Water | Resources
How Smoke From Fireplaces, Wood Stoves, BBQs and More Contribute to Outdoor Air Pollution and Affect Our Health
My guest today is Mary Rozenberg, Co-Founder of the Burning Issues website, a project of the nonprofit organization Clean Air Revival. We’ll be talking about particulate pollution in outdoor air, how you are contributing to it, and how it is affecting your own health and the health of others. Since 1987, Mary and members have been working tirelessly to improve ambient outdoor air quality through the reduction of Fine Particulate Pollution. The most common sources of deadly Fine Particulate Pollution are residential wood burning (RWB), restaurant wood burning, coal burning, forest fires and agriculture burning, and diesel and auto exhaust. It is estimated that 72,000 people die annually in the United States from the effects of these fine particles. Once emitted they are impossible to clean up. More than half of the fine particulate is caused by fewer than 10% of the population using the dirtiest fuels for recreation and heating. Their principal activity is public education, including the collection and dissemination of the latest science information regarding health effects, economic impacts, and individual actions to reduce and stop solid fuel combustion. Burning Issues also actively does particulate monitoring and has published the results. burningissues.org
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
How Smoke from Fireplaces, Wood Stoves, BBQs and More Contribute to Outdoor Air Pollution and Affect Our Health
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Mary Rozenberg
Date of Broadcast: April 16, 2014
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio—where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world, and live toxic-free.
Today, we’re going to talk about something a little different than we usually talk about because we’re usually talking about things that are going on inside our homes, or in our workplaces, or how to detox toxic chemicals from our body. But today, we’re going to be talking about the outdoor environment, outdoor air pollution to be specific, and a particular kind of air pollutants, to be even more specific.
And there are things that we can do, there are things that we need to be aware of in the outdoor air that are making us sick.
And in fact, it was very timely that I have this guest on today because last week, there was a statement from the World Health Organization, and I talked about this last week actually, when we were talking about indoor air pollution.
But I want to talk about it again today because on March 25th, the World Health Organization released data from 2012 that estimated that 7-million people had died in 2012 as a result of outdoor air pollution exposure.
That’s one person in every eight.
And they have stated that air pollution, outdoor air pollution, is now the world’s single, largest, environmental risk.
So there are things that we can do. Today, my guest is going to talk about how we’re contributing to that air pollution, and what we can do, and the kinds of health effects that happen.
Her name is Mary Rozenberg. She is the co-founder and president of the Burning Issues website. That’s at BurningIssues.org. And what they do is they work with fine particulate pollution in outdoor air. And we’ll be talking about, as I said, how you’re contributing to it, and how it’s affecting your own health and the health of others.
It’s actually worst. I think I’ll find this statistic, but I’m just [reading it] off the top of my head that it’s actually worse to breathe—no, I won’t give it to you until I actually have the right thing.
Anyway, it’s estimated that 72,000 people die annually in the United States from the effects of the specific fine particles. And once they’re emitted, they can’t be cleaned up. So the solution to this, to removing this toxic pollutant from the outdoor air, is for people to be aware of how we’re contributing to it.
The number one thing to do with all toxic exposures is to reduce them at their source—whether you’re removing toxic cleaning products from your home, so you don’t have toxic chemicals, or whether we’re understanding outdoor air pollutants, and reducing them at the source. Source reduction is the number one thing to do for toxic exposures.
So Mary is joining us from California. Hi, Mary.
MARY ROZENBERG: Good morning. Good afternoon.
DEBRA: Well, it’s afternoon here, but it’s morning where you are. And people are listening all over the world, so good day, or it may even be evening where somebody else is listening.
Anyway, Mary, tell us how you personally became interested in this subject.
MARY ROZENBERG: Well, I was a professional [cellist] in New York City. And I began having health problems. I had always had them, but they became more pronounced. I had learned to move around and live around them, and I didn’t know why I had to make choices, but I did. I knew if I didn’t do this or that that I would be ill.
I was diagnosed with lupus in my 30’s and I could no longer continue with my career in New York City as a professional cellist. And my husband is a computer geek, and he wanted to come to Silicon Valley. And so we decided maybe it’s a better climate would help my health.
Once we were out here living in Los Altos, I got sicker. And I ended up with my own pulmonologist and trips to the pulmonologist, into the throat specialist, and so forth, accelerated. And I one day, I looked around and realized that there might be a difference when there was smoke or not.
And that’s how I started observing. I had become a bird watcher. They said it was the same thing because, of course, with smoke, it’s fairly visible most of the time. So what I found out, the journeys that I went on, was fascinating and horrifying.
DEBRA: Yes, I understand that.
MARY ROZENBERG: I’m sure you do.
DEBRA: I had a very similar story in that I was a professional classical pianist. And I had to stop playing because I had paralysis in my hands. I could play for my own enjoyment, but I couldn’t represent myself as able to perform, if in the middle of performing, my hands ceased up, and I couldn’t do anything about it.
And it wasn’t until later that I found out that as I removed the toxic chemicals, that paralysis went away. And it didn’t even occur to me that toxic chemicals just in my very own home would cause paralysis in my hands, but it did.
MARY ROZENBERG: Yes.
DEBRA: So I understand the process of discovering that what’s happening to you is an environmental pollutant, it’s causing you problems, and how horrifying that can be.
MARY ROZENBERG: Well, the first thing you do is identify what the problem is. So if you go to our website, BurningIssues.org, we have a chart that has some big brown balls, and it shows various forms of home heating, and whether they’re clean or dirty.
Our political situation in the world has led people to believe that it’s patriotic to switch to the dirtiest form of fuel because supposedly, wood is there, and it doesn’t cost anything to use. And what it’s doing is costing us 30,000 lives a year, and raising our medical bills because when you’re exposed to smoke, it lowers your ability to fight off infection 25% to 40%.
So when the particles reach a certain level, like 10-micrograms per meter-cube, there is already a health risk. And at 30-micrograms per meter-cube, there’s a death rate, and then at 40, it’s even more. It goes up incrementally like that.
So what was happening in Los Altos was that the wood burning, due to their weather condition, the wood burning was kept in due to weather inversion—so cold air at night, and all the smoke that was emitted was emitted within about 100-feet above the houses. So it just goes up and up and up until the toxic levels were quite high.
