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How to Help Your Liver Detox Your Body
My guest today is Dr. James Gatza, author of The End Of Health Roulette and Founder of Total Shake. We’ll be talking about the role of the liver in removing toxic chemicals from your body and what you can to to help your liver perform that vital function. Dr. Gatza is a Doctor of Chiropractic Medicine with over 25 years of experience. He uses Applied Kinesiology, Nutrition and Body Chemistry with an extensive background in the treatment of chronic symptoms and disease. He is trained in Clinical Laboratory Diagnosis, X-Ray Diagnosis, Spinography, and Physiotherapy; as well as Reflexology and Cranial-Sacral Therapy. He has attended state of the art seminars on the effects and treatment of Food Allergies, Clinical Nutrition, Acupuncture, and Herbology. For over 20 years, Dr. Gatza has treated over 20,000 patients with weight problems, and other common diseases such as diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic neck & back pain, headaches/migraines, high blood pressure, breathing problems, joint pain, sleep problems, carpal tunnel syndrome, chronic fatigue & fibromyalgia, high cholesterol, joint swelling, and much more. Early in his career, Dr. Gatza realized that most doctors treated the symptoms of illness, and not the CAUSE. He found that because of this backward, thinking, the usual medical approach either didn’t work at all, or at best, helped a patient temporarily. This left patients stuck in the drug/doctor revolving door. In fact, Dr. Gatza found that in most cases, under that type of “care”, patients experienced the same symptoms or worse, over and over again while their doctors simply continued to drug them. Not satisfied with these drug/doctor “solutions.” Dr. Gatza searched and found workable answers as to WHY a person’s body is not working the way it should and devises individual treatment protocol to improve the function of each individual.
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
How to Help Your Liver Detox Your Body
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Dr. James Gatza
Date of Broadcast: June 02, 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 Monday, June 2, 2014. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida, and I want to tell you about something that I became aware of over the weekend. Well, not for the first time, but I have a picture, a framed picture up on my wall, of the first bridge that was built over the Mississippi River.
You have things in your home, and you don’t always look at everything, every single second. And then every once in a while, you’ll walk by something, and you’ll go, “Oh, I remember putting that there.” And you get reminded of something again.
And over the weekend, I was suddenly reminded of this picture of the first bridge across the Mississippi River. And the reason that I wanted to tell you about this today is because I [inaudible 00:00:57] because I saw a television show. I don’t remember the exact name, but it was something like the man who built America, and was all about all these industrialists—Rockefeller and everybody who built the industrial infrastructure that we have today.
And the importance of this bridge was that it was the first bridge that was built out of steel. It was such a long span that they had to have a new material. And that started the steel industry.
Now, when it was completed at 1874, it was the longest bridge in the world—the longest span bridge, arch bridge in the world.
And on the show, there was a little scene, and they had a picture of a man standing, looking across—of course, it was an actor, the Mississippi River. And the narrator in the back is saying, “He’s looking into the future.”
He looks across the Mississippi, and he sees a bridge. He can see it in his mind. It’s in his imagination. And he’s able to see that future. He’s willing to have enough confidence in that vision to put everything he’s got into it.
He even put all his own money into it.
And he’s willing to convince others that he knows it is going to happen.
And when I heard those words, it’s like, “Yes, that’s the way I feel.” I can envision that there is a future where we have everything is toxic-free, where we don’t have to be reading labels, just everybody is in agreement that we should live in a toxic-free world.
And I’m making that happen on a day-by-day basis. I have put everything. I have put my life into this. I have put my money into it. It’s so important to me, and I know that it’s important to all my guests and many other people. And if we each have that vision, if we can each see that that is what it is that we’re creating, we can create this together. And that’s why this is so important for me to do this show, and do the work that I do every day, bringing information about how to make this dream of living without toxic chemicals a reality.
This dream that we can all be healthy because toxic chemicals aren’t making us sick—it’s something that we all can be in agreement on every day, and take those steps to make it happen.
So I’ll get off my soapbox now and introduce my guest, who is Dr. James Gatza. He is a chiropractor who is here locally in Clearwater, where I live. And he agrees that we should be removing toxic chemicals from our body, and has various ways that he does that.
So today, we’re going to talk about your liver, specifically, which is a major detox organ—how it works, what we can do to make it function better, and also, a little bit about how toxic chemicals can actually destroy its function—that the toxic chemicals destroy the very function that our bodies need to be able to protect ourselves from toxic chemicals.
So the liver is very, very important.
Hi, Dr. Gatza.
DR. JAMES GATZA: Well, good morning.
DEBRA: Good morning. How are you?
DR. JAMES GATZA: I’m outstanding. How are you doing this morning?
DEBRA: I’m doing very well. So tell us how you became interested in chiropractic and doing things in a different way than a standard medical profession?
DR. JAMES GATZA: Well, when I was growing up—I grew up in Michigan, so I’m a nice, Midwestern boy. And I used to play a lot of sports, and I used to have a lot of fun with my life. But every once in a while, we’d get hurt, or I get sick, or something would be wrong with me. And when I went to the doctor, the solutions were just never very good. They never could really figure out what’s wrong with, they never helped me very much. The drugs they gave me didn’t really do me much good.
And I just really didn’t believe that much in taking drugs as a way to make someone healthy.
So I made a choice to become the type of doctor that helped people get healthy in a more natural sense, which actually is really the only way to make someone healthy.
And I lucked out that I made a really good choice because it turned out that like your bridge story, I was right—the way you get people healthy is through natural means. And so that’s what we do in our office. It’s fun.
DEBRA: And I totally agree with you with that. It’s just, we, I think, most of us, who are alive today came into this world with the idea that if you’re sick, you go to the doctor, and they give you a drug, and that’s what makes you well. But if you really think about it, giving somebody a drug to alleviate their symptoms doesn’t actually create health.
DR. JAMES GATZA: Yes, it really doesn’t.
DEBRA: Yes, tell us more about that.
DR. JAMES GATZA: Well, a personal story—a lot of the choices that I make I think it’s like this with most people—these things that have happened to us personally.
I remember I was in college, and I was a tennis player, so I was playing lots of tennis all the time. And I was hurt constantly.
But this one time, I woke up after playing how many days in a row, and my back was so bent over that I couldn’t straighten up. It literally was bent at the waist, 90-degrees, walking like a person whose head is face down.
And I’m only 19 years old. I’m a pretty young guy and I’m in a pretty good shape.
So they take me to the specialist. They x-ray me, and do all the normal tests. And by the time he’s finished, he says, “You’re
totally normal.”
And I walked out of the office and I’m thinking, “Man, I don’t feel very normal. I can’t walk.”
So now that leads to a later period of time where I learned about nutrition and toxicity, and what I didn’t know at the time was I had some habits that were making me toxic and were, therefore, depleting my body of certain key minerals like calcium and magnesium. Both minerals are needed for the muscles to relax under normal circumstances. Me playing tennis was using them up because I was sweating too much, and the toxins were another burden that was too much.
And one day, I woke up bent over. And it was actually because I was toxic. That was actually the reason for it.
DEBRA: So then, did you do something to detox and it fixed everything?
DR. JAMES GATZA: Well, at that time, what I did was muscle relaxers and painkillers because that’s what the doctors told me to do. And I didn’t know anything of toxicity then. I didn’t know anything of detoxification.
So I didn’t do anything. And to be honest with you, this happened to me so often, I pretty much had to quit tennis. I was injured all the time.
And it wasn’t until later in life when I learned about how to detox and the necessity to be toxic-free that I was able to overcome this, and now, I’m back on the tennis court even though it’s 35 years later, 30 years later.
DEBRA: That’s great. That’s great. And so now, you’re a chiropractor, and you studied some other things as well.
DR. JAMES GATZA: Yes. When I first got out of school for chiropractic, the normal thing that you do is you open a practice, and you start seeing patients. And my wife is also a chiropractor, so we were in the business together. And we both loved our jobs.
But what I found was when patients who’d come in, I would give them a standard treatment like an adjustment, and maybe some stretching or something like that—but mostly just adjustment. And I found that most of my patients tended to have the same problem every time they came in, and it wasn’t necessarily correcting the problem all the way though.
So I thought, “Man, this is weird. I do the same thing every time and they like it, but when they come back, I’m starting over again.”
So I went on a search to find why that was, was there really a way to help someone get all the way healthy, was there really something specific that was causing this problem? And after years of study of things like acupuncture and homeopathy, herbology, cranial sacral therapy, reflexology—just about anything you could think of, even study energy patterns on the body.
It came down to a few basic things. The two most significant ones were toxicity and food allergies or food sensitivity of some kind, which really just leads back to toxicity in the end anyway.
DEBRA: It does. We need to take a break, but we’re going to talk about exactly that when we come back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Dr. James Gatza. He’s a chiropractor here in Clearwater, Florida, where I live. He’s also the author of The End of Health Roulette and founder of Total Shake. And you can go to his website at GatzaWellness.com. That’s G-A-T-Z-A Wellness.com.
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. James Gatza, chiropractor, here in Clearwater, Florida where I live. And we’re talking today about detoxing your body.
Now, Dr. Gatza, I know in your bio that you sent to me, you said that you have treated over 20,000 patients. One of the things that I’ve learned that I think that you’re going to agree with is that it looks like that people have many different illnesses, but my conclusion after 30 years of study in my field is that it’s all the same illness. It’s all that the body is overloaded with toxic chemicals, and that it comes out looking like different illnesses because those are the areas where individual bodies are the weakest.
And so you say that you’ve treated people with such diverse things as diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic neck and back pain, headaches, migraines, high blood pressure, breathing problems, joint pain, sleep problems, carpal tunnel syndrome, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, high cholesterol and all these different things.
But I’m thinking that you’re probably treating a lot of them with a basic program. I don’t know because we’ve only just met.
But I’m thinking that there’s a basic program that handles the basic things that are out for everybody. And then there are individual things for the specific illness.
DR. JAMES GATZA: Yes, well, Debra, it’s interesting. When we first started working with all these different chronic illnesses, we had a separate program for every one of them. We thought we had to be a specialist and really understand specifically what was wrong with every particular different disease that was named, by the way, by some other type of agency like M.D.’s or pharmaceutical companies.
But what we found over the years was every single disease, whether it was someone with irritable bowel syndrome, or whether they had diabetes, Crohn’s disease, it really didn’t matter—high blood pressure, high cholesterol. They tended to have similar things at the bottom of the problem—similar things causing the problem.
DEBRA: And what were those similar things?
