Actually, could you just tell us – we only have a couple of minutes before the break, so tell us why so fast. Could you just tell us, explain from your viewpoint, how chemicals, when they are being expose on a chronic everyday basis, how that builds up in the body?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Correct. So, we’re talking about epigenetics and we’re talking about the baseline health of the individual. Your genes are going to turn on from different exposures than my genes. As a result of that, there’s variability. It’s hard to pinpoint. This is why some of these things just kind of go under the radar. They’re not really trying to fully embrace the dangers of using these products.
So, what we find is that chronic exposure to chemicals by itself could be more insidious. When we have acute exposure to something, you can measure it in the peak in the bloodstream. It’s going to be very, very high and it’s something to treat. Maybe they are going to be extremely symptomatic at that point (especially if they get exposure to arsenic).
Even exposure to mercury, if it’s acute and it’s sudden, the person is going to become extremely ill. They’ll be able to do a blood test and they can even do a hair analysis and see where the hair’s growing out at a particular time and say, “Okay, we see this.”
But when it’s chronic, it’s insidious.
DEBRA: Right. We’ll just finish up with that thought when we get back from the break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist, but she also has a natural pharmacy at BotanicalResource.com. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. We’re talking about the announcement that the FDA reversed its position last week on mercury fillings and now is recommending that people not use them. If possible, not any patient have them.
So, we’re in our last segment here, Pamela, It goes by so fast! So, tell us quickly, finish your thought about the difficulty of establishing chronic exposures to chemicals. And then, let’s talk about what you can do.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Okay, good! So, this low level exposure is insidious and perhaps, even more dangerous than a chronic, acute exposure where all of a sudden you’re exposed to something. An acute exposure to anything, you feel different and you’ll notice the difference and it’s an immediate thing that you would go and seek medical help for.
Whereas if it’s chronic and ongoing, “I feel fatigued, I have blurry vision. I’m tired, foggy thinking. My muscles and joints ache,” all these things are obscure symptoms of something else. And so, many times people have used diagnosis as maybe chronic fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue and it could very well be the vapors that coming off of their teeth and into their body.
DEBRA: That’s exactly right! So, what do we do? Obviously, the first thing is if you have no cavities and you suddenly have a cavity and you go to a dentist, you say to him, “I don’t want mercury fillings.” And there are other things that they use for fillings. We don’t have to use mercury.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Absolutely! They have composites that they can use that are very safe and have no toxic mercury in them at all.
DEBRA: The next thing is if you have mercury fillings in your mouth, what do you do?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Okay, this is good. Good question! You can do one of two things.
And I just want to mention one thing. I was talking about this study a little bit earlier that the fruit consumption (how many fruits and vegetables you eat) affects methylation significantly in the body. It turns on several different genes. So, before we talk about some of the homeopathic things you can do and some of the surgical things you can do, eating correctly makes a big difference.
I can tell that this is very, very important. People will think, “Well, yeah right. What are you talking about?” But these studies show that the methylation is significantly enhanced and works more efficiently in people that are eating fruits and vegetables.
DEBRA: I just want to say that my diet has changed immensely over the course of my life. But what I’ve noticed is that the healthier I get, the more I want to eat raw fruits and vegetables. I’m not trying myself eat them, but it’s just want to eat. I eat salads for lunch and dinner now.
PAMELA SEEFELD: You’re absolutely right!
DEBRA: I used to eat a bag of cookies for dinner.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Right! And you know what? Your body feels better. Some of this is epigenetics and a lot of these genes turning on and reassuring you that this is what you’re supposed to use, that these components, the flavonoids and the components in the fruits and vegetables turn on these genes to make you feel better, but they also protect you against toxins.
DEBRA: That’s right. Yeah.
PAMELA SEEFELD: And that’s very important to understand, your diet does make a difference, how you feel and the internal functioning of your body takes place.
DEBRA: It does. I can vouch for that. Okay. So then, what else?
PAMELA SEEFELD: So, say somebody has a mercury amalgam filling and they’re thinking what are their options.
Your options are you can have them removed. You have to make sure that the dentist who does this has the equipment and has the expertise in doing this. And there are dentists that do these. They have to have you wearing respirators at the time of the removal, they have to have the vents above the patients to make sure that any vapors are captured and not placed into the rooms and placed back into the patient.
But if that is not an option, I’m a big fan of using the Body Anew, the homeopathic detox. I have used this in the past for people that have tested highest in mercury or tested high for lead and arsenic. They didn’t want to use chelators.
They didn’t want to have mercury situation. They couldn’t afford to have their teeth redone at that present time. And after using homeopathy, specifically, to take out heavy metals and take out these components, their hair analysis and their blood work came back far improved after they have done that. So, that’s just a testament for that.
