Art | Resources
Dental Bridge
Question from Marshmallowcottage
I just got a partial bridge and made sure that it didn’t have BPA or PVC in it. I’ve had it for almost a week and just started with symptoms. My tongue underneath and my bottom inside gums are starting to burn. Also, my salivary glands under my tongue are swollen and painful.
I have MCS and this bridge is necessary for eating and chewing. What kind of other plastics, acrylics are used in a dental piece and is there any way to detoxify it so it doesn’t bother me.
Debra’s Answer
Readers, any experience with this? What did you do?
Marsha, did you get this from a biologic dentist or a regular dentist? If a regular dentist, I recommend you check with a biologic dentist who is familiar with safer materials.
International Academy of Biological Dentistry & Medicine
Beyond Organic: How BioDynamic Agriculture Contributes to Good Health
Today my guest is Thea Maria Carlson, Director of Programs of the Biodynamic Association. We’ll be talking about the basics of biodynamics and how to find and choose biodynamic foods. Biodynamics is a spiritual-ethical-ecological approach to agriculture, food production and nutrition. It was first developed in the early 1920s based on the spiritual insights and practical suggestions of the Austrian writer, educator and social activist Dr. Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). Today, the biodynamic movement encompasses thousands of successful gardens, farms, vineyards and agricultural operations of all kinds and sizes on all continents, in a wide variety of ecological and economic settings. Biodynamic farmers strive to create a diversified, balanced farm ecosystem that generates health and fertility as much as possible from within the farm itself. Biodynamic practitioners also recognize and strive to work in cooperation with the subtle influences of the wider cosmos on soil, plant and animal health. Thea is a farmer, organizer, educator, and artist with roots in California and the Midwest. She joined the Biodynamic Association while farming with Turtle Creek Gardens in 2011, and continued to balance both roles until she became Director of Programs in 2013. Her previous work includes teaching gardening, nutrition and beekeeping; developing community and educational gardens in California, Chicago and Maine; organizing strategic communications training programs for nonprofit leaders; and farming with Blue House Farm and Mendocino Organics. Thea earned a B.S. in Earth Systems from Stanford University, a permaculture design certificate from Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, and is trained in the Art of Hosting. www.biodynamics.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Beyond Organic: How Biodynamic Agriculture Contributes to Good Health
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Thea Maria Carlson
Date of Broadcast: May 14, 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. It’s Wednesday, May 14, 2014, and it’s a beautiful, early summer day, late spring day, here in Clearwater, Florida.
I just want to say that to be toxic-free isn’t one, single thing. It’s a whole scale of things. You could start out being toxic on one end, and then you could move to using a less toxic product that’s still made from non-renewable petroleum, but it’s not harmful to health.
Then you could move into something made from renewable, natural material.
It keeps moving to practices more and more healthy, more and more sustainable, more and more natural, more and more in alignment with nature. And each time you take those steps in that direction, then you become more able to sustain health and sustain life because in order to sustain our health, we also have to sustain the life of the planet, the health of the planet.
And today, we’re going to be talking about one of those very top-of-the-chart practices that contributes to the sustainability of the planet, and contributes to our health. And that is biodynamics.
Biodynamic farming is a practice.
I’m going to let our guest explain about it. My guest is Thea Maria Carlson. She’s the Director of Programs of the Biodynamic Association.
Hi, Thea.
THEA MARIA CARLSON: Hi.
DEBRA: How are you?
THEA MARIA CARLSON: I’m good. It’s not quite as springy up here in Wisconsin, but we’re managing.
DEBRA: Good. First of all, explain what biodynamics is.
THEA MARIA CARLSON: Biodynamics is an approach to agriculture that treats the farm or garden as a living organism. So it’s really taking an opposite view to the mechanistic view that industrial agriculture takes, of the soil and plant just being this production machine where you put in a certain amount of input and you get the certain amount of production, as being all the soil, the plants, the animals, everything as working together as a living organism and trying to nurture and foster those life processes to create a healthy organism that then creates healthy food.
DEBRA: Good. And how did biodynamics originate?
THEA MARIA CARLSON: Biodynamics originated through the work of Rudolf Steiner, who was an Austrian philosopher, renaissance man. He did a lot of work in his life on a number of areas of society. He worked on education, medicine, the arts, architecture, and he also worked on agriculture.
He was approached by a number of farmers towards the end of his career who had known his work. They were noticing that the vitality and health of their land was decreasing as the use of chemical fertilizers was starting, and pesticides. As these various industrial agriculture practices were trying to take hold, they were starting to notice the decline in the health of their plants, animals and their lands.
And so they asked Rudolf Steiner for some guidance as to how they could renew the health of their farms.
And so Rudolf Steiner gave a series of lectures in 1924 to this group of farmers. And out of the various […] that he gave through his lectures, biodynamics, a form of agriculture, has developed and evolved over the past 90 years.
DEBRA: How did yourself get interested in this?
THEA MARIA CARLSON: Well, I became interested in food and sustainable agriculture while I was studying abroad in college. I was in Brazil, studying Amazonian Ecology and Natural Resource Management. I had been really focused on environmental conservation.
When I was in rainforest and saw the tension between growing food and saving the rainforest, I really wanted to understand how to grow food in a way that wasn’t depleting the land the way most of the agriculture has done around the world, including in the Amazon, and how to grow food in a regenerative way.
And so I looked for a farm to work on, and I ended up on a biodynamics farm. I wasn’t seeking it out, but it sort of found me.
DEBRA: So you now work for the Biodynamic Association, but are you currently farming?
THEA MARIA CARLSON: I’m not currently farming. So that first biodynamic farm I worked on, it was 11 years ago. And then I did work with full gardens and urban agriculture for a number of years. And then I was farming full time for a couple of years, and then started working part time for the Biodynamic Association, coordinating the Apprenticeship Program that the Association has.
And then as we’ve been developing more programs, I kept taking on more programs, and eventually, my position became full time. So I am now taking a break from farming. I have a garden in my yard, but I’m in the office full time.
DEBRA: I found biodynamics many, many years ago. And I first noticed it, I think, because I saw it on a label, a food product label, and I don’t remember what the food product was. But I have also been to Germany, and I had noticed that in Germany, a lot of food is grown biodynamically more than here in the United States.
So as we’re talking about this, I just wanted to make clear that we’re talking about not only a way of farming, but as consumers, we can look on the label, and find products. As we go through the show later on, I want us to talk about how people can find biodynamic foods to purchase—what to look for, where to look for that.
But first I want to just tell more about what biodynamics is.
I consider is to be a step-up from organic. Both organic and biodynamics don’t use pesticides. That’s a big thing that they have in common.
But start to tell us some stuff about biodynamics, so that people can understand why biodynamics would be more sustainable than simply organic.
THEA MARIA CARLSON: There’s a broad spectrum within organics, especially since the introduction of the USDA Organic Standard. There are certain things that organic guarantees; and other things it doesn’t.
So it guarantees you won’t have certain pesticides or fertilizers. But a lot of times, as there are more and more big industrial, organic farms, they’re basically substituting the less toxic, more naturally-derived inputs, but still putting in the farm in the same system. So they’re not necessarily building the health of the soil. They’re still feeding the plants.
One of the thing that’s unique about biodynamics—although there are certainly organic farms that do this as well—biodynamics integrate crops and livestock. So there’s a balancing of the nutrients on the farm.
So you’re neither importing a lot of fertilizers if you’re a plant-based farm or having to deal with a lot of manure waste like an animal-based farm would use. There’s a balancing, so that the manure of the animals is feeding the soil and providing nutrition for the plants. But you’re also, as much as possible, growing the feeds of the animals on the farm.
So, it creates more of a closed-loop system, which then can develop its own integrity and health on its own.
Biodynamic farms are also very diversified. There are a number of organic farms that are diversified. But also I’ve been to Southern California and seen acres, and acres and acres of carrots, organic-grown carrots that you could get all over the country. So there’s nothing in the organic standard that says you can’t just have a mono-culture of one crop where biodynamic farming—go ahead.
DEBRA: I think that’s a really big, important distinction for us to talk about, is that system of monocropping versus having a whole system. And so you said earlier, you can grow organic, but you’re still feeding the plants, and not feeding the soil.
We need to take a break in a few seconds here. And when we come back, I’d like us to talk about that particular difference because I think it’s a really, really big one, and of course, talking about animals and plants being in a symbiotic relationship with each other. Well, that’s the way it is in nature.
And we’ll talk about that when we come back.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Thea Maria Carlson. She’s a the Director of Programs at the Biodynamic Association, and we’re learning about biodynamic farming and gardening, and how you can eat biodynamic food.
We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Thea Maria Carlson. She’s with the Biodynamic Association, and we’re talking about biodynamic farming and gardening.
So Thea, just compare the two, what is it like to be on an organic farm that’s monocropping versus the diversity that happens in a biodynamic farm.
THEA MARIA CARLSON: I think something that a lot of people who visit biodynamic farms notice is something that’s a little hard to put your finger on, but it’s a kind of vitality that I think comes from that diversity, but also from some of the other biodynamic practices.
So it’s just a sense of vibrancy and health within. Biodynamic farms really do focus on diversity. That doesn’t mean that they can’t have a specific crop that they focus on. There are some biodynamic farms that mainly have vegetables, but they’ll also have […] that will compliment and balance that out.
There are other biodynamic farms that might focus on meat production. There’s diversity both of the crops that are grown for food, but also including areas for wildlife and natural predators […]
So when you set foot on a biodynamic farm, you’ll probably see a lot more different species of plants and animals than you might see on a farm that’s not biodynamic.
DEBRA: On a biodynamic farm, tell us what some of the practices are. I know that there are different things like using different kinds of fertilizers or things like that. I have nothing against organic. I think that organic is a wonderful thing, so I’m not trying to make it sound like organic isn’t a good thing to do.
It’s certainly better than spraying pesticides and artificial fertilizers and just completely destroying the soil.
But this is a step beyond that because it’s a whole different way of thinking.
So can you tell us more about the general viewpoint that would be different?
THEA MARIA CARLSON: So as I mentioned before, there’s a view of the farm as a living organism, so really trying to nurture the health of the whole organism, and through that, having the products that you’re producing be as healthy as possible.
