Art | Resources
Non toxic ways to stop squeaking door hinges and wooden floors
Question from Lynn
Hi Debra,
What might you recommend to stop squeaky metal door hinges ? I am chemically sensitive so not using 3-in-1 oil and silicone spray that would linger for weeks in my bedroom.
Graphite powder I tried squirting into the very thin entry points didn’t work – the hinges have been painted over for years. Last resort would be the time consuming task of scraping the paint, taking the pin out and lubricating it directly, with something !?! I’m hoping to get this done fast and with luck – using a simple non toxic spray.
A friend suggested Crisco, which maybe comes in a spray or Pam? -(Is that the name – I don’t ever use these!) But being vegetable oil might eventually “gum up” I would think?
It should be liquid enough or sprayable right to the hinge breaks to have a chance of working it’s way down – for the quick way to do it!
Any how, love your work, great new website, and I am hoping there is a solution you might know about!
Lisa’s Answer (updated September, 2020)
Readers suggest EZ-1 by Foust that is made for sensitive people. Always test a small area before using if you are sensitive.
RV Options for MCS
Question from Cathy
Hello Debra,
Perhaps you or your readers can provide feedback and suggestions on the topic of RV’s. I have tried to do research online and by physically going through, or attempting such, a number of RV’s, and I am still in process of doing that. Many/most seem very problematic, particularly as I am especially sensitive to formaldehyde.
However, I want to include a couple of links for review of anyone who is interested. I have just learned of a company who makes the little trailers or pickup campers out of mostly composites and aluminum. They are LivinLite
Also, a company, Evergreen RV, seems to do a lot of composites in the construction, stating, for example, when I view the page on the Ascend small travel trailers, that they have low VOC’s and formaldehyde.
Do you have any thoughts, comments, or suggestions? My husband and I have also looked at Airstream as some/many of them have some aluminum as wall covering, which should be more healthy. However, they are more expensive than most, even for the very small ones.
I have purchased and enjoyed several of your books over the last decade! I also find the blog very enjoyable and helpful.
Thanks,
Cathy
Debra’s Answer
I haven’t done much research on this topic, but I’m sure some of my readers will respond!
IKEA Morgongava Mattress
Question from LC
Hi Debra,
I love your site and find all of your information so helpful!!! Thanks so much for taking time to answer readers’ questions!
My husband and I are hoping to replace our memory foam mattress as soon as possible. We really like the feel of the memory foam and would like to go with latex foam.
We are considering the IKEA Morgongava. It is not completely latex (85% latex, 15% synthetic) and I contacted the company to confirm there is no flame retardant used in this model. We need to replace both ours and my daughter’s mattresses so we were looking at going with these, do you think they would be a safe option for all of us? Thanks in advance for your thoughts!!!
Debra’s Answer
I would feel more comfortable if you would choose a mattress that is 100% natural latex. There are still chemicals in that 15% synthetic. But it’s very good there is no fire retardant. And I like the 100% cotton ticking and wool wadding.
There is a lot right about this mattress. You need to decide if that 15% synthetic latex is OK for you.
Just as an aside, you need to be very careful about assessing latex mattresses, as many so-called natural latex mattresses contain synthetic rubber even if not disclosed. There are no regulations for the labeling of latex. So it’s good that IKEA is labeling as such.
Schleich Animal Figurines
Question from TA
Hi Debra, Could you tell me whether you think these Schleich animal figures are safe for young children? My child is beyond the age of putting things into his mouth, but I am still curious about whether this type of plastic is safe for play. They say they meet and exceed European standards and so forth. Your thoughts?
Here is an excerpt from their FAQ page:
“We not only set tight controls for ourselves and our production stages, we begin with our materials suppliers. They are only approved for use in Schleich products if they are aware of the quality of their processes and materials, comply with international toy regulations and can present the relevant laboratory reports.
The main materials we use are a variety of plastics and a special softener. We make sure that this is used in the same way all over the world so that small parts cannot break off our figures and the material is pleasant to the touch and not too hard. This softener was developed and tested by BASF for particularly demanding applications. It is not only approved for use in toy manufacturing but also for food packaging and for use in the medical field for example as bags for blood products, breathing tubes etc. This means that here too, we are meeting all legal requirements.
Schleich quality assurance staff check and control all production premises as well as our materials suppliers every year.”
Debra’s Answer
Well that’s a very nice description, but there is no mention of what TYPE of plastic it is, nor is there a customer service phone number or even a USA email.
So I can’t evaluate this.
It sounds like they are aware of toxic plastics and are wanting to offer a safer one, but I have no way to validate that.
Compliance with international regulations does not mean it’s necessarily nontoxic and if we don’t know what those regulations are specifically we can’t check them.
I’m not saying there’s anything toxic about these toys, I’m saying not enough information to evaluate.
How Endocrine Disruptors Disrupt Our Endocrine Systems
Toxicologist Steven G. Gilbert, PhD, DABT, a regular guest who is helping us understand the toxicity of common chemicals we may be frequently exposed to. 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
- Toxics in the Air We Breathe—Indoors and Outdoors—and How it Affects Our Health
- 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
- 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
How Endocrine Disruptors Disrupt Our Endocrine System
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Steven Gilbert, PhD, DABT
Date of Broadcast: May 20, 2014
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. Today is Tuesday, May 20th 2014. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida, on an early beautiful summer day. And my guest today is toxicologist, Dr. Steven Gilbert PhD, DABT who has been in on this show so many times.
If you go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, underneath today’s description of the show, I actually put links to all of his shows. He’s been on seven times. He’s been on six times. This show is number seven that he’s done. I think that he is the most frequent guest on this show, but I think one of the most important because he talks with us about why toxic chemicals are toxic and where they are and what they do to our bodies and why we need to be concerned about them.
This is the information that we all need to have. What are the chemicals that we need to be watching out for?
He is the Director and Founder of the Institute for Neurotoxicology and author of A Small Dose of Toxicology: The Health Effects of Common Chemicals which is I think that every single person needs to have. It’s free. You can go to his website and download it. It’s easy to read. It tells you all the basics of toxicology and the basic toxic chemicals that we need to be concerned about.
So his website is Toxipedia.org. You can go there and download A Small Dose of Toxicology. And I am going to remind you this all throughout the show because I think it’s so important for you to get this book—and especially, it’s free. Just go download it and start learning this stuff. It’s important because everything, all these things are toxic in our world.
Hi, Dr. Gilbert.
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: Hi, Debra. Nice to hear you this morning. I didn’t know that I’ve been on this show that many times.
DEBRA: I didn’t either until I counted it up.
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: That’s great.
DEBRA: So, you got the award for most frequent guest and I hope many more. We will never run out of things to talk about.
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: It really is. Toxicology is a broad field. There’s a lot to talk about.
DEBRA: There is, there is. So, today we are going to talk about endocrine disruptors.
So would you start out by explaining what are endocrine system is? I know that one of the things that I discovered a few years ago when I was writing my most recent book, Toxic Free is that I realized that toxic chemicals now are known to affect every body system.
And as I was writing about that, I realized that I didn’t really know what my body systems were. Not only could I not list them, I really didn’t know what was involved in each one of them. And the endocrine system really is one of the most complex—well, all of our body’s systems are essential, but the endocrine system is responsible for a lot of our everyday activities that we don’t like to be without.
So, tell us what the endocrine system does.