[Inaudible 00:43:17] every single day and it’s pretty easy just put it in the water. I would really highly recommend for people that have fillings. If they don’t want to go through the expensive process or perhaps they are saving up money for it or they’re looking for the right dentist, doing some homeopathy to start taking out these mercury components out of the body –
I’ll tell you, neurologically, the thing we should really be concerned about when people are exposed to mercury, the cognitive function and the variability of the cognitive function. The person might think, “Oh, I’m getting older… senile moment,” that kind of thing, but that’s not necessarily the case. If the person’s not on a bunch of prescription medicines and they are noticing some differences, there’s lots of studies that show – especially with tuna fish exposure in kids, it affects them scholastically. So, it’s so important to protect your brain, that you can have your cognitive function.
DEBRA: Yeah. So, I take Body Anew every day. Pamela’s been taking it for 15 years. I just consider it a standard thing to do because no matter how much you avoid toxic exposures (and you can greatly reduced your toxic exposure), still, if you’re going to leave your house and going out into the world, just driving your car or walking down the street, you’re going to be exposed to some. Body Anew will help your body process those chemicals.
Another product that I like a lot is Pure Body Liquid Zeolite, which I also take every day. It will also remove mercury and other heavy metals. So, I actually take both of these products.
PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s smart. That’s very, very smart.
DEBRA: They work hand-in-hand. Our world is so toxic. I live in a as non-toxic house as can possibly be had. I still take these products because your body has a whole lifetime of chemicals that it’s having to deal with. Your body wants to that detox and you’re being exposed to new ones.
So, if it were me, if I had mercury fillings, I would get them out. But if I couldn’t get them out, I will take Body Anew and Pure Body Liquid Zeolite.
PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s really good advice! I really have recommended some kind of a homeopathic detox with the Zeolite. When you take mercury out, at least, it buys you some time. That’s what you really want. You want time to decide what you want to do, maybe find the right dentist for you.
I know that some of my patients that have had removed mercury from their teeth, it’s can be quite expensive and insurance does not cover this. So, it’s something that you might not be able to do each tooth at one time. But maybe do one tooth. And then, save up and go do another tooth and find out if they have some kind of a financing plan.
But if you don’t want to spend that much money, first of all, whatever new fillings you get, as we’ve discussed earlier, no more mercury. After that, doing detox on a daily basis, I think it’s really important. Maybe having some baseline hair analysis or blood work and seeing where your mercury levels are at.
DEBRA: Absolutely! Yeah.
PAMELA SEEFELD: You have to know if it’s high or not. That gives you an idea how rigorous your treatment need to be.
DEBRA: I totally agree with that! I mean, if you can see those numbers then, you can see, “I’d really need to do something about it.” It’s not a guessing game.
I would say just in my opinion and estimation, if you were to take a hundred people who have mercury fillings and test all their blood, all 100 would have high mercury.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Most definitely.
DEBRA: I would think that would be the result.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Actually, I had a client of mine maybe about two weeks ago, he nearly had a heart attack and so he was checking everything to make sure everything’s okay (and he’s actually doing well). His mercury came back high previous to the heart attack. That was just a routine test that he had done. And then, he came back with the results after we’ve put him on a bunch of different things like Body Anew and of course, some things for his heart, and it came back much lower. I was like, “Look, this is a huge difference.” And it did take things out.
And this wasn’t even something we were looking for. He was just so concerned because of the heart attack that he was like, “I need to make sure everything is taken cared of in my body.”
You have to realize that these heavy metals, like I said, the reason they’re not warning people is because the symptoms that are very variable. And I’m telling you, if we cannot give any more important information to your listeners today, you really need to eat correctly if we can the majority of the time. You need to be taking antioxidants, any of these epigenetic influences we were talking about.
Really, this whole talk is really about the toxins and the teeth and the mercury and the craziness of the position that are not substantiated by the FDA. They know this is dangerous. They’re not going to have with their original statements. It’s very important that diet and epigenetics are playing a role in the process of methylation and some of the removal of some of these toxic chemical and heavy metals out of the body.
So, you are what you eat. It’s really important to realize that nutrition, it does have a component in some of these along with the homeopathics and the Zeolite.
DEBRA: I agree and I would say that even if you don’t have mercury fillings (but especially if you do) to do those, eating fruits and vegetables, do some kind of detox like Body Anew and/or Pure Body on a daily basis. Exercise, get good rest, those are things every single person should be doing as basic, bottomline things. No matter else you do, do those things and you’ll feel a lot healthier no matter what’s going on with your body.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Correct! I also would like to say too that I really think pH balance makes a big difference in the way heavy metals are released out of the body with detox products. You really want to make sure that you’re using some kind of a pH adjuster in your water like Alkalife. There are some products that adjust the pH. There are different water ystems that affect the Ph as well and make their water alkaline. But you really want the water between 9 and 13, the pH. That makes a huge difference as far as the removal of these processes out of the body.