There is an emphasis on building the health of the soil using compost and manure and cover crops, and compost to plant matter as well. Focusing on those for fertility rather than just putting on mineral fertilizers. There are a lot of organic mineral-based fertilizers that don’t have the whole living composted elements to them.
In addition to that, there are some preparations that are used in more medicinal qualities. There are six preparations that are added to the compost pile to add specific properties to that. And they are each made with different medicinal herbs that
some people might be familiar with like chamomile, yarrow, dandelion. Each of them adds a different energy and work with different micronutrients within the compost pile.
So, each of those is added in homeopathic quantities to the compost pile. And then through the compost, it’s spread over the land.
There’s also a couple of […] preparations that are used on the soil and the plants. There’s a corn manure preparation. That is one of the things that people tend to hear about when they hear about biodynamic farming. So there’s manure of cows that is buried in the cow farm in the fall, and then dug up in the spring. And then that’s diluted with water and stirred rhythmically, and then sprayed on the soil usually in the spring (but it can be other times). And that really helps to bring about more life in the soil and support the fertility of the soil.
So it’s not a fertilizer in the sense that there’s not a large, actual quantity of nutrients in it. But it’s more like an energetic, homeopathic way to encourage balance of the soil.
That works with the earth and the water elements. And then there’s a polarity to that. There’s […] the summer months and […] crystals. And that is sprayed in the air over the plants. And that helps bring in warmth and light […] of the plants.
DEBRA: What’s so interesting to me, I just have a personal interest in nature, and this is part of why I was so interested in biodynamics when I found it, or even found it, is because many years ago, I just looked around at our industrial culture, and I said, “Wait a minute. There’s something wrong here.”
And I thought, “Where is life actually flourishing?”
And I said, “Oh, I need to look to nature and see what nature is doing.”
And one of the things about biodynamics is that, and this for me, is one of the differences I see between organic and biodynamic, we’ve said this but I want to say it in a different way, organic really is taking the industrial model and seeing how to make it natural. It’s natural industrial that there’s still this thought that you have to kill the insects. And so there are natural pesticides.
There’s still the thought that there has to be a fertilizer. And so there’s a natural fertilizer.;
But it’s all still about industrial inputs into an industrial agribusiness.
And I’m not saying that every organic farmer is like this. As Thea said earlier, there’s a wide spectrum of organic farmers, everything from huge agribusiness organic, to small family farmers, to community-supported agriculture and things like that.
But it’s all based on our modern industrial model of having to have there be a fertilizer, having to have them be a pesticide and what are the acceptable ones to use that aren’t synthetic, that aren’t harmful.
Biodynamic is a completely different thing because it’s looking to see what nature is doing.
And so, as Thea is talking, she’s talking about not going to the store and buying manure in a bag. She’s talking about this farm takes the materials that are on the farm and doing these things.
I’m not saying they never buy anything, but I’m saying that the whole idea is that this is creating an ecosystem, and the food products being part of that ecosystem, which is just so, so different.
And I’m making a big deal out of this because this is the change we all need to go to, is to see ourselves as part of that ecosystem.
We’ll be right back. We’re going to go to break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Thea Maria Carlson from the Biodynamic Association, and stay with us.
Thea, I want to tell you that one of my favorite parts of biodynamics is the Stella Natura calendar. I have years of Stella Natura calendar sitting on my shelf because not only is biodynamics about awareness of our relationship to the natural world, but also about our relationship to the cosmos and recognizing things like the planets, the sun, the moon and everything.
It’s all affecting life on earth. And the Stella Natural calendar, the subtitle is Inspiration and Practical Advice for Gardeners, Working with Cosmic Rhythms.
And there are rhythms in the universe.
I think it’s a big stretch to think of ourselves as being part of this big environment of the earth, and even a bigger stretch to think of our earth as being part of the cosmos. But that’s how it is. That’s nature. It includes all of those things.
I just think it’s wonderful that biodynamics includes all of them too.
So if you go to Biodynamics.com, look for the tab about books and calendars, and take a look at the planting calendars because they’re very interesting. They have a lot of articles in them about gardening from month to month. And it just gives you a different perspective about life on earth. That’s a very interesting thing.
So you have a conference coming up. You want to tell us about that?
THEA MARIA CARLSON: Yes. We have a conference. Every other year, we hold a North American Biodynamic Conference. This is the year.
And this year, our conference theme will be farming for health. So it’s really taking up this question of how does farming, how can farming really foster the health of the land, the soil, the plants, the animals and the people.
And so we’re bringing together over 60 presenters who are going to be talking about all different aspects of this from how do we bring health and flavor to fruits to how do we really work with the health of livestock, how can we integrate livestock and different types of plant species, looking at the sources of healing in plants and the medicinal qualities of the biodynamic preparations I mentioned earlier, and looking at how those herbs can be helpful to human health, looking at compost and really what can bring high quality compost (not all compost is created the same) and dozens of other topics.
So it’s really a great opportunity to learn a lot more about these topics, whether someone is already farming, whether someone is a gardener, whether you’re just someone who’s interested in food and health and want to dig into these questions of what health really means, what is food quality really means, how can we go beyond just the macronutrients and the levels of vitamin C to what’s really going to give you something that’s going to nourish you and nourish your family.
DEBRA: As I’m listening to you, and I have the website up in front of me, I was considering this whole topic of farming for health. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that phrase before. Those two words are not usually in the same sentence.
There’s farming and then there’s health. And the farmers do what the farmers do, and then the consumers buy whatever is on the shelf. And then we go to the doctor, and the doctor is about health.
But the doctor is really not about health. The doctor is about handling the malfunctions of the body that come from not being aware of all of these other things.
And so this whole idea of food actually contributing to health, it’s not such a strange idea, but as you were talking, I was getting it in a different way because I think that a lot of people know that you need to eat the right foods in order to be healthy.
But if we stop and look at what is it that we’re eating, the vitality of the food, like I’m always going back to nature. If I was just in nature, if we didn’t have an industrial system, then what would I be eating, and I’d be out in the forest eating fruits and nuts and these kinds of things. But they would have an aliveness to them.
And if we just look at that aliveness quality, if somebody has grown something in their backyard and you go out to your backyard, and you pick that tomato off the vine, and it’s alive. But what we buy in the supermarket, whether it’s organic or not, is not so fresh, that nutrients and vitality are much lessened.
If we then take those ingredients and process them, and put it through a factory and have processed food, it’s even less vital.
And I think one of the lessons of biodynamics is that there is a vitality and an aliveness that really does contribute to health.
And that’s what’s missing from most of the food. We can get nutrients, but if we’re missing that aliveness of something, we’re not taking alive food and put it in our bodies, to make our bodies more alive.
Did I get that right?
And I think that that’s probably going to be a lot of what people are talking about at this conference. And that’s part of, as I said, what sets biodynamics apart for me because they’re really talking about how can we have this whole system of life be alive and thriving, and that includes all of us. I so admire biodynamics.
THEA MARIA CARLSON: One of our programs is a research program. And what we’re really working on right now is a pilot project for developing quality testing and quality research on farming methods.
So, even though you’re saying that […] you picked in the backyard is different from the tomato you buy at the supermarket, it’s different from tomatoes that’s canned, a lot of the traditional scientific analyses of the nutrition content and quality of those to say, “Oh, they’re all the same. There’s no difference.”
And so a lot of what biodynamics brings to the table and what we’re really trying to continue to develop through our research program is developing and utilizing ways that can detect those qualitative differences between those different kinds of foods that you can sense through your taste buds, and even using your taste buds as a qualitative analysis in a way.
DEBRA: Also, I find that food feels different to me in my body. Different qualities of foods will feel different. I will have a different kind of aliveness in my body depending on what I’ve eaten. It is an energetic thing. The food gives you energy that is beyond calories.
So we’re going to take another break, and when we come back, we’re going to talk about how people can find biodynamic food to purchase, and how they can find a local biodynamic farmer because once you taste this food, and feel this food, you’ll see a difference.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Thea Maria Carlson from the Biodynamic Association. And that’s at Biodynamics.com, lots of information on this website.
We’ll be right back.
So let’s talk about if you want to eat biodynamic food, how to find it. And so the first thing I think people should know about that is the Demeter Association. So tell us about that.
THEA MARIA CARLSON: The Demeter Association is the organization that certifies biodynamic farms and biodynamic products in the United States. It’s actually an international association. So there’s a Demeter International and then chapters in each country where there’s biodynamic certifications.
So, there’s an international agreement on the standards for certification. Farms can be certified, and then a specific products can be certified biodynamic as well.
In the United States, the UCSA Organic Standard is the baseline for Demeter Certification. So any farm that is certified biodynamic has also met the requirements for being certified organic. But then there are additional requirements for being Demeter-certified.
Some of the things they talked about, including crops and livestock, including wild areas, balancing the different parts of the farm, working with the preparations and things like that.
DEBRA: Actually, I was just looking at this page. I just clicked away from it. There are two certifications. There’s the Demeter Association, and then there’s the Stellar—I’m looking at a very tiny little thing, the Stellar Association. What’s the difference between these two?
THEA MARIA CARLSON: I believe that the Stellar Certification Service, they work with organic certification. So they can wrap together. If the farm wants to be certified organic and biodynamic, Stellar can do both for them.
But Demeter is the only organization that has the ability to certify a farmer or product biodynamic.
DEBRA: Good. And I know Demeter, it originated in Germany. It’s been around for a long time, even though it’s more recent here in America.
The Demeter Association, I was trying to find online a list of biodynamic foods and maybe there is one and I didn’t find it, but I am on the Demeter Association site, and that’s D-E-M-E-T-E-R hyphen USA dot org. Demeter-USA.org.
And they say, “Coming soon, a director of biodynamic farms and biodynamic products.”
But even on the page, there’s a slider which shows different brands that have biodynamic foods in them like wheat organic, biodynamic pasta. The Republic of Tea has some tea and herbs that are biodynamically grown now. Here’s Crofter’s Blueberries.
When you go to a natural food store and you see biodynamic on the label, then you know what that is.
You could also, if you’re looking for biodynamic cherries or whatever, you can just type in “biodynamic” and whatever it is that you’re looking for into your favorite search engine, and the brands of products or the biodynamic farms will come up.
