Water | Resources
Bee Killers in Your Backyard
from Debra Lynn Dadd
We’ve all heard that bees are dying off at an alarming rate, and this has been attributed in part to pesticides used in agriculture.
But a new study from Friends of the Earth and Pesticide Action Network found that bees are being killed by pesticides on plants in our own backyards…on plants that are being sold as “bee-friendly.”
The study shows that 36 out of 71 (51 percent) of garden plant samples purchased at top garden retailers in 18 cities in the United States and Canada contain neonicotinoid (neonic) pesticides — a key contributor to recent bee declines. Some of the flowers contained neonic levels high enough to kill bees outright assuming comparable concentrations are present in the flowers’ pollen and nectar. Further, 40 percent of the positive samples contained two or more neonics.
These toxic, long-lived insecticides not only harm bees, but can also harm butterflies, earthworms, birds and other beneficial animals in our gardens for months to years.
Of course, you could simply not buy these plants, but they aren’t generally labeled as to the type of pesticide used. And it’s not just bee-friendly plants. All plants in garden centers could have harmful pesticides on them.
You can also shop at an organic nursery if you have one in your area (I have two).
The real solution is to get them off the shelves.
Friends of the Earth: New tests find bee-killing pesticides in 51% of “bee-friendly” plants from garden centers across U.S. and Canada A short summary of the report
Friends of the Earth: Gardener’s Beware The full report
HealthyStuff.org Lend your voice to a campaign asking retailers to remove plants with bee-kiling pesticides from their shelves.
Nutrition for Beauty: Look and Feel Your Best from the Inside Out
My guest today is Jolene Hart, CHC, AADP, who teaches women to use nutrition and lifestyle choices to look and feel their best from the inside out. She’s the author of Eat Pretty, and a health coach certified by the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and the American Association of Drugless Practitioners. Jolene is also the founder of Beauty Is Wellness, as well as a former beauty editor and contributor to publications from InStyle and Allure to The Huffington Post, Organic Spa and Prevention. jolenehart.com
The MP3 of this interview has been lost, but will be placed here if we can find a copy.
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Nutrition for Beauty: Look and Feel Your Best from the Inside Out
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Jolene Hart, CHC, AADP
Date of Broadcast: August 04, 2014
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic-free.
It’s Monday, August 4, 2014. We’ve got a little overcast here, so there might be a thunderstorm, but I’m crossing my fingers that everything is going to be fine, that we’re going to have power and we’re going to have a wonderful show.
Today our show is a little bit different, but it’s also right in line with things that we’ve been talking about. My guest today is Jolene Hart. She’s written a book called Eat Pretty. It’s about nutrition for beauty inside and out. I think that I was captivated and decided to have her on the show.
When I went to her website, she had a recipe for a cherry chocolate smoothie. Now, the idea behind all of this is using nutrition and lifestyle changes to make your body more beautiful instead of toxic things. The thing about this cherry chocolate smoothie is it has no sugar, no sweetener of any kind and it is absolutely delicious.
I had been looking for a way to eat chocolate without having any kind of sugar or sweetener. The combination of the cherries and the cocoa in this smoothie with the other ingredients has a lot of nutrition. You get your chocolate fix, you get all the benefits of all these great things and you’ll look more beautiful too. That’s what we’re going to talk about today.
Hi, Jolene.
JOLENE HART: Hi Debra. Thank you for having me.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. So tell us. I see from your bio that you’re a former beauty editor and a contributor to publications like InStyle and Allure and Organic Spa and Prevention. Did you start out in the regular beauty world and then decide that you were going to take a little different direction?
JOLENE HART: I did. I started out working in magazines, and I worked in fashion and then in beauty. During that time, when I was working as a beauty editor, I was also dealing with a lot of skin issues of my own.
So, I had been consulting dermatologists and aestheticians and just trying to figure out what the root was of my cystic acne and the eczema that was on my body. Really, I tried every product that crossed my desk. And as beauty editor, hundreds of products would cross my desk in a month and I was always looking for something that was going to solve these issues for me.
It wasn’t until I took a step back from products and really overhauled my diet and my lifestyle that the changes happened so quickly.
This book, Eat Pretty, was really the book I really needed at that time in my life. So just being able to share this message was really important for me. I did, like I said, take a step back from my position as a beauty editor to really look at beauty from the inside.
DEBRA: I think that that’s very smart. And I’ve noticed in my own life that – I have had a lot of acne as a teenager and things. I noticed as I cleaned out my act in my life, suddenly my skin just cleared up. And I didn’t do it because I was looking for a solution. I spent all of my teens on tetracycline.
JOLENE HART: Me too. I spent many years on tetracycline. Now we know that being on an antibiotic for that long can be really detrimental to your digestive system. But still to this day, teens and women in their 20s and 30s and older are being put on those kinds of medications. So I wanted to share that there are other things that you can do because I really wish someone had told me this back then.
DEBRA: I wish that someone had told me that too. And that’s actually how I started writing my first book. I needed a book to tell me how to live without toxic chemicals and there were no…
JOLENE HART: That’s really interesting.
DEBRA: Yeah. It was the same kind of thing of having a personal problem, figuring out the solution, and then not having there be anything to guide me.
I do want to just say that it’s interesting that you showed up to be a guest this week because your message of healing essentially from the inside out and having that show up as beauty in your body is something that I’ve been looking at in other areas with other products. And there’s a big difference that I’m seeing. I’m starting to look at this through a different lens, so to speak.
There are so many products now that I’m aware of where what they’re talking about – and beauty products especially fall into this category, but I was looking at nutritional products or products that say that they’re going to handle your blood sugar issues or whatever it is. So many of them are just saying what we’re going to do –
Oh, I was watching one on TV about a new weight loss pill. What it does is it changes the receptors in your brain to tell your brain that you’re full. Now, that’s just like trying to handle something on the outside. It’s like if there’s something wrong on the inside, put a cream on it or a lotion or take a pill. Even a lot of natural remedies are looking at things from this direction.
But the point being – one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on – is that what I’ve come to, after all these years is if you do handle the things that build health in your body, if you remove the toxic chemicals, if you don’t put garbage in your body, you’re going to be healthy, you’re going to be beautiful, you’re going to be energetic. All the things, all these products, all these toxic products, all these drugs are trying to – you know, people are trying to be sold all this stuff, but the true answer is exactly what you have in your book.
JOLENE HART: I agree. And I feel like a lot of these other products you’re talking about, they may work, but also bringing in these extra ingredients and extra toxins or products can throw your natural balance off in your body.
So I like it bring it back to zero and look at even a pattern of seasonal eating, which even goes beyond what we look at today in the grocery store. It ends up being so intuitive for your body and you end up getting the freshest and the best foods for your beauty just by eating simply with the seasons. That’s probably the most basic you can get and yet it really does work.
DEBRA: It really does. That’s something I’ve come to a long time ago too. But let’s just like look through your book. Her book is Eat Pretty. It’s a beautiful book. The design is beautiful. I’m really enjoying looking at it.
The first part, you want the reader to rethink beauty. How do you want us to rethink beauty?
JOLENE HART: You really think about beauty from the outside in. And I, of anyone, was so guilty of this as a beauty editor. It was my job to recommend products that would make you look more beautiful and make you look your best and I wasn’t looking at my inside the way I should have been.
So rethinking beauty and turning everything around and realizing that – I like to mention the name of my company, Beauty is Wellness. It really is that glow that you have, the energy and the vitality, and your body running at its best. It really does come from the inside out. So take a minute and rethink the way you think about product and you think about your beauty regimen because you might be looking at things the wrong way.
DEBRA: Yeah. I was just thinking about you being on this morning and about how we’re so oriented to wear make-up and that that’s what beauty looks like. But I think that somebody who is very healthy is so gorgeous.
JOLENE HART: We all just want that glow. I’m sure you would feel the same way, but as an acne sufferer, I have lived by my make-up. I wouldn’t go out of the house without a concealer layered under a foundation. All I wanted to do was to be able to leave the house in my bare skin and feel like I had a glow and like I was beautiful. It really took a long time to get there because I was looking at things the wrong way. I was looking at make-up first.
DEBRA: I am happy to say that I don’t wear make-up. I don’t wear foundation at all anymore. I only wear it when I go on TV or I’m giving a speech or something where I need to wear it professionally. But I don’t wear it anymore because I don’t have anything that I need to improve about my skin. Not that my skin is absolutely picture-perfect beautiful, but the thing is it has its own healthiness to it. And if I put the make-up over it, it doesn’t have that healthy look anymore.
JOLENE HART: I agree. And of course, here we are in the depth of summer. Nobody wants to be layering on make-up either. You want to be able to go in the ocean and go on the pool and not having make-up dripping off your face. You only want to feel like you’re naturally beautiful.
DEBRA: And we are naturally beautifully. And with that, we’re going to go to the break. When we come back, we’ll talk more with Jolene Hart about her book Eat Pretty.
. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Jolene Hart. She is the author of the book Eat Pretty: Nutrition & Beauty, Inside Out.
She is also a health coach certified by the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and American Association of Drugless Practitioners. And she’s the founder of Beauty Is Wellness.
I love that name, Jolene, because beauty is wellness. If you’re well, you look beautiful. That’s just the way it is. You can go to her website, JoleneHart.com and right on the front page is the recipe for that luscious cherry chocolate smoothie…
JOLENE HART: You’re making me want to make it.
DEBRA: I’m just in love with that
JOLENE HART: I have the same story…
So I think for me that was another bottom line, when I sat down to think about what I was eating.
We need to go to break. And my guest today is Jolene Hart. She’s the author of Eat Pretty. And you can go to her website JoleneHart.com and try that cherry chocolate smoothie. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Jolene Hart. She’s the author of Eat Pretty. You can get more information at her website, JoleneHart.com.
Jolene, you have a section here called Nutritional Genomics and Epigenetics. Tell us about that.
So tell us how to put together an eat pretty plate.
So you’ve got a great chart here that makes it easy to do that.
DEBRA: You know what? We still have another minute…
JOLENE HART: Okay. Just as a preview…
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Jolene Hart. She’s the author of Eat Pretty. Her website is JoleneHart.com. When we come back, she’s going to tell us about different healthy foods and how they make us more beautiful.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Jolene Hart. She’s the author of Eat Pretty: Nutrition and Beauty, Inside and Out .
Jolene, tell us about some of the foods in your Eat Pretty Pantry.
So tell us now about your seasonal approach.
DEBRA: Isn’t that a beautiful symbiotic relationship with nature?
JOLENE HART: I absolutely agree. Perhaps we were overcomplicating it earlier. We didn’t realize.
So learning how to balance your hormones through self-care and through meditation and learning how your moods can affect the way your skin looks, I think this is all so fascinating. I wanted to make sure that it was part of Eat Pretty because I didn’t feel like this information had been represented fully in the media or in other books that have been published.
And the first chapter is, again, digestion. You and I could probably talk an hour about digestion.
DEBRA: Spa meals, but not spa meals in the sense of having them…
JOLENE HART: …and start feeling incredible.
DEBRA: Yeah, I totally agree with you. Gluten was a really big thing for me as well. I love bread.
So anyway, we’re at the end of the show. Thank you so much, Jolene.
JOLENE HART: Thank you. This is wonderful.
DEBRA: Thank you. Her website is JoleneHart.com. The book is Eat Pretty, a wonderful subject.
This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. You can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com to find out who’s going to be on tomorrow and to listen to past shows. This show will be archived immediately. Be well.
Fragrance-free Cleaning Products That Benefit The Environment Too
My guest today is Mary Allen, co-owner of Savvy Green LLC with Rita Knorr. Based in St. Petersburg, Florida, their new brand of fragrance-free household cleaning products are also designed with the environment in mind. We’ll be talking about toxic chemicals in cleaning products and how simple cleaning products can work just as well. Mary and Rita started their company at home, using a simple recipe to create a dry laundry detergent to give to friends and family. The thought was that if all of their friends used the powder detergent “gifts,” that alone could account for a significant reduction of detergents in large plastic containers and their associated carbon footprint. Of course, their friends loved the powder and a new cleaning products brand was born. Mary grew up in a family of grocers. From a young age working in the store, she loved to understand what brought people into the store. After college started working retail specialty and department stores as a buyer and manager in many areas of the store. She has worked in product development, merchandising, testing, packaging, marketing and sales. She has traveled the world to bring the best products to her customers. most recently for 21 years with Bealls Department Stores and Bealls Outlet Stores. www.savvygreen.net
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Fragrance-Free Cleaning Products that Benefit the Environment too
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Mary Allen
Date of Broadcast: July 01, 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. You know I always love—I’ve been doing the show for how long now? About a year and a half. I always love listening to that opening music because it really is about making a decision to do something right.
And that’s what we’ll talk about in the show. It’s about making decisions to do things that are less toxic, so that you have better health and you take care of the environment and that we’re supporting life. Everything we talk about on the show is life supporting as opposed to life destructing.