DEBRA: That’s an interesting subject! Actually, we should do a show about pH because I have questions.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes, absolutely!
DEBRA: But we only have 15 seconds left. So, thank you very much, Pamela!
PAMELA SEEFELD: Thank you!
DEBRA: She’s at BotanicalResource.com. Give your phone number really fast.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes, 727-442-4955.
DEBRA: Great! And we’ll see you in two weeks.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Great! Looking forward to it!
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well!
Organic, Cage-Free, and Other Exceptional Eggs
My guest today is Rick Leibee, Sales and Marketing Manager for Nature’s Yoke, a specialty brand of Westfield Egg Farm, Inc. We’re going to learn all about how organic, free range, and other specialty eggs are produced, how they are labeled, and why you should eat them. This is the brand of eggs I eat every morning. Rick grew up on a small family farm in rural Kentucky where they raised a lot of their food and had livestock for family use. He is still married to his college sweetheart for 39 years, Helen, and they have 11 children—six birth and 5 adopted, four are international adoptions. He lives in New Holland, PA home to Nature’s Yoke. When they were first married in 1976, Rick and his wife adopted the “healthy” eating lifestyle. They received, for a wedding present the cookbook Laurel’s Kitchen, which had just been published, and since then have eaten as “clean” and organic as possible with a large family. They lived on 15 acres and grew their own food and raised free range chickens and cattle for our personal use. Rick graduated from Florida State University in 1977 with a degree in business with an emphasis and marketing. While working for other businesses, Rick became friends with the owner of Westfield Egg Farm and was invited to work there. www.naturesyoke.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Organic Cage-free and Other Exceptional Eggs
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Rick Leibee
Date of Broadcast: July 28, 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 is Tuesday, July 28, 2015. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. We’ve been having so much rain. It looks like it’s going to rain again, but I think we’ll be safe.
I used to live way out in the country in California. So when we had rain, we lost our power. And so, every time it rains or we have thunderstorms, I think, “Are we going to lose power right in the middle of the show?” But that’s never happened. So I think we’re fine.
Today, we’re going to talk about food, one of my favorite subjects. And specifically, we’re going to talk about eggs. I eat eggs every morning. I eat organic eggs every morning. And so, I thought I would call up the maker of the eggs that I eat and see if they would come talk about their eggs. And they said yes.
So my guest today is Rick – I asked him how to say this. And I didn’t check before the show. I think it’s Leibee, but we’ll find out once he comes on.
Rick Leibee, he’s the sales and marketing manager for Nature’s Yoke. And that’s a specialty brand of Westfield Egg Farm. They’re in Pennsylvania. I just found out that he’s right down the road from the studio that does the production for this show.
Hi, Rick.
RICK LEIBEE: Hi, Debra.
DEBRA: So even after I asked you, how do you pronounce your name?
RICK LEIBEE: That’s okay. It’s one of those names with the spelling. But it’s just pronounced Leibee.
DEBRA: You know what? I get this with my name too. People look at my name, D-A-D-D, and they go – it’s too simple. It doesn’t even occur to them that it’s just Dadd like what you call your father.
So Leibee, I’m writing this down.
Hello! So, tell us how did you become interested in working for an egg farm?
RICK LEIBEE: Well, I guess a couple of things. Most my adult life, at least since I’ve been married, I’ve been interested in eating healthy, organic food. I grew up on a farm myself and since lived on a small farm of about 15 acres, raising my own chickens and cattle and sheep and various other animals for myself and my family.
One thing led to another. I actually became friends with the owner of this company, Westfield Egg Farm, probably about 10 or 15 years ago. And over time, our friendship developed, he asked me to come to work here because I had a background in marketing, which they needed some help in. And I guess you can say my lifestyle and my work came together.
DEBRA: I think that’s really wonderful. So tell us something about the business. How long has Westfield – or I guess, Nature’s Yoke is the brand. I want to know about egg farming today. I just don’t know anything about it. I’ve raised chickens in my backyard, so I’ve seen the egg come out of the chicken and I know what I was feeding it. But I really don’t know much about what happens in a commercial setting.
RICK LEIBEE: Well, this particular company, Westfield Egg Farm, was started back in the late ‘50s or early ‘60s by the Weaver family. At that time, they were typical egg farmers. They did it on the side, along with their dairy farm.
And that’s why even today, when you go to eggs, to buy eggs at a grocery store, the department you go to is the dairy department because that was the history of it all.
But today, most eggs, probably 94% of all eggs that are produced in America are still in the classic battery-caged environment where there are two or three chickens in a small, wired cage, in a large house with hundreds of thousands of chickens. It’s very efficient from an agricultural business standpoint. And that is your classic egg facility.
But about 25 or 30 years ago, in addition to small, little independent farmers, some people thought, “Hey, maybe we can produce eggs to sell in the grocery store that isn’t out of a typical caged environment.”And Westfield Egg Farm is one of those companies.
