My guest today is Victoria Schomer, ASID, LEED AP. As an architect, innkeeper, and real estate agent, Victoria and been at the helm of many ‘firsts’ in the green design and build movement, completing her first green project in 1990. We’ve been friends for years and today we’ll be talking about toxic-free design for building and remodeling, including information on LEED and other green building programs. In 1991, Victoria began publishing “Interior Concerns” the first green design and building newsletter in the US. She followed the next year with the first green materials and products resource guide. She later formed the nonprofit, Building Concerns, to further broaden the base of design and build education tools and programs. In 2000, Victoria was honored for her pioneering work in green design with the American Society of Interior Designer’s (ASID) prestigious “Design for Humanity Award.” Victoria is a co-founded and co-author of the REGREEN: Residential Remodeling Guidelines. She is a founder member of ASID’s Sustainable Design Council, a member of their Distinguished Speakers Bureau, and is REGREEN Trained. She is a LEED AP and BD+C, and a USGBC REGREEN Faculty member. Victoria continues her design and consulting business, Green Built Environments, working on projects throughout the US, and based in North Carolina. And most recently has become a real estate broker to offer comprehensive evaluation and assessment of properties for their green potentials. Green Built Environments, Real Living Carolina Property, Asheville Green Cottage

 

 

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Toxic-Free Building and Remodeling

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Victoria Schomer

Date of Broadcast: October 02, 2013

DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world. Today is Wednesday, October 2nd 2013. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida, and the sun is shining.

One of the reasons why we need to be talking about how to thrive in a toxic world is because the world is toxic. Half of my time – well, not actually half, but a good portion of my time, I’m working on finding out what’s toxic. And there are many, many people in the world today who are asking this question, who are recognizing that there are toxic chemicals all around us. What are they? Which ones are they? Where are they hiding? What should be regulated? How toxic are they? Who gets what kind of illness from them? There are all these questions that are being asked, and many, many people working on these issues.

But I actually see that in comparison to all the people that are working on just finding out what’s toxic, there are very few people talking about what are the solutions. There are many, many books written on, “This is bad, this is bad, this is bad,” and we need to know all of that, so that we can avoid those toxic chemicals or remove them from our bodies, but what I’m really trying to do on this show (and I think I’m doing a good job) is bring together enough people who are working on what’s toxic to show you that we are living in a toxic world and we need to do something about it, but also show you that there are solutions, that everything is not toxic and that there are people who are working towards strengthening that which is good and healthy and sustainable.

My guest today is one of those people who, like me has been working on this issue for a very long time – decades, in fact.

Her name is Victoria Schomer. She’s an architect, innkeeper, and a real estate agent. And she has been a pioneer in bringing toxic-free and green to the design world of designing buildings and remodeling, almost as long as I’ve been looking at the consumer product aspect of this. We met – hmmm… we’ll ask Victoria when we met. Hi, Victoria.

VICTORIA SCHOMER: Hi, Debra!

DEBRA: How are you?

VICTORIA SCHOMER: I’m doing great. We’re having just the most beautiful fall weather that just won’tseem to quit. I think it’s our compensation for having such a lousy, foggy summer.

DEBRA: Well, Victoria is in Asheville, North Carolina. I’ve been to Asheville in the fall and it’s absolutely stunningly gorgeous with all the color.

VICTORIA SCHOMER: Yeah, it is.

DEBRA: It’s just an amazing place.

So Victoria, tell us how you started on this field because you really have been a pioneer. You’ve been doing this for a very long time. How did you get into it when there wasn’t a field? How did you even think of this? And then, what were some of the first steps you did? And I think I know when I came into the picture.

VICTORIA SCHOMER: Well, I think when I think about what formed who I am today, this green and constantly inquiring environmentally-concerned people, I am grateful that I grew up in Virginia with a big woods in my backyard. And even though it looked like suburbia with lots of houses lining the street, lots of kids playing, there were acres and acres of wood in our backyard.

So, I was a treehugger before. I couldn’t remember anything else. We played in the creek and hang out with the salamanders and the box turtle. And that was pretty much how I spent all my play time with all my buddies in the neighborhood. That was certainly an important part of what formed me as someone who just loved to be in nature.

Are you there?

DEBRA: Yes, I’m here.

VICTORIA SCHOMER: Oh, because I heard a clicking noise.

DEBRA: Oh, I didn’t hear it.