And so if you’re looking for things that are organic, instead of just typing in “organic fruit,” looking for some place that sells organic online, you could also type in, “biodynamic” whatever, and you’ll get a biodynamic quality product as well.
I think that organic is getting to be very well-known and that people just type in organic this, organic that. But remember that biodynamic exists.
Search it out and see, if you see the difference, it’s a very interesting thing.
Well, we’ve got about five or six minutes left. The hour goes by so fast, and there’s always so much to talk about. Is there anything that you want to talk about that we haven’t covered?
THEA MARIA CARLSON: I would say if people are interested in learning more about biodynamic [interventions], on our website, we do have a number of resources, educational resources. We have a monthly e-newsletter. There’s a calendar of events if you’re interested in learning more about it. There are different events happening all over the country. And then there’s our conference on November 13th to 15th in Louisville, Kentucky.
We also are supported by members. And so if you like what you hear about biodynamics, and you’d like to support it, you can become a member of the association. We have a journal that comes out [twice] a year where you can get more in-depth articles. And then, you’re also helping us do more education, community building and research to keep growing the biodynamic movement in the United States and North America.
DEBRA: I think that’s a really important thing to support. And I support it by buying my calendar. Tiny support.
One of the things that has struck me recently, back on Earth Day, I did a show about Rachel Carson, who wrote Silent Spring. And that was such an important breakthrough book about toxics. And yet, I was very excitedly going around and talking to people, even people that I know in my circle.
I was saying, “I’m doing this show on Rachel Carson. I’m doing a show on Rachel Carson. Her biographer is going to be on and the former head of the Rachel Carson Institute.”
And they’re looking at me blankly like, “Who is Rachel Carson? I’ve never heard of this person.”
Also, even, again, in the circle of people that I know, they wouldn’t know who Rudolf Steiner is. People don’t know who Henry David Thoreau is.
I’m sorry listeners, if you’re listening and don’t know who these people are. All these people have done very important things. Rudolf Steiner had a magnificent viewpoint about our relationship as human beings in nature.
Henry David Thoreau, way back at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, he said, “I’m going to go live out by the edge of a lake.” And he wrote a whole book called Walden, about his experiment living in nature rather than living in the industrial society which was encroaching his home in Concord, Massachusetts at that time.
And there are all these ideas, all these ways of thinking and knowing that are just disappearing because people don’t talk about them.
I think that these are the exact ideas that we should be basing our future on, in my opinion, that we should not be forgetting them, that we should be working on them, we should be taking these ideas and doing as you’re doing, to be using them in the world, and teaching them to people, and studying and exploring them, and moving them forward.
And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you’re doing because we need to not lose this. We need to expand it.
THEA MARIA CARLSON: Yes, and there are so many people who are now interested in it. And so it’s great because more and more people are waking up and saying, “I want to learn more about this. I want to do something about this.”
So there’s a building movement and it’s a great time to get involved with this.
DEBRA: I think so. It’s very encouraging to me to see over the years that I’ve been studying these things personally, to see the things that I found out about 20 or 30 years ago are now getting much more popular, and much more known, and are starting to become part of our culture.
So this is very, very good. Very good.
What else is on your website that we could talk about? I’m sitting right here.
So tell us about some of your programs that people might be interested in.
THEA MARIA CARLSON: So our main programs, we have an education program. We have a research program. And then we do community building.
I started out working mainly in education, and then my work has expanded to the other programs. We have a farmer training program, which is a two-year program that combines on-farm training with classroom studies.
We have about 45 mentor farms in the United States and Canada. And right now, just about 40 apprentices are enrolled in that program. So that’s a great thing for people who are really wanting to become the next generation of biodynamic farmers. It’s our core education program.
We also have a group of farm-based educators that we work with. So they’re working with kids on farms, helping them to nature and understand how life works and get connected to their food. And so we have a learning community of folks who are working specifically with children and youths on farms.
Our research program, as I’ve mentioned before, we’ve been working to support the development of a qualitative testing network and research projects that will work with farmers using different biodynamic, organic, conventional practices, looking at really how the different farming practices affect the quality of food, and looking at the quality from a lot of different angles.
We have our conferences every other year. And that moves around the country. So we try to move to a different [region] each time. And then we have regional events as well. We did one in California this January, a one-day […] Ecological
Farming Conference that happens there every year.
Then we have the journals that I mentioned where we publish articles and different research, and the monthly e-newsletter.
We also have a directory for our members which includes individual listing, so people can find each other if you have similar interests in biodynamic bee-keeping, fruit-growing, or whatever. There are also farms and businesses which are listed in that directory as well.
And we also have a number of forums on our website for people to post or find internships and apprenticeship listings, job opportunities, land-sharing opportunities, or just to post topics really that’s biodynamic.
DEBRA: I see all these as you’re talking about those. And this is just great. This is great. I just really encourage everybody who’s listening to go to the website, Biodynamics.com and take a look at this.
Thanks so much for being with me. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well.
Buttons
Question from SVE
Hi Debra,
I sew a lot but haven’t bought buttons for a long time.
These are the two kinds of buttons I sent for. I know they aren’t green – polyester and nylon – but are the dyes non-toxic to the touch? Thanks!
1 – Jesse James & Co., Inc. – www.dressitup.com – “Our buttons are from nylon. They do not contain any phthalate. We hand dye our buttons on our premises and use Rit powdered dye to dye our buttons black. It is non-toxic and lead free.” Marsha Pangrass – Jesse James & Co., Inc. – Phone: 610-419-9880
Email: mpangrassjjco@gmail.com and mpangrass@rcn.com
2- Hill Creek Designs – “Our buttons are made from a polyester plastic. They are dyed with Aljo Dye so the color is not painted on and won’t flake off. Janice dyes them like you would dye a tie-dyed shirt, just color and hot water.” Janet – Info
Debra’s Answer
To the best of my knowledge, these would not be toxic to touch.
There are many buttons made of natural materials, including wood, shells, nuts, and other natural materials.
Here are a few websites
www.ecobutterfly.com/naturalbuttons/
www.fabric.com/notions-patterns-buttons-natural-material-buttons.aspx
www.lotsofbuttons.com/en/collections/natural-buttons
This website doesn’t sell buttons, but take a look. They are gorgeous and a material to become familiar with in case you see it in a store. www.corozobuttons.com/
Health Effects of Modern Man-Made Electromagnetic Field and Functional Impairment Electrosensitivity
My guest today is Olle Johansson, a world-leading authority in the field of EMF radiation and health effects. If you are concerned about EMFs and their health effects, tune in and listen to one of the most knowledgeable men on the planet on this subject. Professor Johansson is associate professor, head of the Experimental Dermatology Unit, Department of Neuroscience, at the Karolinska Institute (famous for its Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine) in Stockholm, Sweden, and yes, we will be talking with him in Sweden. He has also been a professor in basic and clinical neuroscience at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. He has published more than 500 original articles, reviews, book chapters and conference reports within the field of basic and applied neuroscience. His studies have been widely recognized in the public media, including newspapers, radio and TV as well as on the Internet, both nationally as well as internationally. He has participated in more than 300 congresses and symposia as an invited speaker, and with free contributions and as an invited ‘observer’ at an additional 100. Professor Johansson is a member of, i.a., The European Neuroscience Association (ENA), The European Society for Dermatological Research (ESDR), IBAS Users of Scandinavia (IBUS), The International Brain Research Organization (IBRO), The International Society for Stereology (ISS), The New York Academy of Sciences, The Royal Microscopical Society (RMS), Scandinavian Society for Electron Microscopy (SCANDEM), The Skin Pharmacology Society (SPS), Society for Neuroscience, Svenska Fysiologföreningen, Svenska Intressegruppen för Grafisk Databehandling (SIGRAD), Svenska Läkaresällskapet, and the Svenska Sällskapet för Automatiserad Bildanalys (SSAB). ki.se/en/neuro/johansson-laboratory
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Health Effects of Man-Made Electromagnetic Field & Functional Impairment Electrosensitivity
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Olle Johansson
Date of Broadcast: May 13, 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.
It is Tuesday, May 13th, 2014 and I am just going to get right to my guest today because he is speaking to us all the way from Stockholm, Sweden and he has a lot to say.
He is Professor Olle Johansson. He’s a world leading authority in the field of electromagnetic fields radiation and health effects. And he sent me a list of about 500 articles he has written on this. I mean he really is one of the most knowledgeable on EMFs I have ever met. Actually, I haven’t met him yet. I emailed with him, but I am going to meet him right now and so are you.
Hi, Professor Johansson. Thank you so much for being here.
OLLE JOHANSSON: Oh, it is a great honor to be on your show today and it is going to be very interesting to hear your questions.
DEBRA: Oh, good. I am going to be very interested in hearing your answers. So the first question I have for you is how did you get interested originally in this field in the beginning?
OLLE JOHANSSON: Oh, that was actually thanks to radio. I very rarely myself listen to radio. I have to admit that. But in the early 1980s, for some reason late evening, I was listening to the radio in my laboratory and I hadn’t done that for months actually.
And suddenly, I hear in the program a woman with the name […] from one of the trade union secretariats here in Sweden. She was talking about what, at that time, was called screen dermatitis, meaning people that got skin irritations primarily in their face, arms, hands, upper chest when they were sitting in the very newly introduced PC computers.
DEBRA: I remember that. I remember people talking about that then.
OLLE JOHANSSON: Yes. I got very interested because she was asking for expertise in neurology. And I am not a neurologist, but a neuroscientist. So I thought, “Well, close enough. Why don’t I give her a call?”
So, I called her after the program and said that I was prepared to help her investigate these skin problems in people sitting in front of these computer screens and also ordinary television sets.
She got very excited and we put ourselves together with a physicist from one of the universities here in Sweden. He was an expert also in the electromagnetic fields and exposure and measurements and the whole technical side.
I remember, we were very enthusiastic. We met at my office here in Stockholm at the Karolinska Institutet and we drew our plans for different projects that we would apply money for and start investigating.
And no one obviously then realized that a little bit further down the road, around the corner, there were forces in play that actually didn’t want us to investigate that. But that came later on. We started out in grand style.
And the very first project we actually did was to, in a double blind fashion, investigate different types of skin using advanced microscopy, looking for cells and the content of different biologically active molecules. And we looked at skin from normal healthy volunteers. We looked at skin from the people that got the skin rashes in front of the computer screens. And we also had different patient categories like rosacea and seborrheic keratosis.