I just read something this morning about how we don’t need to be afraid of things that appear to be dangerous if we know what to do to overcome them.
We can hear about toxic chemicals in the news all the time. Or it just sounds like we live in such a dangerous world. But if we know what to do, if we know that we can make a different choice and choose something that is less toxic, if we know that we can remove those toxic chemicals from our body and how to do these things, it’s not such a dangerous world.
It may still be toxic. It may still be harmful to other people that don’t know how to take care of themselves. It’s certainly harmful to the environment, so we absolutely need to clean up the world. We absolutely need to handle and remove all the toxic chemicals that we possibly can.
But each of us don’t need to be afraid that we are going to be sick and die or have less quality of life even though that’s happening all around us because there is enough information. If you do the things that we talk about on the show and on my website, you can have a healthy, happy life. And it’s totally, totally possible.
So that’s why I do the show everyday – every week day. And that’s why we have shows in the archives so that you can get all this information and hear all these all inspiring people who are making the world a less toxic place to live.
And now I’ll get off my soapbox, and we’ll talk about—well, soap actually. We are going to be talking about cleaning products, non-toxic cleaning products.
My guest today is Mary Allen. She is the co-owner of “Savvy Green” with her partner, Rita Knorr. They’re based right here in St. Petersburg, Florida which is right next to me in Clearwater, Florida. They have a new brand of fragrance-free household cleaning products that are also designed with the environment in mind.
Thanks for being on the show, Mary.
MARY ALLEN: Thank you so much, Debra. Thank you for your show and sharing all the information that you do with […]
DEBRA: Thank you. Are you hearing me okay? I’m hearing some static on the line.
MARY ALLEN: Great. Yes, I hear you okay.
DEBRA: Okay, good. So Mary, tell us how you—well, I know first of all you had an environmental interest. So why don’t you tell us about how you’re interested in living in a less toxic way. And then tell us about you and Rita started your company.
MARY ALLEN: Well, for me personally, living as simply and environmentally conscientious as possible mainly because I did use to travel a lot. I still do travel some. But you know when you travel around the world and see what’s happening to our environment globally, it really makes you think about where we live.
So many rules and regulations revolve around what we eat and drink anymore. But yet you don’t hear so much about what goes on inside our homes. It’s starting to be more important […] But I really think that what goes on around our home is not as dominant in what you hear out there…
DEBRA: Well, I would say in comparison to hearing about environmental issues in the news, hearing about the toxic dangers right inside our homes and consumer products is not given as much attention.
MARY ALLEN: Right. And that’s what’s so interesting to me because I’m really interested in being safe in what I eat and what I use. So I want to know what’s in the products. It’s interesting to me that so many of the products out there aren’t regulated, that so many companies can put whatever ingredients they want into products which is really interesting to me.
So I don’t know all the rules and regulations. I’m not claiming that I do. But it is interesting to me that there isn’t as much focus with what we do use inside the home in […]
DEBRA: Well, I think that needs to change. I think actually that every product should list every ingredient. And Walmart is actually coming up to be demanding that in the next two years from all their vendors, which I think is a great step in the right direction. It just should be every product that the consumer should be able to know what’s in it.
MARY ALLEN: Exactly! And I totally agree with you. That’s right. I think a lot of companies are getting onboard with it. And Whole Foods has really been a very important leader in calling out ingredients that they don’t want to sell in their products.
So, I think that’s really a good thing for all of us.
DEBRA: Good! So then tell us a little bit about your life before you decided to do this company, this new company.
MARY ALLEN: Well, I started at a young age. My family was actually in the grocery business. And so I’m very entrepreneurial. That really got me started on my path basically. As a kid, I worked with my dad in his store. And it really got me interested in products and things that people wanted to buy and what’s sold.
And then from there, after I got off school, it’s sort of interesting that I ended up working with someone in a specialty store and got really hooked into retailing and merchandising.
And so my career started in buying for a specialty store in Jacksonville, and so I’ve always lived in Florida. But from there I worked for a department store and then got more involved in product development, packaging. And then most recently through the past 20 years, I worked for […]
DEBRA: I know Bealles Department Store.
MARY ALLEN: Right.
DEBRA: It’s actually a great place to get really cheap clothes. And a lot of times, I find natural fiber things there. So that’s good.
MARY ALLEN:Well, it’s a great locally private held company.
DEBRA: Yes.
MARY ALLEN:And their department stores are only in Florida, but their outlet stores are all over the country.
DEBRA: Wow!
MARY ALLEN: So it’s just great that a local family-owned company is still in business because it’s tough to compete against the bigger boys.
DEBRA: Yes.
MARY ALLEN: But anyway, it was a great foundation for my background. I ended up getting into the hardline area which are things like home goods and gourmet food, things that people buy for gifts for their homes. And so, a lot of that involved product development, packaging, traveling globally, looking for products for our stores, especially for our Florida lifestyle.
Basically, it’s mostly hardline. But it really got me involved in testing because so many of our home goods now before they come in to the country and go out, they’re all tested, believe it or not. They’re tested for lead. Candles are tested for lead, ceramics and things like that. So I got very involved in the whole testing process as a merchandise manager eventually over a group of buyers and travelling around.
We did so much importing and bringing our own products, developing our own products, so I was very conscientious about bringing in the very best that we could, making sure everything’s tested well, that we are being safe and responsible in what we were bringing in. That sort of got me on this whole testing thing.
DEBRA: Let me ask you a question. As somebody who shops at those outlets, I have no idea that you were doing all of that. I had no idea of the safety that you are going through. So how come they don’t say we test all our products and things like that? We’ve only got about 15 seconds for you to answer that.
MARY ALLEN: Well, it’s hard to say, but I guess mainly because a lot of it is actually customs regulation. So customs want to be sure that you’re bringing in all of these products tested for across […] in California especially for lead.
DEBRA: Oh…
MARY ALLEN: Because especially for kids’ items, you have to be so cautious.
DEBRA: I didn’t know there were customs rules about that. I want to hear more about that when we come back.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Mary Allen. We’re actually going to be talking about her new line of cleaning products that are fragrance-free and benefit the environment. She’s got some other interesting things to tell us. We will hear more about it when we come back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Mary Allen. She’s the co-owner of Savvy Green. And they have a new brand of fragrance-free household cleaning products that are also designed with the environment in mind.
Mary, so could you just tell us a little more about the customs regulations? You were just talking about they’re required to be tested, products […] get through customs?
MARY ALLEN: Well, a lot of things that come in—I’m sorry, a lot of things that do come into the country do need to be tested and make it through based on our customs broker’s rules […] that customs does require. But the rules have changed so much. It has been a few years since I’ve been involved in the importing, so I don’t want to speak to what the custom’s regulations are right now.
DEBRA: Yes.
MARY ALLEN: But I can tell you that we are, as a country, very conscientious about lead and products. And that’s why you see any more things being recalled from companies because there may have been too much lead in a product. But we did test for that.
And so all of these details really made for my background and the beginning that really helped me with Savvy Green—because of the merchandising, because of the packaging, the product development.
The marketing background that I have between Bealles Department stores and Bealles Outlet stores. And then, before that, the department stores. So that attention to detail really helped me with this process of building a new brand and focusing on things that are important to me with the brand and my partner, Rita Knorr, because she has always been an early adaptor of living this lifestyle and healthy choices. So it’s really been a big part of Savvy Green.
DEBRA: So tell us how the two of you met and what made you decide to start this company.
MARY ALLEN: Well, actually, we met in yoga class. But we’ve become very good friends. We live in St. Petersburg Florida. Rita and her husband, Rick, are neighbors. We’re friends and neighbors. We practice yoga. Rita is a yoga teacher. She has many years of engineering. She has 25 years in engineering. She’s really interested in how things work and how to improve and live in an environmentally sustainable lifestyle.
So, we met through all of that. And then, the way Savvy Green sort of got started was she was making her own—Rita was making her own laundry detergent in her kitchen. And she would make this laundry detergent that she would put in glass jars and give to friends as gifts.
DEBRA: Now, what motivated her to do that? I know that a lot of people—like I make my own cleaning products, but I don’t make my own laundry detergent. So do you know why decided that she felt like she needed to make her own instead of use laundry detergents that were on the market?
MARY ALLEN: Well, first of all, she’s always interested in how things work and how to be more sustainable. So, of course she wanted to figure out. And from her background as an engineer, it made her want to figure out how to be greener and cleaner as well as try and help change other people’s lifestyles in that regard.
She actually had seen—and there’s a picture, I wish I could show the picture on the radio show. But she actually had seen a laundromat in our area and it had piles of these plastic jugs on the roof—I mean, hundreds, maybe a thousand, of these plastic jugs on the roof of the laundromat. And these are, of course, liquid laundry detergent.
DEBRA: Right.
MARY ALLEN: Well, liquid laundry detergents are predominantly water. And so the carbon footprint of liquid laundry detergent is much higher because it’s mostly water. And so shipping predominantly water is not the best use for resources.
DEBRA: No, I’m afraid not.
MARY ALLEN: So that got Rita involved in the powder and doing some research to find good recipes for the powder.
Well, I would go over to her house. She would be in her kitchen counter. And the next thing you know, I’m helping her grate soap. And before her husband could even walk in the kitchen, there’s like piles of powder all over the kitchen.
So me, with my backgroun din merchandising and retailing and product development, I’m thinking, “Wow Rita! You could really do something with your laundry detergent.”
And so that sort of how it got started. We talked about selling it maybe at one of the Saturday morning markets, green markets that we have. And then she told me this name that she had thought of ‘Savvy Green.’ And of course with my product development and brand management background, I have a sense that I just loved the name “Savvy Green.”
I loved everything about it because ‘savvy’ is smart. And green is how we want to live. And we wanted to be clean. So that sort of how smart green and clean came along because of Savvy Green.
So from there, then we both got excited about Savvy Green and expanding on how to expand her powdered laundry detergent.
DEBRA: Well, I’ve been using your laundry detergent. And it works really well. And it has absolutely no fragrance. What made you decide to not put a fragrance on it?
MARY ALLEN: Well, so many, including myself, I’m not a big—even though I’ve been in the home goods, for some reason, scents in candles and in potpourri have a tendency make me not feel so great. And so many people I know are allergic to certain fragrances. And plus, so many fragrances are artificial.
DEBRA: Yes.
MARY ALLEN: There are very, very few natural fragrances out there. There are essential oils. They’re out there. But so many are artificial, so we didn’t want to…
DEBRA: They are. Good!
MARY ALLEN: Yes.
DEBRA: One thing that just amazes me about laundry detergent being scented is that I can smell laundry detergent on people’s clothing. And why would a manufacturer want to clash with somebody’s personal choice to wear perfume or not just from an aesthetic viewpoint.
So, anyway, we need to go to break. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Mary Allen from Savvy Green. Their website is SavvyGreen.net. You can go there and find out all about their cleaning products. But we’re going to talk about them right about after the break. 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 Mary Allen. She’s the co-owner of Savvy Green LLC with Rita Knorr. They’re in St. Petersburg Florida. And their website is SavvyGreen.net where you can go and find out more about all the products we’re about to talk about. And you can also order them online because I think that they’re only in our stores locally here in Florida. Is that correct?
MARY ALLEN: Actually, believe it or not, we do have a great co-op in Chicago that we’re selling Savvy Green.
DEBRA: Great!
MARY ALLEN: We have two or three stores in New York city that we’re selling Savvy Green. We’re in North Carolina, Maryland, Tennessee. So we’re in a few stores around the southeast and northeast. And we’re working on expanding.
DEBRA: Well, listeners, if you don’t find it in your local stores, you can ask them for it. And maybe they’ll put them on their shelves because they really are very good products.
So tell us about it. Tell us first about the packaging because I know that’s really important to your company.
MARY ALLEN: Yes. It is very important because when Rita first started giving the gift in the glass jars, we thought, “Wow! Glass jars are very expensive.” And as you expand and want to ship, they could be a problem with the shipping. They’re heavy, and it could be cost-prohibitive for us to put the laundry detergent in. So we started…
DEBRA: Well, I saw a thing about glass. You were talking about not shipping water because of the extra cost of energy usage and pollution generated by that. Because glasses are heavy, it also adds to that same shipping problem of additional pollution produced by glass. So where it’s very non-toxic for people to use, if something else could be used for a container, it’s better for it. It reduces the amount of pollution that goes out into the environment.
MARY ALLEN: Right. And so for us to come up with a packaging of our own—living in Florida most powdered laundry detergents we were seeing always came in a cardboard box. And you couldn’t really reseal the cardboard box. And in Florida with our humidity—well, guess what? A lot of powdered laundry detergents in a cardboard box would end up clumping because moisture would get into the box. So we’re thinking, “Well, to come with just another cardboard box just didn’t make sense.”