So about 21, 22 years ago, they started doing different kinds of specialty eggs, became certified organic in the early ‘90s and have just prospered since then with all of their farms being cage-free. We now also have a number of the farms that are free range of pasture-raised organic. You mentioned they are some of the ones that you like to eat.
It takes a lot more time and a lot more effort to have those kinds of farms than the typical eggs that are produced, the typical grocery store eggs. But we have a lot of great customers and they’ve been very loyal with us. So it’s been a lot of fun to continue to push that kind of product with research and new farms that we keep adding every year.
A lot of people like that lifestyle of raising those kinds of eggs too. All of our farms are family farms. None of them are corporate farms. In other words, we’re Westfield Egg Farm, but we have about 85 independent, small farmers that supply the eggs. We just go out and pick them up, bring them back to our facility and grade them, wash them according their organic and USDA standards and put them in the cartons that you get at your store wherever you shop down there in Florida. But they might come from 1 of 85 different small family farms that we deal with.
DEBRA: And each of those are owned independently. You pick up their eggs. And instead of it being a corporate, industrial kind of thing, it’s eggs that it’s used to be.
RICK LEIBEE: Exactly, yes. And that model is working really well for us. And there are other companies that have a similar model. But for us, it works really, really well because it also ties into sustainable agriculture because it’s a lot easier to sustain that kind of small family farm than these huge, multiple, layered agricultural, industrial complexes.
DEBRA: I think all foods should be produced this way. It’s just the word industrial and food just don’t fit together in my brain.
RICK LEIBEE: Yes, it’s tough and yet, there needs to be a lot of food produced. So it’s one of those difficult things to get our head around, what’s the right thing to do and all of those things because a lot of people need to be fed. And yet, some of the practices are maybe not what you want to get our eggs from anyway.
DEBRA: So what was it that inspired Westfield Egg Farm to go organic and cage-free and pasture? A lot of people aren’t doing this. What happened that your company decided to do that?
RICK LEIBEE: The family, the Weaver family that owns the company, has always been a very innovative family and always interested in trying new things. And even before they were organic, they were trying to figure out nutritionally what they could do to decrease some of the cholesterol, some of the fats and increase the good vitamins in the eggs. They tried different things.
Through the years, some of them worked really well, but they began to see that if they wanted to continue down that path, they would probably need to give up the traditional approach to the egg business. One of those steps was to get the farms certified organic and feed them organic grain. And for them, I think it was just a natural evolution of their view of agriculture.
Again, family farms, healthy. They have a simple belief. Healthy chickens, healthy eggs. So it sprung out of all of those ideas that they had.
DEBRA: Good! Well, we need to go to break in a few seconds, but what I want to do when we come is to start talking about the different types of eggs. I know that there are different names for them and different ways of doing things.
I just want to give our listeners an idea of what kind of eggs are available that they might not be finding at their supermarket, but would find at their natural food store and what those differences are in the eggs, why you would choose one over the other. There are a lot of choices in eggs. So we’re going to talk more about that when we come back.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Rick Leibee, sales and marketing manager for Nature’s Yoke, a specialty brand of Westfield Egg Farm. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Rick Leibee. He’s the sales and marketing manager for Nature’s Yoke. They have all kinds of eggs. We’re going to talk about them now, find out what they are.
So you have a really good website. It’s NaturesYoke.com, and that’s Y-O-K-E, lia ke yoke around an ox, rather than Y-O-L-K, like the yolk in an egg. NaturesYoke.com.
So you have different kinds of eggs that you offer. So let’s start with the first one you have on your list, which is simply called organic eggs. Tell us about what makes those organic.
RICK LEIBEE: Okay, sure. As most consumers over the last 10 years have become more and more aware of eating healthy (which is a great trend, organic is a term, I think, most people are becoming more familiar with), for us in the food industry, what it means is that most every state and certainly, nationally, there is a USDA organic certification or standard. And again, most states either meet or exceed that standard.
So for our farms, which are all here in Pennsylvania, we get certified by the Pennsylvania Organic Board as well as the USDA. And then that allows us to, again, have that certification on there. What it means is they come out and actually test the farm to make sure that the ground itself is organic, meaning no chemicals or additives that are not 100% organic are allowed on the property, as well as the food, the grains, and the food that the chickens eat itself was raised on a farm that is subject to the same tests.
Usually, it’s a minimum of three years. Usually, somewhere between three and five years for most states that the ground has to be proved to not have had any harmful chemicals or additives put on it other than natural compounds.
So that’s some of the basic things. And then, there are other things like even down to the cleaning solutions we use here in the plant. The eggs come in, they’re washed. We have to make sure we wash them properly in an organic solution as opposed to a harmful chemical solution.
So even at that level, when the consumer gets the product, everything that’s had to do with it is part of that organic process, you could say, until it actually arrives in their grocery cart and to their house.