VICTORIA SCHOMER: Oh, okay.

And so I guess it wasn’t that big of a surprise that I chose interior design. I was always rearranging rocks in the creek and trying to re-engineer to flow better. And so, interior design in the building world seemed to just be of a natural interest to me.

But it was pretty quick in my career that I started reading about reinforced destruction. And when I think about my love of the forest and the wood and I started reading about what was happening in the tropical rainforest, I was really horrified.

I then equated that and connected that with the fact that me recommending mahogany desks and chairs to my clients, I was the one participating and destroying that habitat for those societies and those animals by me recommending those products to clients. And boy, that really pulled the plug on a lot of my thinking or my decision-making process for doing just standard selection of materials and products.

DEBRA: Well, I think that’s a really important point that people get to when you stop thinking about just yourself and realize that all of your actions that you take is affecting the rest of the world. And I think a lot of people haven’t gotten to that point.

I went through a similar process where I recognized that everything that I was toxic that I was using was not only affecting me, but it was affecting the environment. And if I wanted to leave in a clean environment, I have to stop putting toxic things in it.

DEBRA: Right, yeah. You just can’t participate in something that you disdain or you hate or that you feel is not right. It really pulled the plug on my design career.

I also started reading about European paint materials, the ones made from plant chemistry or from the resins on the […] trees or the old casein paint, milk-based paints that were being in Europe, and I thought, “Wow! Why are they using products that seem to be so benign when we are…” Here again, me, as the interior designer, I’m painting the interior of these people’s homes with all these toxic stuff, making them sick. I’m thinking, “Wait a minute! What in the world am I doing?”

It pretty much just stopped me dead in my tracks. And I think you and I at that time were deep in the weeds of researching and trying to figure out what is going on here and how in the world are we going to move forward making this world safe for ourselves and everyone we’re working with and that we love and care about. And all the critters, for me, was about the entire ecosystem really.

DEBRA: And so, you grew up, you were very fortunate to grow up in a childhood where the critters and the ecosystem where you lived in was very real to you. I know a lot of children grow up in cities.

I even once had an editor on one of my books where I talked about my “local forest” was the phrase that I used because I did have a local forest. I was living next to a state park that had preserved a forest. And she had no idea what a local forest was. She couldn’t conceive it. I remember seeing her blue pencil line crossing that out, saying, “You can’t say that. There’s no such thing as a local forest,” and I’m like, “Yes, there is!”

And when they start having awareness of that, they will want to protect those things as well.

VICTORIA SCHOMER: Yeah, absolutely. And for many kids, that’s all that they will know and experience for their childhood.

I can remember somebody who started doing urban parks in restoring these areas like New York City where they’re just terrible tear-downs and they started doing gardens. But they used to package the seeds to these inner city kids and they look at them and they go, “What’s that?” How arrogant of me to assume that every kid out there knows how to a seed goes into the soil and generates and becomes a living thing.

It was, again, another wake-up call of the disconnect I had with people in my world and I how I felt like I really wanted to bridge that gap somehow and help them have this […] that I had as a kid.

DEBRA: That’s why I talk about nature so much in this show because it’s a lot about our health. Toxic is a lot about our health. But it’s also about what we’re doing to the world that supports us. To me, health is about supporting all of life, not just mine or one individual body.

So, you started Interior Concerns.

VICTORIA SCHOMER: Yeah, I started a non-profit.

DEBRA: Yeah, and I think that’s when I met you. And we must have been in the San Francisco Bay Area at the time. I found about Interior Concerns and I think I hooked you up because you were doing just what I was doing, but you were doing it for building products and decorating products.

And we need to take a break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Victoria Schomer. And we’ll be back right after this.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Victoria Schomer. She is an interior designer, innkeeper and real estate agent. She has been at the helm of many firsts in the green design and build movement, completing her first green project in 1990.

So Victoria, would you tell us, I really want to talk about what you do because you do many things. But first, would you tell us a little history since you were there through the whole thing from the beginning of what were the concerns of how did this whole green building movement start? What were the concerns, particularly the toxic concerns of sick building syndrome and all that? How did these all get to be what it is today?

VICTORIA SCHOMER: Well, I think the biggest press piece was that the EPA headquarters had been carpeted with toxic carpet.

DEBRA: I remember that.