DR. JAMES GATZA: Well, if you look at the body, the way it actually is designed—you don’t have to be a medical doctor to understand this. It’s just very basic stuff.
The body is controlled by the brain through two areas—one is the nervous system, which are the nerves. The other is through hormones and the glands.
Now, toxins are fat-soluble. So what that means is that toxins are poisons—whether they come from drugs, or food additives, or pesticides, or the environment, or the water, or the air—wherever they come from, they’re fat-soluble. So what happens is once they get into the body in an overwhelming fashion, they start to hide themselves in the fatty tissue.
Well, the brain and glands that make hormones are fatty tissues. So as toxins get more prevalent inside the body, they’re then more in the brain and more in the hormone things called the glands. Once these toxins build up enough, they start to affect the brain’s ability to function properly, and that means that the nerves won’t work properly.
And they affect the glands, so they can’t work properly. So hormones won’t work properly.
And then you have a little bit of a crapshoot, depending on what toxic build-up is affecting what area of the brain, or what area of the nerves, or which hormones, or which balance in the glands. Then you have a certain disease that follows whether it’s asthma, or diabetes, or arthritis.
DEBRA: Yes, you explained that very well. That is exactly my understanding as well. And I studied this from the viewpoint of—I’m not a chemist, a toxicologist or anything like that, but I did study a lot of toxicology books. And that’s my conclusion as well, is that the body has a basic function, and then the toxic chemicals come in, and destroy our basic functions.
And when I wrote my most recent book, Toxic-Free, I actually took a new look at it, and I looked and found that there are toxic chemicals that destroy specifically each one of our body systems—each one of them.
Your body needs to have a heart, and lungs, and a brain, and each part, in order to function as a whole. And when toxic chemicals come in, and start destroying your immune system, or something, or your liver, as we’re going to be talking about, then there’s a hole in the function. It’s like one of the workers is missing.
And then the whole system starts going down.
And not only do we have toxic chemicals that are destroying one system of our bodies, each and every one of our body systems are being harmed by toxic chemicals every single day unless we’re doing something to eliminate those toxic chemicals from our homes and workplace.
And today, we’re going to talk about very soon, after the next break, I’m watching the clock. We’re going to be talking about how toxic chemicals affect your liver, and what we can do to restore our liver function, specifically.
Now, there are all kinds of other systems that need to get restored as well. But there are very specific things that we can do to help our liver, and our livers—you just look at the word, liver. It’s the thing that allows you to live. Without our livers—it contributes to so many different functions.
We’re going to get our liver straightened out today. And because the liver is the major area in the body that processes toxic chemicals, it’s a very, very, very good place to start.
Do you want to say something about the liver for a few seconds?
DR. JAMES GATZA: Sure, I’ll say something. Well, when we look at the simple idea that your body is controlled by the brain, the nerves and the hormone, therefore, for it to function properly, those things have to be in control, and they have to be controlled correctly.
If the toxins build up in the body, those toxins affect that control. So we have to change that or we have to stop that.
Well, the line of defense that controls that completely is the liver. So if the liver is functioning properly and able to do its job as well as it can, then the toxins never make it to the brain, to the nerves, or to the hormone glands, and the body will just function at a much higher level.
So it’s vital that you have to have a functioning liver. I would say that of the 20-plus-thousand patients that we’ve seen here in the clinic, 20-plus-thousand of them had to have liver handling. Almost every single one of them had toxicity in the liver, and toxicity in the body. It’s a primary part of our program and it’s not because we just want to do detox on people. It’s because if we have found pretty much almost as a law of health at least at this time and in this place, if you don’t detoxify your patients, they will not be able to get healthy.
It’s pretty much black and white now.
DEBRA: I totally agree with that. We need to go to break now. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and we’re talking with Dr. James Gatza. And we’ll be right back to tell you what you can do to help your liver be healthy.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Dr. James Gatza. He’s the author of the End of Health Roulette, the founder of Total Shake, which we’re going to be talking about soon, and he’s a chiropractor here in Clearwater, Florida, where I live.
Would you say what you said just right before the break again about how if people don’t detox, they’re not going to get well?
DR. JAMES GATZA: Well, the simple reality is that because we live in such a toxic world, there’s a constant in-flow of things that are harmful to our bodies, certain poisons that just get into our bodies, whether through food, air, water or whatever.
So If we don’t have the ability to properly detoxify those things, which means, to take those poisons and get them out of the body, then they’re going to build up, and if they build up, they’re going to affect your brain, your hormones, and the rest of your health.
So it’s a vital part of being healthy in today’s world.
DEBRA: It is. In today’s world, this is just a necessary bottom line. It’s just necessary for everyone to do this.
I don’t see how somebody could live in today’s world and not get these chemicals in their bodies—just from walking around outside, going into public buildings, driving cars, using ordinary consumer products. If you know where the toxic chemical are, which is my job, is I tell people where the toxic chemicals are and how they can eliminate them from their lives to a great degree, if you do that and live an intentionally toxic-free life, then there’s not so much build-up.
But if you’re not doing that, anybody who’s not doing that, is going to have what’s called body burden. And your liver is the organ that cleans it up if it can.
So now tell us what people can do to help detox their liver.
DR. JAMES GATZA: Well, it’s actually not that hard to understand. I think that most people don’t really know about toxicity, and they don’t know how important it is—to get rid of it. But it’s really simple.
There are two steps in the liver that take a poison that’s somehow gotten into your body, and get it fully out of the system. Now, because these poisons are fat-soluble, they like to hide inside the body, so you’ve got to have a really good functioning liver.
Now, the first phase requires a very specific ratio of vitamins, minerals and enzymes. So things like niacin, vitamin B3, B6, B12, vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E—there’s a whole list of things.
Now, it’s the same for every person. Everyone has the same kind of liver, and they have the same vitamins, minerals and enzymes that helps the liver take the poisons out.
What happens in our world, if there is too much of a burden of chemicals or toxins, you use up those vitamins.
So for instance, if someone has a habit that’s very toxic, then they’re putting those toxins in all the time, then they’re going to use up their vitamin B3, B6, B12, C, D, E, et cetera. So what happens with that person is they become deficient in those nutrients, and then the toxins are no longer removed in that first phase, and they start to build up and cause trouble.
DEBRA: And they keep coming in too.
DR. JAMES GATZA: And then they keep coming in, and the depletion gets worse, and then the toxins burden more, and then the depletion gets worse. It’s a dwindling spiral of health. And then you get any myriad of different diseases that the doctors are happy to label for you later.
DEBRA: And then they give you a drug, which does nothing to help your body detox. It might alleviate your symptoms, but—
DR. JAMES GATZA: Well, actually, the drug is one of the toxins—
DEBRA: Yes, it is.
DR. JAMES GATZA: —that has to be removed by your liver.
DEBRA: That’s exactly right.
DR. JAMES GATZA: Every time a person is overburdened by toxins to the point where they get vitamin-deficient, to the point where they get a symptom, to the point where they go to the doctor and get a drug, they have just sped up that dwindling spiral on an exponential level because now, they’re going totally in the wrong direction.
So we have to make sure when we’re dealing with a toxic person in a toxic environment that their phase 1 nutrients are super high-levels inside their body.
That’s the phase 1. Now, the second part is the second phase of detox. You actually need both of them to work. In the second part, this is a heavy amino acid side—which is just the different nutrients that you need to convert that poison in the final step, to make it excretable, or for the body to be able to get rid of it.
So in phase 1, you use certain vitamins to make changes in the poison or the toxin. Then phase 2, you make a final change.
And then once that final change is done, you can now get rid of it, and you’ll be toxic-free for that particular segment.
So when you’re dealing with the liver, you’ve got to make sure you’ve got all of those nutrients, not only by the name, they have to be given in a way the body can assimilate them, they have to be given in a way that’s balanced with the other nutrients, so you’re not too much of one, and too little of the other. And they have to be given on a regular basis, so the body doesn’t build up toxin.
DEBRA: That’s right because they do get depleted. You have to keep putting them in.
And would you say—aren’t people getting these nutrients in the food they eat?
DR. JAMES GATZA: Not to plug my book, but one of the first things in my book, probably the most important factor in getting our patients healthy liver has had to do with the concept of the food. And what people’s idea of what food is, and what food really is, is different.
So what I did was I wrote a chapter called Food versus Unfood.
DEBRA: I wrote a whole article that probably said the same thing, but go ahead.
DR. JAMES GATZA: It’s a funny concept, but people think that food is something you put in your mouth that tastes a certain way, and fills you up, and you feel like you’ve eaten. But in my definition of a food, it’s different really than any other definition I’ve ever seen. It’s simply this—for something to be considered a food, it has to have the nutrients in it that are necessary for the function of the body.
In other words, you have to have vitamins, minerals and enzymes that are alive in it, that once you put it into the body, the body can use those nutrients to further its function.
DEBRA: That’s actually the dictionary definition of food. I looked it up. I wrote a whole article about this about 10 years ago.
I’ll look it up and see if I can send it to you and post it online or something because I differentiated between food being something that you consume that gives your body nutrients, so that it will nourish your body functions.
And that is what the dictionary says.
And that is not what is sold as food today. So I agree with you. Even if you were to go buy a head of lettuce, if there’s no nutrition in it because it’s 25 days old or whatever, and there was no nutrition on the soil, then it’s not a food. A food is something designed by nature in order to nourish the organism of the body.
We can keep talking. Sorry, I was looking at the wrong number.
So go ahead with food. Talk about a little more.
DR. JAMES GATZA: Yes, I agree. What you said is exactly right. And what we found was all the different patient that we’ve seen no matter what the disease they come in with, they don’t know those definitions. And so what’s happening is they’re eating a lot of what we call unfood.
Now, an unfood—
DEBRA: Wait. Now, we do need to go to the break. I’m sorry. We do need to go to the break. And we’ll talk about that when we come back.
This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Dr. James Gatza, and we’re having a very interesting conversation about livers, foods and how to be healthy. 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. James Gatza—chiropractor, and we’re talking about your liver.
So continue with what you were wanting to say about the unfoods.
DR. JAMES GATZA: Just real quickly on unfood, most people think that when they eat a food, they’re helping their body.
But if what they’re putting in their system is an unfood, all it does is increase the toxic load. And it just adds poisons, adds toxins—it doesn’t give them the nutrients they need.
And therefore, the liver can’t do its job because now, instead of getting a delivery of all the new nutrients that needs to fight the battle, it’s just delivered a bunch of more toxins, and a bunch of more problems, and it causes incredible amount of health problems.