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: You’re really right. The endocrine system is very complex and it’s responsible of producing low doses of chemicals. So, you could think about the blood system as distributing the endocrine chemicals. So, our blood supply distributes these chemicals out that are produced by different glands in our body.
For example, ovaries in the female produce progesterone and estrogen which are incredibly important for pregnancy and have a range of effects on wellness and sexual characteristic. It’s the same with testosterone which is produced by the testes in male. It’s responsible for muscle mass, bone density and sexual maturation. So those are just two examples.
Another good one here that people have probably heard of is insulin. It’s produced by the pancreas. It’s very important for regulating of glucose.
We have a number of other glands. The adrenal glands, thyroid, pituitary, pineal glands are just a few of the other ones that are really incredibly important in our endocrine system.
Now, the challenge is when we disrupt that system. And that is what we are going to talk about with endocrine disruptors.
DEBRA: Right. And so I want to make sure when we say the types of disorders that are associated when these glands are disrupted, then you end with things like—well, when you can’t regulate the insulin, then that’s diabetes. If your reproductive hormones are messed up, you need to go to the doctor for Viagra. It also regulates weight. And so we have this tremendous epidemic of obesity in this country. Well, that’s the endocrine system. All of these different things that are everyday things that we’re dealing with, so much of it is the endocrine system.
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: It’s very important during development. As we mature, we develop sexual characteristics. And that’s where a lot of important cell types and development is laid down, from fetal development on up to puberty. So it’s very important during that period of time because neurological disorders as well as—well, like you mentioned—weight gain or diabetes. It’s really a major framework and foundation for future disorders in our body including cancer.
DEBRA: Well, I’ve been working on this subject for—not this subject of endocrine disruptors, but the subject of toxic chemicals. I’ve been researching for more than thirty years. And I remember when I started, there wasn’t a lot of information. And my first awareness was how the toxic chemicals affected the immune system because that’s what it looked like was going on in my body.
So, in 1993, we didn’t even know about endocrine disruptors until 1993. And I remember when people first started talking about them, I could see that not only was my immune system messed up, but my endocrine system was messed up.
Everything that was wrong with my body was all related to the endocrine system, every single thing. I’m like, “Oh my God, this is it. It’s endocrine disruption.” And so I know this one first hand.
So, tell us about what happened in 1993 that made everyone aware of endocrine disruptors.
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: Well, there’s a couple of really important events that occurred in the both the ‘90s and even before that. I just want to step back before that a little bit.
We’ve learned a lot about endocrine disruptors when we tried to produce hormonal contraceptives [inaudible 00:06:56]
Some of the research started in the ‘30s. In 1939, Russell Marker developed synthetic progesterone. It wasn’t until the 1960s that the Food & Drug Administration recognized the pill. And this is really a summary of [inaudible 00:07:15] endocrine disruptor. It disrupts female fertility. And it’s had an enormous impact on our lives.
DEBRA: What kinds of things have happened to women who took the pill? I never took the pill.
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: You know, that’s a good question. When they first started using these endocrine disruptors, the estrogen and progesterone combinations, they used relatively high doses which caused blood clots in the lungs and in legs of women or some women taking these things, particularly for women that smoked. They found that they could really lower the amount of estrogen and progesterone use in a pill to very small levels because the endocrine system is so exquisitely sensitive.
DEBRA: But did those women go on, after they started to take the lower dose even, to have health effects because their endocrine systems were now imbalanced?
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: Yeah, you can say that. There is certainly an imbalance, a little bit too much stimulation. I don’t think they ever really figured out why it caused the embolism and these blood clots, disrupting the endocrine system. It’s just one of the many side-effects. So, the endocrine system is very sensitive to chemicals.
DEBRA: Yes…
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: It’s just like when the athletes used an array of hormones and hormones supplements to increase muscle mass. Testosterone is one thing. Testosterone is used in sports events and sports enhancement.
DEBRA: There’s a really wonderful book called Our Stolen Future. And so if anybody is listening who wants to know about endocrine disruptors, that was the first book that I was aware of that came out about it. And it’s still a really good book.
And we are going to go on a break pretty soon. But when we come back, we are going to talk more about endocrine disruptors and the chemicals that harm the endocrine system.
And what’s really important about this is that it used to be that the dose made the poison. So, some poisons were not poisonous until you got up to high doses. But endocrine disruptors affect your body at very, very low doses that we are being exposed to on a daily basis. So we are going to talk more about that when we come back.
This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Dr. Steven Gilbert author of A Small Dose of Toxicology. And during the break, you can rush over to his website and download it at Toxipedia.org. We’ll be right back.
A Small Dose of Toxicology. Again, I’ll tell you, it’s free. You can go to his website, Toxipedia.org, and download it. It’s got so much information including a lot of what we are talking about today.
So, I’m looking at your website which has so much information on it. And I’m on a page about endocrine disruptors, and I see this little ad from the past about DES. Do you want to tell us about DES?
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: Yes, that is a really important story in understanding endocrine disruptors. DES is diethylstilbestrol.
And I want to also mention another [inaudible 00:10:54] is BPA, Bisphenol-A which was actually first created in 1891. There’s a long history with this.
It was recognized as a very low level endocrine compound. But DES [inaudible 00:11:08] by 1938 and it was recognized as a very potent endocrine disruptor and estrogen mimic (so synthetic estrogen). And it’s used to treat miscarriages and for post-menopausal women.
So, the problem though was this was approved by the FDA in 1947 for miscarriages. And it was first studied in 1953. I want to emphasize that. It was approved at ’47. It was ’53 when they first said [inaudible 00:11:39] that it was not effective for preventing miscarriages.
And this was consumed and was regularly prescribed. The doctors thought it was good thing, so they continued to prescribe it. It was not until 1971 when the first study was published showing that the offspring of women that consumed DES had a rare form of vaginal cancer. So, this was a second generation effect of DES.
They said DES was withdrawn. But during that period, millions of young women who were over-exposed to DES had an increase risk for vaginal cancers.
So, it is really a wakeup call to very low-level exposures to an estrogen mimic. It can cause serious problems for offspring when women consumed it. And this is really a key change in toxicology when it recognized that possibility.
Along with that was the very low level effects that these compounds, in very small amounts, can cause effects which goes against toxicology’s principle of dose response—the greater the dose, the greater the response. Some of these estrogen disruptors, very small level of exposure (really sort of like a U-shaped curve) showing that very low level of exposure, there’s an effect. It sort of tapers off. And then there’s a different effect in higher doses.
So DES is really a very interesting example of cross generation effect of compound.
DEBRA: Wow, it’s so interesting to me what we’re being exposed to today. I was born in 1955 (I know that I don’t sound that old). I was born in 1955. And at that time, nobody was even thinking about these things. Yet after reading Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, I realized that when I was born, my mother was already exposed to toxic chemicals and that I was exposed in the womb. And that’s even more of a concern today because we have so many chemicals than we did in 1955.
So, even before babies were born or even before they’re conceived, the DNA has already been changed.
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: You’re absolutely right. I think the thing here that’s really concerning about endocrine disrupting chemicals is we are exposed to a broad array of chemicals that are endocrine disruptors. It’s not just one compound that’s an endocrine disruptor.
For example, Bisphenol-A, about 90% of us excrete BPA, Bisphenol-A in our urine. So we are constantly exposed to it from cash register receipts, tin can lining, from plastics. There’s just a huge array of products.
Phthalates is another one that causes endocrine disruption. We’re exposed to many forms of phthalates in fragrances, perfumes, in personal care products and fire retardants. You could just go down a list of chemicals. A lot of the pesticides are endocrine disruptors.