So we started looking around for what could be an alternative to a cardboard box, and we started of thinking of using a flexible pouch. But we didn’t want to use any flexible pouch because, clearly, that’s plastic. I started doing more research and found a brand new innovative product that companies were beginning to use called ‘HTPE#2’ high density poly-ethylene. And it’s something that could actually be recycled with other plastic bags and products in the mainstream of recycling. And so that really interested us—and especially since our film comes from recycled material.
DEBRA: Oh, good!
MARY ALLEN: Yes. So and then any of the scraps from our packaging are then recycled.
So we did some research and found some companies that did this HTPE#2 pouch and took it from there. Of course, we had to have a great zipper because we wanted it to reseal every time. Since we’re both really into details, so many packages that you get after a few tries just don’t close anymore.
DEBRA: Yes. I’ve had that experience.
MARY ALLEN: So, we wanted to have a great zip-closure. So all of these things increased our price just a little bit, but we think that this attention to detail really gives us a high value product. So that’s how the package was born.
And the other thing that’s important about our package, I can tell you, is these water-based inks. And it’s a matte finish. So it’s really important to us. We wanted it to look very natural and clean-looking. And so the water-based inks that are used, they can be reused again if they they’re doing the printing process.
DEBRA: That’s wonderful. Yes.
MARY ALLEN: So there’s very little, if any, waste in our printing process.
DEBRA: And the ink doesn’t smell on the package either.
MARY ALLEN: Correct! And it’s just really one layer. Our package is a little thicker than most. It gives us a little better moisture barrier, so to speak, to keep the product from clumping. So that improves shelf-life and then it also improves it from any damage to the product.
We do get a little bit of wrinkling because the product is a little thicker than most. But it’s a tough package and it is recyclable which we’re very proud of. And because of that, we’ve actually won a few awards for our packaging. So we’re pretty excited about that because she’s a new company.
DEBRA: Yes. That’s very good. It’s very good. It’s very easy to just sit it on—it also stands up really well. Even though it’s a pouch, it stands up with the folds on the bottom of it. It stands up really well. I can just easily unzip it and easily re-zip it after I use it. The product itself has no fragrance. The plastic package has no outgassing from the inside, from the plastic. And you just did a really good job with that part of it.
MARY ALLEN: Thank you so much. It is a stand-up pouch. And what’s so great about it is takes up so much less space than so many other packages. It also is easy for people to pick up and hold. A lot of heavy car—first of all, we really wanted an ultra-concentrated powder because Rita’s product, you don’t really need to use very much, a tablespoon or less and you’re good to go.
We didn’t want to overdose. We didn’t want to include any directions that would cause you to overdose on using your detergent. And it’s really easy to hold and pick up. It feels good in your hands. And we’ve gotten a lot of compliments from a lot of people because of that because it is easy to hold and pick up and takes up less space.
DEBRA: Yes, it does. It does all those things. We need to go to break in just a few seconds. So when we come back I want you to tell us all about—you have three products. I want you to describe each one of them, so our listeners get an idea of what you have.
MARY ALLEN: Okay, great! Thank you.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Mary Allen, co-owner of Savvy Green with her partner, Rita Knorr. And their website is SavvyGreen.net. 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 Mary Allen, co- owner of Savvy Green with Rita Knorr. And their website is SavvyGreen.net.
So, tell us about your products.
MARY ALLEN: Currently, Debra. We have three products—our powdered laundry detergent, our powdered dishwasher detergent and an oxygen brightening powder. They’re in our same package—refillable pouch. All are super concentrated.
Clearly, we wanted to be able to use one small scoop. And so the scoop is included in every package.
But the laundry detergent is—actually, all of our products are phosphate-free, chlorine-free, fragrance-free. The laundry detergent has 108 standard washes. It’s just slightly under a tablespoon that you use. And it really works. I’ve been using that product for quite a while. It’s biodegradable. It’s great for people with sensitive skin. It’s safe for babies and baby’s diapers. It’s safe for delicate fabrics.
We don’t recommend using softeners. In some cases, you might have to. If you have large clothes, you might have to use one and a half or two scoops. But in general, from everything I’ve heard, the number of washes really works because of its super concentration. You really don’t need that much in it.
And we don’t leave any residue. The product leaves no residue which is so terrific. In the dishwasher detergent, the same, no residue. Ultra-concentrated, you get 80 loads out of our dishwashing detergent.
And then, in the oxygen brightening powder, that’s basically a non-chlorine bleach. And you can use anywhere from half a scoop to three scoops depending on what you’re using. It’s a great destainer and deodorizer. You can use it in your laundry as a laundry booster. You can use alone to soak things in a bucket or in a sink to help remove stains.
So, currently, those are our three items. We will be coming out with the single dose packs in the fall in laundry and dishwasher detergent. So we’re really excited about that as well.
And those are the three products.
And of course, just FYI on the laundry detergent, it is good for front and top loading machines which is great. So it works great in both cold and warm water. So I can say that they really do work. My family uses them. And we get great reviews from the family, you know that you have a good product.
DEBRA: Right. So can you tell us what the ingredients are in each of those products?
MARY ALLEN: Oh, sure. So in the laundry detergent, we have sodium carbonate which is basically washing soda. We also have sodium methyl silicate which is a drying agent. It’s more or less a—I mean, it’s a detergent. It’s mineral-based detergent. And then we also have […] detergent which is a detergent. And so those are the three ingredients in the laundry detergent. It’s very clean, very organic mineral-based items in our detergent. And it’s mostly washing soda.
DEBRA: Yes.
MARY ALLEN: It’s a very simple ingredient. And really, that’s all you need. It doesn’t leave chemicals in your clothes like some other products. It actually cleans your clothes, so you don’t need a fragrance to mask not very clean clothes.
DEBRA: My clothes seem very clean when I wash them. And it doesn’t seem like they have anything in them. They just are very clean. So, what’s in the dishwasher detergent?
MARY ALLEN: Oh boy. Well, let’s see. In the dishwashing detergent is much more complicated because of the food that you have to get out of your dishes. Let me just make sure that I’m reading this right now. Let’s remember that I’m not a chemist, Debra.
DEBRA: It’s okay.
MARY ALLEN: So if I don’t pronounce something right, you chemists that are watching this, please forgive.
But our ingredients in the dishwashing detergent are soda ash or sodium carbonate—just like our laundry detergent, it’s the base—sodium citrate, sodium sulphate, sodium methyl silicate, sodium bicarbonate, alcoholic oxalate, silica, sodium polyacrylate, protease and amylase enzymes, fatty alcohol polyglycol ether and then the sodium methyl glycol dye succinate.
All of these ingredients are naturally derived from plants and minerals. They’re either a water softener or a detergent. The enzymes actually are produced from living organisms and they’re like catalysts in the detergent that help remove stains.
They break down the starches and the proteins in the food that may be left on your dishes.
The sodium carbonate, its main use is for water softener. Sodium citrate does the softening as well. So, many of these ingredients are basically to soften the water, so that they can get clean. Things like sodium sulphate and silica, they’re actually used for anti-clumping. They keep the powder from clumping.
Let’s see, what did I forget here? The fatty alcohol polyglycol ether, that’s a rinse aid to keep your glasses and dishes from spotting.
So, all of these things are sourced from US companies in our dishwashing detergent.
DEBRA: Oh good.
MARY ALLEN: It’s very complicated I found to get a dishwashing detergent that’s super concentrated that cleans your dishes, that doesn’t leave the residue. And our dishwashing detergent, I believe, is really terrific.
DEBRA: Well, you know I don’t have a dishwasher which is why I haven’t tried yours, your dishwashing detergent. But I know that early on, when I was trying to find the home made recipes for all these things because products like yours definitely exist 30 years ago, it was really hard to find something that I could wash my dishes with just using my dishwasher that I did have at that time.
I just went to washing my dishes by hand because you can just use regular plain old soap to wash your dishes by hand. And I have been doing that now for more than 30 years. I’m just accustomed to doing it that way.
I’m not saying that people shouldn’t buy your product if they have a dishwasher, but I don’t think we need to have a machine to do everything.
MARY ALLEN: Right.
DEBRA: Yes. Well, I have a washing machine because it’s really hard to wash clothes.
MARY ALLEN: Right.
DEBRA: It’s really hard to wash clothes by hand, and then hang them up on your drier and on the clothesline and stuff. So I do have a washer and a drier. But for dishes, I just wash them by hand with soap.
MARY ALLEN: I was going to say, I used to do most of my dishes by hand as well. But I found over time, I think, that you may use actually use less water by using your dishwasher more. And if you can find something that’s an efficient cleaner, it really makes a difference.
And so I started using my dishwasher once I found the product that I liked. And with our dishwashing detergent, you can still use a rich rinse agent as you normally would.
DEBRA: Yes.
MARY ALLEN: And then our oxygen brightening powder is basically two ingredients. I mean it is two ingredients. It’s sodium bicarbonate—and again sodium carbonate. So both are cleaning, softening agents. Sodium bicarbonate is—I guess the best way to say is it’s a non-chlorine bleach. It whitens, it brightens, it cleans.
DEBRA: Right.
MARY ALLEN: It’s a great product. And this oxygen brightening powder is terrific and has so many uses.
It’s not a proprietary formula. A lot of different companies have an oxygen brightening powder, but we felt like it was important for us to get one out there because…
DEBRA: To go with your detergent.
MARY ALLEN: …because it goes with our detergent, right.
DEBRA: Yes.
MARY ALLEN: And it really helps clean. You don’t need a liquid stain remover. It does the job.
DEBRA: Yes. Well, we’ve only got about just over a minute left. So are there any final things you would like to say that we haven’t covered?
MARY ALLEN: I can just say that we are looking to expand into more stores. We’re obviously a new company. So hopefully, people will check our website out and follow us as we grow. And please do tell your local stores about Savvy Green.
Debra, we just appreciate you being so interested in our company and hearing more about our products.
DEBRA: Thank you so much. So that was Mary Allen and her website is SavvyGreen.net. Remember the ‘.net.’ It’s not “SavvyGreen.com.” It’s SavvyGreen.net. Go check out their website, and find out all about their products.
And if they don’t carry them at your local store, then you can ask your store, tell them about it, and see if they’ll stock it for you.
I really like this laundry product. It just really gets my clothes clean. I have used some other natural ones that have their own natural fragrances. But this one absolutely has no fragrance, smell, odor, anything about it. So if you’re looking for something fragrance-free that works and is all natural, this is it.
So you’ve been listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. You can find out more about other shows and listen to the archives by going to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well.
Medicinal Plants Can Replace Toxic Drugs
My guest today is Pamela Seefeld,R.Ph, a pharmacist who dispenses medicinal plants. I heard about Pamela from a friend of mine, whose mother was on a lot of drugs for a specific condition. Pamela replaced the prescription drugs with medicinal botanicals and his mom started doing better. We’ll be talking about how synthetic drugs are toxic to the body and how medicinal plants can be a viable alternative. Pamela is a 1990 graduate of the University of Florida College of Pharmacy, where she studied Pharmacognosy (the study of medicines derived from plants and other natural sources). She has worked as an integrative pharmacist teaching physicians, pharmacists and the general public about the proper use of botanicals. She is also a grant reviewer for NIH in Washington D.C. and the owner of Botanical Resource and Botanical Resource Med Spa in Clearwater, Florida. www.botanicalresource.com
The MP3 of this interview has been lost, but will be placed here if we can find a copy.
LISTEN TO OTHER SHOWS WITH PAMELA SEEFELD
- Vaccines: Harmful or Necessary?
- Evaluating A Study and Testing a Test
- Seven Deadly Drugs
- The Hidden Dangers Affecting Your Heart and How You Can Protect It Naturally
- What We Can Do About Cancer
- The Power of pH
- How to Protect Your Health From Toxic Mercury Dental Fillings
- Pharmacology 101: How to Use What Pharmacists Know to Take Supplements to Best Advantage
- Are You Heading For Kidney Failure? Natural Remedies Can Help
- How to Keep Your Blood Vessels Open and Flowing With Supplements
- How Inactivity Leads to Illness and Drug Use—And How Exercise Can Get You Off Drugs and into Health
- How to Protect the Environment from Pharmaceutical Pollution by Using Natural Medicinals
- Hidden Toxic Dangers in Common Dietary Supplements
- See More Clearly with Natural Remedies
- Hidden Mental Health Dangers in Common Drugs
- Different Types of Detox
- Getting Off Prescription Drugs with Natural Remedies
- How Natural Remedies Could Have Saved A Life
- Natural Alternatives to Sleeping Pills
- Natural Back Pain Treatment Options That Work
- How Toxics Age Your Body & What You Can Do to Stay Young
- You CAN Lose Weight—Even if You’ve Had Difficulty Losing Weight Before
- Calcium—Is There Really a Deficiency in America?
- It’s Cold and Flu Season—How to Support Your Immune System and Why You Shouldn’t Get a Toxic Flu Shot
- How Eating Fruits and Vegetables Help Your Cells Create Health
- Toxic Psychiatry and How to Have Mental Health Without Drugs
- Why You Should Take Fish Oil and How To Choose the Right One for You
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Medicinal Plants Can Replace Toxic Drugs
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Pamela Seefeld, R.Ph.