DEBRA: That’s really good. So your organic food product is certified organic from beginning to end.
RICK LEIBEE: That’s correct. And then those hens that are on our organic farms are (part of our definition is), our minimum standard for all of our hens is that they live in what’s called a cage-free environment, meaning, just picture a big, old barn, maybe your granddad owned in the country. This huge, big barn but now, it’s totally open. There are no cages. There are no stalls. It’s just this big, open building. There’s some roost that poots. The chickens actually like to fly a little bit if you give them room.
And then on the outer edges, there would be little boxes that they can hop up or fly up to and lay the eggs, They’re rolled at the back and then they’re collected on the outer edge by the families. And all of our organic, cage-free barns also have doors, usually one on each wall, sometimes more and they have unlimited outdoor access because part of the definition of organic, at least in Pennsylvania here, is there must be at least some outdoor access.
So they can go outside, get a little sunshine, scratch around or whatever. It’s not pasture-raised or free range. It’s just, again, picture your grandma’s chicken coop and the chicken could go outside and scratch around some. But it’s not like they had to run up the whole property. It’s just a contained area. But it’s a great environment. They enjoy it.
We have a number of our small family farmers choose that type of facility to manage on their property.
DEBRA: Okay, good. You said some other words that are often associated with eggs. So let’s just discuss for a minute cage-free, pastured and free-range. So what do those mean?
RICK LEIBEE: That’s a great question. Here’s the difficult part. There is no regulated, standard definition for those words in the food industry except for organic, which, again, as we said earlier, a certified from an outside source either the USDA, again, or Pennsylvania. The rest of the terms are just terms that have evolved over the last 10 to 20 years in the industry. So I can give you our definitions. Again, every company has maybe a slightly different version.
So what I’m going to tell you is generally correct for most people. But again, each company would have their specifics.
For us, we have, what we call our entry-level egg, you might say, into the special egg business. That would be just the cage-free egg. We have those in cage-free brown or cage-free white.
And cage-free, as I’ve described a moment ago, picture this big, open barn, no cages, no stalls as I’ve described earlier. But instead of being organic, they are fed – again, this is not a regulated term, what we call an all-natural grain meaning that there are no antibiotics, no animal by-products, no hormones, no steroids, no chemical additives.
It’s just the grains and usually, a little bit of oyster shell and calcium for them to be able to produce good eggshells.
But it’s all, again, not regulated term, natural ingredients, but again, not organic.
That’s our what we call our entry-level egg because again, not everybody’s budget allows maybe everything they’d like to do. And these eggs because they’re not certified organic, but they still have a lot of great advantages, a lot of people can afford them more easily than an organic egg. So that’s what we call our entry-level specialty eggs, cage-free.
DEBRA: We’re going to need to go to break very soon here. But I want to ask you, if somebody is just buying regular, supermarket egg, what are those eggs being fed? What are those chickens being fed?
RICK LEIBEE: The difference between theirs and ours is they’re being fed grains and everything, but they often put in a lot of additives, hormones, steroids, antibiotics, things like that, which are just, again, added chemicals to try to get them to produce more and better eggs. But are those chemicals better for you as they’re passed on through the chickens? That’s the issue people have to deal with.
DEBRA: So we will go to break, but when we come back, we’re going to talk more about different things to look for when you’re choosing an egg.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Rick Leibee from Nature’s Yoke. Their website is NaturesYoke.com, Y-O-K-E, Nature’s Yoke. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Rick Leibee from Nature’s Yoke. Actually, that’s the brand that we’re talking about today because that’s what I eat. That’s what I get at my natural food store. We’re going to talk about the exact eggs that I eat in just a second.
I do want to mention that – Rick, I don’t know if you know about what happened last week in the United States government about the right to know law with GMO labeling.
RICK LEIBEE: Yes, I did read a little bit about that. I don’t pretend to be an expert about it, but it seems like something did happen there.
DEBRA: Well, to honor that occasion, what happened is – listeners, if you’re not familiar what this is (and I’m not an expert in it either), basically, people who are concerned about GMO labeling, which I am, and I see no reason for people who are putting GMO ingredients into food products should not have to label them.
In Europe, they’re required to label them. But for me, I just want to stand on my soapbox for a minute because labeling is a big issue for me as a consumer advocate for 30 years. The only way that I can make a decision about how toxic a product is or not is to have information on the label or information on a website.
The fact that so many products are not completely labeled well enough is something that I’m always speaking up for.
I would love to have standardized terms for our eggs and everything else, which doesn’t exist.
And so, the point I want to make here is we were talking before the break about how if you were to buy an egg that’s not a specialty egg like what we’re talking about today, you just buy it at the supermarket as part of the industrial system, that you’re going to get grains and whatever and you’re also going to get additives and by-products and all kinds of things that are being fed to that chicken and then getting into your body through the egg.