And no one seems to be aware of this. And as I became aware, I was very fortunate to contact the Stanford Civil Engineering Department, and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. And they all recommended that I should meet
Dr. Wayne Ott.
Well, we did, and I started doing some monitoring. I was helped by a professional at the [inaudible 00:09:17] Air Quality Control District. And she told me how to set up the monitoring, what to do. One of our volunteers brought the instrument which was pretty amazing. It was $5000.
And so once I had that instrument, and I started measuring everything, I had people’s attention because you could show it to them.
DEBRA: We need to take a break. We need to take a break, but right after the break, you can tell us what you found.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Mary Rozenberg, co-founder and president of Burning Issues website. That’s BurningIssues.org, and this is a very easy to understand and comprehensive website with a lot of information about this issue.
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 Mary Rozenberg, co-founder and president of Burning Issues website, and that’s BurningIssues.org. And we’re talking about outdoor particulate pollution.
Before we go on with Mary’s story I just want to comment on the homepage of her website. She had mentioned earlier about a picture that compared the particulate emissions of different kinds of heating fuels. And the worst, by far, is a wood boiler. I’m not even sure I know what a wood boiler is.
But then after that is an uncertified wood stove, EPA-certified wood stove, and then a pellet stove is much, much less. But then if you look at oil heat, you practically can’t even see the dot, and gas heat. Well, I really can’t see the dot. It’s about as big as a period, whereas a wood boiler is about three-inches across.
So there’s a huge amount of difference in terms of what we’re using to heat our homes, and not only individually, but then if we look down the line, say, if you’re using electric heat, what are they burning to produce that electric heat?
Now, she makes a note right at the beginning of her homepage that says that burning solid fuels yields a particulate pollution—solid particles that are smaller than a red blood cell.
And it’s been found that these little particles are responsible for 2.1-million deaths worldwide per year. The Harvard School of Public Health says, “Particulate pollution is the most important contaminant in our air.”
We know that when particle levels go up, people die.
And she says, “Wood smoke is chemically active in the body 40 times longer than cigarette smoke.”
So this is something that most people aren’t aware of, and yet, it’s affecting so, so many people.
So Mary, you took some measurements.
MARY ROZENBERG: Yes, and luckily, I was able to interest Dr. Ott. And by the way, we have good news. Dr. Ott has joined our board of directors.
DEBRA: Excellent.
MARY ROZENBERG: Yes, it’s good to have that support as he’s supposed us all along. So Dr. Ott began to gather together equipment to do the monitoring. It was very new. There hadn’t been a lot of fine particulate monitoring, and he did a 12-year-study of his neighborhood, and of course, of everything else.
And with him, I did study for cigarettes, which their work, his work with other scientists, has led to the ban on cigarette exposure. And we did restaurant. And, of course, I was very keen on what was the fuel the restaurant was using.
And the numbers of the pollutants inside wood-burning restaurant are really very high because you add the [inaudible 00:13:55] and the food charring, [inaudible 00:14:02] toxic situation for the cook are there every day.
And, of course, they have high rates of stomach cancer, and probably other things they’re not even aware of. But his work made it possible to get my work published, and it was, in the [inaudible 00:14:35]. And it’s on the website. It’s very hard to show day by day the increment of the pollution. But what we saw was the outdoor [inaudible 00:14:48] burning was that you can start with very clean air from a rainstorm or whatever.
Think of this in terms of a city or a town with burning [inaudible 00:15:03] and, of course, it’s huge. It starts usually in the evening. And that burning from that day stays close to the ground. And this weather condition called an inversion traps it there, close to the ground. And then you have all of your daily activities the next day—the traffic, people going to school and work, and so forth.
So that adds to it. And then in the evening, the people who heat with wood come home, and turn on their 5:30, just as the inversion is really tightening down, and they add more pollution to it.
So what we saw is over a series of days. The air moved every day more and more and more toxic. After four or five days of this, the hospitals were overrun with patients, the doctor’s offices, the cancer specialists. We’ve got 40 people there [inaudible 00:16:08], the phone is ringing, and nobody can breathe.
And still, no one was making these connections that it was indeed wood smoke. So we were able to follow a program that had been started in [inaudible 00:16:24]. And the Bay Area Air Quality Management District began to call Don’t Light Tonight Program where they ask people not to burn.
The first time that happened, it was just incredible. The air was already building up. The news stations got on and encouraged people to please turn off their burning, do whatever they could to stop it. And the pollution that was [inaudible 00:16:55] was gone.
It rather showed the Air District officials, I don’t, had been aware that the wood burning was the largest contributor to the winter air pollution. And now, what we have is year-round pollution with wood burning restaurants. I was discussing with Debra that [inaudible 00:17:25] around the green in New York, in the park, they’re going to have a wood-burning pizza place. And this has been going on [inaudible 00:17:32] to do.
And of course, everybody looks at the dollars and cents, and they make a lot of money with these restaurants. And so we are creating this pond of pollutants that we’re breathing. And the thing to do is not burn. We can’t clean it up.
DEBRA: We’ll talk about it more after the break. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Mary Rozenberg of the Burning Issues website. That’s BurningIssues.org, and we’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Mary Rozenberg, co-founder and president of Burning Issues website. That’s at BurningIssues.org.
The more I look at this website—here’s something actually Mary wrote to me in the e-mail that there’s no real controversy in the scientific community that is saying that wood smoke is safe. And she says no one is saying that wood smoke is safe.
Hundreds of papers are all in agreement about the danger of it.
So this is something where it’s not even controversial. Nobody is saying, “Well, wait a minute. Maybe this isn’t true.”
Everybody agrees, so it’s something that we all should be doing something about.
I just want to say that the most common sources of particulate pollution are residential wood burning. So those are your fireplaces and your wood stoves, restaurant burning, like Mary was just talking about for cooking, coal burning, forest fires and agricultural burning of the fields, and diesel and auto exhaust. It comes from all of those things.
And so we not only need to be burning less, but how can we reduce how much we’re driving our cars. There might not be a lot that we can do about forest fires, but there’s a big difference between an occasional forest fire and auto exhaust day in and day out, and people burning with their wood stoves night after night after night.