Date of Broadcast: July 30, 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 summer day here in Clearwater, Florida on July 30th 2014. And today, we’re going to talk about drugs and some alternatives to taking drugs.
You’ve probably all seen those commercials on television where they come on with some product, a drug product they want to sell and there’s a beautiful scene of grandparents playing with children or running through a meadow, just something really beautiful and this is the life that you want to have and that you’ll have if you take this drug.
“And oh, by the way,” they say in a very pleasant voice, “it also causes liver damage and kidney failure and death.”
And if you go through volumes of places you can go online, books at the library and if you take any of these drugs, it will come with a warning label that has a very huge, long list of side effects. And all of these drugs are made in laboratories and factories. They’re industrial products that are made from some of the same chemicals that toxic chemicals in consumer products were made from.
So they may alleviate your symptoms, but they don’t have any properties in them that actually heal your body like natural materials do.
So today, we’re going to be talking with my guest. Her name is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a pharmacist who dispenses medicinal plants instead of drugs. I had never heard of a pharmacist who dispenses plants and so I thought I’d have her on the show.
I actually heard about her because a friend of mine, she practices here in Clearwater, a friend of mine, her mother has been taking a lot of drugs for a very common illness. He wanted to get her off the drugs. He went to see my guest and she gave him some medicine plant kind of remedies instead of drugs and she’s doing a lot of better – right away, she started doing a lot better. So I thought I’d better call her. She’s Pamela Seefeld and her business is Botanical Resource in Clearwater, Florida.
Hi, Pamela!
PAMELA SEEFELD: Hey! Great to be here.
DEBRA: Thank you. I’m so happy to have you because this is a new field for me to learn about. So tell me, how did you get interested in being a pharmacist. And within the field of pharmacy, why did you chose – there’s a word for this. I’ve got it here somewhere, but you’re going to tell us about the word for pharma-something rather that is the study using medicinal plants.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Correct. If you look at medications, two-thirds of all medications originally were derived from plants. They started changing it quite a bit and it doesn’t really resemble the original product.
I’ve been a pharmacist for about 25 years and in pharmacy school, I studied something called pharmacognosy. Pharmacognosy is the study of medicinal plants. It’s a little bit even than herbalism. It’s knowing the medicinal qualities and the constitute properties, how they act in the body, what plants possess them and what different parts of plant different part of these properties, different chemicals. They’re actually natural product pharmacy that go to different receptors in the body and repair the body.
And what’s interesting about natural products – and I do a lot of homeopathy, which is natural products – is that when you use these products, it goes to the area and it actually starts solving what the problem is, whereas medications are really just treating symptoms. There’s really not a solution to the problem. You get a medication, you have it and maybe some of your symptoms go away, but you have a lot of side effects and it’s not really solved. If you take the medicine away, you’re still sick. But with natural products, if you use them correctly, you see tremendous results.
DEBRA: And I think that that’s – I mean, what I use as a healing modality is I get body work and I get nutrition and I take professional grade supplements. So it’s a lot of plant materials. I had never heard of someone who does what you do looking at what the plants do and being able to dispense them specifically to help different body areas. I think that’s very fascinating.
Do a lot of people do what you do? I mean, there must be pharma – how do you pronounce that again?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Pharmacognosy?
DEBRA: So you’re a pharmacognocist?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Pharmacognocist, correct. I’ve met a few pharmacist that do this. There are maybe a handful of people in the whole country. I’ve really taken this to a new level. I’m kind of hiding out here in the weeds, so to speak, in Clearwater. I’m sure I could be up in New York and I’ve had offers to go a lot of different places. But I like my practice here. It’s contained. I love Florida and I really love what I’m doing. And a lot of times too, I do things internationally and even on the telephone.
I’ve done lots of TV and radio nationwide from different shows. I don’t necessarily even have to see the person. I can talk to them on the phone. It’s a brief 15-minute conversation if they want to fax me or email me their blood work. I look at what they’re doing and I say, “Metabolically, I’m telling you what’s not necessarily…”
Like if you go to the doctor’s, he’ll look at your blood work and say, “Oh, this is out of range.” They only look at something that’s out of range. I don’t look at that. I take a few seconds. It’s a free consultation. I say, “Okay, this is what I see coming. This is what’s happening because of the medications you’re taking. This is the medicine they’re going to prescribe for you within the next two to five years” and I just tell them flat out, “Do you want to not take medicines? Would you like to get rid of the problem now?” and we can triage the problem.
I have thousands of clients. I’m very, very blessed at what I do, I have eight years of college chemistry, I’ve been doing this a long time and I know looking at labels naturally what the products are and how they will work in the body.
DEBRA: That’s amazing. That’s amazing. I don’t even know what to ask you next.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Well, that’s okay. I can talk just in general about some of the things I see.
DEBRA: Talk!
PAMELA SEEFELD: My specialty is – I do really everything. I even do veterinary, dogs and cats. I do liver failure, kidney failure, things like that. I use homeopathy for that. I have been very good at that. I can tell you, Crohn’s disease, GI issues are easily treated with homeopathy because when you take stuff orally, it goes directly to the lining of the stomach and into the intestines. So anything GI-related is very easy to treat.
But my interest is really things that regular medicine can’t treat technically. If they give you medicines for a particular problem, it gets worse and it doesn’t get better. I can give you an example.
When I see people that have borderline kidney issue, it’s not out of range yet, but I can see where it’s trending. I look at them and I just calculate what’s called their creatinine clearance, which is a measurement of how the kidneys are handling protein and urine and I’ll tell them flat out, “Look, you’re going to be needing to see a kidney doctor within the next few years. And then he’s going to…” –
This is what I’ve had my clients tell me. They go to the kidney doctor, the nephrologist and he’ll say, “Okay, you’re starting to have kidney failure. I’ll see you every six months until you end up on dialysis. And then I’ll see you every month.” I look at them and I’m like, “Are those good odds? Is this what you really want to hear?”
So I use professional homeopathy. I actually got a lady off of dialysis. She was a new start, but she’s kidney issue free.
DEBRA: Wow! I do believe in my experience I’ve seen that we live as human beings in this bigger system of nature and I think that everything that we need in order to be healthy is all in nature.
PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s a very profound statement and very true.
DEBRA: Thank you, thank you. And so we just need to look to nature and see where the solution is, that we live in this culture. I think of our industrial culture as being like an artificial culture. The whole way that we think is artificial as opposed to natural world that if you were to take away our industrial culture, we all have come from nature. Our bodies developed in nature. There’s a grand design or however you want to say it. The solutions are in nature and it’s just a matter of learning them and finding them. This is why I’m so fascinated by what you do.
So we’re about to come up on the break. I don’t want to ask you a question that you’re going to start answering, but we also have a few seconds too. I’ll just say when we come back, what I’d like to do is talk about – let’s take a situation like something that a lot of people have like diabetes. Let’s talk about the drugs and let’s talk about how we could handle that in a safer way. How does that sound?
PAMELA SEEFELD: That is a great topic.
DEBRA: Okay! Well, we’re still not to the break.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Well, diabetes is pretty prevalent and it can be prevented, so yeah, definitely, I have lots of great ideas for that. And that’s pretty easy to do.
DEBRA: Great! So we’re going to do that. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld, R.Ph. Does that sound for registered pharmacist?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Correct.
DEBRA: Okay. Her website is BotanicalResource.com and she has, as she said, a practice here in Clearwater, Florida and we’re going to find out more after the break about the different ways that we can handle diabetes and really handle it in a natural way. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist, but what she really is is a pharmacognocist. I’m always fascinated by word roots and I looked it up during the break because I looked at that and I go, “Okay, pharma, that’s pharmacy, about drugs. And then cognosy–, that must have something to do with knowing or knowledge.” I looked it up and that is the origin. Pharma- is about drugs and gnosis is knowledge. So it’s like drugs with knowledge instead of drugs without knowledge.
PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s exactly what it is. And it’s so timely and so important, absolutely.
DEBRA: Wow! Wow! I love words. And I love how they just absolutely describe what it is. Okay, so before we talk about diabetes, could you just give us a little rundown of the kinds of things you mentioned, homeopathy, but what are the other kinds of plant-based remedies that you might use?
PAMELA SEEFELD: I do a little bit of everything. I do use herbal medicines. I use standardized products that I think are very, very complete and very effective. A lot of times, we’ll use products in place of medications. For example, some people are using Celebrex for arthritis. I have other things that I can use homeopathically and herbal wise that work very well to stop inflammation in the body. And inflammation is a big problem for a lot of people.
I would tell you too that we use vitamins as well here in my natural pharmacy. And the things that we’re using, I use high dose folic acid. Folic acid, if you use 5 mg. of folic acid a day, there’s five serotonin receptors in the brain and it binds to four of them. So I do a lot of mental health.
A lot of what I do is transitioning people off of medication. It could be heart medicine. It could be diabetes medicine, but I particularly help people when they really want to come off of anti-depressants, anti-anxiety agents, things like that. Those typically, what happens is you go to the physician, he’ll put you on that and you’re on it indefinitely.
DEBRA: Yeah.
PAMELA SEEFELD: And a lot of these people, maybe there was a circumstance in their life like their father died or something happened and they were put on an anti-depressant and ten years later, they’re still on all these medicine. This is just not appropriate for many individuals.
So mental health is the last frontier really because when people aren’t feeling happy and feeling great and full of energy, then typically, we’ll start getting medicines for everything else. And that’s the hallmark of it.
Also, I am a really big advocate of using homeopathic products to detox the body because sometimes, when you go to a health food store and you ask for a detoxification product, it might have a lot of laxatives. A lot of these contain like rhubarb and cascara. These things make you use the restroom, but that’s not really detoxing. This is more of a bowel cleanse.
The things I use actually pull out nickel, cadmium, lead, mercury, pesticides and chemicals. I’ve been doing the homeopathic detoxification probably 15 years and I feel great. My clients that actually stick with it, they come in, they look younger, they feel great, they don’t gain weight. It makes a huge difference.
So taking chemicals out of the body especially in the brain too – we know that mercury, haven’t you read about these studies where kids are eating too much tuna fish and they have memory problems and things? You can pull mercury out. The problem with heavy metals is that they’re very difficult to leave the body.
Saunas are a great way to remove nickel, cadmium and lead off of the sweat. They can measure that coming out of the sweat. And I guess here in Florida, we can go out and do yard work. I do have a big sauna in my house, so I use that quite a bit.
DEBRA: All we have to do is lock outside…
PAMELA SEEFELD: Exactly! Exactly! I don’t know, people come to my house and they’re like, “Is that a playhouse?” I mean, they take a path to the room, I go, “No, that’s the sauna.” They’re like, “What?!” But I use it quite a bit. But if people can’t afford a sauna, just go outside and do some yard work and you’ll get the same kind of results.
The metals are really important to take out because once you take those into your body, they don’t leave. And especially mercury in the brain, it’s particularly problematic, so is lead. It can lead to cognitive deficits that most doctors really won’t pick up. Especially if it’s an older person, they might think, “Okay, we’ll just chuck it up to age.” It’s not that. They need to get the chemicals out of their central nervous system.
DEBRA: I’m glad that you’re talking about this. Actually, we can just move diabetes a little further into the show and continue to talk about this because it’s such an important thing.
One of the things I do write a lot about is detox because of my work. I’m interested in people getting toxic chemicals in. And for many years, I only told people to avoid toxic chemicals and it’s only been in the last few years that I’ve been so interested in getting them out of bodies because I started doing various detoxes that were specific for things and I found that I felt a lot better if I did that.
And then I suppose that if we stopped being exposed to toxic chemicals, our bodies will go through the detox process. And maybe over a period of years, some of those toxic chemicals will come out. But the amount that we’re exposed to today, would you say that everybody just needs to do a detox?
PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s a very good question. Yes, absolutely. That’s the first thing I’m recommending for mental health, any debility, anything someone is coming to me for, “My cholesterol is high. I don’t feel good. I don’t have energy,” all these things, which is just typical. I see a little bit of everything every day.
I tell people, “Look, first and foremost, we need to remove the chemicals out of your body because the cell signaling, we know that the signaling takes place on a cellular level. And cell signaling…” – and some of my friends are actually physicians. They work in physics too. They can start measuring these cell signals are affected by chemicals.
And interestingly enough (and I know we’re going to defer to the diabetes), what they’re finding – I mean, I read the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal every day, these articles that aren’t even necessarily concentrated in medical journals, they’re showing up periodically in mainstream media that are discussing that people in the past – for example, diabetes – used to think, “I eat really bad. I gained a lot of weight. I have insulin-resistance. Now, I have diabetes.”
Now, the researchers are finding – this isn’t some obscure journal, these are front-rate journals – that okay, these people are testing very high for urinary pesticides much more so than the general population, so now they’re thinking, “I got exposed to a bunch of chemicals, preservatives or whatever they may be. It started to damage the pancreas. As a result of it, I started putting on weight. Now, I have diabetes.”