And so, I think what that carton should say is grains, this toxic additive, that toxic additive. It should all be there on the carton, and it isn’t. And the way things are now is that they just get to say eggs. And if you want to know organic eggs, it has to say organic blah-blah-blah. And the ones that actually have the toxic stuff in it aren’t required to be labeled. That’s all I want to say on that.
RICK LEIBEE: Like you said, that was your soapbox. I don’t disagree. I have to admit, I read labels too. I’m a consumer. We’re in the food business, but when I go to the grocery store, I read labels. So I think it is a good thing. If somebody is afraid of it, then that’s a whole other issue.
DEBRA: I think if the full information is not disclosed about a product, then consumers can’t make a choice, can’t make an informed choice and we do have a right to know. We do have that right. We have the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To me, having a life, having health, requires that we know what’s in our products. But you’ve done a good job with that.
So let’s talk about pastured eggs because that’s what I eat. I eat pastured eggs. And when I saw that word, ‘pastured’, I just immediately fell in love with your brand. So tell is what pastured eggs are.
RICK LEIBEE: For us, we saw a lot of terms out there. People were using free-range and grass-fed. And those are good terms. But we settled on the term pasture-raised because the idea there is, if you’ve bought our product, you’ve seen the carton, there’s actually a picture of our chickens, our hens, on what you’d picture when you picture a pasture, just this wide open field. That is what our farms look like. It’s not Photoshopped. That’s really one of our farms, really our hens.
We thought that picture would be clearer to people that that is our goal for this type of egg is to get the chickens in an open environment where they can eat grass and bugs, have sunshine and fresh air and move around and exercise even more and all those wonderful things.
So simply, the hens are out in a pasture. Again, they have a big barn that we leave wide open that they can run in and out of when they want to run back or if it starts to rain. And again, we don’t put them outside if the weather there’s lightning or some other difficult situation. But whenever they can go outside, they’re outside. And they love it.
DEBRA: So it sounds like pastured, free-range and grass-fed are all different terms for pretty much the same thing?
RICK LEIBEE: It’s an evolving thing. I think pasture-raised, the way we define it is the most open. Free-range is beginning to be better defined although it’s not all the way defined because there are certain groups –
For example, there’s a group in Virginia called Certified Humane that goes around and does some independent studies. And they come up with a definition of free-range, which more and more people (not everyone) are trying to adopt (again, it’s not regulated) where it’s not maybe as much grass as pasture-raised, but at least in an area maybe 60, 70, 80 feet (and this can vary again tremendously) outside of the barn, there would be an area, a fenced-in area that the hens could go out.
It’s not, what you and I might think of a free open range. And that’s why we didn’t like that term because it’s beginning to mean a smaller area than a true open area. But it’s still a great environment and it’s a very good situation for the hens. Again, maybe companies are using that term and beginning to try to define it like that.
DEBRA: So then what would grass-fed mean?
RICK LEIBEE: Well, grass-fed is one of those terms that’s true and not true because chickens do eat grass, but they cannot consume much more than about 15% of their diet with grass because they do need the grain to have the energy to produce the eggs and to have the shells come out right and all those kinds of things.
And so grass-fed just basically means they are getting outside on some grass, at least a part of the day, maybe they’re free-range, maybe they’re pasture-raised like us.
Some people use grass-fed just to mean there’s just a really small, little area or even some farms just bring in a little bit of fresh green hay. They don’t really go outside, but they are getting, what you could say, some greens into their diet.
Because again, a little bit of greens is good. But again, they can only eat so much of that and still be able to be healthy and produce like they need to do.
DEBRA: Again, we need to go to break. But I just want to ask you quickly. If it’s a grass-fed beef, that’s a different situation because you’re not making eggs.
RICK LEIBEE: Grass-fed beef would be more what you might think of pasture-raised outside and not eating a lot of grain, but are outside most of the time, correct.
DEBRA: Okay, good. We’re going to go to break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Rick Leibee from Nature’s Yoke. That’s Nature’s Yoke, Y-O-K-E, dot com. And we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Rick Leibee from – the brand is Nature’s Yoke.
Let’s continue on with all these different types of eggs because this is really interesting to me. I do want to point out that you have on here organic, pasture-raised eggs versus pasture-raised eggs. So I would assume that that means that you can get organic, pasture or not organic pasture.
RICK LEIBEE: Exactly right. Just like the difference between our cage-free brown eggs or organic eggs, the farms are basically the same. The difference is one is on an organic farm with organic grains whereas the other is, again, what we use the term are natural grain.
The same goes with pasture-raised. The pasture-raised farm has all the benefits of organic, pasture-raised, but the farm is not certified organic or the grain is not certified organic.
Again, our standards for that pasture farm is the farm cannot use on the property any chemicals or additives. And what grain they do eat, again, has to be free of all antibiotics, steroids, hormones, all those kinds of terrible chemical additives. But it does not have to be certified.