And we then, in a double blind fashion, tried to pick out which looked normal and abnormal.
And to make a long story short, to our enormous surprise, it came out very easily to pick out the persons with the screen dermatitis, what we today call electro-sensitivity or electro-hypersensitivity because they had dramatic alterations in their cells of different types.
DEBRA: What types of alterations were in their cells?
OLLE JOHANSSON: Some cell types were more or less gone and some others have increased dramatically in number. And you have to remember that, at that time, I was a complete amateur. I didn’t quite understand what I was looking at.
So, I showed pictures to other experts in the clinical dermatology, clinical immunology radiation damages, et cetera. And they helped us. It was very relevant that what we saw was early prolonged stages of classic radiation damage—and with that, I mean what you would have seen if you, for instance, were exposed from an atomic bomb or from other forms of radio-nuclides or overexposure to X-rays or overexposure to strong ultraviolet light.
But they haven’t, these persons, been closed to any radioactivity or X-rays or anything like that. They have just been sitting in front of computer screens, television sets and started to report skin irritations, redness, numbness, pain, pricking sensations, et cetera. And at that time, we called it “screen dermatitis,” later on, as “electro-hypersensitivity.”
And as you may remember, the general explanation at that time was that the reason people felt these skin irritations was because of people like yourself. When journalists, reporters, radio hosts, television program hosts and so on started to report on that, it was believed that the mass media hysteria was developed. It was a mass media psychosis.
But of course, that could be very easily disproven by using, for instance, rats. And rats develop the very same kind of skin alterations. And with all due respect, rats do not listen to radio. They do not read newspapers. They do not watch television.
And still they got the same radiation damages as the persons with electro-hypersensitivity.
DEBRA: Okay, so is there a particular description? Aside from getting the symptoms, how would you describe a typical person with electro-hypersensitivity? Do they have a particular history?
OLLE JOHANSSON: Yeah, that’s a very, very important and very good question. And the simple and quick answer would be anyone.
And as you probably know, there are a lot of very famous people, including for instance the former World Health Organization President Gro, Harlem Brundtland who also was the Prime Minister of Norway, she is a typical electro-hypersensitive person, meaning that she could still work on, she could still manage her life, but with a few alterations.
And then you have a scale from people with very few problems to people that are really handicapped by their electro-hypersensitivity. And from a general point of view, around 70% to 80% start with sensations from their skin and from eyes, from the mouth for instance. And of course, these are the external boundaries towards the rest of the universe. Where you have your skin, your cells stops and the rest of the universe starts. It works like an antenna picking up changes in the environment.
And I very much like the title of your show, Toxic Free because maybe these people, in that way, functions as the classical canary bird in the coal mine telling us that something in the environment is wrong. And they are wise enough to take themselves out of the situation and avoid getting close to computer screens, mobile phones, low energy light bulbs.
But the rest of the population, like myself, who do not have any such sensations, we will keep on using all these gadgets.
And now I am jumping ahead a lot because now we come into the 1990s and the 2000s because then more and more focus was being put on, for instance, long term effects such as neurological diseases and of course cancers—particularly brain tumors and childhood leukemia.
DEBRA: Okay, we need to take a break and we will talk more when we come back from the break. But I have something I want to say when we come back and then I will let you talk about.
OLLE JOHANSSON: Okay.
DEBRA: You are listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I am Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Dr. Olle—how do you say your name? Am I saying it right?
OLLE JOHANSSON: Olle Johansson.
DEBRA: Thank you. That’s who he is.
OLLE JOHANSSON: But you can say Olle Johansson, that’s all right.
DEBRA: Olle Johansson. And he is from Stockholm, Sweden and we will tell you more about him when we come back to. So stay with us.
DEBRA: You are listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I am Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Professor Olle Johansson. How was that?
OLLE JOHANSSON: Oh, that’s good.
DEBRA: Good, okay. He’s a world leading authority in the field of EMF radiation. Now, he’s with the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden and that is famous for its Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. So this is a very prestigious international organization that he is with and he is very well-recognized in this field.
What I wanted to say in response to what you are saying earlier about the canaries, one of the things that I found in my work with toxic chemicals is that when I started being aware of toxic chemical dangers, it was at a time when people were talking about people being chemically sensitive as if we were a special group of people and that it wasn’t affecting anybody else, except for this little group of people who were chemically sensitive.
And so when I found out that I was responding physically to exposures to toxic chemicals, they didn’t really call them toxic chemicals at the time. They just said chemicals. So there was something wrong with us because everybody else could tolerate them. So there was nothing wrong with them because we were the only ones that we are getting sick.
Now, what I found when I started researching was that it wasn’t just that I was getting sick because of some otherwise healthy materials. I was getting sick because what I was being exposed to then that was making me sick were poisons. They were recognized poisons that were not being acknowledged in the consumer marketplace.
And I see that it’s very similar with electromagnetic fields now because there’s now a designation. And I am not saying it is wrong to designate this way, but there is a designation that there is a group of people who are electro-hypersensitive.
And yet, the way I see it is and I think that you would agree with them that these health effects, as you said, even happen to rats. And so it is not just a select group of people. These things are happening to everyone. And I know that even myself is like, “I don’t have symptoms that I know of that are related to EMFs.” And so I say, “Oh, I don’t need to do anything about it, but I do need to do something about it because it is affecting my health.”
Whether I see it or not, sometimes there are long term things, which you are about to tell us about.
OLLE JOHANSSON: That’s a very, very important comment of yours. And there are so many things I would like to pick up on.
DEBRA: Okay.
OLLE JOHANSSON: I today received a paper that gives a big yes to you. It’s about “metabolic and genetic screening” of electromagnetic hypersensitive subjects as well as subjects about chemical sensitivity. And as you say, they have deranged or rearranged chemical and genetic make-ups. And so they are affected.
And the question is of course which is primary cause and which is the secondary cause.
Then to go to normal healthy volunteers, we did in the late 1990s and early 2000s a study which really surprised us, I could tell you. Namely, we had put normal healthy volunteers in front of ordinary television sets, ordinary computer screens. We exposed them. No one reported any problems, whatsoever.
A few of these are students. The students said that it was a little bit boring to sit with their back to computer screens and television sets for eight hours. They had nothing. They didn’t anything in the skin, no rashes, no irritations, no pain, nothing.
But when we looked in the microscope, they showed alterations after approximately two hours as if they would have been sitting close to X-ray machines or radioactivity. And they were not at all feeling this. But the body had reacted.
As you say, that was the huge warning signal because everyone nowadays is using mobile phones and wireless indoor phones, routers, Wi-Fi, computers, et cetera. And maybe we are looking ahead of a huge collapse, medical collapse when all these people have been worn out from this constant exposure.
And the question is of course, what do we have in a long term run, around the corner?
And I do hope of course that I am wrong and that all scientists are wrong, that there isn’t any risk, whatsoever. But today, I am flooded every day with an overwhelming amount of reports. So it’s hard to really keep pace. And more and more and more are pointing into one single direction that these exposures, they are to be seen as […] toxic one. They are not good for us.
And if you look around the biology, you probably know that there have been a huge number of studies on different experimental animals, on organs, on tissue pieces, on cells, on molecules. And to make a very long story short, no one of these—no rats, no mice, no cells, no one of them—should buy and use these gadgets. But we force them to do it because we buy it and all our cells in our body are exposed and cells everywhere are exposed.
There are some extremely interesting studies from France, for instance, where tomato plants were exposed. It’s a very, very well controlled study, excellent study. And it turned out that these tomato plants, when they look at them and I quote from the French scientists, they said, “They reacted as if we would have crushed them with a hammer.”
DEBRA: Oh, my God!
OLLE JOHANSSON: So it is the same molecular sequence of damaged molecules including molecule called calmodulin. And they hadn’t touched them. They have to allow them to be in pretty low exposure from […] That was it. And still, they reacted in such a dramatic way.
So, what we saw in the 1980s then is mimicked, more or less, identically in a lot of other studies. And as I say, nowadays, I am pretty stressed every morning when I get to work because my computer looks like a pregnant woman more or less. It’s more like going to burst with information because scientists all over the world are producing so many papers nowadays and I am just amazed. And I can only really talk about the Swedish authorities, but I am amazed how rapidly all these studies are swept aside. And I just don’t know why.
DEBRA: I have an idea about that I want to talk to you about when we come back from the break. You are listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I am Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest is Professor Olle Johansson from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden.
We are talking about EMFs. He has written more than 500 articles about this. So he really knows this stuff. I am sure you can all tell by listening to him. So we will be right back.
DEBRA: I am Debra Lynn Dadd and we are having a very interesting discussion today with my guest, Professor Olle Johansson from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden.
What I wanted to say was that I think that a lot of the problem with recognizing the damage from EMFs is you can’t see it.
And I think that that’s part of the problem with toxic chemicals too because in both areas, we have a tremendous number of people who are looking at the studies and saying, “Oh well, that’s interesting,” and doing nothing because they don’t think that it applies to them.
But what people don’t understand about EMFs and chemicals is that there can be internal damage going. There can be damage to cells. There can be damage to DNA.
Actually, if I remember correctly I think I read something somewhere about how that the damage happens way before the symptoms occur, just any kind of damage to your body. The symptoms are one of the last things that happen, but you can be sick way before you start having symptoms.
And so what’s happening in our society at large globally is that we are being exposed to toxic chemicals and EMFs, which are causing damage to our bodies that we don’t see. And that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It just means that people aren’t to the point of symptoms yet.
And when we get to that point of symptoms, I think that there’s going to be a point where the world recognized after many years of everybody smoking cigarettes that it takes 30 years to develop cancer from cigarettes. At any moment, it could be 30 years from when we started using solvent. I don’t remember the year.
When I was a child, we didn’t have all these electronic gadgets. And so there’s going to be a time period where suddenly, we are going to start seeing the results of this like we started making the connection between cigarettes and cancer. What do you think about that?
OLLE JOHANSSON: It is true indeed. Then you also have to remember if it takes 30 years from the initial transformation at the cellular level to develop a cancer, maybe it took yet another 20 or 30 years before that to instigate, for instance, DNA damage which has been shown for exposure from mobile phone, telephony for instance.