DEBRA: Incredible amounts, yes. I can just say, in a nutshell, from my personal experience, that there are all these toxic chemicals out in the world, which I had been doing my best to eliminate for more than 30 years. But I also discovered that food, just ordinary, everyday food that we think that we’re all eating has caused as many health problems for me as the toxic chemicals.
There are actually some foods that I consider to be toxic chemicals because they cause us worst health problems as anything that’s coming manmade out of a factory.
So that’s a whole different discussion, but I just want to include those in what we’re talking about here.
So I know that you have put together a product that is specifically to help people detox their livers. So tell us about that.
DR. JAMES GATZA: What you just said is really, really true. We basically found that the food—there are all kinds of different sources of these toxins. But we found that the food in America is not very well-made, or let’s say, it’s just not very healthy.
And we had to put people on so many different dietary restrictions. And we had success with that but it was hard for them.
So instead of that, what we did is we got together, and we formulated what we consider to be the perfect food. And what it is, it’s called the Total Shake, and it’s precisely formulated food for the liver. It basically should be called liver food.
And how you make something for the liver is you want to create, basically, a certain type of food that’s easily digestible, easily absorbable, and when it’s absorbed, it builds up all the vitamins, minerals and enzymes needed by the liver to fight the toxic war that happens every day.
Now, for it to be effective, it has to be food allergy-free. It can’t have any toxins in it, so you can’t have preservatives, and other different things that people put in all these crummy products. It has to be very well-made. In other words, it has to help and not hurt.
And Total Shake is very hard to make. It’s very expensive to make. But we have basically formulated the perfect food. And when patients take it, whether they’re asthmatic or arthritic or diabetic or high blood pressure or whatever disease that you can think of, this shake helps them decrease the toxic load by helping the liver do its job.
When you decrease the toxic load, the brain and the hormones start to balance better, they start to function better, and that disease starts to improve just by normal body function. It’s almost like a miracle.
DEBRA: It is. Some years ago, I took a different product that was designed for the liver. I didn’t know about yours until this morning actually. But I was seeing a naturopathic doctor. She gave me a liver shake, specifically designed for the liver.
And she was doing at the time live blood analysis. And what that is, listeners, if you’re not familiar with this, is that they look at your blood, take a blood sample and look at it under a microscope, and you can see what’s going on in your blood.
And it was very interesting to see. And when you have healthy, clean blood, your blood cells, red blood cells float around separately.
And when your liver is not functioning, there are all kinds of garbage. It actually looks like garbage floating around in your blood.
It does. Don’t you think?
DR. JAMES GATZA: Can I say one interesting thing about that?
DEBRA: Sure.
DR. JAMES GATZA: We had a live blood cell analysis person come to our office, and he was evaluating—first, he evaluated Dr. Julie and myself at a seminar. And he couldn’t believe our blood was so perfect. He’s like, “Wow. Your blood, I’ve never seen blood like this before.”
And I could understand Dr. Julie’s being good, but I’m not such a perfect eater. I can tell you, the Total Shake is what helped me with that. But what was fun is they came to the office, and they started doing live blood cell analysis on our patients.
And they were finding one for one, unbelievable analysis on the blood. They’re all doing great.
And let me tell you. When they started, they were pretty sick. But now, they are good.
DEBRA: I believe that because my experience with taking a specific, similar liver detox product was that at the beginning, even though I ate well, and I wasn’t exposed to toxic chemicals and stuff, I still had a lot of stuff in my blood.
My cells were clumped together, just stuff, particles of stuff floating around in my blood. I went on this other product, a similar product, for 30 days. And at the end of the 30 days, I had another live blood cell test, and it was perfect.
All that garbage was gone.
DR. JAMES GATZA: Isn’t that amazing?
DEBRA: The little blood cells were floating around independently, and I went, “Wow.”
It made a big difference in how I felt, in how my body started healing, and some of my symptoms went away. And it was just one of the steps that I took in order to detox. But I think it’s a step that every single person needs to take.
DR. JAMES GATZA: There’s no doubt.
DEBRA: There’s just no doubt in my mind. No doubt. And you’ve shown it with your improvements in your patients over and over and over. It’s just something that everybody needs to do in our world today.
Well, we have a few minutes left. Is there anything else you’d like to say that we haven’t covered?
DR. JAMES GATZA: What I could say is if someone wants to find out more about the Total Shake, they can call our office.
Can I give out the number for them?
DEBRA: Sure.
DR. JAMES GATZA: It’s 727-449-2008, and just ask about the Total Shake. And also, if it would help you with your progress on making a toxic-free world, my wife and I would be happy to do free consultation for anyone that wants to learn more about how to detoxify their body. We would be happy to do that.
DEBRA: Okay. That’s great. You can also go to TotalShakeSystem.com, and take a look at the product. And I’ve been looking at it this morning, during breaks, and before we started the show. And it is very consistent with what I would expect to see in this kind of product. And there are no allergens in it, and it obviously is made with a top quality materials.
Even though I just met Dr. Gatza this morning, I’ve lived here for 12 years, and have heard his name and know of his clinic and his wife, are very well-regarded in our community. So I think that it is a trustworthy thing. And everything that you have said could be something that I would have said. I’m just totally in agreement.
So if this is something—listeners, if you’re thinking about that you want to do this, this is something to take a look at because this is a product that I would recommend. TotalShakeSystem.com, or you can call the office. What’s the number again?
DR. JAMES GATZA: It’s 727-449-2008.
DEBRA: Okay, good.
DR. JAMES GATZA: But I’ll say one last thing before you have to send off. I have not seen a patient in over 25 years of practice that didn’t need to detoxify—not once. And that’s saying a lot because we see people from all over the world. We have patients fly in from out of this country to see us.
And people are toxic, the environment is toxic, and if you don’t handle it, if you’re not handling your health, it’s that simple.
DEBRA: That’s right. And you could look at a product like this and say, “Well gee, that’s expensive,” or you could look at going to a doctor who knows what they’re doing about this like Dr. Gatza and say, “Well, that’s a lot of money,” that’s relative for each person.
But if you don’t do this—what I found is if you don’t spend the money and put in the intention to do this step, you can spend money for the rest of your life doing everything else, and it’s not going to work. It’s not going to work.
And I’m not trying to sell Dr. Gatza’s product. I’m having him on the show because this is something that everybody needs to do. It’s just something everybody needs to do.
I can’t say that enough. It’s something everybody needs to do.
DR. JAMES GATZA: You’re going to be stuck, and then you’re going to be doing things that don’t work, and you’re going to be spinning around.
Detox isn’t even expensive. McDonald’s is more expensive than doing a detox program.
DEBRA: Right, it is. What are some of the other things, just quickly, people could exercise that will help, they could sweat.
But helping the liver is detrimental.
DR. JAMES GATZA: If you have a toxic liver, and you have a toxic environment, and your habits are somewhat toxic, and your diet is toxic, it’s always a good thing to exercise, it’s always a good thing to sweat. However, your body is being depleted by the toxin. And people that have depleted nutrition, if you also do exercise, which is also depleting, sometimes it’s not the best thing until you cleanse and detoxify because you end up more depleted.
And a lot of people get sicker as they exercise. So people who say, “I exercise all the time. It’s not helping,” because they’re toxic. So toxicity is really the first step.
DEBRA: It is. It is, it is, it is. Thank you so much for being on the show today. I think we all learned a lot. That was great.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today was Dr. James Gatza. You can go to his website at TotalShakeSytem.com. And be well.
Organic fabrics – Are they all treated?
Question from Sheila
Hi Debra,
I am trying to outfit my daughter’s bedroom. I have considered purchasing organic cotton fabric from fabric vendors to make my own curtains, pillow covers, bedding, etc.
Is that a safe bet? Are all fabrics typically treated with formaldehyde and other chemicals?
I also purchased a set of organic cotton sheets from Target. Much to my dismay, they had an odor. I feel like anything with an odor has chemicals on it. Are you familiar with the Target sheets?
Any advice on what fabrics I can use in her room that are non-toxic?
Thank you so much.
Debra’s Answer
Not all organic fabrics are treated, but some are.
Unfortunately, at the moment there is a difference between an organic fabric that is organic every step of the way and fabrics made with organic fibers but then have chemical processing.
Go to the Fabrics page of Debra’s List. These are the best resources I know of for fabrics. They will be able to answer any questions you have about their fabrics.
Especially look for 100% GOTS-certified organic cotton textiles, these are made from organic fibers and processed without chemicals. One example is Naturepedic (babies + kids) and Naturepedic (adult) GOTS certified sheets (and other bedding). There are no chemicals added (fragrances or otherwise) and any cotton smell washes away.
As well, if there ever is any smell, it’s a cotton smell which will wash away.
It’s great that Target and other discount stores are supporting organic cotton, but the cheaper price point usually means some toxic chemicals are involved in the processing and finishes.
OK to Grow Food in Stainless Steel Containers?
Question from Lynn
Hi,
I am considering growing fruit/vegetables/herbs etc (consumables) in stainless steel containers (304 grade).
I was wondering is this advisable given that stainless steel contains ‘leachable’ toxins? And has there been studies done on this before?
Regards
George
Brisbane, Australia
Debra’s Answer
There are no studies that I could find, but I will tell you that logically I don’t think it’s a good idea.
Metals leach from stainless steel with contact time. Even a few hours of cooking will leach metals into food, so continuous contact for weeks and months on end could certainly result in leaching metals into the soil that would then uptake into the plant and get into the fruit or vegetable.
ToxIN ToxOUT — How to Get Harmful Chemicals Out of Our Bodies and Our World
Today my guest is Rick Smith, one of the two authors of Slow Death by Rubber Duck and their newest book ToxIN ToxOUT. Since the runaway success of their first book, they’ve been asking “How do I get this toxic stuff out of my body?” and this book is their answer. We’ll be talking about their practical and sometimes surprising advice. Rick Smith is a prominent Canadian author and environmentalist. He is the Executive Director of the Broadbent Institute (www.BroadbentInstitute.ca), a progressive policy thinktank. From 2003 to 2012 Rick was Executive Director of the national charity Environmental Defence Canada. He co-authored the 2009 book Slow Death by Rubber Duck: How the Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Life Affects Our Health which became a bestseller in Canada and Australia and has now been translated into six languages. With a Ph.D. in biology and a stint as Chief of Staff of the federal New Democratic Party, Rick’s career has been equal parts science and politics. He is regarded as one of the country’s leading environmental campaigners and has spearheaded important new “green economy” policies at both the provincial and federal levels. He lives in Toronto with his wife and two small boys. www.toxintoxout.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
ToxIN ToxOUT—How to Get Harmful Chemicals Out of Our Bodies & Our World
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Rick Smith
Date of Broadcast: May 29, 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 to live toxic-free.