So, we’re exposed to really an array of these things. It starts really pre-conception for the woman and for a man too. They do cause disruption in sperm. Sperm count has been linked to endocrine disruptors.
So, it’s just a wide, wide array from pre-conception onto the development and then post-natally.
DEBRA: I recently heard over the weekend that—I am looking for the reference for this, I’m sure I’ll find one—that the Human Genome Project found that we’re not so much the product of our genes, but the product of our environment. I don’t have the number right in front of me, but it is something like very small. Less than 10% of what happens to our bodies is by our genes. And the genes can be affected by the environment. They are being affected by the environment.
When I heard that, I thought, “Well, if they are affected by the environment, what we are giving our genes are toxic chemicals which are changing their character.”
I also read that nutrition, good nutrition will improve your genes, and that it can actually improve your DNA. And so do we want to be giving those basic building blocks to our bodies? Do we want to be giving them toxic chemicals or do we want to be giving them something good like good nutrition?
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: You raise a really good point. In every good nutrition, it’s really critical using organic compounds as much as possible with fewer pesticides and pesticide contaminants. It’s really important.
And you’re really touching on the issue of epigenetics where we’re really changing the expression of DNA by exposure to these chemicals. [Inaudible 00:16:43] It changes our endocrine system in a way. So the fly or flight response is part of that system. So stress increases cortisone level which changes endocrine responses.
So it’s a very complex interrelated system that we continue to fill with and contaminate with chemicals as well as the stressful environment that we have.
DEBRA: Sometimes I wonder how do we stay alive. I mean that just goes to show the resilience of our bodies.
I really know for myself that I have been having to address body conditions all my life that have to do with chemical exposures. And it’s not that I have been exposed to these chemicals anymore, but the damage was caused to my body at a time early on. And then I saw that my health has improved tremendously, but still there are things going on.
Anyway, we need to go on a break. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I am Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Dr. Steven Gilbert. Go to Toxipedia.org and download his book, A Small Dose of Toxicology. We’ll be right back.
So Dr. Gilbert, I’m looking at your risk of potential endocrine disruptors and you’ve mentioned some of them, but I just like to go over the list as a whole here because I can see some of these. I am thinking from the viewpoint of how do we get these out of our bodies. I know that Bisphenol-A, I’ve studied that quite a bit about detox and what I’ve learned is that most people have an ongoing present of this Bisphenol-A in their bodies not because its persistent in the body, but because we continue to be exposed to it.
But if we stopped being exposed to it, some studies have shown that within a few days, it’ll all just clear itself out of our body and that the body will detox itself. So it’s not a matter of needing to take some things specific for it.
But I am looking at this list. And the first one of the list is DDT which you know is no longer allowed in the US. It has been many years since it’s been banned. Wasn’t this the pesticide that Rachel Carson wrote about in Silent Spring, DDT?
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: Yeah, that’s right. She rewrote about DDT.
DEBRA: It’s still ubiquitous, isn’t it?
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: Yes, it’s still ubiquitous. We’re still exposed to it from animals that we consume. It’s a very persistent chemical. We’ve tried to get rid of some of these persistent bioaccumulative chemicals. But DDT is a classic example of one that just continues to survive in the food chain.
And it’s also still being used in mosquito nets in some places in developing countries to fight mosquitoes. It’s a very effective pesticide, but it has a very bad side-effect. It will just stay around and continues to be present in people’s bodies. It’s now known to be an endocrine disruptor.
It’s very difficult to get rid of this because it’s stored in the fat. And one way that a woman reduce her body burden of DDT is during breast feeding. Because they mobilizes a lot of fat during that period, they mobilize a lot of DDT which exposes the developing infant to DDT. They’re endocrine disrupting compounds.
DEBRA: Wow! Wow, wow. I was going to say the more I learn about toxic chemicals, but I have been learning about them for so long. But still, the more I learn about toxic chemicals, the more it is just seems like it is such a bad idea that this even happened in the first place. How do ever know?
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: Absolutely! [Inaudible 00:20:54] We just haven’t been thinking more carefully about future generations and really guarding our children. We really want our children to be able to reach and maintain their full potential. They can’t do that if they are exposed to this wide array of chemicals.
DEBRA: Some other things on this list. This is just the list of the big, bad chemicals that I’ve been hearing about on the news all my life—DDT, 24D, PCB, DES and more recently PBDE (Polybrominated diphenyl ethers, that’s the one that is in the fire retardants), phthalates in plastics, Bisphenol A, Dioxin, Arsenic.
Dr. Gilbert has this chart here and it says, “Arsenic, Lead and Mercury: Wide-Spread Contaminants.” All the other ones he was talking about, 24D is an herbicide, Atrazine is a herbicide, BPA is a hard learned classic. Then he gets into arsenic, lead an mercury, and it says “widespread contaminants.” And these are widespread. We are looking at all these, and it’s like our poor endocrine systems.
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: It’s very serious. It’s very serious, the lack of really trying to pay attention to chemical exposures. Mercury is in coal. So you burn coal for our utility plants, you distribute mercury throughout the environment. That’s a really serious consideration particularly on the west coast because they’ve got all the air that’s coming from China.
These are global issues. It’s not just an issue in the United States. These are global issues.
We’ve tried to [00:22:33] bisphenol-A and it still go into product. We’ve banned bisphenol-A in baby toys and we’ve been trying to get it out of plastic bottles and things like that. But why do we start doing them in there without studying the potential health effects? Phthalates are in personal care products and used in fragrances.
So, we end up being exposed to these products from multiple sources. They are in our cars. They are in our plastic. We have phthalates from shower curtains, plastic shower curtains. We have phthalates that offgass from products.
So it really is not being thoughtful about the chemicals exposures. We’ve put the burden on individuals that try to [inaudible 00:23:10] this work where we really should have a more broad effort to manage our chemicals.
If we put new drugs into the environment, we have a very precautionary approach. The Food and Drug Administration is required to study the potential toxicity or benefits of a compound. We don’t have a similar approach for putting industrial chemicals into the environment, exposing our children.
DEBRA: Last night, I was watching TV and I wasn’t awake enough to remember exactly what I am about to tell you. There was a commercial on for a drug. And we are all familiar with those drug commercials where they give you a beautiful picture and some nice music and a nice pleasant voice saying about all the side-effects.
But last night, it just went on and on. And it ended with death as a side-effect.
But the thing that really impressed me was that it was a drug for something that had nothing to do with saving your life or being comfortable. It was like some cosmetic thing like make your eyelashes grow longer or something like that. It just amazes me that all of these health effects can be known and yet they are still allowed to be sold.
Every night, we’re watching TV and there’s at least one or two or three drug commercials that are talking about the dangers of these drugs. And yet, they are being sold. They are being advertised. And people buy them.
Do you have any comment on the fact that we could be having all these warnings, and yet people aren’t listening?
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: I think we are just overwhelmed with that kind of information sometimes. We’ve got lots of information and we want to do things too quickly so sometimes. We want a quick fix. I think our whole medical profession end up as being geared toward the cure instead of preventing disease.
We look for a quick fix to prevent whatever disease we have. And a lot of these don’t cure whatever disease we have or fix it. We’re not looking at the longer term issue of preventing disease like having good nutrition, having fewer chemical exposures where we’re trying to prevent obesity, trying to prevent diabetes, trying to prevent endocrine disruptive effects or the nervous system, ADHD, hyperactivity (with autism, for example). We need to be working to prevent these and not just try to fix them.