And then we are talking about an exposure that happened maybe when you were a baby. You were exposed to the electromagnetic fields. You got the damage to your DNA. But it took time before it really turned into a cancer transformation at the cellular level. And then the tumor and such needs to build up to a level where a clinician can tell you, “I am so sorry. I have something to talk with you about.”
DEBRA: Yes.
OLLE JOHANSSON: So the span could be enormous. Also you have to remember there are studies pointing to that there could be transgenerational effects so that things may be shown later on in generations.
For instance, there was a very famous Greek study where they looked on fertility. And to make a long story short again, in the first, second, third and fourth generation, they didn’t see anything. But in the fifth generation, the fertility was basically just gone and the population on mice used was becoming fertile, meaning that our grand, grand, grand, grand children may be infertile due to something we did in 2014. And then it is too late to call back and say, “Hey please, could you stop doing this?”
DEBRA: Right, exactly right. And so why don’t you tell us about the Precautionary Principle?
OLLE JOHANSSON: That is something that is used sometimes. And as you know, myself and others, we feel very strongly it should be used now, especially since we are talking about toys. I mean they are not life necessities like food, water, air to breathe, love, compassion and understanding. These gadgets are toys.
And the Precautionary Principle then states that you should take precaution if you cannot rule out any form of risk. And you should remember that for instance, the telecom manufacturers as well as the operators, they tell you to keep mobile phone or similar gadget at least one inch away from your body.
DEBRA: It does that.
OLLE JOHANSSON: Yeah, the telecom operators and manufacturers. For instance, when you buy a mobile phone, in the thick booklet you get, somewhere it will say that you have to keep it at least one inch away from your body, meaning that you can never ever touch it.
DEBRA: That’s right.
OLLE JOHANSSON: And it is very intelligent. In Sweden, we have a completely different legal system than you have in United States. Here, you can never win against the company or anything like that. You can never get any money, anything. So here, companies are safe.
But of course, in the United States, a private person can enter a court of law and win and get billions of US dollars as compensation. And therefore, they quite early realize we have to have some precautionary principle of our own and this is one of the aspects of that.
And the first thing that a lawyer will ask you if you claim you got a brain tumor, they will ask you, “Was it the left or right hand you use when you talk in your mobile phone?” “Well, it was actually the right hand.” “But we told you we cannot keep close to your body.”
DEBRA: Yeah. I totally understand what you are saying.
OLLE JOHANSSON: So it is very, very intelligent from that point of view. So they have their precautionary principle. And also if you go to the insurance companies around the world, including the big ones like Lloyds in the UK and Reassurance in Switzerland, they completely refuse to take responsibility for this. And they say that they will not reassure in any way as they will not do for other things like gene modified organisms, nanotechnology and so on.
And I feel this is very strange. They are sold to us 100% risk-free and completely safe, but then it should be completely safe to insure them, shouldn’t it?
DEBRA: Yes.
OLLE JOHANSSON: But they completely refused any form of liability for this. And this is not new. This goes back to the early 2000s actually. And already in London, 2004, we learned about these things that all these different levels of society claiming safety still have their precautionary principles.
DEBRA: Yeah. We need to take another break. But we will be right back. You are listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I am Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Professor Olle Johansson from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. And we will continue our discussion on EMFs right after this.
DEBRA: You are listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I am Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Professor Olle Johansson from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. We are talking about EMFs.
Dr. Johansson, there was a video. I think you probably saw it. It was sent to me yesterday and I know we are both on the same mailing list about EMFs here. You are probably on many more. But we are on a common and that’s how we met actually.
And this video is called Look Up. You can probably just go to YouTube and Google it or something. It’s called Look Up. And the whole point of this video is to get people to see how all this technology of smart phones and iPads, even something that we take for granted like email has served to make us very robotic and not have personal human relationships.
I wanted to bring this up and I forgot to do it in the beginning. I remember many years ago when I was doing some local environmental work and we were talking about, “Could we email to each other?” That’s how new email was.
I was living in a rural area in California and we would have to drive to a central point to one of our houses in order to have a meeting. And we were asking ourselves if we could not make the drive and email instead.
And one of the members said, “What about chocolate cake?” And just that moment made such an impression on me because if we get together, we can eat chocolate cake. But it is not about the chocolate cake. It is about us being together, face to face, eye to eye, hugging each other, getting to know each other people instead of being a little electronic message.
And I have a friend or actually several friends who I say, “Come over and see me.” And they say, “I talk to everybody on the phone. Can’t I just talk to you on the phone?” I said, “No, you have to come over and see me. Or I am going to see you.”
That’s because the human experience is so different than the electronic experience. And so here we have, not only these EMFs flying around, but it is cutting into our human experience.
OLLE JOHANSSON: That is very true indeed. And I today read that in an investigation, it has been shown in the UK. They looked into 2200 teenagers that about 40% of them were deeply addicted to their wireless and smart gadgets.
For instance, in Sweden, when I go in the underground, in the subway and in the buses and trans and so on, it is like being part of a Matrix movie that it has robots everywhere. And I seem to be the only person alive. I am the only one left from the planet. And I love chocolate cakes, so I am eating it, but the rest are not. They are intensely focused on it.
And maybe if they actually solve problems, I would be impressed. But you probably have read about that the Swedish educational system has really plummeted downwards because of lack of control, lack of quality, et cetera in spite of that the Swedish schooling system contains the highest numbers of computers, smart tablets, smart phones, et cetera, everything.
Kids here, they have everything in school and still they don’t come out as Albert Einstein or William Shakespeare. So I am not so impressed by all these gadgets.
So, today, that at the Waldorf School in Silicon Valley, they are using a computer free environment, and it is because parents at the high tech company like Google have demanded it. They don’t want their kids to be sucked into this, things that they provide us with and provide this rather negative world, I would say.
On the other hand, if I could be a little bit blunt, Sweden is famous for liking nudity and sex and so on. When I go on the very same underground subways, trans, busses as a man, there’s no risk to view the cleaves of women because they never notice. I mean you can do whatever you want. You can probably steal their wallets and so on. They wouldn’t react because they are so concentrated.
DEBRA: I see people walking around with the little ear buds. They are listening to whatever it is. And so when they are doing that, they are not aware of their environment. They are not aware of people around them.
OLLE JOHANSSON: Unless you know that quite a number of people that have been hurt badly and even been run over in traffic. Such example in Sweden, people on the bikes who ran across a red light were killed instantly right in the middle of Stockholm because they were, as you say, cut off from reality.
DEBRA: Yeah. Wow. So there’s actually so much we could talk about. We only have about five minutes left. So is there anything that you could tell us about how the situation has improved? Are our computers any safer than they were in the 1990s? Are there some things that you think are basic things that anybody should be doing to protect themselves?
OLLE JOHANSSON: Well, I would like to come back to actually your commercial breaks because they are very interesting from a Swedish point of view.
I would say the core issue is that you should watch what you eat and what you drink and the quality of it. And maybe you need to use dietary supplements.
And I also today read a study that said a team of Italian, Russian, Malaysian scientists that have shown that for instance, electro-hypersensitive people, they have the metabolic alteration with a distinctly increased plasma co-enzyme Q10 oxidation ratio.
That means in layman terms that something is wrong with internal metabolism and it needs to be corrected in some way. And again, it’s hard of course at this stage to know what the culprit behind this is. But at least, you should take care of yourself.
And I think people are more and more, not only in United States, not only in Sweden, but all over the world are realizing this and they also realize they need to take care of the environment, all plants, all the animals, all bacteria, all the water, all the food, everything.
And also of course, as you know, here in Sweden, people with electro-hypersensitivity are officially recognized by our government and parliament as a group with function impairment, what we call a disability or handicapped before. So they do get governmental subsidy. For instance, they have organization that takes care of their interest.
And I do hope that could spread because these people, most of them, they can get along quite well actually. Actually you can live very well without mobile phones and so on. But some of them, they do need accessibility measures on a more grand scale. So that is something that has happened the last approximately 10 years.
DEBRA: There’s so much I want to say. First, I want to say that again, we are separating out people who are, as you said earlier, canaries who are showing that there is a human response to all these electronic things and that there is a damage and that damage could happen to everyone.
But instead of saying, “Oh, these people are showing it early and everybody needs to be concerned about it,” the society is saying, “Oh here’s this group of people who can’t tolerate it and now they have to be a special group.”
I am glad that they are getting the help that they need, but the downside of it is that it separates them from everybody else who also needs to be taking the same precautions.
OLLE JOHANSSON: Indeed and even more so.
DEBRA: Even more so, yes.
OLLE JOHANSSON: The rest of the population, they are not aware of it. So they really need to be careful.
DEBRA: That’s right. And also, in terms of access, I realized some years ago that there actually isn’t any place I can go on earth where I am not exposed to EMFs because it is so global and all these satellites and more cellphone access and everything. And there is no place that I can go where I am not being exposed to it.
So all I can do is, in my own home, not have my wireless phone next to me or not use my cellphone or make sure I am making a certain distance from the monitor. But there’s no place in the world that you can go where there’s no toxic chemicals. There’s no place in the world where you can go where there are no EMFs.
And so we really need to be doing everything we can nutritionally to take care of our bodies. We need to reduce our exposure however we can. And we are going to run out of time in about a minute. There’s so much I want to say.
Are there any final things you’d like to tell us?
OLLE JOHANSSON: No, I think that is an excellent summary. We really need immediate and huge divine vacuum cleaner because there’s so much we need to clean up.
And I am as concerned as you are. And one of the very best ways is to get more information and to listen to radio programs like this.
And I say finally, don’t trust me. Don’t trust you. Go to the sources yourself. The listeners should do that. Read, think, read again, think more and make up your mind. Is this good for you and your family or not?
DEBRA: I completely agree. And just in the last few seconds…
OLLE JOHANSSON: I am going to say if they read enough, maybe they can then come to Stockholm and receive a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. It’s the right word.
DEBRA: Oh, I am sorry. Okay, good. So thank you so much, so much for being on the show.
OLLE JOHANSSON: Thank you.
DEBRA: And I hope you will come back again because this is a very big subject that we need to talk about.
OLLE JOHANSSON: That would be lovely. Thank you so much.