My guest today, I’m so happy to have him on, and I’m really interested in our interview today. Well, I’m interested in all of the interviews. I love all my guests. But this guest, I read a book that he was a co-author of. Back in 2009 and his co-author published a book and it’s called Slow Death by Rubber Duck.
And it has a picture of a rubber duck on the front.
It was a big bestseller.
This book was their account of an experiment that they did on their own bodies during which they intentionally put toxic chemicals into their bodies by ingesting and inhaling particular common consumer products that contain those certain toxic chemicals that they were looking for.
And then they had their body fluids tested to find out if those toxic chemicals they knew were going on were actually there in their body.
And sure enough, they were there.
And the book was a bestseller.
Now, five years later, these two authors are back with another book called ToxIn, Toxout, which is all about their personal experiences, trying to get the chemicals out of their bodies this time. And they explained which detox method works, and why trendy cleanses don’t.
And at the end of the book—I’ll say this now, but I don’t want to give away the story, but at the end of the book, what they do is they give us a lot of tried and true advice for eliminating toxics to begin with, which as you all know, this I’m totally in favor of. And I’m in favor of detoxing too.
We’ll find out today as we talk, if our guest agrees, that the best thing to do is that it’s a lot easier to just not put the toxic chemicals in, in the first place, but since all of us have toxic chemicals in our bodies, we need to know what works to get them out.
And since my guest and his co-author have tried all these different detox methods, we’re going to find out today.
My guest is Rick Smith, and he’s the co-author with Bruce Lourie of Toxin, Toxout.
Hi, Rick.
RICK SMITH:Hi, Debra, a pleasure to be here.
DEBRA: How are you doing? Thank you.
RICK SMITH: I’m doing very well, thank you.
DEBRA: Good. Are you feeling toxed out?
RICK SMITH: Yes, I am. I tried to take some of my own advice in our book.
DEBRA: That’s very good. And I want to say that, first of all, I really love the title of your book. I actually think we should all be using “toxout”instead of detox because the first thing, I guess, I’d like to say is that the term detox is confusing because it could mean anything from going to a drug rehab place to get drugs or alcohol out of your body, to doing something a cleanse, which is designed to get the waste materials of cell metabolism out of your body, to removing toxic chemicals, and a lot of things.
People just hear that word, detox, and they think, “Well, it’s a detox. It’s going to work for toxic chemicals.”
But as you found out, that isn’t necessarily the case.
RICK SMITH: Well, yes. The big focus of this book is investigation of the whole weird world of detox. As you say, I think the term is in danger of really leaving any useful meaning. You can’t open that women’s magazine or a men’s health magazine these days without the requisite detox article.
And most of the times, these articles are about the latest fad diets, the latest mango juice cleanse, or the latest three-day detox diet.
One of the common sense conclusions we reach in the book is that if these things found too good to be true, they probably are. You can’t eat crummy foods, get no exercise for 50 weeks of the year, and then the last two weeks, you think that a broccoli blender diet, and all your problems are going to go away.
DEBRA: I’d just like to say at this point that our bodies are detoxing every minute of every day. And our cells are detoxing every minute of every day. Detox is a continuous process that needs to be supported. The toxic chemicals are coming in on a continuous basis. Our bodies need to process them and remove them on a continuous basis.
We can’t wait a whole year until you get to those two weeks to do that cleanse. Would you agree with that?
RICK SMITH: Yes, that’s exactly I mean. What we do in the book, as you mentioned in your intro, is we try to tell the story of toxic chemicals, reveal the problem of toxic chemicals in an entertaining and direct way.
So what we do is we conduct experiments on ourselves and other intrepid volunteers to see to what extent some of these toxic chemicals are absorbed by the body, and then how you can best get these things out.
And so the first conclusion in the book is that it’s a lot easier to avoid these chemicals in the first place than it is to get them out of you once they’re already absorbed.
DEBRA: And I think that that’s a really important thing that everybody needs to know because that is an additional motivation. There’s a motivation to not be exposed to them because they’re going to make you sick. But then the secondary thing is that once they get in your body, they’re very difficult to remove.
Not that they can’t be removed, but some of them are more difficult than others. But you’re going to have to go through a process to get them out. And so it really is easier to create your non-toxic lifestyle and have that be the solution. It’s easy for everybody.
RICK SMITH: I’m just going to say that one of the other things to try to do in this book and in our last book, Slow Death by Rubber Duck, we really tried to get specific about the chemicals we’re talking about.
One of the weird things about a lot of these fads, detox remedies out there, it talks vaguely about getting toxic chemicals “out of your body” without being really specific about what chemicals they’re talking about.
There are hundreds of different synthetic chemicals that are now being linked to various human diseases. Each of them has a different characteristic in the body. It’s absorbed differently. It’s flushed from the body in a different way.
And so we go into some detail in the book regarding these different families of chemicals, and the different ways that you can absorb and get rid of them.
DEBRA: I want to hear all about that. We only
have a couple of minutes until the break, so I’d like you to tell us first how did you get interested in doing this.
RICK SMITH: I’m a biologist by training, and Bruce is also a scientist by training. When we were trying to figure out how to tell story about this new generation of population that’s just damaging—a new kind of pollution that’s more subtle, that’s more insidious than the more obvious, big, industrial sources of pollution that we’ve all grown up with.
Bruce and I came up with this idea, this renegade, adult, [inaudible 00:08:18] project, using some of our scientific training for good and not evil.
I hope the way that we tell the story with these experiments, these real life experiments, is entertaining for the readers.
DEBRA: It is. I haven’t read all of Toxin, Toxout because I just got it, but I did read Slow Death by Rubber Duck. I couldn’t put it down.
A lot of this information I already knew because this is what I write about too. But it was very entertaining and revealing to watch you go through your science experiments on your own body—you being the guinea pigs.
It was a very easy way to read some really important information that could otherwise be quite dry and difficult to digest.
You’ve done a great job. You’ve done a great job, and I really recommend that everybody read both books. These are two books that I just think anybody who’s alive today should read, in addition to mine, of course.
We need to go to the break. We’re talking today with Rick Smith. He’s one of the authors of Slow Death by Rubber Duck, and the newest book, Toxin, Toxout. And when we come back, we’re going to find out about different causes of toxic chemicals and what goes on in the body, and how we can get them out.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Rick Smith. He and his co-author, Bruce Lourie, are the authors of Slow Death by Rubber Duck and Toxin, Toxout, which is their newest book, and which is what we’re talking about today—how to get toxic chemicals out of your body.
So Rick, what do you think is the most important from your research and experience? What is the most important toxic chemical to remove from your body, and what did you find was the most effective way to do that?
RICK SMITH: I think I’m going to have a hard time narrowing it down to one. But what we did do in the book is we tried to think through the few ways that these toxic chemicals can be absorbed into the body.
And if you think about it, it can only happen through what you eat and drink, what you apply to your skin, and what you breathe in. That’s a bit of the way that we organize the book and the way that we organize our experiments, as we were talking about before the break.
So we did an experiment, for instance, on organic food, trying to see if eating organic food will measurably lower levels of the pesticides in the body. And pesticides concern me quite a lot.
We did an experiment with the cosmetics. And so we compared levels of toxic chemicals in the body with our volunteers, using both the greener, less toxic cosmetics, and then the regular brand name cosmetics that contain parabens and other nasty things.
And we did an entertaining experiment, looking at indoor air quality as well.
In each of those experiments, we’ve zeroed in on one or two key chemicals that we are quite concerned about.
DEBRA: Let’s go through each one of those, and tell us about what you found. Let’s start with food.
RICK SMITH: I think like a lot of organic food consumers over the years, I just assumed it was better for me. I don’t think the organic industry has done a good enough job putting a number to the organic benefits because, let’s say, for the organic food, in many cases, cost a little bit more.
So we recruited nine kids for this experiment. That was a 12-day experiment. It was complicated to do, actually.
So for the first four days of the experiment, we fed them non-organic food. For the middle four days, we fed them organic food. And then we put them back on the non-organic food for the last four days of the experiment. And we looked at levels of cancer-causing pesticides in their urine each morning.
Really, really dramatic results. In the middle four days, when these kids were eating organic food, the levels of pesticides in their body were cut almost to zero. And then as soon as they went back on the non-organic food, within a matter of hours, those pesticide levels zoomed right back up again.
DEBRA: A chart with that information should be in every natural food store that’s selling organic food.
RICK SMITH: Yes, it really should. The punch line is, “Organic food is worth it,” even if it costs a little bit more, even if sometimes it’s hard to find. Eating organic food is worth it.
It’s not an all or nothing proposition. Every little bit of organic, you can add to your diet, will measurably lower your pesticide levels.
And that’s particularly important for young kids, who we know, doctors tell us, are disproportionately susceptible to pollution of all sorts.
DEBRA: I actually knew that because when I was researching my book, Toxic Free, I saw another study that had done exactly that in Washington State. They had taken some kids, and did pretty much what you did. And they found exactly the same thing.
And so this is where it’s not a question of what do we need to do to remove the toxic pesticides from our bodies because in this case, and I keep saying this because every chemical is different. And even every pesticide is different because some last longer in your body than others.
But in this case, with these pesticides, it was just a matter of you stop eating them, and immediately, they’re not in your body. Not immediately like one second, but on the first day that you stop giving them pesticides in foods, then you notice the difference, so the second day or whatever it was.
But even if it was the third day, that would be very, very quick. And so it’s not like you need to go on a special cleanse, or do some special program. All you need to do is stop eating pesticides. That’s so simple.
RICK SMITH: Yes, really, really simple, and again, particularly important for kids. And the good news here is that there’s an economy of [scale] happening. The more people eat organic food, the cheaper it gets. And the cost differential between organic and non-organic food narrowed. So that’s great news.
The next experiment that we did is we looked at products in the bathroom. We don’t really think about it very much, but it shouldn’t be a surprise that creams and antiperspirant and shaving products that we apply to our skin are actually rapidly absorbed through the skin, and those individual ingredients in those products start showing up in our bloodstream.
So chemicals like parabens and phthalates that are increasingly being linked to different cancers are very common in bathroom products.
The good news is that, as many of your listeners will know, it’s getting much easier to find very good, very effective brands that have got these toxic chemicals out of their formulation.
So what we did to try to nail down whether bathroom products are the main contributors to paraben and phthalate levels in people’s bodies, we did an experiment with two cosmetic industry insiders. And for a few days, they wore just conventional brands, really smelly, artificial scents and things like those. And then for a few days, they wore this new generation of very good, green, less toxic bathroom products.