That chronology of events is a big change because in the past, we’re saying, “Okay, you ate sodas, you ate fried food.” It might not necessarily be that. We are finding that these people for some reason are not processing the chemicals the same as other people.
And I think you’re going to find in the future – I’m really telling you this, this is the truth. You watch and mark my words. A lot of diseases that we have today will be linked to chemicals in the environment.
DEBRA: Well, that’s already true. When I was researching my last book, Toxic-Free a few years ago, I actually could find studies which associated toxic chemical exposure to every body system, problems in every single body system.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Absolutely!
DEBRA: And so I can say without a doubt that any illness that anybody is having, any body malfunction is associated with toxic chemical exposure in our world today. It just is.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Oh, we know that probably since the industrialized revolution, there’s probably 20,000 chemicals. The Environmental Working Group with their body burden a few years ago, they found 300 chemicals in cord blood for these babies that were born. It’s pretty significant.
DEBRA: It is. We need to go to break. And when we come back, we’ll talk more about toxic chemicals, toxic drugs and how we can use medicinal plants to heal our bodies with my guest, Pamela Seefeld, registered pharmacognocist. There, I got it! I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio and we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She is a pharmacognocist. We’re talking about using medicinal plants in order to heal bodies. Okay, let’s talk about diabetes.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Correct. Diabetes is very common and very preventable. I’m talking mostly about type II diabetes, people that are in their middle age, even 30’s, 40’s, 50’s. All of a sudden, they go to the doctor and the doctor is like, “We need to give you Metformin. We need to give you Glipizide.” Those are the medicines they typically use. Those are the first oral drugs they use.
Now, diabetes doesn’t show up overnight. It’s not one of those things that, “Okay, today I’m a diabetic. Yesterday, I wasn’t.” It doesn’t necessarily work that way. And this is what I find a lot of times. I can tell you some situations I see quite frequently.
What happens is the big thing is that someone may be treated with high cholesterol, statin medications. I look at their blood work and I’m like, “Well, the reason why your cholesterol and your triglycerides are going up and the reason why they had to put you on Lipitor or something like that is because your blood sugar is unstable and it’s too high.
Fasting blood sugar for a normal person should be between 75 and 85 on a blood draw. The little range that they have goes up to 110 and 120 depending on which lab you used. And so if somebody is already in the nineties or close to a hundred, they’re already pre-diabetic. They’re already on the road to it.
And typically, what I see is that the physicians won’t intervene at that point. They’ll say, “Look your blood sugar is what’s causing me to put you on cholesterol medicine and triglyceride medicine and all these other stuff. We need to get your sugar down. Let’s look and see what you’re eating. Let’s see how you’re eating your meals. We need to balance your blood sugar.”
That’s not the way things are approached in regular medicine. It’s that, “Okay. Your cholesterol is up. Let me give you a statin medication.” And a few years later, like, “Oh, now we’ve got to give you something for the diabetes.”
Meanwhile, all this time has passed and no one has done anything about it. It’s just very, very sad. This is a preventable thing.
So what I tell people, if you’re fasting blood sugar is a little bit high, even in the nineties, I don’t like that. You need to look at a few things.
Fruit has a lot of sugar. So if you’re eating fruit, you want to have some kind of protein or fat at the same time. Now, I’m not talking about you need to put oil on something. If you want to have a banana, you need to have some natural peanut butter a piece of cheese or something that has a little bit of fat or protein along with it or even, a lot of times, I eat a lot of almonds. If you have fat or protein along with the carbohydrate, it delays the emptying out of the stomach and so the blood sugar rise won’t be so precipitous.
This can also apply to candy, anything else, soda. Obviously, we don’t eat that kind of stuff. I would tell you that carbohydrates are your friend, but you need to have some kind of fat or protein present at the same time.
So a lot of people just don’t realize these are just easy ways to balance their sugar. It could also just be from poor eating as well. We know that nutrition is the hallmark. A lot of people do not see that. If somebody already has a fasting blood sugar close to a hundred (and I see this pretty much every day), I have a homeopathic product that actually repairs the pancreas, reverses the damage that’s already been done. And then when I also use the Body Anew, which is the homeopathic detoxification, it cleans everything up. I’d say that within a month, you can reverse all of these.
DEBRA: Wow! Wow!
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yeah, it’s great.
DEBRA: Wow! Okay, so…
PAMELA SEEFELD: I know! I mean, that’s probably a lot of information. I mean, I can tell you that pharmacologically, there are things vitamins-wise and homeopathic wise that are significant and very effective and it takes a short time to really have them work.
Another thing too is that people, when they’re starting to have elevated blood sugar end up with something called neuropathy. Neuropathy is numbness and tingling in the hands and feet. It’s nerve damage. In regular medicine, the medicines don’t work for it – Lyrica and Neurontin and all these stuff. They can’t handle it, all these medicines.
A lot of those medicines make you really loopy and tired, they don’t solve the problem and the nerve damage is very bad because when you start damaging the nerves from sugar, what happen is some of that is not reversing in the regular pharmacy realm.
But in homeopathy, you can actually target it with homeopathic products that actually resurface the outside of the nerve. So that can work for any kind of nerve conduction issue that might be taking place – even carpal tunnel. Anything that’s going on with the nerves, these are obscured diagnoses and things that happen that regular medicine just has nothing in the goody bag for you.
DEBRA: How did you even find out about this field? I’m astonished that they’re teaching it in pharmacology school.
PAMELA SEEFELD: This is what really led me on that path. I was already studying pharmacognosy. And then I got out of school and I was working – I mean, I still work as a pharmacist. I was working as a pharmacist, a clinical pharmacist (I was a clinical, not the drugstore type), I really decided that I wanted to put my education to good work.
So then I decided that I was going to go and spend a great deal of time in Europe and here all over the United States (and I even went to Cuba) and I studied homeopathic medicine under different people and herbal medicine. So I went to King’s College in London. I was really traveling quite a bit and decided that I was going to read every pharmacognosy book written in English. I’ve memorized everything. And now, it’s kind of like I just kind of build on my own background of chemistry and knowledge.
A lot of times, I’ll even use a homeopathic product that really have an inherent and deep understanding of what the chemistry is behind natural products that I can look at a homeopathic product and I will decide to use it for something else in a particular area in the body and I will tell my client, “Look, it says another indication on the front” or whatever (they put these labels on the front of these products), “Do not look at that. I’m using it for something else.” And sure enough, a few days later, they’ll call me back and like, “I’m already better.”
So it’s important to think out of the box. Life in the world, in the United States, we always are kind of pigeon-holed and we have to think, “That this is for that… this is for this…”and in pharmacy, “Drug A goes for this diagnosis… drug B goes for that diagnosis” and that’s not really how the world works. The world works that you need to build on your mastermind in the back of your head, all the things that you’ve accumulated and understand.
When I look at somebody, I look at someone’s blood work or they call me with an individual issue, I say, “Okay, what’s really happening here?” and I explain to them, even sometimes diagram. “This is what’s happening with these cells, with these blood vessels in this area and we are going to change that.” That’s why what we’re doing here is solving the problem instead of saying, “Okay, let me give you something. You’re going to be symptom-free,” but meanwhile in the back of my head, I know she’s not really going to get better. That’s not how it works.
DEBRA: Wow! No, I understand. I totally understand what you’re saying. I’m sitting here being so excited because I understand it’s a different way of thinking.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Well, it is. I mean, I can’t think of myself as a mad scientist, but I’ve been doing this for a long time and I’m very successful at it and I have a lot of clients. I just feel very, very grateful that God has given me the intelligence and the understanding and the inherent knowledge of how to use pharmacy to my advantage to heal people instead of saying, “Okay, this is the drug you need.”
And I have in the past. There have been rare opportunities where someone came to me with all these symptoms, they’re misdiagnosed and I write down their diagnosis, “This is what you have. This is the prescription medicine that they should’ve given you and you need to go see this doctor” and I was right. I mean, I’ve done that before too.
That’s a rarity. Most of the time, I can pretty much take care of it with homeopathy, but when it really comes down to it, it’s people saying, “I really want a solution.”
Or if you know certain things reside in your family, there’s a family heredity of certain diseases, you can prevent that also too. We didn’t even touch on cancer. I see a lot of people with cancer.
DEBRA: We have to go to the break. Wait, wait. We’ll have to go to the break. We’ll talk about this when we come back.
PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s okay, thank you.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. Pamela Seefeld and I are very excited about what she’s talking about. We’ll come back and tell you more of that. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist, but she’s also a pharmacognocist – I love that word. I just love that word – which is a pharmacist who…
PAMELA SEEFELD: It packs a lot of meaning.
DEBRA: It does! A pharmacist who dispenses medicinal plants. And I’ll just say again, we talked earlier about this, I looked up the root of it, it’s ‘drugs with knowledge’. And that’s what plants are. They have knowledge and information and they’re part of this big system of life and they can do things to heal our bodies.
So tell us about cancer.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Okay! So cancer is prevalent. You have what? One in eight women in America with breast cancer? It’s such a big problem. It’s highly diagnosed.
What we’re seeing with cancer is that cancer is caused by chemicals, pesticides, any sort of chemicals in our environment that turn on genes. We have the beginning of cancer in our bodies every single day. But our immune system seize it. It takes care of it. There are these genes called ankA gene and they get turned on by chemicals.
So when people come to me with cancer, I’m telling them that, “Okay, do the chemo, the radiation, whatever you decided to do with the oncologist, but let’s face it, the chemicals that caused the initial cancer are still there.”
DEBRA: Right.
PAMELA SEEFELD: The trick is to get them out. You might be in remission, but the chemicals that were capable of turning on those particular ankA genes in your body and your immune system was unable to identify will not leave with traditional method.
In fact, the things that we use now in chemotherapy are really quite barbaric because it has a lot of collateral damage. It doesn’t only kill the bad cells that have the high turnover by cell cycle – that’s how these drug works, like how many times this thing replicates – they have collateral damage of these other cells that have high replication. That’s why you lose your hair. That’s why you get the mouth sores. All those things are high turnover cells and the drug cannot see the difference between the bad cells and the good cells. And that’s what happens.
So really, when it comes down to it, if you want to protect against having cancer, you really want to do like the Body Anew or a homeopathic detox product. I personally do it every day when I work out.
My big thing is cardiovascular exercise because when you sweat, you mobilize toxins and get things out of the body. When you drink the detoxification, my homeopathic detox, when you drink that while you’re exercising, you’re removing a lot more of these toxic products.
It’s important to realize that people, when they’re treating cancer, they don’t look to say, “Okay, what caused the cancer?” People will say, “Well, it’s genetics” or “I was on a hormone.” That really is not what’s happening. What’s happening is chemicals you’re exposed to every day, whether passively or intentionally that you don’t realize (your cleaning products, you’re out and about) –
And also, too, I may say even if your diet is really clean, you don’t live in a bubble. You might take the dog for a walk by the gold course, there are pesticides there. I see a lot of people that are tennis pros and spend a lot of time on golf courses, they end up with neurological problems because of the pesticides, lots of MS. Let me tell you, it’s very much related to the chemicals. People that play tennis and teach tennis, I have seen a lot of people with neurological disorders.
DEBRA: Wow! I’ve been studying for 30 years, more than 30 years like where are the toxic chemicals in the world that we are being exposed to. I started out with toxic chemicals in my home because those are the ones that I could see were harming my body.
But really, out in the world, we don’t think about this. I got an email this morning from an organization talking about how we go to places like Home Depot and Lowe’s and stuff and we buy plants that are marketed as bee-friendly, but they have pesticides on them that kill the bees. And we don’t think about that thing.
PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s exactly right. We can’t see it, but it’s everywhere.
DEBRA: Yeah. And so you don’t think. You think, “Oh, tennis, that’s good that we’re going out and exercising,” but there’s these invisible chemicals everywhere. I don’t want to scare people to think that we need to be afraid of all these toxic chemical exposures. Other people have identified a lot of them, but even if you knew every single one of them, until the world gets cleaned up, we do need to do these detox things. It’s the detox activities in my opinion that save us from those exposure.
PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s exactly right.
DEBRA: We do need to do the clean-up, but we don’t have to be victim of the exposures. Everybody go around being sick from them because there are things that we can do to protect our bodies and to clean out our bodies so those toxic exposures are not making us sick.
PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s exactly right. And what I would recommend – and people can get a hold of me if they have a question particularly just on occasion that they don’t have Internet access at 747-442-4955, Botanical Resource Pharmacy. I just want to mention that.
If you use homeopathic detox and you do it every day – what I typically do is layer these things in the water. So basically, say someone has a little bit of pre-diabetes or someone has a little bit of hypertension or they have some anxiety, the best way to do it is put homeophatic detox in water, you kind of drink it through the day or you drink it while you’re exercising. This way, you’re really taking things out on a daily basis because if you think that you’re able to circumvent chemicals in the environment, it’s really hard.