DEBRA: Okay. And we will have chocolate cake.
OLLE JOHANSSON: Bye-bye.
DEBRA: Bye. You are listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. Be well.
Toxic-Free T-Shirts
My guest today is Eric Henry, president and half-owner of TS Designs, a company that prints t-shirts using toxic-free and sustainable methods. We’ll be talking about toxic chemicals in printed t-shirts and how to choose t-shirts that are toxic-free. Alongside his business partner, Eric has been in the screen printing and apparel business for over 30 years. Eric’s duties at TSD range from sales to R&D to marketing. He is the foremost public face of TSD, attending numerous trade shows, giving speeches to groups and universities and hosting tours of the TSD facility. Outside of TS Designs, Eric devotes much of his time to furthering the sustainable agenda in various community organizations. He founded the Burlington Biodiesel Co-op in 2001 and has run his car on biodiesel (or straight vegetable oil) that now has over 250k miles on it. He co-founded Company Shops Market, a co-op grocery in downtown Burlington that reconnects local agriculture to Alamance County; and now, he serves the co-op board. He also serves on the Burlington Downtown Corporation board, which works to create an environment for development that enhances Downtown Burlington as the cultural, historic, social and economic center of the community. He also serves on the board of NC GreenPower, an organization that purchases and resells renewable energy, andGreen America. Eric is also applying his knowledge of Permaculture to a 12-acre farm outside of Burlington. Eric won the Sustainability Champion award from Sustainable North Carolina in 2009. www.tsdesigns.com | www.cottonofthecarolinas.com | www.debralynndadd.com/debras-list/cotton-of-the-carolinas-ts-designs
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Toxic Free T-Shirts
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Eric Henry
Date of Broadcast: May 12, 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.
It’s a beautiful Monday here in Florida. The date today is the day after Mother’s day—let’s see—May 12th of 2014. The sun is shining and I had a wonderful weekend.
If you’ve been listening to the show, you know that I’ve done some gardening. I used to live in California, now I live in Florida, and the gardening is very different here. But I used to grow wonderful tomatoes and leeks and potatoes and all kinds of things, herbs. And it’s just taken me a while to get used to the difference in Florida.
But over the weekend, I was out walking around in the beautiful sunshine and on a lovely day. The sun was not too hot. I went to a farmer’s market and I went to a nursery. I was just walking around and I just had to buy some plants. I bought some mint and some basil and different herbs. And I bought this wonderful plant that I don’t know if they have it in any other place in Florida, but it’s called the sweet almond plant.
It was a better fly bush if you know what that is. It’s got these spindly flowers at the end of the stem. And they’re very beautiful and they smell wonderful. They smell like almonds. They smell like almond extract.
I bought two of them, and I put them on either side of my front door. They’re not in the ground, but they’re about to be. And when I came home last night, I walked up to my front door and it just all smelled like almond. It’s so beautiful.
So I’m really feeling, really I’m getting so inspired by all my guests that I’m having on about farming and gardening and growing your own food and all these things. And just over the weekend, it just all called to me. So I’m looking forward to getting up every morning and doing a little digging in my garden. I think this is going to be really good for me because I used to love to do it. I just hadn’t gotten back into it.
So, today though, we’re going to be talking about T-shirt’s sustainability and actually some really wonderful things that, as I was writing my guest bio this morning, I didn’t even think about for the show. But we’re also going to talk about—Eric, I hope you’re listening. We’re going to talk about biodiesel. We’re going to talk about sustainability and it’s going to be interesting.
My guest today is Eric Henry. He’s the President and half owner of TS Designs and they’re a company that prints T-shirts using toxic-free and sustainable methods. Hi Henry—I mean Eric.
ERIC HENRY: Good morning.
DEBRA: Good morning.
ERIC HENRY: I should say “good afternoon.” We just slipped past noon.
DEBRA: We did. We did, we did. I’m so happy to have you on the show. I’m excited about all these other things that you do as I was writing them this morning.
But first, let’s talk about your business, what you do. Tell us. How did you get interested in doing T-shirts this way?
ERIC HENRY: It was an epiphany course/direction or whatever. Our original business plan had nothing to do with sustainability. Keep in mind, we’ve been in business for over 30 years.
I actually got my start in college basically just selling T-shirts to groups, organizations in events just to help fund my college education. And that business grew to working with the major brands, companies like Tommy, Nike, Gap, Polo. We’re what you would describe as a contract screen printer. We are one of Nike’s T-shirt provider for the US market.
And so, we built this business model. We had well over a hundred employees working at TS Designs. We’re very successful from the standpoint of […]. Everything was pretty much textbook successful business.
And in the mid 1990s—1994 to be exact—the NAFTL, North American Free Trade Legislation was ratified and put in place. And the brands could not get the receipts quick enough. We went from a period of time where a majority of our apparel was made in the US. It was time now where 98% of our apparels are made overseas.
DEBRA: Wow!
ERIC HENRY: We saw our business completely be destroyed due to the global marketplace solely based on price.
That was the starting point or the catalyst to think about running our business in a different way. Yes, profits are important, but we realized profits aren’t the only reason we’re in business.
Fortunately, we’ve always had the components of what we call a sustainable business model, triple bottom line of people, planet, profit. It’s always been a part of TS Designs. Employees are by far our most valuable assets.
Since day one, 30 years ago, we’ve had some type of retirement plant, some type of healthcare. We want to make sure employees are successful and paid as well as possible.
And the same thing goes from our impact to the environment. The driver of that, I can’t tie to any particular thing (just like you’re talking about gardening earlier). When I was growing up in downtown Burlington, my parents or family had no connection to farming, but I got interested into gardening.
And again, 40 years ago, organic gardening was the standard default way of gardening. That was when I got my first taste of connecting to the system of nature and what our part is of humans interacting with that.
Anyway, I brought that mindset into our business. Way before NAFTL, mid 1990s, we were recycling way before recycling was mandatory. We started basically following permaculture principles in the management of our landscape. We’re minimizing our mowing and we’re planting trees.
All those components were there prior to the NAFTL meltdown. And then what that hit, and we saw our business get destroyed, we wanted to stay in this printed apparel business, but there wasn’t a market at this time. Everybody says you either go out of business or get an overseas partner, so we charted out a different path and change the mission of our company. We want to be a successful company while simultaneously looking at people, planet and profit. And we like to look at sustainability being this journey and not a destination. So, we’ve been on that journey of triple bottom line from the late 1990s and continued to go down that path.
We’re a lot more fulfilled business-wise, people-wise, community-wise by running a business basically on this triple bottom line compared to what our model was prior to NAFTL. That’s a quick snapshot.
DEBRA: Yes, I’m sure a lot has happened. Now, I just want to ask you. I’m looking at your website, this is TSDesigns.com. I was looking around and I wasn’t quite sure from looking around. If I were to go to your website and want to buy a T-shirt, can I buy one T-shirt? Or are you about printing lots of T-shirts for a company or organization?
ERIC HENRY: We do have an online store. It is a fairly new part of our business. It’s definitely a very small part of our business.
We are a custom wholesale sustainable printed apparel business. We have people that want to support what we’re doing. Our minimal order, if it’s undyed, is 72 pieces. If it’s dyed, it’s 200 pieces.
But as this community grows, people want to reach out and be a part of it, so we do have an online section to our website.
DEBRA: I actually see it now. Listeners, when you go to their website, TSDesigns.com, you can go to Shop (it’s right there on the menu), and there are various T-shirts that you can buy with different kinds of sustainability messages on them, using the natural, more sustainable, less toxic technology that we’re going to be talking about later in the show.
If somebody wanted to have a T-shirt made, then they could bring it to you and you could print it, but not just one. It would be in a larger quantity.
ERIC HENRY: Yeah, that’s correct.
DEBRA: Okay, good. Sometimes, I think about T-shirts. But I need to figure out if I can sell 72 of them first.
I want to ask you about toxic chemicals that are used in the T-shirt business, especially with the printing process. But we’re going to go to break, so
I’ll just have you wait until we come back from the break in order to answer that question.
ERIC HENRY: Great.
DEBRA: Most people and I don’t know what toxic chemicals are used to print T-shirts.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Eric Henry. He’s the President and half owner of TS Designs. They print T-shirts using sustainable methods. And we’re going to find out about those, right after this.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Eric Henry. He’s the President of TS Designs, a company prints T-shirts using sustainable methods.
Eric, tell us about what’s toxic about a regular T-shirt, especially a printed one.
ERIC HENRY: Well, that goes back to—we talked about our journey to be a more sustainable company. One of the first things we realized when we want to be this different company that not only looks at the bottom line, but the impact to the planet and the impact to people is, we print T-shirts and we realized, “Well, what is this ink that we’re putting on T-shirts?
Well, the ink that we were putting on T-shirts back in the mid 1990s is still overwhelmingly the majority of ink put on T-shirts today. It’s called plastisol ink. It is by far the industry standard.
The challenge that you have with plastisol ink is it contains PVC, polyvinyl chloride and phthalates, things that we just don’t need in the environment. One thing that we realized in the mid 1990s is “What we can do to differentiate ourselves from the industry?” And one of our missions is to create the highest quality, most sustainable printed apparel.
So we took a lot of the money, what money we had left after the devastation of NAFTL. And I partnered up with a good friend of mine, Sam Moore, who is a chemist. As a matter of fact, he gets the credit for introducing the idea of the sustainable business models in the early 1990s. And we spent a year and probably a quarter million dollars to see if we could come up with a different way to print T-shirts.
And we have done that. The process is called REHANCE . The technology is later patented.
But what we’re doing differently, where most T-shirts, what they do is they knit the fabric, they cut and sew the shirt, then they come back and print with that plastic resin that you go fill any T-shirt, that you fill in the shirt that, over time, cracks and peels—it’s not always an [incomparable] product, but it’s not an environment-friendly product.
The REHANCE process is a water-based technology where we print a white shirt in garment dye. So the print actually ends up in the fabric, not on the fabric. It doesn’t crack. It doesn’t peel. You could iron it if you wanted to. That was our first major step in addressing the environmental impact.
And then the thing too that’s been an interesting journey is, again, we were not 30 years ago planning to be going down the path that we are, but what caused us to do too was ask questions. For every product that we buy, every service that we utilize, what is not only the environmental impact, but the social impact of our decision?