But the money is made by treating disease and not preventing disease. That is a systemic problem in our medical system. The whole medical pharmaceutical companies have been geared towards treating disease, not preventing disease.
What is so important about your show is that you’re trying to focus people in how to prevent illnesses [inaudible 00:26:16] instead of working from behind all the time.
DEBRA: Thank you. We need to go for a break, but we can talk about that more when we come back.
You’re listening today with Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Dr. Steven Gilbert author of A Small Dose of Toxicology. I really need to go before the commercial comes on.
And it’s well-worth downloading it and taking a look. This will help you understand what’s going on in the world with toxic chemicals a lot better
So Dr. Gilbert, this is our last segment now. We are going to run out of time soon. Is there anything that you would like to talk about that I haven’t asked you yet?
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: Just a quick mention, my website, if you go to the book, you can download the chapter in endocrine disruptors as well as the PowerPoint presentation about it just to give a quick overview of how to protect endocrine disruptors.
I want to point out another really good—if you want to dig a bit more details—The Endocrine Disruptor Exchange (TEDX). You can there by EndocrineDisruption.org. It gives a lot more details about the health effects of endocrine disruptors as well as more details on the endocrine system. It also explores chemicals and natural gas operations [inaudible 00:27:42] pesticides.
Another resource has really come out recently. There’s a new book by Philippe Grandjean and there’s a website called ChemicalBrainDrain.info. You can get his new book from ChemicalBrainDrain.info. He explores some of the endocrine disruptors as well as the other chemicals that affect early development.
I think what we are really emphasizing here is, with endocrine disruption, the exquisite sensitivity of the developing nervous system, the developing body. And we need to be thinking more about that.
The other thing that’s important is that everything is not just straight dose responses, not “the more of the compound, the more the effect.” There’s also these very low level of subtle changes in performance and subtle long-term effects. And the effects that we garner in our early life can really have impact as we grow older. DES is just one example of that, but it can also be increased incidence of diabetes, other nervous system disorders, sexual dysfunction, low number sperm counts and other deformities.
So, it really is a very complex system that we’re perturbing in unknown ways.
DEBRA: And the best thing that we can do is to be aware on where those chemicals are, what the chemicals are, where those chemicals are, what the alternatives are so that we can create a toxic free home.
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: More broadly, we need a chemical policy reformed. It really does get the heart of the matter. We have more information about chemicals we put into the products we use.
DEBRA: We need to have better labeling
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: We need much better labelling, much more transparency about what chemicals are in the products and what the potential health effects of these products are and really move towards [inaudible 00:29:34] fewer chemicals.
DEBRA: One of the reasons why I like doing this radio show is because we just need to have more awareness, so that people can say, “Oh, I understand that there’s a problem and what can we do about it.” I know that I am constantly talking to people, but they don’t even know that there’s a problem at all. And these are intelligent people. They are just not aware of it.
As much as you want to talk about it, it’s still not part of our collective awareness, and that we all together should be doing this and this is just the right thing.
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I think we sort of assume that it’s out, a product, the government must’ve taken a look at it enough. In this case, the government has not taken a good look at it and is not really monitoring chemical exposures.
And [inaudible 00:30:27] we are not exposed to just one endocrine disruptor. We are exposed to a lot of them. They have so many more mechanisms of action. When we do our assessments of this chemicals, it’s one chemical at a time. It’s very difficult to do mixtures of chemicals that we’re, in reality, exposed to.
DEBRA: Even if they did that in the lab, they can’t possibly duplicate what mixture of chemicals I’m being exposed to because its different than the mixture of chemicals you’re being exposed to. Each of our listeners has their own—I’m trying to figure out what is the right word here—mine field of chemicals that they are—
That’s what it is. It’s like walking through a mine field as you move through your day…
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: Our individual sensitivity is really important, knowing what we’re exposed to and what our individual responses. We all metabolize chemicals a little bit differently. The chemicals we’re exposed to influences our genetic response to these chemicals.
So, it’s very a complex environment that we’re [inaudible 00:31:32]. We’re all individuals. We do not pay enough attention to individual sensitivity. For example, kids are much more sensitive to adults. We don’t account for that in our assessment of toxicity response to these chemicals.
DEBRA: Well, I don’t want to sound really scary. I mean, it actually is something scary. We should be concerned enough about it. We should be scared enough to do something. But I don’t want people to think so scared that they think that there’s nothing that they can do.
And I know in my own personal experience that being aware of the toxic chemicals in my environment, whether it’s in my home or as I am out of the world, and knowing what I can do to help protect my body has so greatly increased my health. It’s just astounding to me. So even though my health isn’t perfect because there’s been damaged done to my body even before we can be aware of it, I am so functional than I have been at other times in my life when I was being exposed to toxic chemicals.
I just want to emphasize that it’s so worth it. It’s so worth to do whatever you can do to find out where the toxic chemicals are that you’re being exposed to, whether they are endocrine disruptors or they harm your immune system or whatever it is they do. If they are toxic, you want to stay away from them.
And when you do that, and if you do things to start removing toxic chemicals from your body, you will see a difference. You will see a difference. I am willing to say that I can guarantee you will see a difference. Because we are exposed to so many toxic chemicals that if we just do something, it’s going to reduce that stress in our bodies and our health can return.
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: You are absolutely right there, Debra. When you see these chemicals used in our homes, in our schools, it’s really important just being more conscious of those issues and what chemicals might be in the products we use and try to reduce exposure to them.
Take off your shoes when you come into the house. Wash your hands. You know I have a couple of grandchildren. The first thing I do when they come to my house, “Take off your shoes. Before you eat, you have to wash your hands.”
Simple things like that are really important too in trying to reduce exposure to chemicals because chemicals are in so many different places. When we touch an old t-cushion, we pick up flame-retardant in our fingers.
So, it’s very important to just try to be aware of what other chemical exposures might be coming from and little simple things to help reduce exposures.
DEBRA: I totally agree with you. And even if you are only doing some small baby steps, it’s worth it to do those. Don’t think that just because you’re not doing everything, that what you’re doing isn’t making a difference because it does. Every little bit helps. Every little bit helps.
You know, I have a very non-toxic house. I know a lot of stuff. I don’t know everything there is to know. But I’ve been doing this for more than 30 years. So, I started out knowing nothing. I started out having as toxic a life as everybody could have. I wore perfume. I drank tap water. I ate TV dinners. I grew up on TV dinners. I probably have as much chemical exposure as anybody is ever had.
I remember, I think I read somewhere that some of our strongest memory is about smells. And I think about smells from my childhood, and I want to tell you three of them that come to mind immediately:
One is the smell of my mother’s ballpoint pen, the ink in my mother’s ballpoint pen. She always wrote with pink ballpoint pens. I remember that smell. Then I learned what was in ballpoint pen ink.
Another one was my grandmother’s sofa. The third one was my grandfather. The garage was his space. And so the smell of his garage was gasoline because he just had cans and cans of gasoline. And as a little kid, I was just there smelling the gasoline, smelling the gasoline, smelling the gasoline. Nobody even thought twice about it. Nobody had an awareness when
I was a kid that we should even be thinking about toxins.
But now we know! Now, we know and we should do something about it.