And the main reason for that is, again, there is a significant price increase if you go to organic because of getting the certification, buying those grains. And some customers who love the pasture-raised – and they’re happy that it’s not organic because they’re going to pay $1 or $1.50 less, or whatever it is, at their local store, compared to the organic.
And then we have an equal number. We sell almost 50/50 of each. They want all the pasture-raised plus they wanted the organic.
We found people love both. And again, our dozens that we sell are surprisingly almost equal almost.
DEBRA: I found a new egg from you that’s not on your website, but it’s at my store. And that is a soy-free egg. Tell us about that.
RICK LEIBEE: It is new. We’re excited about that. It’s interesting. In the last two or three years, we’ve had so many phone calls from consumers because (our number is there. I get phone calls from consumers) and the number one thing that people would ask me is, “Are you ever going to have a soy-free egg? My son is allergic.” They would tell me their story of taking their son or their daughter in the middle of the night with allergic reaction to soy. We didn’t know what to do. How do we do this?
Finally, we decided to see if we could do it. We did produce a product that’s only been out about seven or eight months. It’s still new.
And that one we decided, in addition to our normal, natural grains, we decided to go non-GMO on that as well and to make it, what we call, certified free-range, meaning, again, we’re fitting that definition of Certified Humane Free-
Range where around our farms are our barns where we keep those that are local farmer here, you’ve got 60, 70, 80-foot grass area around the barn and then a fence. So it’s not full pasture-raised, but there’s a lot of outdoor access.
So it’s a hybrid product in that it’s free-range, certified free-range. It’s non-GMO. But the real clincher for our people that were interested in it is it’s soy-free. Again, the reason that we didn’t decide to do it organic was that would have added – it’s already expensive as it is. It would have added another dollar or two by the time it hits retail.
So we’re trying to make it affordable for those people that really – there are some people that have a really serious allergic reaction to soy. We’re just trying to accommodate and help those kinds of people.
DEBRA: I totally understand that. I’m actually somebody who doesn’t eat soy, but I don’t go into those anaphylactic allergic reactions. And so I would love to have an organic soy-free egg. But I just do the organic. It’s more important to me than the soy-free, but if you were to make the perfect egg for me, it would be soy-free too.
But I understand why you made the choice that you did to make it affordable to the folks for whome soy-free is the most important choice.
So we’ve got about five minutes left, and I want to ask you two more questions. So omega-3, not free, what makes an omega-3 egg higher in omega-3?
RICK LEIBEE: That, thankfully, is a simple thing to do, which, when it comes to food, I love simple answers. We just change the diet of our normal, cage-free brown farm (we’d pick out certain farms) and we’d add several different kinds of feeds that are really high and nutrient-dense in omega-3 fatty acids.
The one that we found seems to work the best both for the hens to tolerate and actually thrive on is actually flaxseeds. We add a lot of flaxseeds, which are a great, healthy thing for people too. And the hens, we found, really enjoyed the taste and they really like it.
When you give them the right amount of it, you can suddenly boost the omega-3 fatty acids in the eggs by sometimes three, four, five and six times the normal omega-3 levels, which, again, for people who are really watching that in their diet, it’s a “neat, easy fix” so to speak and enjoy their egg, but also get that good omega-3 fatty acid.
DEBRA: I think what you’re proving here is that what you feed the egg, what you feed the chicken, comes out in the egg. And it’s going to go into our bodies for better or for worse. If you put in something to make more omega-3 (I mean, there’s omega-3 in the flax), you feed it to the chicken, and then we end up with omega-3 in our body. But the same thing would occur for the things we don’t want in our bodies as well.
RICK LEIBEE: As we all know, those things are a direct chain. As the chicken metabolizes the feed, it goes straight into the reproductive part of the chicken and the egg is formed, you can’t separate those things. It’s all part of the process, you might say.
DEBRA: Last question, fertile egg versus not fertile egg. Why would you want one or the other?
RICK LEIBEE: Well, there has been a number of studies through the years that have shown that hens that are fertile (meaning their eggs are fertile) where you allow roosters to stay in with them, the levels of the “not as good for your cholesterol” go down and the levels of the good cholesterol that we actually need in our body go up.
It’s not a huge number up and down, but there is a little bit of a change there, which is again one of those interesting things, metabolically speaking, that happen.
And so again, we have certain farms out of our 85 that we put in roosters at the right ratio to hens. And then the eggs are fertile. We actually have certain people that really like that. They even claimed they taste better. I’ve had both. I can’t tell a whole lot of difference, but there are people that really like that. And they like the different reading on the cholesterol that they get from the fertile egg.
So we’ve been producing fertile eggs for a number of years. We have some very loyal customers that really, really appreciate that effort that we do because they’re, again, a little bit more expensive because roosters are rowdy. They eat a lot. Roosters eat three or four times, I think, what a hen eats. When you put them in there, they do add to the excitement of things, so to speak.