And the levels of parabens and phthalates were cut virtually to zero in their bodies in those days that they wore [three] of those products. And they didn’t have to sacrifice beauty or their personal hygiene to do it.
DEBRA: In both cases now, on these first two types of products, the organic food and the green bathroom products, all you had to do to not have that chemical be in your body is simply stop using it.
RICK SMITH: Absolutely.
DEBRA: We’re going to go to break, and then we’ll come back, and we’ll hear about the third type. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Rick Smith, one of the authors of Slow Death by Rubber Duck and their new book, Toxin, Toxout.
We’re finding out what are the results of their science experiments they did on removing toxic chemicals from their bodies.
We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Rick Smith, one of the authors of Slow Death by Rubber Duck, and their newest book, Toxin, Toxout. And if you’re interested in ordering these books or getting them at your bookstore, go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. You can look at today’s show. I’ve got the covers there of both books. You can click through and order them from Amazon if you want.
I highly recommend both of these books because these books really give the information about what is the problem with exposure to toxic chemicals. In Toxin, Toxout, even showing what’s wrong with some of the solutions and it helps to sort those out.
The conclusions of the books were done by interviewing experts, but also by the authors doing “science experiments” on their own bodies and finding out what’s going on.
So Rick, what happened with the third experiment?
RICK SMITH: Well, the third experiment involved the new car smell for that pungent aroma that we all grow up with, we all loved so much. We’re interested in seeing whether these potent chemical aromas that we’re all familiar with, the new car smell, the new shower curtain smell, the smell of different cleaning products that we grew up with, whether these aromas would be sufficiently potent that the individual chemical ingredients of these aromas might show up in measurable levels in the body.
So what we did for this experiment is pretty simple actually. I sat in a new car for a day.
DEBRA: Uh-oh.
RICK SMITH: And then measured my levels of certain cancer-causing chemicals, benzenes, formaldehyde, before and after. And the results were quite stunning. The levels of these chemicals in my body skyrocketed when I was sitting in this new car, breathing in the new car smell, and then came right back down again, as soon as I exited the car.
At a time when most North Americans spend well over 90% of their lives indoors, and that may sound like a lot, but if you think about it, all the time that we spend sitting around the kitchen table, sitting on the couch watching TV, sleeping, perhaps driving in our car on the way to work, the majority of us spend well over 9 out of 10 hours of the day indoors.
And so indoor air quality is arguably more important than outdoor air quality, and these chemically aromas, the off-gassing of carpets and carpet underlay, the off-gassing smells from that new couch that you just brought back from the store, these things really matter and contribute to these levels of toxic chemicals in the body.
And the good news is that by being a more careful consumer, it’s getting easier to shop at retailers who are trying to get these nasty off-gassing chemicals out of their products.
DEBRA: And of course, an excellent place to go to find those products that don’t have nasty chemicals is my website, of course, especially DebrasList.com. If you just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, look at the menu across the top, and you’ll find a Q&A section where you can ask questions about these products. You’ll find that little button that says “shop” and you can go to Debra’s List where I have over 500, 600 or 700 websites where you can buy products that don’t have toxic chemicals in them.
There’s a whole lot of them out there. It’s just a matter of knowing where they are and making those choices.
Again, it’s so interesting to me to see in your book that all you have to do, in some cases, is to just stop using it, and they’re not in your body anymore. They’re just not there. But there are some chemicals.
Tell us about some other chemicals that people might need to remove from their body by special methods.
RICK SMITH: So we move on the book. So we spent a lot of time looking at chemicals that need to be avoided, and how you can do that quite easily because we know people are busy. And the big part of this book is to try to boil down some tips for people that can be incorporated into people’s busy, daily lives.
So in the last part of the book, we delved into the whole occasionally weird and wacky world of detox. And we looked at some of these many detox therapies out there to try to figure out what works and what doesn’t.
And it turns out that some of the most [perspective], reliable things you can do to help out your body, and to exhilarate the flushing of these chemicals from the body is to get some good old fashion exercise, and to get off the couch and to break a sweat every now and again.
My co-author, Bruce, did this entertaining experiment where he took a sauna regularly every day for a week, and collected his sweat every day, which you can imagine. It’s a great thing to sweat into these test tubes. Nothing we won’t do to further science.
And so he compared levels of certain toxic chemicals like BTA coming out of his body every day in his urine versus his sweat.
And the results are quite interesting. On many days, it was his sweat that contained much higher levels of BTA are being flushed out of his body.
So the message here is that depending on the chemical you’re talking about, sweat can be a very important mechanism to flush these things out of your body. So to the extent that we’re a nation of couch potatoes these days, and a lot of us don’t break a sweat, don’t get regular exercise [inaudible 00:29:35] work week. Not only is that bad for your cardiovascular health, but it’s actually locking some toxic chemicals into your body.
So we spent a lot of time talking to experts on the relative merits of different kinds of detox methods, and the good old fashion exercise comes in on top.
DEBRA: Well, in addition to that too, exercise, one of the things that carries toxic chemicals out of the body is the lymph system, and it doesn’t move unless you move your body. It’s not like the heart that is a pump, to pump the blood around. You could just be lying down all the time, and your blood would still move because the heart is pumping it.
But the lymph system that carries all the garbage away from the cells just sits there unless you move your body.
And so here we have people who are, as you said, couch potatoes, so their lymph isn’t moving. And they put on antiperspirant, so they don’t sweat.
RICK SMITH: Yes, that’s exactly the double whammy.
DEBRA: We’ll talk about how the body detoxes when we come back after the break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is author, Rick Smith, who wrote Slow Death by Rubber Duck, and their newest book is Toxin, Toxout.
We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Rick Smith, co-author of Slow Death by Rubber Duck, and their newest book, Toxin, Toxout. And again, you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and look for the description of this show, and you can click right through the Amazon and buy these books.
Excellent books. Everybody should read them. This is just the basic, fundamental information about toxic exposure and toxic de-sposure. I was trying to think of a word. What’s the noun for getting the toxic chemicals out? We need better words.
As I started out in the beginning saying that detox has become meaningless because it could mean so many different things, we need a specific word, and I think I’m going to start using toxout to mean removing toxic chemicals from your body because it’s so perfect. I think that’s the way to go.
So we were talking before the break about how you found the best thing to remove toxic chemicals from your body, and not just theoretically, but you actually took samples of body fluids to show this. It’s just plain old exercise and sweating.
And I would assume that so many didn’t want to exercise. They could go sit in the sauna, which is also very effective. But there’s a benefit to exercising because you’re moving the lymph to get the toxic chemicals moving around. And then it comes out through sweat in the skin.
And right before the break, I was saying that. But what we do in our culture is that we don’t exercise. So we’re not stirring up the chemicals to be released, and we don’t sweat. In fact, people wear antiperspirants to not perspire.
Now, this combination, this particular combination, is horrible because our bodies have this natural function. If you look at people living out in the wild, they would be exercising and sweating as part of their daily lives, but we don’t.
We consider sweat to be a bad thing. And yet, sweat is the redeeming thing.
RICK SMITH: I totally agree. I think that’s right. One of the basic points of our book is that we don’t really need all these often expensive detox remedies to get these chemicals out of our bodies.
A lot of these things probably don’t hurt, but there’s very little evidence that they’re terribly effective. And in some cases, things like ionic foot bath, for instance, there’s actually evidence out there, just outright useless.
What we try to focus on in the book, and the reason that we do these experiments in the book on ourselves, and on other volunteers, is to really to try to nail down what works and what doesn’t, so that people can have some confidence in the tips that we give.
DEBRA: The subtitle of the book is Getting Harmful Chemicals Out of Our Bodies and Our World. So tell us about the our world part.
RICK SMITH: We certainly believe, and we provide a lot of advice in this regard in the book, that being a more aware and careful consumer is an important thing to do. So carefully reading labels, being on a lookout for some of these chemicals we’ve been talking about on labels, parabens and phthalates and crazy antibacterial chemical, triclosan.
Being a more careful consumer is a part of the equation here.
But ultimately, the fact that we have to worry about this stuff in the first place is just outrageous. And the only real permanent answer to this problem is the governments and big companies start to get these chemicals out of products in the first place.
And so the last chapter of the book is about this very encouraging, exciting, emerging world of the green economy, and the different ways that governments around the world are trying to cut down on waste, trying to force consumer product manufacturers to make their products in a safer way.
It turns out that a lot of these chemicals we’ve talked about can be fairly easily replaced. They’re not necessary. They’re not critical to human life as we know it. And as this green consumer movement accelerates, the fact that you can go out to grocery stores now, you can go to mainstream drugstores and find green products on the shelf side by side with non-green products. And they cost, thankfully, the same.
One of these products is toxic, and the other one is not.
So that change in the marketplace, the green consumer movement, I think, is making it easier for governments to change lives and to force these companies to make safer products that they should have been doing all along.
DEBRA: Well, that’s a very good point. I hadn’t quite thought about it that way, that consumers—I’m always saying you don’t need to wait for government in order to live toxic-free. But I hadn’t really realized that our consumer choices are helping government change to make the regulations be such that these chemicals wouldn’t even be allowed.
I’ve been watching all this, and what’s going on with government and regulations, and big corporations. Again, I’ll just say none of these companies need to wait for government to mandate this, just like none of us need to wait for government to make it illegal for us to use toxic chemicals.
And so it’s always a choice. It’s a choice that anybody could make at any time. And a lot of companies are making the choice. And governments are moving very slowly, sometimes frustratingly making a list of toxic chemicals, after 20 years, they have 20 chemicals on the list. That’s a little too slow.
RICK SMITH: It’s a little bit slow. We’re actually quite optimistic in the book about the progress that’s happening generally in this area, largely as a result of change in consumer preference.
But just in the last six months, for instance, Procter & Gamble, Avon, Johnson & Johnson, Wal-Mart, some of the biggest consumer products, manufacturers and retailers in the world have started to get out of the business of these chemicals. They’ve started re-formulating their products to get away from these toxic chemicals.
That’s a huge step forward. I think that change in the marketplace, they’re only going to accelerate.
DEBRA: I am so glad that you said that. I just want to say it again for everybody listening that the companies are changing in response to consumer demand. It’s just an economic law that companies are going to produce what we consumers buy.
And we have tremendous power to change everything.
So whether our representatives in Washington are making regulations happen, or whether you sign a petition or don’t sign a petition, what it all comes down to is the power of voting with our dollars.
So that is the most powerful thing that we can do.