VICTORIA SCHOMER: Yeah. And boy, help me with my remembering how early that was, but I bet you that was in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. So, that 4PC that was in that toxic carpet –

And I think there’s some irony that it was the EPA, not nice, but it was kind of ironic. That was the beginning of all of these people who were getting sick from exposure from this carpet that had been installed in this office at the EPA headquarters.

That was the beginning of this inquiry into, “Okay, what is going on here? Why are all these people getting sick?” And the only thing that they could connect it to was this installation of this new carpet.

And of course, a lawsuit is what motivated everybody to wrap their heads around it and get it taken care of. And it didn’t take long for them to figure out that it was in the glues that bind together all the toxic carpet that make up that carpet, the loops of carpet had to be glued to the backing, so that they stay in place. It was in the glue.

So, here, again, it was one of these big chemical companies producing something without any regard or any legislation or any criteria for what were safe or not.

So, that was the beginning of, I think, the realization that, “Uh-oh, it’s not all safe inside or out.” We already knew that outdoor air quality was smog and we could see that. But we assume that we were indoors, we were safe tucked inside as long as our windows weren’t open. Well, guess what? We learned differently.

And that was my first remembrance. I think that’s probably what started it all.

So, from the early ‘90s on, we started examining everything that was going inside our buildings. And it’s been a long rollercoaster ride. As we start to look at some product, and we go, “Wow! Isn’t spray foam insulation just the greatest thing since sliced bread? How tight an insulation material it could be, it makes your home very energy efficient, it’s easy to install.”

The first time I used that product on a renovation, I was quite shock because I have a pretty good nose. I don’t have any real serious chemical sensitivities. I have my own immune issues, but nothing anywhere near as dramatic as a lot of people that I work with. But I thought, “This isn’t right. This stuff smells really bad. No one’s talked about it.” And that was probably five or six years ago. And it’s only been in the last year or so.

This is what makes me a bit crazy. I couldn’t possibly be the only one that this was suspecting that this stuff doesn’t smell good. How about the installers? I mean, they’re using a Hazmat suit and a respirator. Isn’t that kind of a tip-off that this product might be great for energy efficiency, but what in the world is it doing to us in installation? And then, what is it doing to us while it’s outgassing? And what’s it going to do when it starts breaking down into small particulates and becoming airborne and in our homes and in our entire environment?

Well, I think this is exactly what I think part of the problem has been. I think it’s improving some. But I know in the beginning, I was looking at people when the whole idea of green started back in 1990 that people were saying, “Oh, we need to do this environmental thing” and they would only look at one aspect, I think, which is, say, “Let’s save energy.” And that’s all they would look at. And so, if something saved energy, it was legitimate.

And yet, we live in a multi-faceted life. What we really need to do is look at all the different facets. If we do something that saves energy with toxic chemicals that kill people, that’s not a solution. And I think that that’s what the field has had to learn.

DEBRA: Mm-hmmm… yeah. And I looked at the U.S. Green Building Council, which, to its huge benefit has really driven the green movement internationally (what they created has been enormous), but their focus has been about – and through their LEED rating system, which is just a system that you can add a points or acquire points based on your water usage or energy efficiency, the location of the materials, where they came from, how much waste material you were able to divert to recycling instead of landfill, they have a rating system.

And that rating system has been rated so heavily on the efficiency, how much material have you saved, all those things.

Only in the last year or so have they finally gotten it with the help of the Healthy Building Network that they have got to address toxins in the home and in the building. And they are now making the rating system address those issues and requiring people to get a lot more points in the category of indoor air quality or indoor environmental quality as energy efficiency.

And the U.S. Green Building Council is having their 20th anniversary. So, it’s taken this 20 years.

Granted, they’ve done tremendous stuff. Gosh, I mean…

VICTORIA SCHOMER: I agree, I totally agree. In the environment, there are issues that need to be addressed like energy efficiency that are not particularly toxics issues although energy efficiency is a toxics issue because of the toxic waste that gets produced and the pollution that comes from burning the fuels.

But all these other things (we’re talking about toxic chemicals and the materials that we use in our homes), that hasn’t be addressed to the degree that it should be.

We need to take another break, but we’ll be right back. We’ll find out more about what’s going on with Toxic Free Building with Victoria Schomer, one of the pioneers in the field.

You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And today, we’re talking about green interiors in your home. My guest is Victoria Schomer who is a pioneer in this field.