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: Actually, I grew up working with cars, so I was exposed to gasoline and a lot of solvents too. And one of the consequence of that as we age and get older—we’re not thinking about it when we’re in the ‘50s or in the ‘60s. We’re sort of charging ahead, thinking chemicals are our friends and we’re solving the world’s problems. And what we’re doing, we’re really doing a lot of damage to ourselves and our future generations.
DEBRA: Yeah.
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: Lead is a classic example of that. We spread lead all over the environment, putting lead in gasoline, lead in paint. And lead is one of the endocrine disruptors as well as having a lot of other effects. We are not taking a precautionary approach to this.
They’ve banned lead-based paint in Europe in the ‘20s. In the United States, not until ’78. We did not learn lessons that we should learned looking at the health effects of chemicals.
DEBRA: Well, I read something the other day. I send out inspiring quotes every day. You can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.org and just sign up for the newsletter. You can choose that. It’s called Words of Wisdom.
And one of them recently—I’m sure I won’t quote it right—but it was something like “we can’t go back and change what we’ve already done, but we can start today and make a new future.” We can’t change the past, but we can make a new future. And I think that’s an excellent advice for toxics.
Well, thank you so much for being with us. I am sure we’ll talk again.
DR. STEVEN GILBERT: That’ll be great, Debra. Thank you so much for what you’re doing. You’re really great, getting the word out like this.
DEBRA: This is ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. I am Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well.
Developing a Toxic Free Toy
My guest today is Jim Barber, a Managing Partner at MWB Toy, LLC, a startup toy company based in Danbury, CT. We’ll be talking about how MWB Toy is developing a line of toxic-free toys under the Luke’s Toy Factory brand name. Luke is Jim’s son, and the toy designer. These toys will be made in the USA with sustainable and safe materials. With 85% of the world’s toys produced in China and a slew of quality & safety issues in recent years, Luke’s Toy Factory set out to create sustainable, competitively priced toys made in the US. These toys will utilize organic by-products of industrial farming and industrial manufacturing operations, and never use paint!. Moreover, by eliminating overseas shipping from China they cut down on their carbon footprint and reduce pollution that results from transportation.. Jim is the owner of Jim Barber Studio, Inc, a well known still life photography studio that counts over 100 of the Fortune 500 companies as clients. His work has won many awards for advertising and annual report photography. He is also a judge of the ARC awards, the premier worldwide award competition for the annual report industry. Kickstarter project: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lukesfty/ecotruck-made-from-safe-organic-materials-in-the-u
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Developing a Toxic-Free Toy
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Jim Barber
Date of Broadcast: May 19,2014
DEBRA: Hi! I am Debra Lynn Dadd and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic free. It’s Monday, May 19th 2014, beautiful summer day here in Clearwater, Florida.
I have to spend the weekend in Raleigh, North Carolina at the conference for Touchstone Essentials. I play commercials for their products everyday on this show and I talk about the 33 servings of broccoli and supplements or the zeolites that removes toxic chemicals from your body. Those all come from Touchstone Essentials.
I was just once again so impressed with this company. The conference was just so professionally done. They continue to have such outstanding products. People continue to have so many wins from taking them.
I just see people’s health improving. These are people that I’ve been promoting these products for two years. I’ve seen these people over this two-year period and I just see people’s health improving.
One of the things that I learned that was new that I didn’t know was that toxic chemicals in your cells can actually block the nutrition that you’re taking in from your food and your supplements. The toxic chemicals can block that nutrition from even coming into the cell. Nutrition needs to get into your cells in order for your body to be nourished.
By taking the Zeolite product called Pure Body and also then taking really pure supplements that are not made from food but made of food—just food and nothing but food–in the supplements—by doing that, you really nourish yourselves and you nourish every part of your body.
It was just so clear to me because I see other people, I see it in myself—I’ve been taking this for two years. And it was just another confirmation that I’m doing the right thing by doing it. I wrote on my book <em>Toxic Free</em> before this company even started. It’s been around for a little over two years.
But a few years ago, I wrote Toxic Free. And the conclusion I came to when I was writing that book was that one thing we should be doing, as I’ve been saying for more than 30 years, is remove the toxic chemicals from our homes. We’re at a point where what we need to do is remove the toxic chemicals from our bodies also. And we need to get better nutrition because our food supply just does not giving it to us.
So then along came Touchstone Essentials and they have these products that remove the toxic chemicals from your body and they give us superior nutrition. I just want to say that, once again, I went and I met with them. I know everybody in the company, I know everybody on the staff, I know the founder and I know all the executives. I am just so impressed with these products.
Give a listen when you hear these commercials and you might want to take a look at these products because if you’re concerned about your health, if you’re concerned about improving your health or <em>improving</em> your health, these are some products to be looking at. They are products I take and products that I recommend. They are doing something important because toxic chemicals, if you have toxic chemicals in your body, it’s going to impair your health in one way or another.
Anyway, that’s my commercial message for the moment.
Today, we’re going to be talking about toys. My guest is Jim Barber. He is a managing partner with MWB toy who is developing some toys through the brand Luke’s Toy Shop. I think I got that right, right? Luke’s Toy Factory, there!
My computer is down this morning, my internet. So I can’t actually go to my website. I have all these little notes on my screen. Okay, Luke’s Toy Factory.
The thing that’s different about this show, usually, I have on people who have already manufacturing products, and I’ll give you their website and you can go by them, what’s different about this one is that they are still in development and they are using the Kickstarter program to come up with money to go into manufacturing.
If you want to, you can go to their Kickstarter program and make a donation. This is what’s called crowd funding, some of you may be familiar with that. If you want to know more about it, you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and the link to do that is right at the end of the description of the show.
DEBRA: Hi Jim! Thanks for being here.
JIM BARBER: Hi! Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. First, tell us how you got interested in this subject. What made you want to make toys?
JIM BARBER: Well, I tell you Debra. The thing is, my kids are actually grown. I’m past the age when they really paid a lot of attention to toys. Few years ago, I guess around 2009, we started hearing all these stories about some of the things that were in the paint coming from toys from China. I started looking at some of my kids’ toys, especially some of the toys that had been recalled, and I realize that I had some of these toys. When I really started looking, I found that 99% of the toys I had were made in China. When you really start looking on carefully, we start thinking what’s really in these toys.
JIM BARBER: I started doing some research just to be interested in what was going on. I started finding out that there are a lot of heavy metals in the paint. Lead is just one of the heavy metals that you find. You find arsenic, you find cadmium. There’s a whole range of things.
And then the other issue is with a lot of the wood, there’s formaldehyde in the ply wood.
So I started thinking, there’s got to be a better way to make these things.
And I read about this material that they’re using in decking. It’s called wood plastic composites. And what it is is they take a regular plastic and they replace part of it, 30% to 40% with saw dust.
So, what you have is 1) you’re taking away plastic and 2) you’re adding what was a waste product to this material so that it transforms it from being plastic to being a hybrid between the two. I thought, “Well, that might be a way to make the toys.” And then, I started doing more research and getting more deeply into the whole process.
DEBRA: Well, we talked before so I know that you were cleaning out your basement and you found these toys. Obviously, your children are grown and they’re not playing with them now. But you have stored some toys and you’re going through them and you’re looking at that. What was that moment like when you were looking at them and made this decision that was so powerful that you decided that you needed to make some toys?
JIM BARBER: Well see, one of the things—I don’t know if my kids are unique in this. But when it comes time to throw something out, it’s like, “Oh no, I don’t want to throw that out. You throw the other thing out, but don’t throw my stuff out.” Even though they’re grown, it’s like, “I want to keep all these toys.”