Mary, I was thinking, as you were talking about asking people not to burn—this is so interesting. In nature, one of the things that I learned about nature is that nature will often try to warn you, like a poisonous mushroom—not all poisonous mushrooms have this, but a lot of times a poisonous mushroom will be bright red, or a poisonous berry, or that there are indicators. They’re going to have spines on them, or things like that.
And so nature tries to warn us about things that are bad for us, like making it taste bad, or something, and it tries to give us indicators of pleasure of things that are good for us.
I think that a lot of people have a lot of positive associations with the smell of wood smoke. I hate to say that but we go, “Oh, it’s winter time. That smoke smells good, and it tastes so good.”
But this is one of those times where even though it seems like a pleasure to us, it really is a poison.
MARY ROZENBERG: Yes. There are, I believe, people that are addicted to wood smoke. They’re basically part of the smoking addiction. Remember, you heard it here first. Combustion byproducts, it’s not just the nicotine. I think that part of why it’s so hard to give it up.
So what we see many times is these committed burners who absolutely don’t want to hear that they’re toxically—totally destroying the neighborhood air, they are former smokers.
A single fireplace operating for an hour burning 10 pounds of wood, during that time, will create more carcinogenic, [inaudible 00:21:55] than 30 cigarettes.
So that’s a real wham-pow for your brain.
DEBRA: I can understand everything you’re saying about the toxics, and then there’s this other part of me that goes, “But sitting in front of a fireplace and the smell of that wood smoke, and it’s so romantic,” and all that stuff. I think this is a difficult thing to give up. Psychologically, it’s a difficult thing to give up.
MARY ROZENBERG: Part of that is carbon monoxide, and other chemicals. And we have on the website, if you go down to the bottom of that first page, the front page, on the right side, you will see educational material.
DEBRA: I see it.
MARY ROZENBERG: And there are actually flyers which we created that have the chemicals in wood smoke, and what they are, in terms of—
DEBRA: Is that the one called Wood Smoke Brochure?
MARY ROZENBERG: it’s right below that.
DEBRA: References for Wood Smoke Brochure?
MARY ROZENBERG: It’s Chemical—
DEBRA: What’s the title of it?
MARY ROZENBERG: Pardon?
DEBRA: What is the title of it?
MARY ROZENBERG: I’ll find it for you.
DEBRA: Is it over under Scientific Information? Is it the one called Chemical Constituents?
MARY ROZENBERG: Yes.
DEBRA: Okay, that’s under Scientific Information.
MARY ROZENBERG: Good.
DEBRA: I see it now.
MARY ROZENBERG: Thank you for showing me my website. The references you mentioned for the wood smoke brochure, I want to assure people, when you go to our website, you’re reading the science. It’s not influenced by politics, and everything that we say we have a scientific reference for the scientific statement.
And I talked with many of the scientists and, of course, they are experts in one little tiny particulate area, and so it was fascinating as this all unfolded. And I’m delighted to say that Dr. Ott is continuing the monitoring.
So that’s important to remember is that this isn’t an area of science where there’s been much attention paid.
DEBRA: No, and I think that a lot of times that the toxic substances that are really getting attention, it’s people like you who are actually being made ill by it, and they say. “What’s making me ill?” And you start doing the research, and you start seeing that there are all these studies, studies, studies, but they don’t get out into the public, and they don’t get attention.
And so it’s so wonderful that you have this organization. When did you found this? Haven’t you been doing this for 20 or 30 years?
MARY ROZENBERG: Yes.
DEBRA: Yes, and so there just needs to be more and more and more and more awareness, so that when people are considering, “Well, shall I put wood-burning stove in my restaurant?” When I said that, I thought of this little restaurant where I used to live in Inverness, California, that is an old hunting lodge, and they have this big fireplace, and they put a grate in the fireplace, and they cook right in the fireplace. And the whole place just smells like smoke, and people just think it’s so delicious.
And yet, people just aren’t aware of how much pollution that’s creating, even in that little, tiny place where it has an inversion [inaudible 00:26:09] too.
We need to go to break, but we’ll be right back after this. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Mary Rozenberg, and we’re talking about fine particle pollution in outdoor air.
We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest is Mary Rozenberg of Burning Issues website. That’s BurningIssues.org.
There is so much information on this website, and all you need to do is just go down to the bottom part of the page, and you’ll see all these links to different brochures and reports and things. And I’ve been clicking around during the break, and I’m looking at one right now called the Cancer brochure.
Actually, the one that says Wood Burning brochure, that does have a list of the toxic chemicals that are in wood smoke.
But now, I’m looking at the Cancer brochure. And it says, “Wood smoke is 12 times more likely to cause cancer than the same amount of tobacco smoke.”
That’s pretty amazing. Wood smoke is 12 times more likely to cause cancer than the same amount of tobacco smoke.
Then it goes on to say, “You might be surprised to learn that 50% to 70% of outdoor wood smoke fine particle levels seep directly into homes, even non-burning homes.”
MARY ROZENBERG: It’s the next thing I wanted to mention, yes.
DEBRA: Okay, you go ahead and talk about that.
MARY ROZENBERG: No, you’re doing very well.
DEBRA: I’m just reading your brochure. It says, “In smoky neighborhoods, towns have been shown to have the same amount of indoor polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons as five cigarettes smoked inside a house at non-wood-burning time of the year.”
[inaudible 00:28:02] many communities. It’s like there are things that we can do at home like remove toxic cleaning products, but we also need to really be taking a look at what’s going on outside in the environment around us because it does affect us. It’s not just that we’ll walk outside our door, and breathe this pollution.
It’s coming in our houses.
MARY ROZENBERG: Because it’s so small. It’s really a gas. What we’re talking about is aerosol. And that was why the discovery of the fine particulate and its role in health was so amazing. It was new.
And now, they are looking at even super fine particles, smaller than just the PM2.5. So 70% of it comes in, and there is no protection other than trying to clean it up. There is only one air cleaner, and I’m not paid for this. I will give it a plug because I feel it’s saved my life.
It’s called IQ Air. And they’re expensive. I have six of them in my home, and I have several in the office. And I depend on these air cleaners to keep me going because I get so ill when I’m exposed to smoke that I’m really totally incapacitated.
I’ve been driving where there was smoke, and the police had pulled me over, thinking I was drunk. And all I was trying to do was get out of the smoky area.