Now, really interestingly, during your commercial break, you were talking about water filters and things in the water, I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but here in Clearwater, there’s radium in the water because a cardiology practice in Sarasota dumped radium down the drain because the people that were handling the radioactive properties of these products weren’t paying attention and they had to be cited for it. This happened in two places – here and in northern Minnesota. And so we have radioactive water right here in Clearwater.
DEBRA: Well, this particular water filter removes radioactive particles. That’s one of the things that it removes.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Right, that’s right. That’s interesting.
DEBRA: And so I have one in my house. Actually, this filter protects me from exposure to all the pollutants that I know of. It’s just a little over $300. It’s something that everybody could have everywhere and it would protect them from all those water pollutants. It’s such an easy thing that people can do.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Absolutely!
DEBRA: You never know. You never know when there’s going to get something dumped in the water. You really don’t.
PAMELA SEEFELD: What I’m telling you, this is just really ridiculous. And really, there were articles about this. It’s kind of buried with the news. Really, there was one article even (I think it was in the Wall Street Journal) a long time ago, they were talking about how in the past, radioactive materials were really handled by the hospitals. The staff is trained in that.
But you have a lot of cardiology practices that are doing these procedures because they’re monetarily very good and they’re handling radioactive materials and their staff might not be properly trained. They’re just dumping it wherever.
And this is really, really dangerous. And that’s just the stuff we know about. There’s a lot more going on.
Also, too, we have the EPA, we have rules and regulations in place, I always tells people heavy metals never leave within two inches of the surface soil. They’re there forever. So if somebody dumped a lead battery in the back of yard a hundred years ago, you don’t know. Those things are still there. They do not go down into the water supply.
And also too, all these pressurized decks, these treated decks that people have in their backyard, there’s a lot of arsenic in that, which has high affinity for the soil.
So I think if you’re going to do a few things –because I see a lot of people come to me thinking, “I heard Dr. Oz say I should take bilberry and take that…” – they come in with bags and bags of all these vitamins that they heard about. I say, “Look, your chances of disease are two things. You’re either going to have a heart disease or you’re going to have cancer. Those are the things that get most people. Everything else are non-consequential.”
I mean, those are things you should look at, but I tell people that you really want to do detox every day. That’s very, very important because it protects against cancer, it protects against neurological problems and memory problems, all these things that are very, very important to people.
And you need to take prescription dose, high dose folic acid (which I use here a lot) and fish oil. If you take the fish oil and the folic acid, the reduction of heart attack incidents is 75% just doing that. I don’t care what you’re eating, what you’re doing.
Obviously, all that good, healthy things make a huge difference, but if you don’t do those three things, you’re really missing the boat on preventing against a lot of very bad things.
DEBRA: Okay, let’s talk about fish oil. I can’t take fish oil.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Okay, good.
DEBRA: Maybe you have a fish oil I can take, but I have never been able to take fish oil.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Alright, okay. So there are different categories. Some people, they have an allergy to fish oil. Those people are opted out. What I would tell you is that if people don’t do well with fish oil because they’re gastrointestinal tract doesn’t handle it very well, maybe they burp it out, the trick with any vitamin or any supplement is if you have issues with a sensitive stomach, you want to put it in the freezer.
When you put something in the freezer and you take it frozen, what it does is it bypasses the stomach and goes to the small intestine. That’s where it starts to thaw. It will release the medication in the small intestine instead of the stomach.
So I use that little trick all the time for someone that comes to me. I say, “I want you to take this supplement,” “Oh, I can’t take supplements. They make my stomach upset,” I’m like, “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got you covered.”
You just have to use basic pharmacology to understand that you need to bypass the stomach for the absorption. A lot of things can be absorbed, but there’s a partial absorption in the stomach, but the small intestine is where the majority of our nutrients are absorbed from food and it’s a perfect locality to put the vitamin.
DEBRA: Oh, wow! You know so much, I’m so impressed.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yeah, I know. This is fun. I’m having a great time. No, there is a solution for everything. Remember I was talking about thinking outside of the box?
DEBRA: Yeah.
PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s why God gave us this wonderful thing called a brain and the ability to learn, retain knowledge and to assimilate and to try and comprehend what’s best to help people because let’s face it, when we learn things, my feelings is that we learn to give it away. That’s why we’re here. We’re here to learn and organize data in our head and organize our thoughts to help in the betterment of mankind. If we are not on that mission to try and make people well in some capacity, what is really the point?
DEBRA: I totally agree with you. I totally agree. Well, we have less than a minute left. And so I just want to ask you, first, why don’t you give your phone number again? And the website is BotanicalResource.com. Give your phone number again so that people can call you if they want to meet you. and
PAMELA SEEFELD: So my phone number here at my natural pharmacy is 727-442-4955. We’re here Monday through Friday, 10 to 5 and Saturday 10 to 2. And any questions you may have about yourself, your family or your pets, I would be very, very honored and happy to help you with that.
DEBRA: Well, I’m going to come down and see you in the next couple of days. I can’t come this afternoon, but I’m going to come down and see you because I think you can help me.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Please do. I think you’ll be very impressive.
DEBRA: I think I will. Okay, that’s the end of the show! Thank you so much for being with me.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Thank you so much.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well.
People Towels
Reusable personal hand towels, made of a patent-pending fabric that’s 100% certified organic Fair Trade cotton. The light-weight fabric is absorbent, yet dries quickly, making it possible to carry and use in public places instead of paper towels. One of the co-founders discovered the concept of using a personal hand towel on her first visit to Japan where everyone – men, women, children – young and old carry a hand towel because they do not have paper towels in public places in Japan, and hand dryers are only occasionally found in large cities. PeopleTowels are printed with eco-friendly dyes, and come in a variety of designs to appeal to different tastes and styles. Convenient hangtags even allow you to clip or loop your PeopleTowels to your backpack, belt buckle or purse.
Listen to my interview with People Towels co-founder Mary Wallace. |
Nanoparticles
Toxicologist Steven G. Gilbert, PhD, DABT, a regular guest who is helping us understand the toxicity of common chemicals we may be frequently exposed to. Dr. Gilbert is Director and Founder of the Institute of Neurotoxicology and author of A Small Dose of Toxicology- The Health Effects of Common Chemicals.He received his Ph.D. in Toxicology in 1986 from the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, is a Diplomat of American Board of Toxicology, and an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, University of Washington. His research has focused on neurobehavioral effects of low-level exposure to lead and mercury on the developing nervous system. Dr. Gilbert has an extensive website about toxicology called Toxipedia, which includes a suite of sites that put scientific information in the context of history, society, and culture. www.toxipedia.org
LISTEN TO OTHER SHOWS WITH STEVEN G. GILBERT, PhD, DABT
- Toxics in the Air We Breathe—Indoors and Outdoors—and How it Affects Our Health
- Toxic Solvents and Vapors
- How Pesticides Can Harm Your Health
- Why Do People Doubt the Science Behind Toxics?
- There is No Safe Level for Lead Exposure
- Fewer Chemicals Make Healthier Babies
- Why We Shouldn’t Have Nuclear Power Plants
- How Mercury Affects Your Health
- Persistant Bioaccumulative Toxicants
- How Endocrine Disruptors Disrupt Our Endocrine Systems
- The Dangers of Exposure to Radiation and How to Protect Yourself
- Toxics Throughout History—Exposure to Toxic Substances is Not New
- The Ethics of Toxics
- How to Determine Your Risk of Harm From an Exposure to a Toxic Chemical
- The Basic Principles of Toxicology
- Meet a Toxicologist
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Nanoparticles
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Steven G. Gilbert, PhD, DABT
Date of Broadcast: July 28, 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 July 28, 2014, a beautiful summer day here in Clearwater, Florida.
Today, we’re going to talk about nanoparticles. I know everybody has heard of nanoparticles, but I bet a lot of people don’t know what they are. Today, I’m having our toxicologist, I want to say my resident toxicologist because he’s been on so many times, Dr. Steven Gilbert, Ph.D. from Toxipedia. And he has his own website, Toxipedia.org, and he’s the author of a book called A Small Dose of Toxicology.
Hello, Dr. Gilbert.
STEVEN GILBERT: Hi, Debra. It’s good to speak to you today.
DEBRA: Nice to speak with you too. So as long as we’re talking about A Small Dose of Toxicology, why don’t we start out with you telling us about your translation project? Tell us more about A Small Dose of Toxicology as a book. It’s been translated into many languages. Tell us about your new translation.
STEVEN GILBERT: So we’re working A Small Dose of Toxicology as an introductory toxicology text. It’s free on the web. It’s SmallDoseOf.org. That’s SmallDoseOf.org. So you can download that or any chapter of the book as you like.
It was recently translated in the Chinese. So it’s now published in China. And we have hopes that it will be an introductory text for people to learn more about toxicology and the issues in China.
Our latest effort is to translate the book into Arabic. There are over 400-million Arabic speakers in the world. And we have a great toxicologist that’s in the West Bank (and a novelist) that’s willing to translate the book.
Then we started an Indiegogo website to try to raise funds to complete this project. So we’re looking to raise not a lot of money, but quite a bit of money at the same time. It’s $14,000 to get the book translated. And it will be available for free on our website published by Healthy World Press as a free e-book in Arabic.
So, we’re very hopeful we’ll get that project done in the next 6 to 12 months and have it out there on the web where we’re going to put it up.
The first chapter is almost done. We completed the translation. It’s under review right now. So we’ll be posting it chapter by chapter in Arabic as the chapters become done.
So, I’m very excited about this project.
We also have our […] on the history poster. I’ve looked at the history of toxicology, and it’s translated in Arabic and Chinese as well as 10 other languages.
So, we’re working very hard to make toxicology (which really is an international issue) and help people understand a little about the health effects of chemicals around the world.
DEBRA: I will say that this is an excellent book. Anybody who hasn’t already downloaded it for free—and I’ve been talking about it on show after show—if you haven’t already downloaded it, please do because its’ an excellent book. It talks about the basics of toxicology in language that anyone can understand.
This is not a dry, uninteresting chemistry book. This is living toxicology. It’s about what’s happening right now. It’s about understanding how toxic chemicals interact in your body. It’s about gaining the ability to tell what’s toxic and what’s not.
And so this is just the basics well-explained, and you can have it for free. So go download this book, everybody who’s listening.
STEVEN GILBERT: Thank you very much. You can learn more about it right on the front page of Toxipedia, and learn how you can support our efforts to translate it into Arabic.
DEBRA: That’s Toxipedia.org.
STEVEN GILBERT: I’ve actually been to Gaza twice on humanitarian issues, and it’s really painful to see what’s happening over there right now in Gaza. It’s a really, very unique place. The people are wonderful. I’m hoping that this book will also help them in their issues there.
DEBRA: So let’s talk about nanoparticles.
STEVEN GILBERT: Well, nanoparticles, that’s a big subject—or a small subject depending on how you look at it.
DEBRA: Well, why don’t you start by telling us exactly what a nanoparticle is?
STEVEN GILBERT: The definition of nanotechnology is the understanding and control—I want to emphasize the understanding and control—of matter. So it’s really talking about controlling matter to atomic level. And so, nanotechnology is the understanding control of matter with dimensions of approximately between 1 and 100-nanometers, where unique phenomena enable [noble] applications.
One thing about the size, let’s get a little more perspective on the size, a sheet of paper is about 100,000 nanometers. So you can imagine that sheet of paper and dividing it up to 100,000 times. A strand of human DNA is about 2.5-nanometers in diameter.
So, this is one of the concerning things, nanoparticles of the size and dimensions of DNA, so that some of the particles can travel in and out of cells, it tends to interact with DNA. And this is what has toxicologists worried about potential health effects.
A human hair is about 80,000 to 100,000 nanometers. So you can then just take a piece of hair and dividing it up 100,000 times. There are over 25 million nanometers in an inch. And this is another important factor. A single gold atom is about a third of a nanometer. So, you really can manipulate matter at the atomic level.
And of course, the definition of nanometer is a millionth of a millimeter to a billionth of a meter. So you’re talking about a very small material. And the unique thing about nanoparticles is their physical and chemical properties change. For example, a tee which is usually white, at a nano scale, it becomes clear. This has very important implications for things like sunscreen.
DEBRA: Let’s just relate this to a real consumer product right now. So sunscreen, let’s talk about it. A lot of people are putting sunscreen on their body. And titanium dioxide itself is one thing, but then when it’s at a smaller size, so that it’s not white, but it’s just clear (you don’t turn white when you put on your sunscreen) how does that change?
STEVEN GILBERT: That is why people like it.
DEBRA: That is why people like it. So tell us how that is different. When you put it on your skin, what happens that’s different?
STEVEN GILBERT: The concern is the titanium and zinc oxide […] So most sunscreens, the idea of sunscreens is protect against ultraviolet radiation. And there are UVA and UVA, ultraviolet radiation. And the nanoparticles are used to reflect the light. There are also chemicals that can be added that absorb some of the energy from the light.