I guess the real surprise to me was that these were toys and toy companies that I trusted and that I knew their names. When I grew up as a kid – all these toys were the brand names we played with.
DEBRA: Right.
JIM BARBER: And I felt almost a sense of betrayal because when I started really researching this—you can go on the Consumer Products Safety Commission website and you can see all the recalls that are being done on these toys, it’s astonishing how many of these toys get recalled. I just…
DEBRA: And what are they get recalled for? What kinds of things?
JIM BARBER: Mostly, it’s mechanical issues, things will not be well-made, a lot of toys use screws and they use fastening devices.
The thing about the toy industry is it’s all about price. So, how do you get the price down? You cut quality.
DEBRA: We need to go to a break. But when we come back, we’ll talk about this more.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Jim Barber. He is developing toxic free, eco-friendly toys. We’ll talk to him more when we come back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Jim Barber of Luke’s Toy Factory. They’re developing toys that are toxic free and eco-friendly. We were just talking about how Jim found these toys he’s storing in his basement and said, “No, we’re not going to have those anymore,” and wanted to create something better.
And the way he’s financing those is with a Kickstarter campaign. If you’re interested in contributing to that, you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and look for his show and at the end of the description is the link to his Kickstarter campaign which is quite long, which is why I’m not trying to describe it to you over the radio.
We were talking about—what were we taking about before the break? Anyway, let’s go on and just talk about the materials. Let’s talk about…
JIM BARBER: This idea, yeah.
DEBRA: Yes. Let’s talk about some of the materials that are used. You talked about them a little bit in your story, but let’s talk more about some of the toxic chemicals that are found commonly in toys.
JIM BARBER: Generally, you have to differentiate between wooden toys and plastic toys. The ways that most plastic toys are made, they’re made with relatively safe materials depending on what kind of additives are put in them.
Sometimes, you can put additives into the plastic to keep away things like molds or to make them less susceptible to sunlight, things like that. But for the most part, most toys are made out of material called the polypropylene, ABS, another one is HDPE. And all these are different kinds of plastics. For the most part…
DEBRA: But aren’t some made also out of PVC?
JIM BARBER: Yes. Anything that has a thin flexible feeling to it is probably made with PVC. There’s a lot of different ways to create a toy. One of the ideas and one of the things that PVC does well is that it conforms to a very thin mold. The more plastic you use, the more money it cost. PVC is a very popular product. PVC is not a particularly good plastic in my estimation. I’m not an expert on plastics.
DEBRA: Well, this is not a good plastic in other people’s estimations as well. In fact, Greenpeace for many years has had a campaign trying to get people to stop using PVC altogether. Because of its toxicity, they consider it to be the most toxic plastic on the planet. I would agree with that.
So, that’s one of the reasons here. One of the reasons why I was interested in having you on today is because so many toys are made of PVC which is a soft plastic. It’s outgassing carcinogenic fumes. Children are playing with that. And you’re offering an alternative to that.
I wish that toys were marked with very clear symbols or labels that would say, “This toy is PVC and this one’s made out of polypropylene which is less toxic, HDPE which is less toxic and ABS which is less toxic.” But we can’t tell the difference because the toys aren’t required to be labeled.
JIM BARBER: Well, it’s interesting because there are a lot of requirements for labeling for safety. All our toys have to be tested for safety. There isn’t a lot of labeling in terms of recycling. We’re hoping that in the future, of course, that changes.
One of the things we’re looking at is providing a recycling solution for these toys. If your kid outgrows the toy, you’re just going to throw it in the trash, we’ll take it back. We’re trying to keep people from just throwing things away.
A lot of people pass this on, but some people don’t. We live in a more throwaway society.
But the plastic that we’re using, what we’re trying to do is replace part of the plastic essentially with a saw dust. What they’ve done is they’ve develop these plastics that is a hybrid of wood and plastic, but can be injection molded, so that you can make toy. And somewhere between 30% and 40% at this point of the material is a benign wood flour. It’s a pine or oak, things like that.
It’s all about taking steps. I wish it could be a hundred percent recycled, but I’m having a hard time finding a source for recycled plastic where the source will certify to me that it’s safe. No one can say [inaudible 00:16:00] a can of insecticide.
DEBRA: Yeah. That was interesting that I saw. I think it was in your press release. Tell us a little bit more about that, about why recycled might not be non-toxic?
JIM BARBER: Well, a lot of it has to do with where do you get the material. If you get what’s called post-consumer waste, there’s very little control over what actually goes into that stream of plastics.
They have machines that can pull out the metals. They have different ways of separating things. But for the most part, you can’t really guard against the person who just happens to throw something in there and not looking at the bottom of the container and putting it in the wrong stream.
So, where most of the recycled plastic comes from for the kind of thing that I’m doing is what’s called post-industrial waste which means that you are at a factory. And the way the injection molding system work is there’s always some leftover bits of plastic. If you ever made little models where you open up the box and everything that’s all stuffed together on a one frame and you have to cut the little pieces off…
DEBRA: Yup, I remember that.
JIM BARBER: That’s the injection molding process worked.
DEBRA: We need to go to another break, but we’ll be right back. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Jim Barber. He’s developing some toxic free toys through a company called Luke’s Toy Factory.
He has a Kickstarter campaign which you can contribute to. Just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and you can see his show and URL for the Kickstarter campaign is right there at the end.
We’ll be right back to talk to more about toxic free toys.
They have a Kickstarter campaign. So they are not in production yet, but you can make a contribution to their Kickstarter campaign to make this happen. Just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and the URL for that will be there at the end of the description of the show.
So Jim, when you decided that you were going to make a toy that wasn’t toxic and didn’t come from China and everything was going to be in the US, how did you get started doing that? What was your first step?
JIM BARBER: Well, the first step was research. I like to learn things. I found that the first thing to do was talk to other people and find out what has been done in the past.
There is one company called Green Toys out in California that’s been doing this for a while. They‘re the inspiration for me. These are the people that they make their toys out of recycled milk bottles called HDPE material. They have differences on…
DEBRA: And that stands for, for our listeners who don’t know what that is, <em>High Density Polyethylene</em> which is very non-toxic.
JIM BARBER:That’s my understanding. I do a lot of research and what we tried to do was to identify sources of material that are the least toxic, the safest materials we can. There are resources for that. There are ways to identify that.
JIM BARBER: The big thing was I went to a trade show down in Florida where they had a—it was called the National Plastics Exposition. They had literally everybody in the whole business was there. I just ran from place to place saying, “Look, here’s what I want to do, give me some ideas.” I met some very interesting people and that kind of built on itself.
But I just kept doing a lot of research on the materials and trying to connect with as many people as I could with the idea that even though it’s something new, there have to be somebody out there who’s willing to try it.
And because the toy industry is gone from the United States, the people who are left here that are still in business basically don’t want to deal with it because it’s a low margin business. They’d rather work in medical, aerospace or things like that. Trying to get somebody to take a chance on this was one of the biggest problems.
But we kept at it and then I found a place here in Connecticut, a guy who was willing to give it a try. And I found a guy up in Massachusetts to do the tooling which is the expensive part of injection molding. I found some great resources with companies here in United States who were really trying to take plastics and make them more sustainable.