Victoria, we were talking in the last segment about the EPA building. And during the break, I looked it up. I actually wrote in my book, Home Safe Home, which is no longer in print that in 1984 actually…

VICTORIA SCHOMER: Oh, my God!

DEBRA: In 1984, in my very first published book, Non-Toxic and Natural, I wrote that you shouldn’t use synthetic wall to wall carpeting. And I had no studies to base it on, but I listed all the toxic chemicals that I knew of that were in carpeting. Anyone could just look at that list and if they had any knowledge of toxic chemicals (like I did at the time) and say, “Wait a minute!

This is too much toxic exposure.”

But the year was – and I just had it here – 1988. That was the incident at the EPA. And then it took all the way – I mean, this was really a big thing and I wrote and wrote and wrote about this. And they found all these levels of 4PC like you were talking about.

And then the Consumer Product Safety Commission had received 500 complaints about reactions to carpet from the general public by 1991. And then, a whole contingency of state attorneys, generals, asked the Consumer Product Safety Commission to put a warning on new carpet, but they refused. And now, we still have that same toxic carpet with no warning on it all these years later.

So, that’s what we’re up against. It’s that we do have all these toxic products like that. And you and others and me have been looking for safe alternatives.

So, tell us more about what you do. I’ll just say that on your website, which is GreenBuilt-e.com, it shows that you do green design and build green-built environments. But you’re also a realtor and you also have a bed & breakfast in Asheville, a green cottage.

I love the way you can do design, but you can also, as you say, “help people discover the potentials,” which is also something that I do. I’m not a realtor, but I can go anywhere in the world and assess the potential of turning a building into being less toxic.

And you also provide a space where people can come and see what it’s like to spend the night in a place that isn’t toxic. And I think that you’ve done a very good job of providing all these different services. It’s really wonderful.

VICTORIA SCHOMER: I think it’s the most fun I’ve been having. I wouldn’t say that my design and build isn’t fun. But the green bed and breakfast is just really fun. For seven years now, we are getting the most amazing people.

And the synergy of who meets who, who’s interested in anything, the conversations at the breakfast table are always – mostly, it’s always focused around health and the environment and different issues, things like that. Everyone comes to us because we’re pretty much in the same page.

It’s just been wonderful to facilitate that opportunity for people to come and stay at a place. They love the colors that I’ve picked. They said, “What am I sleeping on? My back doesn’t hurt this morning. How come it doesn’t smell in here of anything?” It’s really wonderful to make that available to people because there’s not many people that they can find that.

I would just check in my emails. I’ve got a client, a B&B guest, she comes all the time. She’s chemically sensitive. She comes here and she feels safe to come here and stay. That’s just a wonderful thing that I feel really good about, offering that.

DEBRA: It’s a living example of people can come and see this is what their home could be like.

VICTORIA SCHOMER: Yeah, and it’s so simple what we’ve done here. We’re not a Victorian B&B with lots of things to dust.

We’re mostly all hardwood floors and healthy bedding, organic linens. It’s really a very simple environment. And I think for me, I always say my default when I’m trying to figure out what products to use is to use whatever’s got the least chemicals or the least products in there, and whatever is the simplest.

We clean absolutely everything with vinegar water and tea tree oil as an antiseptic. That is it! It’s clean. We’ve got two doctors. We swiffer and sweep. But otherwise, vinegar and water and tea tree oil has done everything we need to other than some soft scrub. And as we know, it’s not giving any reactions to people. That’s been an easy solution.

And there are many easy solutions if we keep things simple I think.

DEBRA: I think so too. I mean, I basically clean with vinegar and water and baking soda and all those things. So, if people want to know more about Victoria’s green bed & breakfast, you can go to AshevilleGreenCottage.com. You can see pictures of the rooms and all kinds of information. I’m looking at the pictures right now. Beautiful!

Oh, Victoria, in one of your rooms, you have exactly my bedframe!

VICTORIA SCHOMER: Oh, you’re kidding?

DEBRA: No, I have exactly this bed, the one that has a curve over the top and that little medallion and the three panels, that’s my bed.

VICTORIA SCHOMER: Oh!

DEBRA: In the Mediterranean Room.

VICTORIA SCHOMER: In the Mediterranean Room, yeah.

DEBRA: That’s cool! So, tell us what you do as a real estate broker, how you can help people assess.

VICTORIA SCHOMER: Yeah, this has been really exciting because as you know, there is just so much existing housing stock. I mean, I guess the greenest building there is the one you didn’t build because you couldn’t create more waste, put in more toxins, et cetera.