So here, by making a decision to not use the toxic product, we’re not only reducing, removing the toxic chemicals from our bodies, but we’re also removing them from the world. Excellent.
RICK SMITH: The conclusion of the book is that it’s important that people be more aware consumers, but also that we be more demanding citizen because we deserve better from our government.
DEBRA: We do. Well Rick, we only have about two-minutes left. Is there anything that you’d like to say that we haven’t discussed?
RICK SMITH: I think we’ve covered the ground pretty well. What I will say is that the book and with an easy top 10 to-do list, maybe because my co-author and I have kids, we spend a lot of time in the kitchen, so we actually thought it would be fun to boil down the message of the book. Boil down the tips of the book to a ripped off page that you can literally rip out of the book, stick on your fridge.
DEBRA: Do you want to read it to us?
RICK SMITH: And then be reminded of some of the simple ways that you can get toxic chemicals out of your life.
DEBRA: Do you want to tell us what those are in the last minute?
RICK SMITH: Very quickly, think about eating more organic food that will dramatically cut down pesticide levels in your body. Avoid products in the bathroom that contain parabens and phthalates. When you’re looking for products for the home, try to shop for low DOC, less off-gassing products whether those are couches or carpeting.
A little bit of exercise every now and again turns out to be the most significant way that you can help your body to wash these toxic chemicals for good and an ongoing basis.
DEBRA: Good. So thank you so much for being with me, and I just wish you all the best with both of these books. You’ve done a tremendous service to furthering the understanding of toxic exposures.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and go to the top of the page where there’s a menu, and just start looking around because all of the things that my guest has been talking about today about using less toxic products, non-toxic products, this is the biggest resource that I know of, in order to get that information.
You can go click on the shop button and find more than 500 websites to explore. You can click on the Q&A and ask a question. You can even call me up on the phone and talk to me, and I’ll answer your questions.
This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well.
Does “Wood Composite” Contain Formaldehyde?
Question from Stacey
Hi Debra,
I just bought a sea grass storage bench, which I loved, however, I was told it was made of a “wood composite.” That is the only answer I could get, but I assume this is like MDF/particleboard, and that it most likely contains formaldehyde and I should return it. Am I right with this assumption?
Thanks so much!
Debra’s Answer
Actually it doesn’t. But what it does contain is plastic.
The problem is that the plastic could be anything from the least toxic polyethylene to the most toxic PVC and it’s not stated.
IF you can find out what the plastic is, you can determine the toxicity. Otherwise your guess is as good as mine.
I would avoid this material if the plastic cannot be determined.
An Environmental Ethic for the 21st Century—Without Toxic Chemicals
Today I’m celebrating Rachel Carson’s birthday with my guest Patricia DeMarco PhD. In 1962 Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, the book about toxic pesticides that laid the groundowork for the environmental movement and the establishment of the EPA. But she also wrote many other books and papers as a naturalist. Today we will be talking about what Rachel left us and what we can still learn from her work today. Patricia has been a Rachel Carson scholar since 2005, with service as the Executive Director of the Rachel Carson Homestead Association and as the Director of the Rachel Carson Institute at Chatham University. She writes and speaks extensively on the environmental ethic of Rachel Carson and her relevance to modern times. She is currently writing a book titled “Pathways to Our Sustainable Future.” www.rachelcarson.org/ | www.rachelcarsoncouncil.org | www.rachel_carson_homestead.myupsite.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
An Environmental Ethic for the 21st Century—Without Toxic Chemicals
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Patricia DeMarco
Date of Broadcast: March 27, 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. And we just had a long weekend. It’s Tuesday, May 27, 2014. And it’s Rachel Carson’s’ birthday. I’m so excited because, as those of you who have been listening now, I do love Rachel Carson and we talked about her on Earth Day—and you can go listen to that show too.
But today, I have one of my guests back who was here on Earth Day talking about Rachel Carson then. Her name is Patricia DeMarco, Ph.D. And she’s a Rachel Carson scholar. She’s going to be telling us today about—she’s actually writing a book called Pathways to Our Sustainable Future, which is about what she knows about what Rachel Carson has left us—her legacy—and how we can apply that today, what we can learn from that today to move forward in creating our toxic free world.
One of the things that I’m very interested in about—Patricia sent me her first chapter of the book. And one of the things that really was interesting to me is that, in my own life, I long ago made a decision that—well actually, I had a realization that the way to get out of living toxic is to live in harmony with nature. And I’m reading her chapter, and she says that Rachel Carson says exactly the same thing. So, great minds think alike.
And so, we’re here today to hear more about what Rachel Carson has to say about how we can move beyond our toxic world with Patricia DeMarco.
Hi, Patricia. Thanks for being here.
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: Hi, Debra. How are you?
DEBRA: I’m really good.
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: It’s my pleasure to be here.
DEBRA: Thank you. It’s a pleasure for me to have you. And let’s say happy birthday to Rachel Carson.
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: Happy birthday!
DEBRA: And I was just reading again your wonderful first chapter this morning, and two sentences are my favorites. The first one is:
“The planet earth operates on a set of natural laws, to the most extent ignored in the crafting of human laws that drive the economy.”
And then you also say:
“It’s our challenge to transition quickly from a fossil-dependent economy to an economic system operating on renewable and sustainable basis in harmony with the natural laws of the universe.”
And I just put a big star next to that last one and wrote, “Yes!” In the margin, a big yes.
But the thing that I ran into when I had my realization about that was, “Okay that makes perfect sense.” And for me it was a time when I was looking for some solution. If I’m not going to live according to the toxic industrial way, what can I use as a model? What can I use as a basis?
I was living out in a forest at the time. I just looked around and said, “Ah! Well, nature knows how to do it. If we weren’t doing these toxic things, nature would just sustain life.” And there are laws. And everything, even human beings, operate by those laws.
But then the question is, “What are those laws? And how can we actually apply them?”
Before we get into that though, I want you to tell us how did you get interested in this subject?
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: I was given a copy of Silent Spring by my Dad for a high school graduation present. And it just came out the fall before my graduation. So Rachel Carson was one of my heroes.
But I had lived all over the world by the time I was out of high school. My father was in the Foreign Service, so we moved every two years to a different country, which means I didn’t have the same kind of peer group that people get whenever they’re in first grade to high school—the same bunch of people from the same town.
So, similar to many people who travel all around during their growing up, I developed an interest in the natural life that was around me—butterflies in particular, and also creatures of the sea because we often lived on the sea shore.
And that really stayed with me as an interest in biology for most of my life. And I have my degree in biology in fact.
DEBRA: So then you have this interest. And then what made you decide to be a Rachel Carson scholar?
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: Well, I have been away from Pittsburgh for about almost 30 years, working in energy and environmental policy in both Connecticut and Alaska. I came home to Pittsburgh in 2005 partly because my parents have died, and I needed to be closer to my family. And Alaska is a long, long way from Pittsburgh.
So, it happens that Rachel Carson Homestead was seeking a director. And I took the five years contract to help them look at homestead, rebuild it and restore it to [programmatic] functioning—which I did between 2005 and 2010.
DEBRA: Well, you know what? Until yesterday, I didn’t actually know there was a Rachel Carson homestead. But I looked it up. I was looking for some links we could put on ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com that would lead people to more information about Rachel Carson. And I found the website for the homestead.
So, could you tell us a little bit about that? That’s exactly the kind of thing I love to go to when I travel.
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: Well, the best link for information on Rachel Carson is RachelCarson.org, which is Linda Lear’s website. And she is the biographer, the […] biographer of Rachel Carson. There’s a wealth of information there.
Also, if you go to the Fish and Wildlife Service, FWS.gov, they have preserved there all of her original papers—the conservation and action papers and much of her writings.
And so, those are both really good sources.
If you want to visit the places that were important to her, she was born in Springdale PA, on the Alleghemy River, which is where the way to Carson homestead is. And they are restoring it now to the four room farmhouse configuration that it held when the Carsons lived there.
Now, she was not there for very long. And when she graduated from college at what was then the Pennsylvania College for Women, now Chatham University, she then went on with her studies and her work outside of Pittsburgh and really didn’t come back until about 1952 when she received an honorary degree.
There also is a Rachel Carson Refuge in Maine nearby where she lived and wrote Silent Spring and where her family still has a little cottage in I believe Southport, Maine.
And then, in Silver Spring, Maryland, the house where she lived when she was working in Washington—and even until the end of her life—was in Silver Spring, Maryland. And you can find out about that in the Rachel Carson’s Council.
DEBRA: Yes. I’d put the links for RachelCarson.org, and the Rachel Carson Council, and the Rachel Carson Homestead on ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com next your interview. So people can go there, and also click through to get a copy of Silent Spring, if you don’t already have one and a copy of Rachel Carson’s biography, which I’m in the middle of reading. It’s very excellent.
So, can you tell us—one of the things that I noticed about myself actually is that I tend to think not the way the rest of society is thinking. It’s like I have my own thoughts. And I like people who have their own thoughts. I see that in Rachel Carson. I see it in a lot of people who are thinking differently ahead of their time, that instead of just following along with what society is saying, that they’re looking for themselves and observing the world from themselves and making their own conclusions.
Can you speak about her? What was it about her that she could, not only observe life differently, that she could see what was going on, but then speak out about it?
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: Well, there are some interesting things about Rachel Carson. First of all, her mother was in the [Nancy Comb] arena of children’s education. And she believed that nature was the best teacher.
DEBRA: Wow!
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: So, during the time that she was growing up, they had about 58 acres of undeveloped land in their immediate neighborhood. They lived on a graveled road. And it wasn’t built up the way it is now. So, Rachel and her mother would have many, many times where they could just roam the woods and fields—
DEBRA: I need to interrupt you for a second. I want you to continue your story after the break. But we need to go to the break because the commercial’s going to start.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And we’re here with Patricia Demarco. We’re talking about Rachel Carson on her birthday. Sorry I had to interrupt you, but I was listening to you. I’m so engrossed that I forgot to look at the clock. But we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Patricia Demarco. She is Rachel Carson’s scholar. And today is Rachel Carson’s birthday.
So, we’re celebrating Rachel Carson’s birthday by talking about her, and what she has to say about living in harmony with nature. So, go ahead with your story about her childhood.
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: Okay. So because she was a child of the fields and woods, she learned to become a very astute observer, which is one of the most important criteria for being a scientist as you know.
She also was encouraged from an early age to write because her mother was hoping that she would be a writer. And she was published in St. Nicholas Magazine for Children at the age of 10 and was an honor author (meaning she was paid) by the time she was 14.