So the IQ Air, which you can find on the web, is Swiss made and invented. And it does the best particle removal because it also removes the aerosol, the gasses. It has three stages.
So it’s important. The first thing, of course, you want to do to protect yourself is [inaudible 00:30:29] filter. Make sure that anything you get is [inaudible 00:30:33] filter.
The second thing is you do not want an electronic filter that just emits ozone or something like that that’s supposedly cleans the air because that can cause health problems. And you actually have to clean it up and clean up the carbon monoxide that’s coming in, clean up the [inaudible 00:30:57] hydrocarbons as they’re coming in.
I’m in a rural area here on the coast now in California, and there are, unfortunately, burns—most of them caused by local people thinking that they’re saving forest fires by having these big piles of wet wood burning.
DEBRA: And wet wood creates more smoke than anything to have it be wet.
MARY ROZENBERG: Yes.
DEBRA: But wet or green wood that’s just been chopped you really shouldn’t be burning. Well, we’re talking about not burning wood at all, but if you’re burning wood, the best wood to burn is dry-seasoned wood because that produces the least amount of smoke.
MARY ROZENBERG: However, it’s very toxic.
DEBRA: It is.
MARY ROZENBERG: Dry-seasoned wood—
DEBRA: Burning is toxic. It doesn’t matter what you’re burning—if you’re burning incense, or candles, or whatever, but the combustion byproducts are toxic.
MARY ROZENBERG: Yes, and so when they’re telling you to relax and burn a candle, no. Don’t do that. It’s very toxic. You do not want candle smoke or incense smoke in your home.
We actually have reports of renters, apartment dwellers, who have been made ill by a neighbor who is burning incense all the time.
I had a woman contact me. She was doing research on candles. And she was very upset because she had gotten some candles that destroyed some of her furnishings. And she wanted her insurance company to pay for all of the damage from the combustion, which I think they did at that time.
And what she missed entirely was the fact that it doesn’t matter what the candles are. You don’t want to burn them.
The wonderful thing now is we have these nice, little flashing, little mini candles, and they are very available now. And so that’s what we have with my grandchildren at Christmas.
DEBRA: I was thinking about the obvious things like fireplaces, wood stoves and restaurants. And I was thinking here I live in Florida where we have no problem with people burning fireplaces because nobody has one. It’s too hot here for fireplaces.
But what we do have is barbeque. We have barbeque pits, they’re called. They’re not in the ground, but there are barbeques that are just smoking all day long, all day long, all day long, smoking meat. And a lot of times, they’re just right in residential areas, or shopping areas, or whatever because they’re attached to barbeque restaurants.
And you just walk down the street, and there’s smoke. And it’s going up into the air.
And so you really need to really think about and really observe where this smoke might be, and what the sources might be.
If I were to say, “Let’s not have barbeques because they’re contributing to toxic air pollution,” I know here in the south, people would just go up in arms over not having barbeque.
This is what we’re faced with.
MARY ROZENBERG: They think we want to create this mess.
DEBRA: It’s just in [inaudible 00:34:59]. You know what I’m saying.
MARY ROZENBERG: Yes. Our monitoring showed that if you used a gas barbeque, a propane, then the pollution was really insignificant until the chicken wings caught on fire—so until something is actually burning.
So if you must have your barbeque, do it over propane. Now, some of the—
DEBRA: To me, I don’t think that even tastes like barbeque.
MARY ROZENBERG: It can’t have the charred—
DEBRA: Not that I’m a big fan of charred meat, but I think it tastes really good, but it’s not something that I need to eat every day. It’s not part of my heritage or something like that. And we need to recognize that burnt meat—those are toxic chemicals in that burned, charred meat also.
MARY ROZENBERG: Yes, and they also emit this charred air. When the chicken is disappearing, when it’s charring, it’s going into the air as pollution.
DEBRA: I’m just making a little note here about this. Well, you know what? That went by so fast. We have about a minute left, so are there any final words you want to say?
MARY ROZENBERG: Well, please go to the website. I also recommend an Australian website that we linked to, and that’s done by a very fine scientist.
DEBRA: I see it right here—the Armidale Air Quality Group. It’s right there, about halfway down the page on the left.
MARY ROZENBERG: Yes. Keep in mind that wood smoke is chemically active in the body 40 times longer than tobacco smoke. 70% of it, once it’s emitted, is going to go into every house, including that person down the block who has a heart problem.
Unfortunately, it has been a growing concern, and it’s time that we all start to speak up. Tell our grocery stores we don’t want them barbequing outside. Don’t go to wood-burning pizza places.
So it’s the choices you make, and that you have to begin to educate others. And keep in mind they can be nasty.
DEBRA: Well, I need to say thank you now because we’ve only got about eight seconds left. So thank you so much for being on the show today, and thank you for everything that you’ve done all these years, and you continue to do to educate and bring all this information together.
Everybody, go to BurningIssues.org, and find out more about this. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio.
Cleaning Biofilm From Jetted Tub Pipes
Question from Leslie
Hi Debra
I was looking for something to clean our jetted bathtub. I am concerned about using the tub, because when we bought the house, it was unoccupied for a while before we got here, and I have no idea how (or if) the inner parts had been cleaned prior to that. So meanwhile I’m not using the tub while I try to find a suitable way to clean it. I’ve seen many recommendations online for using Cascade dishwasher detergent and bleach, and I’d prefer not to use those. I thought about trying vinegar, baking soda, or some other natural cleaner. But my concern is that those will probably not remove what is lurking in the plumbing. Then I saw the “Oh Yuk” biofilm remover, and it claims to remove the harmful bacteria, molds, etc, that grow in the unseen plumbing.
www.scientificbiofilmsolutions.com/oh-yuk-cleaner/
The company indicates that other options don’t actually remove the biofilm. Because we can’t actually see the plumbing lines, it’s a bit difficult to know if the nasty stuff inside has actually been removed. But people who use the Cascade/bleach method, or the Oh Yuk product, say that they see black/brown/green film, flakes, etc, come out into the water while doing the cleaning. So there does seem to be some evidence it is working.
I suppose it comes down to trusting the company that they have done testing and examined the tubing to make sure it is, in fact, free of harmful bacteria after using the product, since we can’t actually see the tubing or test it ourselves. So it appears to be effective.