There is so much building stock existing, building stock that is just perfectly sighted – south-facing slope, roofline for solar exposures. It has space where it can open it up so you can have a garden and provide for yourself, easy way to cause ventilation for good air quality and fresher air.

And then, for me, the simpler the architectural style, the better. Just a ranch-style home to me is the most perfect example of a piece of real estate that you can green up, that’s easy to design or redesign and make it your own, but also, make it energy efficient, make it safe and also have opportunities to make it energy efficient and use solar and natural ventilation and things like that.

So, it’s been really, really fun to get involved in the building side from that angle, and help people find homes.

It’s a scary proposition going out there to make a new home for yourself, especially when you have either health –

DEBRA: It is!

VICTORIA SCHOMER: …or as most people know, they know enough now to know that there are things they should be looking for, but they’re not quite sure what they are. But they need support to make sure that they don’t buy something that’s going to make them sick.

DEBRA: Or also to know if they can clean that up or not. And we’ll talk more about this after the break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Victoria Schomer. We’re talking about green and toxic-free homes. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Victoria Schomer, oen of the pioneers in green and non-toxic building and remodeling. She does many things. Her website is GreenBuilt-e.com. You can go and see everything that she does there. And there are links to all the different aspects of her work, doing design work, acting as a realtor to find toxic-free and green properties. And also, you can stay at her bed and breakfast.

Victoria, this is the last segment of the show, so I want to make sure that you get the opportunity to talk about whatever you would like to talk about. So, is there something you’d like to say that we haven’t covered?

VICTORIA SCHOMER: I don’t know, we’ve talked about all my favorite things, and yours too I think. I think the one thing I just wanted to conclude for me is to sum up my last 20 to 25 years, and realize that I actually feel more hopeful than I have for a long time about where we’re heading in protecting ourselves from exposures to chemicals, and also, saving this planet.

I know people feel like it’s scarier than ever out there, and there are dangers lurking every corner. But I think that’s the way the world has been. A hundred years ago, we could’ve died of a disease pretty easily, and there were a lot of unfriendly activity going on.

I think we have, really, two great opportunities. One is that I think the mainstream public is pretty savvy to what’s going on.

DEBRA: I agree.

VICTORIA SCHOMER: And they are making their voice heard. We’re not stumbling around with 2000 people, but we have tens and tens of thousands of people who are now saying, “Enough is enough.” You realize when Walmart has decided to ban ten toxic ingredients in their products that they sell, that’s a big step. How that all shapes out remains to be seen, but that’s been announced in September. When Oregon decided that genetically-modified seeds were not going to take precedence over natural seeds, we’re getting there slowly, but surely.

So, I feel more hopeful because our consumers and our public are just so much more involved and informed. And because we have the Internet, we have so many places where we can access information, where we can research for ourselves, we can take more personal responsibility for our own health because we can be informed about what’s out there and what’s going to be better for us on an individual basis.

And we all are so unique. You know and I know it’s challenging to help support somebody with a chemical sensitivity because every person’s situation and their toxic levels and the things that they get reactions from are different.

So, the modern information we have out there now, I think we can all do a better job of taking care of ourselves and also, we’re just a bigger base of people who are not going to let things get out of control.

DEBRA: Well, I think I totally agree with you in everything that you say. I know that you and I have had a lot of experience with multiple chemical sensitivities although you’re not chemically sensitive. That was my original introduction to all of these.

But coming from that, that’s a particular way of viewing life of saying, “Well, all these toxic chemicals are making my body sick. They’re destroying my immune system” but what I came to after I started recovering and started doing the researches, that it’s not just about people being chemically sensitive.

In my last book, Toxic-Free, I really identified that every single body system – there are now studies which say toxic chemicals are affecting every single body system. So, it doesn’t matter what symptom or what illness you have, toxic chemicals is contributing to it.

And there are doctors now that know that the first thing that you need to do is detox because no treatment is going to work unless you have the toxic chemicals out of your body if that’s what’s causing the problem.

And if your body is sick because of toxics, you could take all the drugs in the world or have all the surgery in the world, and it’s not solving the problem that toxic chemicals are making you sick.

We know more about that than ever. I totally agree with you that the Internet is giving us more information. It’s making it easier.