When she went to college, to the Pennsylvania College for Women, she began with a major in writing, and then converted to a major in science because she decided that now she knew what she was writing about. So, she really was in tune with the natural world from a very fundamental level all the way from the beginning.
DEBRA: Yes, I can see that. And I can see that in her writing. I think too, at that time in history, when she was a child, I think that people had more of an idea of being in harmony with nature than we do now. Do you think so?
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: …especially when she was beginning to work on Silent Spring. She realized it was after the second world tour and science had won domination over the […] and all of these medical discovery happened as a result of the changing of the industrial might of the country from ammunition to chemical fertilizers, pharmaceuticals because they needed to put that factory production to some commercial use.
DEBRA: Yes.
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: So really, it was […] chemistry. And she was the voice of caution in the face of a predominant perception that nature was there for men’s benefit and amusement, and we can control it. She was arguing that the natural systems know more than any human invention could come up with, and that we may be had become too arrogant for our own good in technology would save us.
And I think this is one of the important messages that are still relevant to us today. I’ll give you some of her words about this.
DEBRA: Good.
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: “In spite of the truly marvelous inventiveness of the human brain, we are beginning to wonder whether our power in the face of nature should not have been tempered with wisdom for our own good and with a greater sense of responsibility, welfare of generations to come.”
DEBRA: I can completely agree with that.
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: She was concerned about what was going to happen as a consequence of some of the things that we were rushing into forthwith.
DEBRA: Well, I’m thinking back, I’ve done a fair amount of study like the history of industrialism. And when I said earlier that I thought that when she was born, she was a child, at that particular time, there was still some awareness of the idea of living in harmony with nature. And then you described what happened post World War II. That was really a time when there was a big shift.
So, those of us who were born after World War II, like myself, we were not raised with the same ethic that she was raised with. And even in Silent Spring, the title of Silent Spring comes from her having listened to the birds sing in the spring time. And then she went through this period that we all went through of having pesticides being sprayed, and then having some of those pesticides killing some of those song birds to the point where the spring time was no longer the spring time that she was accustomed to.
And so, for her to have that observation was the result of her being aware of those birds in the first place, and then having there be a change and her continuing to be aware and seeing that there was a change. Not many people have that level of awareness of nature.
But I think we all should be having that level of awareness of nature—and particularly, those of us who were born, as I’ve said, post World War II. We weren’t raised with that. And I think that that lack of that awareness, I know in my own life that it was like a rebirth for me to start being aware of that and to not think that I just had to live in industrial consumer culture, that there was this whole world of nature out there that I really belong to as a living being, a species like any other species.
And on that level of existence, somehow, we know that we need to be living in harmony with nature according to natural laws. Just as a tree does, or a butterfly, or all the other living things, those laws apply to us as well.
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: Well, I think what Rachel Carson’s gift to us was the understanding of systems and the interconnectedness of the living things. She understood from her years of study of the connections between the land and the sea, and the creatures of the estuary, how we are all connected and the smallest, little creature has a role in the web of life. We cannot perturb one part without perturbing the whole.
That concept of interconnectedness is really essential for understanding why we need to act on a broad scale to address the problems that are eroding our life support system.
And she was very aware, and very effective at communicating how the systems of the world work. And if you look at her book, To See Around Us, where she described the origin of the wave, and the origin of the ocean and how the movement of water and the difference between the salt and the fresh water drives the climate of the planet, these concepts are so relevant today as we’re trying to understand what’s going on with climate change and warming through combustion of fossil fuel.
So, I think because she understood the system so well, and was an excellent communicator, to the public, she had a great deal of credibility and a great deal of influence.
DEBRA: We’re going to take another break. And when we come back, we’ll keep talking about Rachel Carson and her gift to us through her works, and how they can be applied today.
Patricia’s going to tell us about some specific things that we can be doing to live according to natural law in our own lives and in the world. And we’ll find out what Rachel Carson has to say about this.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. And my guest today is Patricia Demarco. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Patricia Demarco. She is a Rachel Carson scholar. She’s writing a book about Rachel Carson’s legacy, what she’s left to us from all her observations and writing and how we can apply that to live more according to natural law.
So, let’s talk about natural law. You’ve told us about systems. What are some other points that we should be aware of.
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: Well, the biggest problem we have is the ecosystem services that the Earth provides us for free are not reflected in our economic computations directly.
So, when you compute gross domestic product—which is what everyone uses to determine whether we’re doing well or not—you don’t count things like wetland degradations. You don’t count things like loss of pollinators. You don’t count the services that the living systems provide like filtration, the wetness of water, like sequestering of carbon dioxide in trees, like the purification of our air. We tend to ignore those as given. They’re just there.
DEBRA: Yes.
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: We don’t see a need to compute the value. So when we destroy them, they are not reflected in that market computation.
And these are not easy to ignore. When you have lost a wetland, it costs a great deal to restore it. And I’ll give you the example. The nine mile run in Pittsburgh ran through a slag pile and was—we called it Stink River when I was growing up. It was put in a pipe and ran into the river.
Now, in 2006 they finally completed a five year effort of restoring that wetland to a functioning wetland. They daylighted the stream. They cleaned it up. They put filtration in to get the slag contaminants out. And it is now a park and a wetland that actually helps to purify the watershed of that whole community. And it has also raised awareness to the whole community.
It cost $7.2 million to just restore that three and a half mile stretch.
Now, all over the country, we have 3 thousand miles of acid mine damaged rivers in just Pennsylvania. When you blow off the top of the mountain to get the […] clean out, you inevitably ruin the watershed—and the neighborhood, and the people who were living in the mountains, never mind the animals as well. So, there’s no cost to the destruction of that ecosystem.
When you tear down a forest in the Amazon, which is the lungs of the earth, it generates 50% of the free oxygen that we depend on to breathe, they don’t reflect the cost of replacing that function. You can’t replace an Amazon rainforest just by replanting it. It took years and years to grow.
DEBRA: Right.
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: So, we have a flaw in how we compute the value of our economy. The essential life support system—fresh air, clean water, fertile ground, the biodiversity of species—don’t have any specific value in the way we compute our economic merit.
DEBRA: Well, I think that—yeah I agree with you on this. I thought that I’ve had in the past—because I’ve thought all of these things that we’re talking about—is if people don’t have an awareness that nature is even there, and they don’t understand the free services that nature is providing to us, and that as far as they can look as going down to the mall or going shopping or what movie they’re going to see this week—
But also—I mean, fairly I’ll say—people have a lot of attention on how are they going to pay their bills. But the thing that struck me was that we have our attention on what we need to do to survive in the industrial world. We have pretty much zero attention on what nature is providing to us in order to suppress, to survive at all—that if we don’t have air to breathe, if we don’t have water to drink, then we can’t do any of the other things that we do within our society.
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: Right.
DEBRA: And our awareness of this being there, it stuns me when I look around in the world how few people think that broadly. But I had to look back to earlier in my life when I didn’t have that awareness either.
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: When you look at what people see in the mainstream media, and there is not a good way to learn about things like wetland restoration and the value of pollinators by watching TV. You don’t hear news stories about, “Oh, the pollinator population crashed,” and everybody’s running around ringing their heads. They don’t go back and say, “Good heavens! Is it possibly because we’re using RoundUp on everything, so that the spaces between the fields that used to have wild flowers are now gone” or, “Good heavens! Maybe because the pollens have become toxic from breathing into the plant a pesticide that was going to diminish the pests, but is now also killing the pollinators. Who would have thought?”
So, I think we need to start thinking about the implications of what we’re doing. And it’s important that we do that before we have tipped over to the point where the ecosystem services cannot be restored.
DEBRA: I completely agree with you. And so, for me at this point in time, after having become aware of these things, for me, the first thing is where are the ecosystems, what are they, where is my local ecosystem that I live in, what kind of condition is that ecosystem in, what needs to be restored, how is it maintained?
There’s a word for this, I think it’s Megalopolis or something of where cities grow into each other, and so there’s no space between the cities anymore. And then there’s whole stretches of land where there are no ecosystems because they’re all cemented over—or parking lots or all of these things.
I’ve lived in everything from living in downtown San Francisco to living out in a forest to now I live in suburbia. And in each of those places, the natural ecosystem environment has been more or less saved or damaged.
I’m looking at the clock. We have to go to break, but we’re going to continue when we come back. Oh, no wait, wait. I still have a few more seconds. So I’ll finish my thought.
But his whole idea of where is your ecosystem, and what is your ecosystem, and what is the nature of your ecosystem, and what kind of plants and flowers and things, everything about it, the first thing that should be of concern to everybody is maintain the ecosystem; and then how can humans live within it in a way that all the flows, and the animals, and the plants, and everything that makes that ecosystem alive, how can that be maintained?
We are going to go to break now. But we’ll be right back. You’re listening to Toxic Free talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Patricia Demarco. She’s a Rachel Carson scholar. And we’re talking about the laws of nature and how to live in harmony with them. So stay tuned and we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And today is Rachel Carson’s birthday. We’re talking about what she left to us that we can apply in life today to make the world a better place.
Patricia, I wish we have a five hour show. We’re already to the last segment. It goes by so fast. So, I’m just going to not ask you more questions. I’m just going to let you talk—not that I might not interrupt you, but just go ahead and talk about more things you’d like to say about living by natural law.
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: So, I think people need to be aware that they’re a part of the living earth and develop a sense of things like, “Where did my water come from? Where does the food come from?”
DEBRA: Yes.
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: And I give an exercise to my energy policy students. I make them list all the things they use in a day, and identify where it comes from. Everything! You get up, you take your blankets off, you turn off your alarm clock, all of that stuff. Where do those come from? And how big is your footprint on the resources of the world.
The average American—although we’re only 6% of the world’s population—we use 34% of the resources of the world. If everyone on earth lives the way we do, it would take 5 ½ planet. So, we need to become more aware of what we do ourselves, use some judicial exercise and understand the problems that we’re facing—the climate change with endocrine disruptors and toxic materials in our food chain.
The answers are not more technology. The answers are a value judgment, an ethical judgment that we will make choices that will preserve the living earth.
And I think that is a good barometer to use when you’re making decisions about things. If you need practical things that you can do yourself, especially at summer time, don’t deliberately put poison in your own face.
You don’t need fertilizers, and herbicide, and pesticide in your own yard. You don’t need toxic materials to clean your property, and your house, and yourself with. You need to think about the fate of the things that you use yourself everyday and try to reduce your own toxicity.