But I’m wondering about the safety of the product. Their site says: “Oh Yuk is safe to work with. Unlike many jetted tub cleaners, Oh Yuk’s fumes will not harm you, your employees, or your guest when the jets are turned on. Some other brands jetted tub cleaners contain carcinogens, mutagens, and harmful VOC’s.”
Their MSDS is provided via the link above, but here is the direct link as well: www.static.squarespace.com/static/52b1d489e4b01342092c760d/t/52b31a47e4b0ddced6131744/1387469383535/MSDS_Oh%20Yuk.pdf
I don’t have enough experience reading MSDS to feel confident in my interpretation of the info they give. The health rating is 1, but I’m wondering why it says “Not Available” for things like toxicological info, carcinogenic effects, etc. Is that common on MSDS? The “personal protection in case of a large spill” section makes me think the product is pretty potent. But again, I don’t have enough familiarity with interpreting MSDS info to know for sure. I googled “quaternary ammonium cation” – one of the ingredients on the MSDS – and the info on Wikipedia wasn’t reassuring. But I’ll admit that the chemistry lesson goes a bit over my head, and it’s possible that the product is fine.
I definitely want to use the safest product possible. On the other hand, is it possible that a less-than-perfect cleaner is a better option than bathing in water that contains harmful bacteria and molds? Meanwhile, I have a tub I’m not using but would like to be able to use for aching muscles, for detox baths, etc.
If you know of another option for addressing these issues in a jetted tub, I’d be glad to know. I suggested replacing the plumbing, but my husband said that would probably be very difficult because of the design of these tubs. Any suggestions?
There is a similar product, called Ahh-Some, but I have the same confused feeling about their MSDS. They claim it is a natural and eco-friendly product, yet the ingredients are irritants. Does that make the product toxic? They also have a “1” rating for health.
ahhsomecleaner.com/wp-content/themes/rgbstore/msds.pdf
Debra’s Answer
OK, just off the top of my head, both of these MSDS’s are incomplete as far as I am concerned.
A health hazard rating of “1” is pretty nontoxic. I think either of these are better than the standard toxic cleaner, but I can’t evaluate them really because there is no information. It may say “not available” because there is none because it’s not needed.
If I had to choose one, I think either would be fine. There’s nothing here that indicates a big toxic exposure to me.
Good you found these safer products!
Toilet installation products
Question from TA
We are planning to replace 3 toilets in our home, and this is our first experience with installing toilets. I know that a wax ring, or some alternative, is necessary. I saw some non-wax alternatives online, but upon closer reading, it appears that they are made of PVC or polyurethane foam (also antimicrobial). So even though they are supposed to be far easier to install and other such benefits, I’d rather not purchase those kinds of products.
Is the basic wax ring a good option, or do you have another recommendation for what to use? I know my husband would prefer whichever is easier to install, and those alternative ones are claimed to be easier. Perhaps there’s a wax alternative that is non-toxic but I just haven’t seen it yet.
After looking a bit more, I saw this option for a wax-free gasket. I checked the company’s website, and it specifies that they use a special type of rubber. I suppose this could have a strong rubber smell. But perhaps it’s better than buying PVC or PU foam? I guess I’m looking for the less-toxic option, whatever that may be!
http://www.amazon.com/Fluidmaster-7500P8-Wax-Free-Bowl-Gasket/dp/B000BQUG7U/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1397501239&sr=8-7&keywords=wax+ring+for+toilet
Then regarding the toilet seat selection, I know I read long ago that you use wood seats. Would you mind sharing a link to the type of seat you have found? When I find “wood” seats, they seem to be either 1) molded wood (is that okay?) or 2) finished with a glossy finish, and I don’t know if the finish is toxic or not. Have you found ones that are only wood? I have to wonder if a polypropylene seat is better than a glossy finished wood or molded wood (which has been made white somehow – so again, is the finish non-toxic?).
I was looking at our existing toilet and noticed the caulking around the base. I realized I hadn’t considered whether that type of product is usually toxic. My husband will know what to get at the hardware store to get the job done, but won’t necessarily know if it’s non-toxic. Can you point me in the direction of a safe product to use there, where the toilet connects to the floor?
Are there any other components I should be aware of, that will take special effort to locate in a non-toxic version?
Debra’s Answer
I’ve installed a number of toilets and we’ve always used the wax ring. I never had a problem with them. Once installed it is covered completely by the toilet.
For toilet seats, I bought mine years ago and they are getting more difficult to find. Here are a number of solid wood toilet seats, but as you said, the finish may be problematic and we don’t know what the finish is on any of them.
They don’t sell unfinished wood toilet seats, but you could buy the toilet seat you like and sand the finish off if necessary and apply the finish you like. See, here’s an opportunity for some industrious person. Go to a wood toilet seat manufacturer, buy some wholesale unfinished, apply a nontoxic finish, and sell them. A niche waiting to be served. A wood toilet seat needs a finish to protect it from water. But it doesn’t need to be toxic.
For caulk you can get EcoBond at Home Depot.
No other components I can think of.
Natural Sense latex mattress
Question from TA
Are you familiar with the Natural Sense brand of latex mattress? When looking for mattresses, there is so much to be aware of — whether or not fire retardants are used, whether the wool was processed organically, whether it’s truly natural latex or a blend with synthetic latex, and so forth. These mattresses appear to be the real deal, but I want to make sure I’m not overlooking something that would indicate that they aren’t actually non-toxic.
They are sold on the Foam Order website, as well as their own site.
http://www.foamorder.com/organic-mattress.html
http://www.organicmattressshop.com/
I find their website a bit confusing. And there is alot of info on the sites. It’s alot to take in. But from what I can tell, it seems like a decent product. Your thoughts?
Debra’s Answer
Evaluating latex is a major subject to write about. I’ve been researching it for over a year and some major changes have taken place. I’ll write about it soon, but for now I’ll just comment on Natural Sense.
Well, first of all there is a mistake on their site. It says the natural latex foam is “FCS certified” but it isn’t. When you click on the link it takes you to a certification for Oeko-Tex Standard 100 certification, which means it does not contain a long list of chemicals.