REHANCE was the first major step of not differentiating ourselves from the industry not only for the higher quality product, but also to address the environmental impact. And then that evolved to five years ago, we took the next step, which is we developed a brand called Cotton of the Carolinas.
Now, what Cotton of the Carolinas did was, really, it defined the supply chain.
And as I was saying earlier, what I witness in my 30 years in apparel industry, 30 years ago, 98% of the products (or probably, 30 years ago, 100%), of the T-shirts we sold were made in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia. Thirty years ago, you could buy maybe a shirt from India, but it was a very poor quality, nobody used it. So we are pretty much 100% US-made product.
And what we were realizing was that there were less and less T-shirts printed and made in USA, so we developed this supply chain called Cotton of the Carolinas where we actually go to the farmer in New London, North Carolina, which is about 90 miles south of Burlington where we’re located, and we buy the raw cotton.
Then we take that raw cotton and we convert it. We like to say we go dirt to shirt. We do it in 600 miles, we impact 500 jobs and we do it in a completely transparent supply chain.
DEBRA: That’s wonderful.
ERIC HENRY: We connect consumer with the farmer.
DEBRA: All products should be that way. All products should be that way. Just explain just for listeners who don’t know what a supply chain is. Could you just explain that a little more?
ERIC HENRY: Every day we buy products—we buy a cup of coffee, a tank of gas, a new widget or whatever—that had to come from somewhere.
And when it comes from somewhere, it goes through a lot of steps. When you buy a cake at the store, the flour comes from one place, the egg comes from another place.
And unfortunately, one of the biggest challenges that we have in today’s society is the lack of transparency. And nothing could be truer than apparel.
It really breaks down to two things.
First of all, most people don’t even pay attention where things are made. That’s the first thing we need to do. But then once you do find out where it is made, it is very, very difficult to go back and follow those steps.
And what we do at Cotton of the Carolinas is we essentially give this in the shirt. As a matter of fact, we’re going through a transition now. It used to be a tracking number. Now, we’re sewing a different color thread depending on the supply chain in the hem of the shirt.
But we’re giving this information. They go to the Cotton of the Carolinas’ website, they put in that information and up pops the Google Map. And in that Google map, you go all the way back to Ronnie Burleson the farmer or Wes the ginner or Mark the spinner. And we give you their picture, we give you the phone number, we give you the email, we give you their physical address.
You can go visit anybody in our supply chain. And it’s the only T-shirt that I know that has that complete transparency that we have.
But I like to also reiterate it’s not a perfect system. The majority of the cotton that we are growing in North Carolina to support the supply chain is conventional GMO cotton.
Three years ago, we did grow the first certified organic cotton. And that continues to be a struggle last year, 2013. We had a total loss due to record rains. I think it was 17 inches of rain in five weeks or 15 inches of rain in seven weeks, whatever it was. That essentially wiped us. We have no organic cotton.
But again, all I do is “This is where we are. It’s not where we want to”—back to that sustainability being journey.
DEBRA: Yeah. It’s a step in the right direction. The other day, I was talking with organic farmer about whether she has a community supported agriculture. And we were talking about that some years, there’s a good crop and some years, there isn’t. But it’s what it is. It’s humans interacting with nature, instead of having this false sense of, “Well, we always have food in the supermarket shelves because it’s coming from someplace else.”
We’ll talk more about this when we come back. We have to go to break. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Eric Henry. He’s the President of TS Designs. They print T-shirts in a more sustainable way. They’re on a sustainable journey. And we’re talking about that .We’ll talk about it more when we come back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Eric Henry, President of TS Designs, a company that prints sustainable T-shirts. Well, they’re on a journey to sustainable T-shirts—some are more sustainable than the others.
During the break, Eric, I went to CottonoftheCarolinas.com and I took a look around at what you are talking about. And this is a very interesting site. Listeners, please go there, CottonoftheCarolinas.com.
What he was talking about, dirt to shirt, if you click on Dirt to Shirt, it shows you the whole entire nine steps. You can click on each step—farm, gin, spin, knit, finish, cut, sew, print, dye and you go to a page that shows you exactly how they do it.
And then the next link on the menu says, “Track your shirt.” And if you click on Track Your Shirt, you can see the instructions about their tracking method. But then you can go there. And I actually went and tracked and there is a map. You choose (there’s a dropdown menu). And when you choose the number that is printed on your shirt, actually maybe sewn or embroidered or whatever, there’s a new method there using now with a particularly colored thread. So you choose the color of your thread and it shows you exactly on the Google map where the cotton was grown for your shirt.
And you can also buy some shirts on that website. You can buy the shirts that Eric and his company have printed.
This is now the second website that I’ve seen that has this kind of transparency about the supply chain. And we’re going to talk to someone else who does that in a couple of weeks. But this is what I think every company should have. Every product should look like this so that consumers can look at this and say, “I want to buy this” or “I don’t want to buy this.” And they can compare it with other products that they might be considering.
And I think that the more companies do this, the more we’re going to be able to understand.
Eric, I just want to applaud you for doing this. I want to stand up on a table and jump up and down and applaud you.
ERIC HENRY: Thank you.
DEBRA: I’ve been doing my work for more than 30 years as a consumer advocate looking for toxic-free products to recommend to consumers and having to evaluate how toxic something is or find a safer alternative. And the biggest problem that I’ve ran into is I don’t know what’s in the product.
And finally, finally, finally, we’re getting to where we have some idea of what are the ingredients and more manufacturers are revealing what the ingredients are. But now there’s this whole thing about the supply chain where we really need to know where the toxic chemicals are or the things that are not sustainable, all the way down to the making of the product. We just don’t have information.
And so it’s just a happy day for me to see this. Bravo.
ERIC HENRY: Debra. It’s where we all need to go to because it’s not a question of what’s right or what’s wrong. The consumer just needs the information.
We’re going to do something similar with fracking now in North Carolina. And we want to require the companies to disclose what they’re putting down these whales. They come back, “No, it’s proprietary. It’s our competitive edge.” We just can’t deal in that environment anymore. We have got to have this information.
Again, we are not a completely sustainable company. There is a lot of room for improvement. But at least everybody knows where we stand.
So, when they come to TS Designs, I will take you anywhere, I will show you anything, I will answer any questions. If I can’t get the answer, I’ll get you the answer. But we’ve got to get away from this mindset of “This is my secret. I’m going to hold it because that secret has impact on other people.”
And we have found it builds a better relationship with our consumers knowing that we are what we are. At least it’s a better foundation for working relationship than keeping it a big secret.
DEBRA: I totally agree. Another thing is many, many years ago, I used to belong to a business club in San Francisco called BriarPatch. One of the things that we learned in BriarPatch was to be totally open about everything. This was way, way long time ago.
And you may have heard there is a practice called, I think, Open Books. It’s not something that I do, but I’m familiar with it. And for listeners who may not know what this is, Open Books is where you publish all your financial things of your company like what you’re spending money on, how much people are getting paid, everything.
And the purpose of that, part of it is not only transparency, but it also allows customers to come in and give you suggestions, not tell you what to do, but give you suggestions on how you could be more efficient or how you could—maybe instead of spending money over here on this supplier, but maybe you might want to go to a different supplier that costs less and then you can have more profit or you could lower your price or whatever.
But what it does is it allows the customer to be involved in the whole process. And I know that might sound scary to some businesses, but I think it’s a wonderful thing because I like to see.
I don’t know everything. I’m a consumer advocate. I’m setting this up all day long and I have been doing it for more than 30 years. And I can’t just imagine how much an average consumer doesn’t know and how much they don’t want to participate. They just want to go and buy something off the shelf. I think that everything that’s on the shelf ought to be, number one, safe to use.
But if you do want to participate—like Eric was talking about taking people on tours and showing people things. I mean you can see it all on his website. It’s like taking a tour of his business. And I just love that idea of people being able to help if they have a helpful suggestion to make.
ERIC HENRY: I couldn’t agree more. There’s so much more to gain by sharing information than withholding information. But it is challenging for a business to go down that path. It’s been on this path since the mid ’90s. It is just a lot more fulfilling way to run a business.
And I think too what it does is it aligns yourself with customers. We’re in a commodity market. I always say if people are coming to us and they’re only looking for the cheapest T-shirt, we’re not going to be your place. There are so many places that are always going to be cheaper. We don’t do that.
Our customers see the value beyond price. They see a social value and/or an environmental value. That’s why our customers are a Cliff Bar or a Whole Foods or Organic Valley. These people could, no question, go buy cheaper T-shirts, but they want to be basically buying a higher quality product, work with the company that they know that works transparently and basically represents their values.
When Organic Valley gives this shirt or sells this shirt, whatever they do with them, it meets their values. And it’s not something that would just solely bought on price.
DEBRA: Right. We need to go to break again. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Eric Henry, President of TS Designs. We’re talking about sustainable T-shirts in the clothing industry. But when we come back, we’re going to talk about some of the other things that Eric does, which are very interesting. So stay with us.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Eric Henry, President of TS Designs. They’re in North Carolina or South Carolina?
ERIC HENRY: North Carolina.
DEBRA: North Carolina. It’s beautiful there. I love North Carolina. Tell us about some of these other things.
First, I want to talk about—in 2001, you founded the Burlington Biodiesel Club. And you have a biodiesel car, a biodiesel or straight vegetable oil that you now have over 250,000 miles on it. Well, I want to tell you that I used to have a vegetable oil car. I didn’t get 250,000 miles on it because my ex-husband took it.
But we did a couple of trips across. We drove all the way across the country from California to Florida a couple of times, picking up vegetable oil along the way. That was a challenge because we had to make sure that we could actually find more vegetable oil before we ran out. It was a fun thing to do.
So tell us about your biodiesel car.
ERIC HENRY: All these things, I guess I have found myself, personally and business-wise, getting involved in this learning process.
Our energy consumption is having a tremendous environmental impact. I remember 30 years ago, climate change is not in our vocabulary. Now, it’s front and center as one of the most challenging things that our society will now face.
So, as you learn about these things, you say, “Well, I got to have a car.” So then the first thing you do is to get a car, transition from your basic focused bottomline business, a nice big BMW fancy car that went real fast and got poor gas mileage and slowly evolve to a Subaru.