There’s a place out in Michigan that I’ve been talking to. They were one of the people that really worked very hard at trying to bring the science forward. Even though they didn’t really have a client for it, a lot of times, these guys, they don’t want to develop a product until someone comes to them says, “I want to make this product out of this”, and then they figure out how it works. This company said, “We’ll make the product, we’ll make the material. And then sell it to people.” We’re going to try to sell it to manufacturers which is how I came across them.
So, there are people here in the US who are looking forward and trying to see a day when we can, not necessarily eliminate plastics, but at least take away half of the material and replace it with organic materials that are not from the food stream.
DEBRA: I have a number of questions I want to ask you. I’m trying to figure out which one to say first. Here’s the first one. You’re talking about recycling. And the wood, the saw dust that you’re putting in, that’s recycled from. It comes from furniture manufacturing or something?
JIM BARBER: Furniture manufactures, yeah.
DEBRA: Right, okay. So now you have…
JIM BARBER: See the good thing about that—go ahead.
DEBRA: Well, tell me about the good thing about it is and then I’ll ask my question.
JIM BARBER: Well, the good thing is when you go to a furniture manufacture, you can identify where the material came from. You know what’s in there. You know that somebody didn’t throw something in there that shouldn’t been in there.
For instance, if you go back to China, one of the places that they get a lot of their wood for different things is wood pallets, shipping containers and things like that. You have no idea what might have spilled on them or where they got them from. The places that we’re identifying, it’s certified as safe.
DEBRA: It’s certified and safe. I haven’t heard that before. It actually goes through a certification process or they attest to that or how’d you know?
JIM BARBER: Yeah. Basically, what they do is they track the material. They put it in things called <em>gaylords</em> which is a size of shipping container and they ship it to the plastic manufacture. So, they know that it came from this factory on this particular production run and this was the material that they were using, whether it’s pine, oak or whatever. They can track what went into this material as oppose to saying, “Well, you know, we just took this bunch of old wood we had and ground it up.”
DEBRA: That’s a very different thing. I think that that’s an important point that I didn’t know anything about before until I talk to you. When you see “recycled” on the label, you know that that’s good for the environment because it’s reusing something that would’ve otherwise gone into a landfill or into the environment some place.
But from a toxic viewpoint, as you said, you really don’t know if it’s post-consumer or they’re just taking a lot of stuff you don’t know what else might be in there.
I remember when I was researching recycling some years ago, people thought that post-consumer was preferable to—what was the term that you used that comes from manufacture?
JIM BARBER: Post-industrial.
DEBRA: Post-industrial, yeah, that post-consumer was preferable to post-industrial because the post-industrial waste was just going back in the pot, so to speak, in the factory. But the post-consumer, was—
Oh, we need to go to break. I’ll finish this when we come back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And today we’re talking with my guest, Jim Barber of Luke’s Toy Factory about making toxic free toys. We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Jim Barber from Luke’s Toy Factory and he’s making toxic free and eco-friendly toys. That’s what we’re talking about.
Before the break, we we’re talking about the difference between post-industrial and post-consumer waste and we got interrupted by the break. I’ll finish my sentence which is that if we’re looking at recycled plastics or recycled anything from a toxic point of view, if you have post-consumer waste, then there may be some unknown toxic chemicals in there because we don’t know what some consumer might have done—putting insecticide in a plastic bottle, wiped up some toxic spill with a paper or whatever it happens to be. There are a lot of opportunities for consumers to use toxic things.
And in a post-industrial situation, if its post-industrial recycled material, then they can say, “Here’s where this material came from,” and you can track if there have been toxic exposures or non-toxic exposures.
So now, here we have a toy that’s being manufactured and the manufacture can tell you that they know that this recycled material does not contain toxic stuff because it’s been track, the source is tracked and they know that it’s recycled from this type of wood from a furniture manufacturer.
I hope that when you get down to manufacturing and making these products available, that you’ll write all these stuff out, so that your customers know exactly where these excellent materials are coming from. It’s not so important for them to know the exact factory, but that they know that it’s post-industrial as opposed to post-consumer. That level of detail usually doesn’t get known.
JIM BARBER: Well, you’re absolutely correct about that. And that’s one of the things that we can do because we know where things were made, when they were made and how they were made.
One of the interesting things about the companies that are creating these materials for us to use, the first thing that I say to everybody that I talk to is the number one thing is safety. I don’t want to hurt kids. When my son, Luke, who designs the toys—the most important things is we will make sure that it’s safe so the parts have to be big enough you can choke on them.
But also, one of the great things about this is that when you color these things—because kids like bright colors—it’s done in the mold, inside the plastic, it’s encapsulated so there’s no surface paint. Kids like to chew on things, kids put things in their mouth. It’s one of their sensory inputs.
That’s one of the problems with getting a wooden toy that has surface paint on it. Sooner or later, that paint’s going to come off and you have to hope—
One of the stories that somebody told me was they were over in China and this was after the whole uproar over lead paint. They were supposedly getting very really clean, good paint. But the guy run out of certain color of paint, went in the back room and found some cans of paint and throw it into the machine. Well, it turned out to be lead paint. There’s no one there overseeing the operation.
And then, at night, when they clean the machines, they clean it with gasoline. So that’s another source of lead.
DEBRA: Here’s something that is I think a very important point and that is you, as a toy manufacturer, are thinking about all of these things, that you have this idea and this commitment to having things be safe. You can tell us a story and say, “Well, he used this toxic chemical, he used that toxic chemical.”
When you’re in the factory and you’re needing to manufacture something or specify how it gets manufactured, then you are not making those mistakes because you have an awareness of it and you care about it and you want to make sure that it’s done right.
A lot of toy manufactures don’t have that ethic. They just don’t have it. This is where consumers, when they’re looking for how do I make a decision, the thing to do is make a decision to buy a toy from someone like you who’s thinking about these things and acting upon them.
JIM BARBER: That goes back to the manufacture that we’re using too, this injection molder. You can go on to some of these shops—which I have gone in, I probably visited 20 or 30 different injection molders in trying to find somebody to work with—and some of these places are filthy. There’s literally cat litter under the machines, catching whatever’s dripping out of them. A lot of machines are hydraulic powered and there’s an oil mist on everything.
Again, the guy that I’m using is really clean. He has a scientific approach to things. It’s a little more expensive, but it’s worth it.
One thing is, I want to make sure that I’m doing the right thing for kids. What I really want to have happen from all these is I want other people to do exactly what I’m doing. I want them to bring their manufacturing back here, put Americans to work and make sure that the kids are safe.
DEBRA: What a great thing. I just want to applaud you because I wish that everybody would do that. I wish that everybody would think that way. It’s a very good thing to do.
I’m just going to make sure that I say again that you’re doing a Kickstarter campaign. And for people who agree with those, please go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and find the link to his Kickstarter campaign and make a donation.
Why don’t you explain, Jim, how a Kickstarter campaign works?
JIM BARBER: Well, it’s an interesting process. It’s a cross between a donation and an actual sale because when you make a donation, there are different levels of rewards. You create what’s called rewards.
For instance with us, for $20, you can get one of the first production toys, the little firetruck that we’re making. And that includes shipping in the US. That’s a pretty good deal. You get a toy and have it ship to you.
The tradeoff you make is you’re not going to get it tomorrow. You’re going to get it when the Kickstarter program is finished and then we go into production.
And what we do is we make an estimate on when we will have the production done. We’re estimating August. To be safe, we’re saying September that we we’ll have all these things shipped out.
There’s different levels every rewards. You can get one truck, you can get three trucks. You can also make a donation and say no reward. I have some people that say, “Well, I don’t have kids, I don’t need the toy, but I like the idea.”