There’s another mistake, “nontoxic organic rubber.” It’s certified nontoxic by Oeko-Tex but I don’t see any organic certification for the latex at all. They have a certificate for organic cotton and organic wool, but not organic latex.
And, they refer to their mattresses as “organic mattresses.” They actually can’t do that. An “organic mattress” means the entire process of materials and manufacture is organic and certified by GOTS. I don’t see any GOTS certification.
Their product may be just fine. But they don’t seem to be aware of what’s going on in the field of mattresses to know how to properly describe them.
When I see this, it makes me wonder if they really know how to make a natural mattress. I’ve never seen their mattress, I don’t know them at all, but this is what it looks like to me. When I see a site like this, I just pass. I could correct them, but what I’m really looking for are people who really know their stuff. People I can learn from because they are on the inside and can see and experience what is going on. That’s not the impression I get here.
The Dangers of Exposure to Radiation and How to Protect Yourself
Toxicologist Steven G. Gilbert, PhD, DABT, a regular guest who is helping us understand the toxicity of common chemicals we may be frequently exposed to. Dr. Gilbert is Director and Founder of the Institute of Neurotoxicology and author of A Small Dose of Toxicology- The Health Effects of Common Chemicals.
He received his Ph.D. in Toxicology in 1986 from the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, is a Diplomat of American Board of Toxicology, and an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, University of Washington. His research has focused on neurobehavioral effects of low-level exposure to lead and mercury on the developing nervous system. Dr. Gilbert has an extensive website about toxicology called Toxipedia, which includes a suite of sites that put scientific information in the context of history, society, and culture. www.toxipedia.org
LISTEN TO OTHER SHOWS WITH STEVEN G. GILBERT, PhD, DABT
- Toxics in the Air We Breathe—Indoors and Outdoors—and How it Affects Our Health
- Toxic Solvents and Vapors
- How Pesticides Can Harm Your Health
- Why Do People Doubt the Science Behind Toxics?
- There is No Safe Level for Lead Exposure
- Fewer Chemicals Make Healthier Babies
- Why We Shouldn’t Have Nuclear Power Plants
- How Mercury Affects Your Health
- Nanoparticles
- Persistant Bioaccumulative Toxicants
- How Endocrine Disruptors Disrupt Our Endocrine Systems
- Toxics Throughout History—Exposure to Toxic Substances is Not New
- The Ethics of Toxics
- How to Determine Your Risk of Harm From an Exposure to a Toxic Chemical
- The Basic Principles of Toxicology
- Meet a Toxicologist
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
The Dangers of Exposure to Radiation and How to Protect Yourself
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Steven G. Gilbert
Date of Broadcast: April 14, 2014
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio—where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and how we can live toxic-free because there are so many toxic chemicals around, so many toxic things that we’re exposed to that we need to be able to identify them, we need to know where they are, and we need to know what to do in order to protect our health—physical, mental, spiritual and our happiness, and raise our children well, and have a future, and just do everything that we want to do in life that often toxic chemicals prevent us from doing because they’re making our bodies sick.
Today, we’re going to be talking about radiation, and the reason that we’re talking about radiation today is because I saw an article we’ve all been watching for the past few years about Fukushima—the radiation coming from the nuclear plant when there was the earthquake.
And this spring, it’s being expected that radiation from Japan, from that earthquake, will be arriving, in small amounts, on the West Coast of the United States.
There was an article about how a group of people have gotten together to do, what they’re calling, a citizen scientist program. And they’re crowd-sourcing funding to have water tested along the West Coast, to find out how much were actually being exposed to this radiation.
And so if the federal government does not consider this to be a priority because the levels are so low, still, people, citizens, are considering this as to be something that we want to find out about. And I’m glad they are doing that.
There’s a website called OurRadioactiveOcean.org, and there’s lots of information there that shows what’s going on as to how much radiation is happening. So that’s something that you can check on.
Another thing that prompted me to do this was last summer, I think it was, I interviewed a woman named Cory Trusty. She has a business where she makes soap. It’s called Aquarian Bath. And I interviewed her because she does not use plastic in her business. She’s a plastic-free business, and she wraps everything in paper, and all of that.
But one of the things that she makes is what she calls a detox soap with zeolite and activated charcoal and bentonite clay.
And she actually lives on the West Coast, and she has her own meter, so that she can check the radioactivity where she lives.
This was last summer. She found that there was sufficient radiation that she needed to develop this soap, so that when people are exposed to radiation, they can wash with this particular soap, and it will take the radiation off of their bodies.
So people are concerned about this. It’s invisible, it’s not something that you’re going to walk outside and say, “Oh, there’s radioactivity,” but it’s something that we need to understand and we need to learn how to protect ourselves.
So I have here today toxicologist, Dr. Stephen Gilbert. He’s been with us before. He’s the director and founder of the Institute of Neurotoxicology. He’s the author of A Small Dose of Toxicology—The Health Effects of Common Chemicals. And he has a wonderful site called Toxipedia.org.
And before we start talking, I just want to tell you that you can go to Toxipedia.org, and everything that we’re going to talk about today is on the website for free, and you can read it. It’s in the chapter about radiation in his book, A Small Dose of Toxicology, and you can get that for free right on his website.
This is something that you’re probably going to want to read about. This is not enough just to have it go by and listen to it.
This is an important subject that we all need to be concerned about.
Hi, Dr. Gilbert. Hello?
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: Yes, I can hear you.
DEBRA: Okay, good. I can hear you. Hi.
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: Hi there.
DEBRA: So you’re over there on the West Coast of the United States where the radiation is coming.
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: I am. So we’re watching for it. It’s supposed to arrive next month or so, on the water, an ocean plumed of radioactivity at very low levels, but it’s not something we want to see on the West Coast.
DEBRA: No, it’s not. So if there’s a plume coming in on the ocean, would people be exposed to that if they’re not in the ocean?
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: No, it’s in the ocean. The thing to be concerned about is potential for fish to concentrate the radioactive particles. And there’s some concern about tuna [inaudible 00:05:19] along with fish [inaudible 00:05:22] particularly the [inaudible 00:05:24] part of the contaminants that were released by the Fukushima reactors—they’re melting down.
But these fish have been tested too, and they’re at very low levels, at least up until now.