As a matter of fact, within Hampton, California 12 years ago I believe, that’s the first time I learned about biodiesel. I had no idea that you could take waste vegetable from French fries and convert it to make a fuel.
Then I went back to that same conference the next year and bought the first equipment that this company made. It’s called a FuelMeister. I brought it back here and started making fuel. And since that time, my car now has about 270,000 miles on it.
All our vehicles in our family—my wife drives a diesel Mercedes, we’ve got a biodiesel pickup truck. We now live on a farm with that. And we’ve got a diesel tractor.
DEBRA: Wow.
ERIC HENRY: It’s being connected to your food and knowing where your food is grown, it’s exciting to be connected to your energy and help produce that energy. And it’s the value of relationships and making that connection and knowing that you’re doing your small part to leave a positive impact.
And again, like I tell people, I didn’t know about biodiesel 12 years ago. And again, biodiesel is not the solution, the one solution for energy problem. It’s one of the many solutions that we’ve got as we wean ourselves off of fossil fuels.
And again, the thing about the south is we fry a lot of foods, so there’s no shortage of vegetable oil. And since that time, I guess we’re partnered up—we’re just a small scale. We do 100 gallon batches a couple of times a month. But there’s a company that started about the same time we started making biodiesel down in Pittsburgh, North Carolina. And they’re commercial. They do about five million gallons a year of biodiesel. So we have actually retail stations in front of our building.
And I don’t know if there’s one thing you noticed on our map or on our website, TS Designs, we have this virtual map. And this virtual map points out the many different sustainable things that we do. And in addition to making biodiesel here, we also sell biodiesel here.
But yeah, that’s an important part of it. We own about a four acre piece of property. We have a large scale garden. We have chickens. We have honeybees. All of this, the food and the honeys and the eggs go back to our employees because we also know we got a broken food system.
DEBRA: How wonderful!
ERIC HENRY: So we want to connect our employees back to a healthy food system. And we’re able to do that at our facility here. So that’s one of the many things that you’ll see. The map is on our website.
DEBRA: I have to look for that. I haven’t run into that one yet. We only just have about five minutes left. Tell us about what you’re doing with your 12 acre farm.
ERIC HENRY: My wife and I moved to Snow Camp, which is about 15 miles south of Burlington. It’s the Piedmont area of North Carolina, central part of North Carolina.
And the main reason we wanted to get out there was—well, I guess, two reasons. My wife is big into horses. She wanted horses in our backyard.
And I want to be closer, connected to my agriculture community. I’m just a hobby farmer, nothing big scale at this point.
But we do a little farming. We grow a slew of vegetables. We have about 17 chickens. We have honeybees there. My backdoor neighbor […] does grass-fed beef. My neighbor across the field does pastured pork. We are very fortunate in our community, especially during the summer months.
Ninety percent of the food comes right from the community in which I live.
And just being closer connected to that group of people, we just find more satisfying than just go into the store. We helped start a cooperative grocery store when we had our third year anniversary in downtown Burlington three years ago. We created a store that’s owned by our community.
It’s a 10,000 square foot store with the focus on local. We have over 2900 owners. This store is owned by our community. So it supports and the money stays in our community.
I’ve been involved in a lot of different sustainable agriculture ventures. To me, it’s a great satisfaction of being connected and knowing where your food comes from.
DEBRA: Yes.
ERIC HENRY: And the last thing that we’ve done in the farm is we’re on the process of—this was our house that was already built. It was a much bigger house than we need […] But we’re on a mission to make it a net zero energy home, i.e. it produces much energy as we use.
We have a geothermal system in place now. We just put a 4.3 solar ray on the roof. These last couple of weeks of sunny weather, we have been essentially running completely off the grid. We’re still connected to the grid. We have ice storms and bad weather and stuff. I’m not giving up my grid connection yet, but we are probably producing a good 70% to 80% of our energy now on our property ourselves instead of just connecting to the grid.
So again, it’s taking that same journey that we started our business and now we’re taking it back home.
DEBRA: I think one of the things that have made the biggest impression on me listening to you today is the concept of really seeing it as a journey. I know that a lot of people look and say, “Well, I want something to be perfect. It has been to be 100% this or 100% that.” And yet, there are so many changes that we need to be making today, moving in a direction that we have to look at the things that are step by step because to make a change often is a step-by-step process.
I’ve been eliminating toxic chemicals from my life for more than 30 years. I would say that I live in a toxic-free home, but it’s not 100%. It’s toxic free enough to make a big difference in my health.
One would be hard pressed to live in modern life and not have plastic. I eliminate all the plastic I can, but I can’t eliminate the plastic telephone or the microphone. My computer isn’t plastic. It’s made out of metal and glass. I eliminate it everywhere I can, but it’s not 100%.
But you can do so much more by just starting. I want everyone to understand that, wherever you start, just start and move in a direction and buy less toxic products. Move towards sustainability. See about what you can grow in your backyard. Just any of these things will all help us have a world where we can sustain life in the environment, in our own lives, sustain our businesses, have human relationships.
I see this whole comparison to where we were 30 years ago, wouldn’t you say we’ve come a long way?
ERIC HENRY: Yeah, very much so. But it is a journey.
DEBRA: It is journey.
ERIC HENRY: We got to move forward, learn, be willing to change and adapt.
DEBRA: Yeah. We’ve got two minutes. Any last thoughts you want to give us?
ERIC HENRY: Again, I appreciate the opportunity to be on your show today. And I think what we like about TS Designs is that we’re always learning. We like to say our best customers are educated customers.
Always be willing to connect with your community because your success will happen depending on the wealth and the happiness of your community. So connect with them.
And then also, just as I’ve said, get on that journey. Unfortunately, we’ve adapted a lot of bad habits over the last few decades. We got to start changing those, but it can be a positive thing at the end where we all benefit and it will be worth all the challenges that we’re going through to get there.
But again, I do appreciate the opportunity to be a part of your show. And if any of your guests want to reach out to me, they can find me at TSDesigns.com.
DEBRA: Thank you so much. And I hope people contact you. If I’m ever driving by going someplace or another, I’m going to stop in and see you.
ERIC HENRY: We would love to have you. Stop by any time.
DEBRA: Thank you so much. Okay, that was my guest.
ERIC HENRY: Have a great day.
DEBRA: You too. That was Eric Henry. He’s the President of TS Designs. His website is TSDesigns.com. But you should also go to CottonoftheCarolinas.com to find out how their shirts are made.
You can also go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and find out who’s going to be on in the future. I always publish the list of guests for the week. You can also go there and go to the archives and listen to this show again or any of the other almost 200 shows that are there now.
There are lots of information, lots of things that you can do to be less toxic. Just find out. Be well.
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Question from Stacey
Hi Debra,
I’m looking for a safer garden hose for my children to use and to water my organic garden. I found a hose that is BPA -free, lead-free, and phalate-free, but it is still made of PVC (Gardener’s Supply Company). I also found a hose at William Sonoma that is also BPA, lead, and phalate-free, but is made of a polyurethane (also $20 more). Which hose would you recommend?
Debra’s Answer
We’ve had this question before and there are a number of posts already about garden hose. Just go to the icon that looks like a magnifying glass at the right end of the menu bar and type in “garden hose” to read them.
PVC is the most toxic plastic. The polyurethane hose would be fine (polyurethane itself is not toxic). There are also some made of polypropylene (also OK)
This is still my favorite page for PVC-Free Garden Hoses, though none are inexpensive (I want the purple one first on the list).
But there are now many PVC-free garden hoses available. Here’s a page of polyurethane garden hoses online.
You may be able to find some of these at local stores.
Seems some of those cute coil hoses are made from polyurethane.
This is more PVC-free hoses than I’ve seen in the past. It’s a trend in the right direction.
Where Your Clothing
A collaboration of farmers and manufacturers across the Carolinas dedicated to growing, making, and selling its t-shirts in the Carolinas (but you can buy them too). In particular this website outlines the entire manufacturing process of their t-shirts, from “dirt to shirt.” They even have a map where you can visit the farmers and factories where your shirt was made by finding the resources according to a color-coded thread on the shirt. Organic and non-organic cotton shirts are printed with a nontoxic process cotton. My favorite is the shirt with the “Clothing Facts” label on the from that says “Certified Organic Cotton 100% – Pesticides Used 0%.”
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Listen to my interview with TS Designs President and half-owner Eric Henry. |
Valspar Reserve zero VOC paint
Question from Bonnie Johnson
I was wondering if anyone has had a chance to try the Valspar Reserve zero VOC paint yet. I am away from home and we could not get Mystic where I live so the painter is using it in my bathroom. I had to have a plumbing job done for both floors.
I looked at the website and did not see a referral to the MSDS sheet.
Debra or anyone?
Debra’s Answer
Readers, have any of you tried this paint? Comments?
ANJI MOUNTAIN
Area rugs and office chair mats made from both natural fibers—including jute, bamboo, seagrass, sisal and cork—and recycled materials (including recycled cotton). “A family business, we are founded on the principle that only sustainable uses of the earth’s natural resources can be tolerated. The astonishing renewability and versatility of natural fibers and recycled materials creates lots of new ecologically positive possibilities at a time when they are desperately needed. It’s our mission to bring these wonderful resources to as wide an audience as possible.”
Creosote-Smelling Wood
Question from Hannah
Hi Debra… another odd question for you! I had an old work bench in my basement that I had taken apart and removed last year because it smelled strongly, an odor that I have now identified as a creosote/coal tar smell. It had a sticky glue binding it together, and I don’t know why that gooey glue would smell like creosote but it did. Above the bench attached to the wall is a wood pegboard, attached at the bottom to a piece of wood. That piece of wood also smells faintly of creosote, which I recently noticed. I can’t tell if maybe the wood was treated with creosote (not sure why that would ever be) or if the glue used to adhere it to the pegboard somehow smells like creosote. Any ideas?
It is my understanding that this smell would indicate the presence of PAHs and would be unhealthy to breathe in (though I have v=breathed it in some trying to figure out what it is!). Would covering the entire piece of wood with aluminum foil tape be the right approach to make it safe?
Thanks!
Debra’s Answer
If you can’t remove the piece of wood, yes, covering the entire piece of wood with aluminum foil tape would block any fumes from it.