And you take a certain time period. In this case, we’re taking until June 8th. And you have to make your goal. Our goal is $15,000. We just broke $4000 now, so we’re getting there. We’re getting there, but we need all the help we can get.
The truck was actually called the Ecotruck. So, if you can’t find it easily, you could just go on Kicksarter.com and search for Ecotruck and you will find us.
They have a very interesting way of creating the campaigns. It’s a really nice process because it gives people who otherwise who wouldn’t have much of a chance—try hard to go to a bank and say, “I have this idea. And if you can just lend me the money, I can prove this idea can work,” well, the banks will say to you, “Come back when you have a product.” Whereas with Kickstart you can say, “I have this idea,” and people will look at it and say “Whoa, that’s a great idea. I’d like to see that happen.”
It’s a huge new thing. I think Kickstarter, in total, have raised over five billion dollars for various projects.
DEBRA: Yeah. It’s a pretty cool thing. If you go to their page, there’s a little video and then they have the different offers that says what you get if you pledge one dollar or more or five dollars or more. It tells you how many people have contributed in what category.
And the most—I think what was pledged $50 or more. No, the most pledged, $15, somewhere between $15 and $20. Second place right after that is $50 or more. I think that that’s great. I think that is showing a lot of support from what you’re doing.
You can get these little trucks in different colors. Yeah, I think it’s a great project. If you’re a parent or a grandparent—and it even shows the little pellets, the materials, the people and a whole explanation. There’s a lot of information here about what it is that they’re doing. Just great, great, great, great.
Well, we have to go. We’ve only got about 15 seconds left, so thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate what you’re doing. You’re listening to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well!
Stockmar Watercolor Paints, and Choosing Art Supplies for Toddler
Question from TA
Could you give me any pointers for evaluating the safety of art supplies for my toddler? It seems that many products are considered “non-toxic” on the label, but they are made from petrochemicals. My toddler is pretty good about not eating these kinds of things, but paints and glue/paste can be absorbed through the skin. So I’m a bit uncertain about how to ascertain which products are safe. Is the “non-toxic” claim good enough? Or is there something else I should be looking for?
I am specifically wondering about these Stockmar watercolor paints. I have seen them sold on various sites devoted to using natural materials in children’s toys – sites that sell wood toys, fabric dolls, and other Waldorf or Montessori types of products. So I would like to believe that this is an indication that those stores have some degree of confidence about the safety of the paints. I also gain some confidence from the fact that they are made in Germany, as their standards for children’s toys are generally much higher than ours here. But beyond that, when I encounter products such as these, are there any specific questions I should ask to verify the safety of the products?
www.stockmar.de/product_info.php?cPath=476&products_id=3848&language=en
I do have the Stockmar beeswax crayons. I like that they are made of beeswax, but I’m not sure what the pigments are made from.
Debra’s Answer
This is a very good question.
The quick answer is that there is some controversy about the “nontoxic” seal on art supplies. Until I get that sorted out, that’s all I’m going to say about that.
About Stockmar, now here is an example of a good product being made by a good company, confirmed by the fact that it has been sold for a long period of time by retaliers who are dedicated to choosing natural products. Natural ingredients are part of their ethic. And that’s a very important thing to look at about a brand. What is their purpose? What are they committed to?
See Stockmar’s Product Information page, which clearly outlines what they do to ensure their products are safe.
This is what you should be looking for when evaluating art supplies.
Piggy Paint Nail Polish
Question from TA
Could you give your opinion about whether Piggy Paint nail polish is truly non-toxic?
Debra’s Answer
I’m correcting this post on 10 April 2016 after a reader pointed out an error I had made. Below is the corrected version.
At www.piggypaint.com/product-info/#.U3tmHSjaPZc they say:
Piggy Paint is specially formulated from God’s natural ingredients and dries to a hard, durable finish. There are no toxic chemicals; it’s free of formaldehyde, toluene, phthalates, Bisphenol A, ethyl acetate and acetone….Say good-bye to harsh, smelly chemicals and hello to Piggy Paint…it’s as Natural as Mud!
They also say it is nontoxic and safe for use during pregnancy, and that you can even paint the toes of babies.
Here’s the ingredient list on their website
Piggy Paint Ingredients Water, acrylates copolymers, melia azadirachta (neem oil). May contain: mica, red 34 lake, ultramarines, titanium dioxide, iron oxide pigments.
But I called them on the phone and they immediately emailed a different ingredient list to me (see below)
Now, toxic or not, I must take issue with their statement “It’s as Natural as Mud!” I don’t know how they are evaluating their ingredients to make this claim, but this nail polish is most definitely NOT natural!
Of the list below, the only natural ingredients are water, neem oil, mica, and copper. It’s full of plastics and coal tar colors.
Yes, it’s better than most nail polish, which contain formaldehyde, etc. But it’s not natural.
Is it toxic? Depends on your definition. Coal tar colors are not considered hazardous but have a long list of health effects associated with them. They were one of the first chemicals I eliminated when I wrote my very first book on toxics in consumer products in 1984.
The acrylate copolymer SDS says that it is not toxic and EWG’s Skin Deep says it’s hazard level is “low.” And The International Journal of Toxicology also reports that it can produce irritation, but little else.
I think the question here is where does one draw the line about what is hazardous? I won’t eat coal-tar colors because they cause cancer, so I would hardly call them safe or natural. But bound up in acrylate copolymer (itself made from crude oil) would they leach into your body? I don’t know.
For anyone sensitive to petrochemicals, this would not be a good choice. It’s not a product I feel 100% confident about recommending.
Kitchen Sprayer hose
Question from di
I recently bought a replacement for my kitchen sink faucet, including the sprayer.
The sprayer hose smells very bad. From my experience in buying shower replacement head with a hose attached, this takes forever to off-gas. I have some hanging in my garage that still smell.
I just noticed this in the last few years. The replacements I’ve gotten in the past did not smell this badly.
What would I look for when choosing these products, as far as the hose attached to the sprayers?
thanks.
di
Debra’s Answer
I called a supplier of kitchen hoses and he said that you need to buy a hose that goes with the brand of sprayer. Nowadays, he said, the hoses are made either from metal or nylon. So I don’t know what would be smelling so bad about the hose.
My suggestion would be if you are buying a sprayer that you check out the material of the hose ahead of time. Neither metal nor nylon should have an odor.
Are Organic Cotton Innerspring Mattresses Hard Like Cotton Futons?
Question from andie
Just found out about the EOS mattress, and others (Essentials) from Naturepedic. My question is: do you think the organic cotton batting (which is normally very firm) would be ‘softened’ any, by the springs in the system? Their website is terrific and shows springs with a layer of cotton/batting, then more springs. Perhaps this would solve the problem of organic cotton feeling so darn hard ?? Or would wool and springs (no cotton) be better?
Thanks!
Debra’s Answer
These beds are very comfortable, like any innerspring mattress. The cotton is only a relatively thin layer over the boxsprings, rather than the entire mattress. So yes, it would solve the problem of organic cotton being “so darn hard.” And cotton IS hard! One of the first natural mattresses I had was a cotton futon on the floor and it was HARD.
Wool and springs wouldn’t be better than cotton and springs, but FYI a 1005 wool mattress on wood slats is very comfortable. I’ve been sleeping on one for more than fifteen years and I love it.
If you want an innerspring mattress, Naturepedic is an excellent choice.