DEBRA: Well, let’s see what happens. It’s something to watch out for. But tell us, I know you’ve been on before. I always like to start with people’s history, so why don’t you give us just a little bit of background about you, just for the people who haven’t heard you before.
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: My background is, I did a lot of work on lead and mercury. I was very interested in protecting children’s central nervous systems and making sure they could reach and maintain their full potential.
And from there, I wrote a book—A Small Dose of Toxicology. My view is that we have tremendous amounts of knowledge.
The challenge is using this knowledge to take [inaudible 00:06:15] and understanding the consequences of chemical exposures. You have to remember that children are not little adults. They eat more, breathe more, and drink more than adults do [inaudible 00:06:25] get a bigger exposure because children are more sensitive to radiation exposure, for example.
[inaudible 00:06:32] can get to the thyroids and cause thyroid cancer.
But my interest [inaudible 00:06:38] how do we make better decisions given the information we have, protecting children from lead, mercury exposure and other contaminants in our environment, and other chemicals we use.
DEBRA: And he’s doing a very good job at this. I find, out of all the information that I’ve read in the past 30 years, the easiest information to understand is Dr. Gilbert’s.
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: Thank you, Debra. That’s so kind of you.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. Well, it’s true. And I just think everybody should go to Toxipedia.org, and it’s the easiest place for a person who’s not a scientist to understand what the chemical exposures are, and some things that you can do about it.
And he’s also got some very fascinating information about the history, and ethics, and everything that has to do with toxicology.
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: For example, we highlighted Rachel Carson. It says in 1964, Rachel Carson died today in 1964.
DEBRA: I saw that and I was going to mention it, so I’m glad you mentioned it. Rachel Carson is one of my heroes. I think that most people don’t realize—I didn’t read, let’s see. How old was I in 1964? I was nine years old. Obviously, I wasn’t reading Silent Spring. But Silent Spring is such a perennial classic that I could have read it at any point in time, but I didn’t, even though I was interested in toxics.
I didn’t read it until about three years ago, I think. I read it one summer. And all of a sudden, I realized that I had always thought that it was an environmental book because she was talking about the birds. That’s why it’s called Silent Spring because the birds weren’t singing anymore because the pesticides had killed them.
And so I always thought of it as being environment. But then I hit this chapter where she talked about pesticides in human exposure. And I realized that that was probably the very first book on human, for the general public, about human exposures to toxic chemicals—that that was a warning way back in 1964.
And yet, nobody was doing anything about it.
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: Yes, there’s a great quote from Rachel Carson. It’s on the front page of Toxipedia right now. It says, “We are rightly appalled by the genetic effects of radiation. How then can we be indifferent to the same effects in chemicals we disseminate widely in our environment?”
She’s a remarkable, amazing woman.
DEBRA: She is. And I highly recommend that you also, everybody also, read Silent Spring. It’s such a context for where we are today, and that all these things were known back in 1964. And it’s [inaudible 00:09:22] so long to do what we need to do to make things right.
But that’s part of why we’re here on Toxic Free Talk Radio in order to push this forward.
We’re going to take a break.
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: [inaudible 00:09:34] using the information we have to make the decisions. And we’ve known a lot of this stuff back when—Rachel Carson’s time. And we’re still overexposing ourselves to pesticides, just using chemicals, not understanding the toxic properties, and exposing our children to them.
We’re not thinking about the future generation.
DEBRA: Well, you and I are making a difference about this, I know. We’re going to take a break, and then we’ll come back, and we’ll find out about radiation.
This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is toxicologist, Stephen Gilbert, and his website is Toxipedia.org.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is toxicologist, Dr. Stephen Gilbert. We’re talking about radiation.
Dr. Gilbert, would you explain what radiation is?
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: That’s a big question.
DEBRA: It is a big question, and I always get confused about it.
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: We need to [inaudible 00:10:30] from photosynthesis onwards, and when we look at the sun, I’m sure everybody enjoys a little sunshine. And that sunshine is important for the warmth it provides, as well as the photosynthesis of the plants. So really, it sustains life.
But as with all things, and we know the sun can also be dangerous. [inaudible 00:10:50] too much, [inaudible 00:10:51] sunburn, and that could be very hazardous to our health.
So it’s always a balance, and that’s called non-ionizing radiation. We’ve [inaudible 00:11:00] radiation for our cell phones, for our telephone communication that uses enormous amounts of energy and a lot of that is radiation.
And the ionizing radiation is what’s given off [inaudible 00:11:13] particles that are decaying, and that can damage our health. And they come in the form of alpha and beta particles, and gamma rays. So there’s a wide spectral radiation. A lot of it [inaudible 00:11:26] radiation came at the turn of the century.
Marie Curie, for example, was one of the leaders in this, about [inaudible 00:11:31]. But it was really not until World War II, during the 40’s, that we learned how to build nuclear reactors, and the first reactor to go critical [inaudible 00:11:41].
The B Reactor was in Richland, Washington at the Hanford [inaudible 00:11:46] area. [inaudible 00:11:48] called Hanford Nuclear Testing Grounds. And the B Reactor produced plutonium. So that’s what these reactors did. It really manufactured plutonium, and learning how to do that was really incredibly scientifically challenging, as well as really interesting.
But the tragic part was the plutonium can be used to create nuclear weapons.
And they did that. The first nuclear bomb was [inaudible 00:12:11] Trinity, and another bomb was the [inaudible 00:12:13] constructed bomb to strike Nagasaki.
But the basic design of the reactors went on to create nuclear power reactors. And you have to remember that nuclear power reactor is basically boiled water to drive big turbines. So this produces radioactive waste, and that’s very hazardous.
And we’ve struggled to deal with this radioactive waste problem for a long time.
And that’s when the reactors melt down, like in Fukushima. There had been other nuclear reactor accidents too from [inaudible 00:12:43] in Chernobyl. It contaminated enormous amounts of the earth, and displaced millions and millions of people.
And we have millions and millions of people now in the United States [inaudible 00:12:54] that live within 50-miles of a nuclear reactor [inaudible 00:12:58]. [inaudible 00:12:59] and be aware that there are potential hazards in nuclear reactors and meltdown in Fukushima, is just an example of that.