So nanoparticles are great in that sense in that the small size reflect the light well. It becomes transparent so it doesn’t show up white on your nose which is good. They have a large surface area ratio, so if you apply chemicals […] in sunscreen, you have more surface area for these chemicals.
So they’re effective products. They’re very efficacious. They work well. The concern is that these nanomaterials, are they absorbed through, for example, a scratch in the skin. A baby’s skin is a little bit different, so you have to be concerned about absorbing these nanoparticles into the skin. And this is something that’s still being studied.
A lot of implications are they’re not. But then you have to ask, are these things washed off into the environment?
Ecologically, what happens to these nanoparticles as they end up in the environment?
So there are many different aspects to this—in skin breaks, if there’s a rash, something like that, is there more absorption of the nanomaterials and nanoparticles into the body that way? Do they bioaccumulate? What are the effects in wildlife? So there are many different aspects.
And by and large, we’ve just charged ahead and started using these products, in my view, without adequate study.
As a cosmetic, the FDA could declare these chemicals as new chemical entities. So a nano-sized titanium would be declared a new chemical entity, so it would require more testing. Food and Drug Administration elected not to do that.
Particles of a nano-size titanium, it’s not a different physiochemical properties. It’s still considered titanium.
So this was a great deal for the manufacturers that use these materials, but I think they deserve really closed [screening] and making sure we know what we’re doing with these nanomaterails.
DEBRA: If you make a chemical or mineral like titanium dioxide, if you make something into a smaller size, does that make it more toxic?
STEVEN GILBERT: There’s potential for that because it crosses the cellular barriers more quickly. For example, something like silver nanomaterial is a bacterial size that’s designed to kill bacteria. So it’s very effective at that, at killing bacteria.
So, they do interact with biological properties. But the question is, “Are they potentially hazardous?”
This is particularly true for developing organism. Toxicology is built on those responses. And once […] exposure, then what might be the response? How does your immune system respond to this? Does it potentially cause cancer later in life? What are the issues that might be relevant to nanomaterials and nanoparticles?
DEBRA: And we don’t know those yet. So we’ll talk more about nanoparticles when we come back. My guest today is toxicologist, Dr. Steven Gilbert. And his website is Toxipedia.org, many wonderful things there, including your free copy of A Small Dose of Toxicology.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio, and 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 toxicologist, Dr. Steven Gilbert.
He’s at Toxipedia.org where you can download a free copy of his book, A Small Dose of Toxicology.
So Dr. Gilbert, let’s see. What shall we talk about next with nanoparticles?
STEVEN GILBERT: I think a little bit of history is…
DEBRA: Yes, tell us some history because this is not a new thing.
STEVEN GILBERT: It’s not! You’re really right. If you look back historically, one of the first examples of nanomaterial was […] Rome about 300 A.D. And this has […] glass.
So if you look at a glass straight on, it looks opaque and green. But if you shine light in it, it turns red and glows. And this is due to the nanomaterials of gold and silver that are being incorporated into the glass.
In the 1600’s or 1500’s, stained glass windows in European cathedrals contained nanoparticles—gold, chloride and other metals that made the glass really a unique color.
Damascus saber swords, those high-quality swords, […] they’re known for their sharp edges, they’re really related to carbon nanotubes and the nanowires. They discovered this by looking at it with SCAN electron microscope.
So the whole field really didn’t get started up until 1936 right before World War II with field emission microscopes that were developed. These developments were essential to really understand and manipulate matter at the atomic level.
Another […] was Richard Feynman. Your listeners might have heard of him. He’s a […] physicist. He wrote a paper called There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom and gave one of the first lectures, I think it was in 1959, in technology at atomic scales that have predicted a lot of these scanning electron microscopes built in ’81.
In 1985, […] the buckyballs were discovered at Rice University. This is really a big deal because nanoparticles and nanomaterial, you can store different types of chemicals inside these buckyballs.
And then in 1986, atomic force microscopes—you can see the things really start picking up from the 80’s with the discovery of different materials, and really, the technology to manipulate these.
In 1991 was carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes had a huge impact on materials, the way the materials are used now has carbon fiber in them. Just for example, I just read over the weekend that the Tour de France, the […] bicycle race in France, just ended. But one of the issues has been the bicycles are carbon fiber. And these carbon fibers, they’re a lot of nanotubes, instead of bending in a crash, the spikes shatter.
So they’re very strong and they’re very lightweight. That’s what carbon nanotubes are all about. But they also have some undesirable properties. They don’t then absorb some of the collision. Bicycle race injuries seem to be more severe.
So that’s just one of the implications or the side implications of nanomaterials.
In carbon nanotubes, we fly in them in airplanes, the new Boeing 787. Tennis rackets, all kinds of materials are starting to use carbon nanotube materials.
DEBRA: What exactly is a carbon nanotube?
STEVEN GILBERT: Carbon nanotube is you roll a carbon very thin—like one atom. You can make it a little bit thicker if you likem, but then you roll them up using atomic force instruments. The roll makes them very strong, very lightweight, and you can transfer electricity through them. They have a lot of really interesting properties.
A concern though, from a health perspective, is related to asbestos. Nanotubes have very sharp edges and look a lot like asbestos fibers. So we know from experience that asbestos inhaled can cause mesothelioma, a fatal lung cancer.
So, the concern was if carbon nanotubes would be a potential hazard with […] workers that are responsible for sanding, for grinding, for making nanomaterial up. So this is a worker-related injury. And that’s by and large an issue across the board with nanomaterials. There are worker issues that we need to be concerned about.
DEBRA: Do nanoparticles exist in nature, or are we making particle sizes that are just only manmade?
STEVEN GILBERT: There’s a lot more of them, but they do exist in nature. They’re naturally-occurring. And our […], some of them.
For example, diesel exhaust out of trucks will have a lot of nanomaterial in them. And this is particularly a concern from around ports, from a lot of train and truck traffic going in and out of it. And this becomes an environmental […] People living near the port are exposed to these nanomaterial.
My concern about the nanomaterial, as I’ve mentioned before, they have a large surface volume ratio to their size, so they have very large surface volume, and other materials can be stuck on the surface of these nanomaterial like polyaromatic hydrocarbons. Can they coat that nanomaterial? You inhale those things in your lungs, and then it can be distributed throughout the body.
Nanomaterials are also natural. They can be sea spray, for example, along the ocean waters. Volcanoes will produce nanomaterials and nanoparticles, I should say.
So they’re both naturally occurring. But as usual, with humans, we tend to exaggerate some phenomenon, so now, we’re making all kinds of new and unique […] There’s no natural process that created carbon nanotubes. This is an entirely manufactured material.
Although we have silver, it’s not […] We’re making them and putting them in a whole host of products now.
DEBRA: It seems like this is something that is more difficult to identify than some other toxic things. You can smell formaldehyde, for example, if you know what formaldehyde smells like. You could identify it. But how would one identify that they’re being exposed to a nanoparticle?
STEVEN GILBERT: You raised a really interesting point, Debra. There are no going rules and regulations that says that a manufacturer has to show the product has been demonstrated or acknowledged there’s nanomaterial in a product. So that’s not required.
The FDA just […] start thinking about this our talk today. On June 24th, the FDA came up with some new guidelines around nanomaterials in cosmetics. I should just […] your time if I can find the quote from the…
DEBRA: Actually, we need to go to break in about 20 seconds. How many nanoseconds is that? So you can find it during the break, and we’ll come back and talk about that.
STEVEN GILBERT: That would be great.
DEBRA: Today, we’re talking about nanoparticles with Dr. Steven Gilbert. His website is Toxipedia.org. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and we’ll go to break and come back, and find out what Dr. Gilbert would like to tell us. We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Dr. Steven Gilbert. His website is Toxipedia.org. That’s T-O-X-I-P-E-D-I-A dot-org, and you can go download a free copy of his very excellent book, A Small Dose of Toxicology.
So Dr. Gilbert, did you find what you were looking for?
STEVEN GILBERT: I did. Before I go there, I just want to mention one other thing. There’s a great [book] called Prey by Michael Crichton that has nanotechnology, nanoparticles as the theme of the book. So if your listeners are looking for a good summer read, it’s Prey by Michael Crichton.
DEBRA: is that P-R-A-Y or P-R-E-Y?
STEVEN GILBERT: P-R-E-Y.
DEBRA: Aha! Okay, good. Thank you.
STEVEN GILBERT: It’s a fun book. It’s a fun read. I recommend that.
So I think we’re talking a little about consumer products. And I just want to mention, when we talk more about that, particularly, related to silver, for example, one of the products is a bear, a little cuddly bear for your infant. And the product has nanosilver particles in it. It’s […] said that it’s clinically proven to be safer because it has killed bacteria, so you don’t have […] growing on your fuzzy bear.
Now, the problem with that is what do kids do? They stuck on their ears of the bear, they mouth the bear. So there’s a possibility that a kid is absorbing silver nanoparticles, and one of the potential consequences of oral exposure to nanoparticles.
So you might think that these products are all tested before they’re put on the market. That’s not the case.
Let me just read this quote from the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The first part of it sounds good. “The potential safety and health risks of nanomaterials that has another compound that are incorporated into consumer products can be assessed under existing CPSC Statutes Regulations and Guidelines.”
There’s a catch.
“Neither Consumer Product Safety Act nor the Federal Hazardous Substances Act requires the pre-marked registration or approval of products.”
So none actually require the pre-marked registration approval, thus it is usually not until a product has been distributed in commerce that the CPSC would evaluate the product for potential risks to the public.
So my view, we have some of the stuffs backwards where these products are not tested before they’re on the market. And then we decide if there’s any potential harm with that.
Another example of silver materials, silver particles is they’re used in socks to kill the bacteria on the feet. But the problem with this is what happens when your feet have cracks in them, things like that, and all these materials are being absorbed into you, they’re being exposed to your feet.
And when you wash the material, the silver nanoparticles, some of them will leave the socks of the fabric and get into the waste stream, get down into the sewage treatment plants, and then out into the water system. So it’s one of the consequences of silver nanoparticles from an ecological perspective.
So, I think it’s one of the huge struggles from a regulatory perspective, how to manage the explosion of nanomaterials and nanoproducts, products that use nanomaterials in our day-to-day lives.
DEBRA: But there are no regulations for them to apply.
STEVEN GILBERT: Right! It’s been a really tough struggle for that. The EPA would use the TSCA, Toxic Substance Control Act. It was passed in ’76. But we all know that that law is pretty broken, so all these materials are not well-tested. It’s very difficult for the EPA to regulate this.
Nano silver particles, they’ve tried to move it, to regulate them as pesticides, as bactericides which is really what they are.
But the advertisement for the products was that they are naturally-occurring and natural silver-based nanotechnology that’s used to reduce bacteria in these products.
Kitchen silverware, all kinds of new products that are coming out there with silver nanoparticles, and it’s reduced bacteria.
And I want to emphasize bacteria is everywhere. Our tabletops, our everything is […] bacteria. And the important thing is just use soap and water to keep it clean. Don’t use antibiotic-based products, or silver-based products for trying to reduce bacteria in the world unless there’s a real need for it. Just soap and water does a great job.
DEBRA: I agree. I had a guest on, a doctor who wrote a book called Missing Microbes. He was talking about how, because of antibiotics and antimicrobials, we’ve lost 30% of the amount of different types of microorganisms that we should have in our bodies that are helping us.
And so I could see that silver would do the same thing. It’s one of those antimicrobials.
STEVEN GILBERT: Our bodies are very finely-tuned. We’re used to a lot of different kinds of bacteria. We have a little ecosystem of bacteria inside of us. Nanomaterials and antibodies really disrupt those systems. And I think we have to be really cautious about that or minimize our exposure to antibiotics.
Particularly things like […] and triclosans, they just show not to be efficacious. And what you really need to do is keep things as clean as possible with soap and water.
DEBRA: Yes, that will do it.
STEVEN GILBERT: […] clean the house, the first thing you have to do is wash the hands.
DEBRA: Yes, you mentioned that before. I remember that. And I would also point out, I always like to say that doctors in hospitals just scrub. They scrub with hot water and soap.
STEVEN GILBERT: Yes, that’s right.
DEBRA: So, there are no antimicrobials. That does the job, and it has for many, many years, many decades, centuries.
So, should we be concerned about all nanoparticles? Don’t you think that nanoparticles are automatically bad because it’s a nanoparticle?
STEVEN GILBERT: I don’t think so. I think there are a lot of good uses for nanomaterials. There are certainly going to be—like I just had solar panels put on my house. And I’m sure those solar panels, they use nanotechnology. So, there are really some excellent uses.
I think the concern is that we overuse them. Do we really need nano silver particles in our socks, in our bears for our kids, or the blanket for the kid? I think we just have to be a little bit judicious about where we want to use nanoparticles.
They’re widely used in our phones. There’s great advantage to them. Small size is important. They use less energy. For cell phones, this is great. They have the potential to revolutionize batteries.