There are people that like that, so again, we have certain farms that have chosen to go that way.
DEBRA: Well, as I’ve said earlier, I have raised chickens myself. I used to have them in my backyard until the police came and took them away because it’s actually illegal to have them here where I live in the city of Clearwater, Florida. That was not a nice experience, but it was wonderful to have the chickens.
Listeners, if you’ve ever not been around chickens, they are just really wonderful animals to have. And I know that a lot of people who raise chickens just love their chickens.
And it was such a wonderful experience for me to feed my chickens and know exactly what was going into their body that they were then making the eggs. And then to see the eggs come out then eat it. I was involved in that whole cycle of life from the feeding to the eating.
And it was just a wonderful experience to have. I’m glad that I got to do that as long as I did. If it wasn’t illegal, I’d still have chickens and eggs. But I must say that I am quite happy with your eggs as a substitute. As I’ve said, I was very happy to see those pastured eggs when they came in my store because that was exactly what I wanted.
So we’ve got about a minute left. Any final words you’d like to say?
RICK LEIBEE: I just appreciate, Debra, to be able to share about what we do. We’re passionate about it. We enjoy it. We’re consumers, again, as well. I think we can say that we are concerned about the same thing as our customers are concerned about. It helps us identify with the things that they go through.
We appreciate hearing from our customers. I’d like to say that. We do get a lot of e-mails and calls. It helps us. Like I said, the newest product we’ve got was a direct result of phone calls. So we do need to hear what people are thinking and how we can help them better take care of their families and their health.
DEBRA: Thank you so much. Again, the website is NaturesYoke, Y-O-K-E, dot come. Thank you so much for being here. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well.
The Vote was “No” on Our Right to Know What’s in Our Food
Last Thursday the House of Representatives passed HR 1599, the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015. Those who oppose it call it the DARK Act—Deny Americans the Right to Know.
I’m not even going to try to explain the pros and cons of this here, you can search the internet for all kinds of information on this.
The point I want to make is that we don’t have adequate labeling of food in this country.
Here is a food label from Europe. It clearly states the produce contains genetically modified soyabean oil. By labeling this ingredient in this way, consumers have a choice to purchase GMOs or not.
I would love to see GMOs on the label in America, but in my opinion, it’s not enough. I think that pesticides should be noted on the label too, as well as country of origin.
Food labels today require most ingredients to be listed. I say most because the law requires all ingredients that “go into the pot” to be on the label. But it’s like if you are making soup at home, you might put in carrots and onions and ham, but that ham might contain sugar and nitrates. It’s the same for food manufacturers. If they put carrots and onions and ham in the soup, all they need to list is carrots and onions and ham, even if the ham contains sugar and nitrates. And the BPA in the can lining that migrates into the food isn’t required to be listed at all.
So you really don’t know what is in processed foods under the current labeling system.
We need to go far beyond GMO labeling. We need a major overhaul of food labeling.
In the meantime, my recommendation is to prepare your own food from fresh organic ingredients, local as much as possible. Doing this, you know what’s in your food and you could even meet the farmers. When I lived in California, I belonged to a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, where I bought a share from the organic farmer and got a share of the harvest every week.
I love to cook! And I know what’s in my food.
Now even the labeling of fresh foods needs a revamp. Some stores voluntarily give country of origin, which is extremely important. And the more you can know about the growing practices, the better.
Many food producers now have a lot of information on their websites.
As a consumer, get curious. Ask. Find out as much as you can. The information is there, even if it’s not on the label.
McClatchy New Service: Health Officials Ill Proposal to Curb Mercury Dental Fillings
Last week, senior US health officials stopped a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposal that would have told dentists they should not use mercury fillings in cavities in pregnant women, nursing moms, children under 6 and people with mercury allergies, kidney diseases or neurological problems. It also urged dentists to avoid using fillings that contain mercury compounds in any patient, where possible.
The good news about this is that the FDA has shifted their position about mercury fillings. The “safety communication” was drafted in response to citizens petitions and an FDA advisory panel of outside experts. The FDA has defended the safety of mercury fillings since the agency’s inception in 1930 and especially during an ongoing, 23-year legal battle with consumer groups. See, we citizens CAN make change!
The bad new is that higher officials blocked the FDA from protecting the health of citizens.
Tampa Bay Times: Health officials kill FDA proposal to curb mercury dental fIlling
California Closets Low-VOC Built-in Closets
Question from Ghita Harris-Newton
Hi Debra,
I would like attractive built in closets. Real wood seems cost-prohibitive. California Closets say they have a low-VOC solution. What do you think of the California Closets solutions?
Debra’s Answer
I called California Closets and nobody had ever heard of a low-VOC solution. Where did you hear this?
Just in general, any time I see something that says “low-VOC” that’s a red flag for me. Because it’s saying it contains VOCs.