Another thing you can do is to support the move for more responsible production of materials. There has been nine different attempts to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1996. The burden is really on the customer to try read all those labels down to the small type and figure out what to avoid. When the business is computed by how much of the poison we’re allowed to put into the air and water by permit by law, it’s now 3.2 billion pounds a year of toxic material that’s released legally.
We can change that to do what some other countries have done, and say we should prevent the production of materials that have toxic products and by-products by design. So you put the burden on the producer to produce things that are safe rather than the consumer to try to put the genie back in the bottle once it’s already distributed.
And the other we can do is to really get serious about the implication of continuing to burn fossil fuels. I know there are places—in Florida, for example—where they’ve tremendously interesting progress in linking solar and wind to the existing electric grid. If we decided to do this on a policy level nationwide, we could make a tremendous effect on the fossil footprint of this country. And then, export that technology broadly to other people who need it.
I think we have to take this seriously as a way of preserving our living earth. And I would like to leave Rachel Carson’s word with you. She said that:
“Underlying all of these problems of introducing contamination into our world is the question of moral responsibility—responsibility not only to our own generation, and to those in the future. We are […] genetic damage to generation now alive, but the threat is infinitely greater to the generation unborn, to those who have been born in the decisions we’re making today. And that fact alone is our responsibility—a heavy one.”
She asked it this way:
“Who has the right to decide for the countless legions of people who were not consulted that the supreme value of the world without insects, even though it also be a sterile world, ungrazed by the perfect wing of a bird in flight?”
We have to apply our wisdom to the application of technology. Just because we can do something doesn’t mean that we should.
DEBRA: Well, I think that that’s where—it’s not that technology is necessarily bad, but it’s not tempered by good sense. What’s missing is this piece that says we live in a natural world that our lives are continued to be alive because of the planet and what it’s giving us, all the gifts that are there, and that we need to acknowledge and respect, and do whatever is necessary to protect that or we’re not going to be able to live at all.
I know that that is an old statement, but it really is true. We really have to be aware that air is there and we’re damaging it.
I started out during my work because of toxics—toxics in my own home, and my own health, being affected by them. But then I went into a phase where I started being aware that there was something beyond the four walls of my house. I was living in the forest. And I went, “Oh, there’s the natural world” and I suddenly realized that not only could I make choices about toxics in my house, but I could make choices about toxics in the environment.
I became interested in all kinds of different environmental issues, and nature, and how to live in harmony with nature, and all these things.
Toxics were not so interesting for me for a while because I was interested in all these other things. But a few years ago, I came back to really just focusing in on toxics again because of the fact that toxic chemicals, pesticides, cleaning products, solvents, all these things, are in virtually every household in the world unless you have intentionally removed them.
Toxics are the biggest enemy to life. And whether we’re aware of it or not, toxic chemicals are out there reducing the quality of life, killing off species, making people sick, increasing healthcare cost, all these things.
And we have a choice. There are non-toxic alternatives already for virtually everything that’s toxic. All we have to do is choose them. All we have to do is choose them.
And there are varying degrees of being toxic-free, everything from making a less toxic chemical out of petroleum is a step all the way to living as completely in harmony with nature as you can. Any step you take is a movement in the right direction.
But we have to do it, we have to do it because this is the enemy of life in my opinion. Anything else could be wrong in the world, but this is the thing that literally is killing us.
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: I think one thing that we need to remember is that much of what we’re talking about here will require policy change on both the state and the national level.
DEBRA: Yes.
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: And unless people makes their wishes known, and communicate the importance of maintaining a healthy world to our representative in the congress and the senate, and in the local government, they’re going to continue to listen to the loudest voice they hear—and that isn’t generally the public pointing they want public health. We need to re-establish the voice of the public interest in the public arena.
DEBRA: Yes.
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: And I think if you haven’t written to your congressman about, “I’m concerned about toxics in my environment,” and demand accountability, “What are you doing about it? I’m concerned about climate change. How are we going to fix this? And what are you doing about it? And don’t tell me we’re going to use natural gas by blowing up the […] under the farm.”
This kind of thing requires public diligence. And it’s an obligation of citizens to engage in this discussion.
And this is one of the things that Rachel Carson did. She was a scientist, and she was a writer, and a naturalist. But she went to congress. She was one of the first women who actually came there as an expert. She gave them recommendations. She gave them opinions about how we go forward based on the studies and based on the science.
And I think we need to do that. We need to have the courage to do that.
DEBRA: Well, that is what this country is about. It was founded on—I remember I went to Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello, when I went to Washington DC. And there, there was an exhibit of something that he had written about the necessity of educating the citizens of the United States, so they could understand the issues and have a voice.
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: Yes. Yes, exactly.
DEBRA: And that is what public education was about originally as described by Thomas Jefferson. He wanted the people who were voting to understand and create a good country.
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: Right. And you need to really take that obligation of citizenship seriously. I think it’s pathetic that, in this country, we have very low turn-out of voting and people are not engaged with the issues that affect their lives everyday—and their children’s lives. Our grandchildren and our children are being affected irreversibly by decision that we are making or that are being made on our behalf without our voice.
DEBRA: Yeah. Thank you so much for being with us. We only have just a few second left.
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: Thank you.
DEBRA: So, I so appreciate the work that you’re doing and that you’re with us today. And once again, happy birthday to Rachel Carson.
DR. PATRICIA DEMARCO: Happy birthday to Rachel.
DEBRA: And you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and check out the links and the books that we have there. This is ToxicFreeTalkRAdio.com. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well.
Fluoride Filters
Question from Don
Hello Debra,
I listen to you on Toxic Free Talk Radio. I recently purchased a Big Berkey black filter system with PF-2 fluoride filters. My question is are there any dangers/side effects of using active alumina filters? The PF-2 filters seem to leave a slightly bitter taste. I would like your knowledge and opinion about these filters. Do you recommend them or is there a better way to filter out fluoride.
Thank You,
Don
Debra’s Answer
There’s a better way to filter out fluoride.
I use and recommend filters from Pure Effect.
There is NO alumina in their fluoride filter. Alumina from the filter can get into the product water. That just adds aluminum to your water, how much, I don’t know. But aluminum is a metal that you want to minimize as much as you can.
This is the filter I have in my home: www.pureeffectfilters.com/filter-units/pure-effect-ultra-uc.html#a_aid=debra8008
Here’s what their website says about their fluoride-removal cartridge.
Although Activated Alumina is effective for Fluoride Removal, comprehensive testing shows that FluorSorbTM has a consistently greater fluoride removal rate (apx. 20% more) and offers additional benefits such as: Raising Alkaline pH, and filtering some anionic (negatively charged) radioisotopes, heavy metals and chemicals.
Primary Purpose: For Effective Reduction of:
1. Fluoride
2. Arsenic
3. Lithium
Secondary Purpose: For Effective Reduction of:
4. Uranium
5. Radium
6. Plutonium
7. Heavy Metals
8. Organic Chemicals
Allclad surgical stainless steel pot boiled dry and turned dark and gold colored
Question from Al
I have Allclad surgical stainless steel pots. I boiled one dry, and it turned dark grey or black and gold colored in the bottom of the pot. I used a chemical-free creme scrub to try to get the stains off of the pot, but it didn’t work.
My question is: Is it safe to use this pot now, or will I be exposed to harmful chemicals in my food?
Thanks much for your information.
Debra’s Answer
That’s a very good question and I don’t have a definitive answer.
You could call the company, but they probably wouldn’t understand what you are asking.
I would say it’s probably fine. Surgical stainless steel doesn’t have the same metals as regular stainless steel. So if you scratched it, there still are no metals to worry about.
So I would say it’s fine, by logic, but I have no laboratory tests to verify this.
Does TSP Outgass Toxic Fumes?
Question from Paula
Is TSP toxic to breathe? My painter wants to use it to wash the walls before painting.
Thanks.
Debra’s Answer
TSP, also known as trisodium phosphate does not emit fumes. It is a salt.
Here is a very good article that tells everything you need to know about TSP:
The Natural Handyman: TSP…Cleaning for the Big Dogs!
Just make sure the TSP he uses is pure trisodium phosphate. A few years ago I went to buy some TSP and found there was a product called TSP that had other ingredients in it. Check the ingredients.
Vinyl Window Offgassing
Question from Terry
Debra, I found this “green” website discussing vinyl windows, saying that they do *not* affect indoor air quality. Would you read this and tell me what you think? I am about to buy a vinyl sliding door and I am concerned. But this website says there is nothing to worry about.
Debra’s Answer
Well, that’s an interesting article.
I like Green Home Guide a lot, but I don’t know why she overlooked the most obvious thing about vinyl: it’s toxic!
For many years, Greenpeace has had a campaign to eliminate PVC. They have a PVC Alternatives Database that lists windows and doors that are PVC-free.
They say, “this commonplace plastic is one of the most toxic substances saturating our planet and its inhabitants. PVC contaminates humans and the environment throughout its lifecycle: during its production, use, and disposal. Few consumers realize that PVC is the single most environmentally damaging of all plastics.”
It is also not recommended to paint vinyl doors and windows, so paint wouldn’t be the most toxic part. Nor would paint necessarily block any outgassing.
Here’s another good article: PVC, the Poison Plastic
Here’s another article about PVC: Green Building Advisor.com:
Pro/Con: Vinyl is Lethal
This article says
Vinyl is the only major building material in which phthalates are used extensively, and it accounts for about 90 percent of total phthalate consumption. Phthalates are not chemically bonded to the plastic but are merely mixed with the polymer during formulation. They therefore migrate out of the plastic over time into air, water, or other substances with which vinyl comes in contact. Phthalate levels in indoor air in buildings with PVC are typically many times higher than in outdoor air. Phthalate accumulation in suspended and sedimented indoor dusts is particularly high, with concentrations in dust as high as 1,000 parts per million.
Because phthalates are semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs), not volatile organic compounds (VOCs), they are not accounted for in most indoor air quality (IAQ) tests, which focus only on VOCs. Thus, vinyl products can obtain IAQ certifications even though they leach phthalates, whose contributions to reproductive-system impairment include infertility, testicular damage, reduced sperm count, suppressed ovulation, and abnormal development and function of the testes and male reproductive tract in laboratory animals. They are known carcinogens in laboratory animals.
And now, here is the evidence that vinyl windows and doors DO outgas. This article is from a website for building inspectors, to locate and fix problems: InspectAPedia: Guide to Plastic, Vinyl Odor Source Diagnosis—Vinyl Siding & Plastic Windows, Flooring & Other Sources. They cite vinyl windows as a source of chemical order, especially when heated. This is a pretty interesting website with lots of toxics information about building materials from real life observation.