There are a lot of great uses for nanomaterials. I think planes is another one, light in cars. You need more carbon fiber material.
So there are a lot of important uses, but we just need to be aware and take more of a precautionary approach to when we use them and ask what our exposure is. Do we really want to be exposed to nanomaterials every time we […] like our cosmetics? How much nanomaterials do we want to use in our cosmetics?
There are some that are really useful. Maybe titanium and zinc oxide are safe and efficacious for sure. But how much do we need to use or how careful? My view is always precautionary. We should try to reduce exposure, so we can […] the materials that there are not necessary […]
DEBRA: Also, there’s a big difference between using nanoparticles in cosmetics that you’re putting on your skin, and using nanoparticles in a solar panel that’s on top of your house, in terms of one’s exposure.
And so it’s not necessarily the technology is really bad, it’s mostly overuse, as you said, or having too much use I places where it really doesn’t need to be. And that overloads our bodies. But if we can use these technologies judiciously and appropriately, then they can be beneficial.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Dr. Steven Gilbert and he’s the author of A Small Dose of Toxicology, which you can download for free at his website, Toxipedia.org. And we’ll be right back
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Dr. Steven Gilbert, a toxicologist, and the author of A Small Dose of Toxicology. You can download your free copy at Toxipedia.org. And also, if you go to Toxipedia.org, you can find out about his most recent translation of this book into Arabic, and make a contribution there if you want.
How many languages has it been translated into?
STEVEN GILBERT: It’s in English, Chinese, we’re working on Arabic, and our Spanish is going to be our next one.
DEBRA: It’s a great book. It should totally be international. It’s great.
STEVEN GILBERT: Actually, it’s interesting. A German colleague has just started translating it in German on his own. I’m not sure when it will be done, but that’s also in the works.
DEBRA: Good! I think that my book, Toxic Free, is now in five languages or something like that.
STEVEN GILBERT: Wow, that’s great.
DEBRA: Yes, I’m very happy that that has happened. I’m looking at your nanoparticles page on Toxipedia, and I just want to say a few of the known health risks. In sunscreen, it’s been known to damage human colon cells, damage brain stem cells in mice, and penetrate the human skin, entering the bloodstream, posing a threat to the heart, liver and red blood cells. It can travel from mothers to unborn fetuses.
And these are things that are known health risks. There were those studies.
So it’s being used in so many products, and as we said earlier, that it’s not necessarily on the label. It’s not necessarily advertised, and not very well understood.
So in this last segment, let’s talk about how consumers can minimize their risk for nanoparticles.
STEVEN GILBERT: I think the important thing is just be aware of what products might have nanomaterials in them, and […] exposure.
And I think you mentioned too, the really important ones are sunscreens and general class of cosmetics because we’re applying them right to our skin.And [manipulation] materials that might get into the atmosphere is important if you inhale them—and in the water supply.
But I think cosmetics are probably the most important one now. They’re also used in some medicines, things like that.
So I think to try to look into some of the websites where the products might be listed. There’s a really good website called Nano.gov. So it’s Nano.gov. It’s tried to produce some […] So there are websites that list some of the manufacturers, some of the products with nanomaterials.
But I think the FDA is trying to get their handle on this issue. I think looking at cosmetics, and really demanding of your legislative folks to pass rules and regulations that require labeling—like how many people know that there are nanomaterials in their sunscreens? There’s titanium and zinc oxide, titanium dioxide and zinc oxide in nano scale in sunscreens. They’re not required to label them as such.
And also, as the size of the particles can be very widely—so how much control the manufacturers use over the particle size, and what chemicals might be attached to the particles, is the other really important question because of the surface area issue. There’s a greater surface area to volume ratio, so you get more exposure to any chemicals that are attached to these products. And these products, because they’re small size, they’re great carriers. They move the chemical into the cell, and you get exposure and potential hazard effects from that.
From a toxicological point of view, nanomaterials are complicated because it varies in size, the […] of the materials. They change their physiochemical properties. In my recommendation to be always on the precautionary side is try to limit exposure unless you really need it.
DEBRA: I completely agree with that on every type of toxic chemical there is, or anything that’s unknown. I think one of the biggest problems here with nanoparticles is that the health effects, we’re just starting to look at them. And so we don’t know what the health effects are. We don’t know they’re in the product.
When you were just taking about the different sizes of the nanoparticles, it suddenly occurred to me that nanoparticles are a whole range of different sizes in a range, but they’re all within this very small, infinitisemal size, but they’re not all exactly the same size.
STEVEN GILBERT: And that’s how the manufacturing process works […]. There are some people […] are calling ultra-fine particles which do not quite meet the definition of nano-size.
Remember, […] nanoparticles serve an arbitrary definition. It just said it was 1 to 100-nanometers. So if it’s 101 nanometers, a nanomaterial, there’s a wide range of concern about how the manufacturer […] size, whether they’re clumped together or not.
And really, I want to emphasize too, the occupational health issues. The World Health Organization put out a statement that people that “research, develop, manufacture, package, handle, transport, use and dispose nanomaterials will be the most exposed, and therefore, most likely to suffer any potential human health harms. As such, worker protection should be paramount with any nanomaterial oversight regime.”
And I’d like to add to that, we should be doing a better job of studying the workers because […] their exposure is going to be great, and we can learn a great deal about potential health consequences of nanomaterial by studying the workers.
DEBRA: I would totally agree with that too. That’s exactly where they would be.
STEVEN GILBERT: I think that’s where the exposure would be greatest. You’ve got the greatest volume of material there, and the greatest manipulation of the product both into the atmosphere as well as in the water supply. There’s surface area around that manufacturing process.
DEBRA: I was also thinking about what you said about the nanoparticle silver washing off, and then it would go down into the water system. Would you think that some of those nanoparticles are getting into our drinking water supplies?
STEVEN GILBERT: I don’t think we looked at that. One of the challenges when you do these studies is trying to quantitate the amount of nanomaterial that’s in the medium. So trying to look for it in the water, look for it in the food, look for it in soil is challenging.
But I think that’s something we need to be spending more time on. I think one of the challenges that we should take on is quantitation of the nanomaterial in different media, so we know what our exposure is.
And silver has been used for a long time. It’s used in medicine for a long time as an antibiotic, for example. It was used […] after World War II when antibiotics got more widely used. But now, it’s coming back particularly in wound dressing. So, actually, you use silver nanomaterial in wound dressing.
And generally, people would say—or they’re convinced that silver nano exposure is not harmful for them. The application in medicine […] But still, it’s not clear exactly where all the silver nano parts that are going in the biological system.
So, there needs to be a lot more study—either animal studies or human health studies—that try to quantitate where the nanomaterial is going in our bodies.
DEBRA: So much to learn. In some ways, you and I have both been working in this field for many years in our own respective ways, in decades. And yet, I keep learning more and more, but I keep finding that there’s more and more to know. And I would say that probably, there’s a word just at the tip of the iceberg about what we know about toxics.
STEVEN GILBERT: Really, what’s discouraging to me is that we know better than this. We put asbestos and lead onto the environment to great detrimental effects to many people. Thousands of people have died from mesothelioma from asbestos exposure. Many kids have been harmed by lead exposure as well as […] chemicals.
And what we don’t need to do is add nanomaterial into that. So my view, we should have a much more robust program to study the potential ecological health effects of nanomaterials before we put them in our socks, in our shoes, in our teddy bears, and all kinds of other products.
We should have a pretty good understanding of the life cycle of these products, how they’re manufactured, where they go, […] products, how do we dispose of them, and what happens to them in the waste stream, and what happens, of course, from an ecological and human health standpoint.
DEBRA: I totally agree. There’s so much that you were talking earlier about the Consumer Product Safety Commission making a statement, and this was something that I read many, many years ago.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission is one of the first places I went when I was looking for information about toxics.
And it really is most people don’t understand that there isn’t preliminary testing, that what happens is that the Consumer Product Safety Commission can’t do anything until the product is in use, and consumers start writing to the Consumer Product Safety Commission to tell them that there’s something wrong.
And that’s just backwards. It’s just backwards.
STEVEN GILBERT: It is backwards, and we need a more precautionary approach. So we put human health, ecological health first before using some of these products. So we really go to ask, “Do we really need it?”
Do we really need antibiotics in our soap? That’s one of the great examples of that. Do we really need antibiotics in our teddy bears or nano silver particles in our teddy bears, in our socks? There are some things that you just don’t need.
[…] some nanomaterial in the washing machine. It would add a little bit of silver nanoparticle in the wash water. So do we really need to go there with some of these products?
DEBRA: No, we don’t. We don’t. Well, Dr. Gilbert, it’s been a pleasure talking to you yet again, and I’m sure that we’ll talk to you a lot more.
STEVEN GILBERT: Thanks, Debra. Have a good day.
DEBRA: You too. So you’ve been listening to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. You can go to Dr. Gilbert’s website, which is Toxipedia.org. Get his book, A Small Dose of Toxicology. It’s absolutely free. You can also go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and find out who’s going to be on tomorrow, and this week. I always have the list of all the guests for the week.
You can also listen to this show again. You can listen to any other shows again because they are all archived.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well.
Toxic Free Gym Gloves
Question from Gustavo Alves
Hi Debra!
I work out at the gym 5x a week and lift weights. I have to wear gym gloves. However, I’ve been researching and some gloves have the Proposition 65 warning (“This product contains one or more chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm”).
Since these will be in direct contact with my hands, I’d like to avoid them. Most of them (if not all) have some PVC, as the description proudly list it. Some gloves don’t have this warning but I wonder if that’s because they’re not sold on California. They could be equally dangerous, but without the mandatory warning, right?
So, any recommendation on gym gloves that are safe/made of natural materials?
Thanks!
Gustavo
Debra’s Answer
Readers, any suggestions?
Gustavo, if you could post a comment with various materials used to make gym gloves I could tell you which is the least toxic. This is just not a product I am familiar with.
But wait. Here’s a comment I just found on a fitness discussion board, in answer to your very question.
don’t use gloves. Get some chalk I got my chalk for about $2 at a hiking shop and it’s lasted me over a year now. I only use it for chin ups and deadlifts.
Learn to grip properly to prevent calluses
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTqNSgCmM2s
I think I read somewhere on this forum gloves actually hinder your grip strength. I take pride in my calluses even though I’m female- really they aren’t noticeable unless I really pay attention to them
Nuwave Stainless Steel Pans
Question from Helen Gray
I am curious if you know anything about Nuwave stainless steel pans that are induction ready that have a “Ceramic Non-stick Duralon Coating”? Are they safe? Thank you
Debra’s Answer
This description just doesn’t make sense.
Ceramic is clay-based and Duralon is nylon.
I’ve been looking at all these new “ceramic” nonstick pans that have been coming out and I just can’t recommend them. Even Green Gourmet that I used to recommend.
Two reasons.
One is that nobody is saying what is really in these finishes.
And, the finishes don’t last. Where do they go if they are no longer on the pan?
I was also told by a cookware rep that olive oil breaks down these ceramic finishes.
I’m sticking with my Xtrema cookware that is 100% safe ceramic through and through.
Oil-based Polyurethane on Wood Floor
Question from amie
Hi Debra
I am moving into a house that was refinsihed with polyurethane on the wood throughout the house. They did this last April so it has been 3 months. I was diagnosed with MCS six years ago. I tolerate more these days but am afraid that this will affect me. Besides heating the house do you recommend I use safecoat product to seal in offgasing or do you think this is enough time for it to cure. I did have a light reaction when I first got into house. They have since aired out and it felt better. Would love your advise
thank you
Debra’s Answer
Oil-based wood finishes and paints take a very long time to cure, many months.
Once I advised a client with oil-based paint to “bake” his house to remove the odor. This actually speeds up the outgassing process. He baked his house for two weeks and that totally handled it. Odor gone.
I can’t tell you how much heating it will take. But once it is completely outgassed it won’t be toxic. Polyurethane actually isn’t toxic. It’s all the solvents and additives that are in the finish. If you had a “light reaction” and felt better after it was aired out, it may be well on it’s way to being fine and you might only need a week or two of baking.
I don’t recommend that you put another finish on top. It’s better to cure this one to complete outgassing.
Chemicals in wool yarn
Question from Mandy
I’m wondering about chemicals in wool yarn. I read in one of your previous posts that there have been tests that show that the chemicals in conventional cotton are removed during the milling and production process. I wondered if this might be the case with wool yarn? Or, if after an item has been knitted that the residual chemicals could be removed by regular washing? I was wondering if you might know if there is any information about this anywhere?
Thank you for your help!
Sincerely,
Mandy
Debra’s Answer
I would say that if there were chemicals on the wool yarn, they probably wouldn’t be removed in the processing. The process to make wool into yarn is much less than the process to make cotton into cloth.
Your best bet would be to buy certified organic yarns where the processing must be organic as well as the growing.
Take a look at the yarn page on Debra’s List.