When I first started 30 years ago, I had to go down to the library. And one book that I have sitting on my shelf today called Clinical Toxicology of Consumer Products, I used that at the library. And I bought a chemistry dictionary.

So, the way I learned about toxic chemicals was that I would look up chemical A and it would say, “It’s made from this and this and this,” I’d go look up all those other chemicals. And now, I can just go online and type in ‘arsenic’ and I get a hundred results of all the health effects of arsenic.

It’s really very simple for people to get this information now.

VICTORIA SCHOMER: Mm-hmmm… mm-hmmm… but I think, yeah, your point that everybody has got something that they’re dealing with, and we need to keep ourselves safe. We also need to take good care of ourselves. We need to really – I’m so grateful to live in Asheville. The stars aligned and I ended up here (from my quick story of how we ended up here).

I’m in an environment where people care about their kids and they want to feed their families, they want to live back on Earth again, on the planet, and feed themselves and grow their own food. There’s hardly a restaurant in town that doesn’t do farm to table organic food.

It’s just a great environment to be in. And I wish that for everyone, to find an environment that helps to support them from the community standpoint because it’s tough out there trying to keep yourself healthy and figure it all out.

DEBRA: It is, it is. And I love Asheville. I think that anybody who wants to go on a vacation who doesn’t live in Asheville should go to Asheville for a vacation. I go there any time I have the opportunity. It’s only a 12-hour drive for me.

VICTORIA SCHOMER: Oh, God!

DEBRA: I love going to Asheville. I love going to Asheville. It’s a great place.

Well, we still do have a few more minutes, just a few more minutes. So, let’s see, what else can we talk about.

Well, how do you see the future? Let’s look in the crystal ball.

VICTORIA SCHOMER: Well, I’m hoping – you know, when I look at a big entity like Walmart sort of bowing down to, “Okay, we’re going to have to really pay attention to this,” If we can get the chemical companies to do the same thing, and we can get our politicians to rally around getting the legislation in place that protects us as consumers, I think that’s going to happen.

It all looks so screwy, but maybe things look the worse before they clear up, that expression, whatever that is.

DEBRA: It’s darkest before the dawn.

VICTORIA SCHOMER: Yeah. I think that that’s where we are in this.

DEBRA: I think so too.

VICTORIA SCHOMER: Our politicians couldn’t get more malfunctioning and the chemical companies couldn’t be so overtly blowing us off like, “Yeah, we don’t care.”

So, when I see Walmart saying, “Okay, we’re going to ban these chemicals,” they’re a global supplier of products, so all of their suppliers are going to have to stop […] what they’re using as well.

So, as I’ve said, I don’t know how it’s all going to really shake out, but I feel really encouraged by the things that are starting to happen that are having big impacts globally.

DEBRA: Well, one of the things that I see kind of behind-the-scenes, there are things going on from manufacturer that consumers don’t see because they’re not advertised to consumers. But manufacturers, there are actually programs going on to help manufacturers identify where are the toxic chemicals in their products and help them identify how they can reformulate their products. That’s going on.

VICTORIA SCHOMER: Yeah!

DEBRA: There was something I saw from the American Chemical Society. The American Chemical Society had at their conference a presentation about natural flavorings for food because they recognized that consumers would no longer tolerate or buy artificial flavorings. And so, this is like the American Chemical Society. It was amazing for me to see that because you think that they’re holding on so tight to the way things used to be, but they’re not necessarily. The change is happening.

And I see it from that fundamental level. And so, I’m going to work, so we see it in the world.

Well, thank you so much for being with me, Victoria.

VICTORIA SCHOMER: You bet, you bet.

DEBRA: Let me give your website again. It’s GreenBuilt-e.com. And you can go find out about all the services that Victoria offers in design and building and in choosing homes to buy. You can just go visit a toxic-free environment at her bed and breakfast in beautiful Asheville, North Carolina.

VICTORIA SCHOMER: Thank you so much, Debra. It was delightful.

DEBRA: Thank you, thank you. So, you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. You can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and you can find out who the other guests are. You can also find out who has been on in the past because every single one of these shows are archived. You can go back and listen to the shows from the past.

And across the top, there’s a menu. Just click around on different parts of my website because you can go to Debra’s List and find hundreds of websites that sell toxic-free products, you can go to Q&A and find out all kinds of questions (you can ask your own questions). You can call me for a consultation. You can buy my book. We’ve just got lots and lots of information.

Thanks for being with me today.