So radiation is a broad subject. I really encourage you to read the chapter of radiation of my book, A Small Dose of Toxicology, gives an overview of that. [inaudible 00:13:18] go to a lot more details about it, but it’s a complicated subject, but it really deserves some study.
DEBRA: Now, could you explain—because this is where I think it becomes confusing for a lot of people. And I had to separate this out for myself. So when we are using a cell phone, we’re being exposed to radiation, but there are also radioactive particles. There are particles coming in the ocean, and they get into a fish, and then we eat them. And that particle gets into our bodies.
So can you explain the difference between these two things?
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: Yes. That’s a fairly important distinction. So the radiation that’s come from our microwave power and our cell phones, and many other gadgets that we use—Wi-Fi signals for example. And some people do seem to have some sensitivity with this radiation is the non-ionizing radiation. So it’s low energy, and generally does no harm.
The ionizing radiation [inaudible 00:14:22] the particles [inaudible 00:14:25] plutonium, uranium, and other radioactive elements. [inaudible 00:14:32] more energetic particles, and they can create ions that can damage the DNA.
So the radioactive particles, if we absorb those radioactive materials, they can damage the DNA, and the DNA could then mutate and start dividing, and become cancerous.
So for example, plutonium—you can hold plutonium in your hands because it’s by large an [inaudible 00:14:55] particles have very low energetic in larger particles, so they cannot penetrate the skin. But the problem is if you inhale plutonium, and get that particle in your lungs, it [inaudible 00:15:06] your DNA, it can cause lung cancer.
So it really depends on what kind of exposures you have, whether it’s an internal dose exposure, or an external dose.
And then there are beta particles that are more energetic. It can travel through paper, but a block of wood can stop them, so they don’t travel as far. And gamma radiation is highly damaging, very energetic. The gamma rays require lead or concrete to stop them. That’s the best way to sum it up—what are low energy or high energy particles.
And the most dangerous ones are the ionized radiation, the high energy particles—the alpha, beta and gamma rays.
DEBRA: So how prevalent is it if I’m just walking around in the world at large, and I’m not getting x-rays or something like that? How are we being exposed, and are we being exposed to a degree that we should be concerned about?
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: We are always being exposed, and our bodies try to repair some of the damaged caused, for example, by the sun. But if you walk outside in the sun, and you’re being exposed to radiation, toxic radiation, if you go into an airplane, and you fly, you increase your exposure to cosmic rays.
And we can tolerate some of that and there are standards about that. So we’re all exposed [inaudible 00:16:34] radiation.
People who live in higher elevations are exposed to more radiation.
Then we can also have radiation from sun contributes to global warming and greenhouse gasses that stop the radiation and trap the heat from the energy of the sun.
So there are many aspects to radiation. The concern is if you’re [inaudible 00:16:56] radioactive particles or [inaudible 00:16:56] material exposed to that, you can damage your DNA. And that’s why people who work around nuclear reactors, they have [inaudible 00:17:06] exposure to radioactive materials, trying to limit that damage.
But we also use radiation a lot. For example, dental x-rays, x-rays in hospitals, CT scans—all these use ionizing radiation x-rays that have the potential of higher dose to damage your DNA. And you use those materials, for example, radiation, in chemotherapy that’s used to kill the dividing cells of cancer. But on the other hand, it can also cause cancer.
So we have very tenuous relationships with radiation.
DEBRA: Good. We need to take a break, but we’ll find out more about radiation, and what we can do to protect ourselves, and how much of a danger it is when we come back. My guest today is Dr. Stephen Gilbert. He’s a toxicologist. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. 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 toxicologist, Stephen Gilbert. Ph.D. He’s the author of A Small Dose of Toxicology—The Health Effects of Common Chemicals. And you can get a free copy of this book at his website, Toxipedia.org.
It’s a book that I think everyone should have if you only become aware of this shortlist of chemicals in Dr. Gilbert’s book, and do something about those, we’ll all go a long way towards eliminating a lot of toxics in the world. It’s just an excellent guide.
And I just think everyone on the planet should have one.
And since it’s free, everybody can have one. It’s just a matter of distributing it around.
So before we go on, Dr. Gilbert, I just want to point out some consumer product sources of radioactive materials. I have made an article on my website called Are You Protected from Radiation Exposure?
Actually, you can just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. Go up to the menu at the top, and there’s a little icon that looks like a magnifying glass. Click on that and type in the word “radiation.” And anything I’ve ever written about radiation will come up.
And in this article, it’s got some wonderful links to various websites that will explain to you in easy terms about what radiation is. But there are also two links that I’ve included about where you find radiation, radioactive materials in consumer products.
And some of the surprising places you might find it is in dinnerware, especially they pointed out [inaudible 00:19:49] in some bathroom tile, in porcelain dentures, let’s see what else—there’s actually some old glass that’s green and yellow called uranium glass that actually has radioactive uranium in it. There’s also a camera lens, low sodium salt—in fact, in particular, anything that has potassium in it is more radioactive than things that have sodium in it.
Glossy magazines, let’s see what else—anti-diarrhea medication, smoke detectors, cat litter. There are a lot of things here that you just wouldn’t think of—water softener, salt, a tape dispenser.
I don’t know how much is in any of these things. But one of the things that we should just be aware of is that these things are all over the place, and the more we’re exposed to them—cigarette smoke.
Actually, in this article, it says, that I was just showing you—let me quote it to you from the EPA. The EPA says by far the largest radiation dose received by the public comes from smoking cigarettes. And they while cigarette smoke is not an obvious source of radiation exposure, it contains small amounts of radioactive materials which smokers bring into their lungs as they inhale. They lodge in the lung tissue, and over time, contribute a huge radioactive dose.
So even if you’re not smoking, if you’re living with somebody who smokes, or you’re breathing cigarette smoke, that’s radioactive exposure.
So obviously, this is something that is out there. There are two things I just want to recommend, and then we’ll go back to Dr. Gilbert. There are two things I want to recommend that you can do to lessen your radioactive exposure.
One is that if you think you have any radiation in your water, there’s a water filter that I have the link on it on this page that removes radiation. And this is the only water filter I’ve ever found that removes radiation. So if that’s a concern for you, if you think it’s raining radiation and getting into your water system, or anything, any reason that you have to believe, then you can actually remove radiation from your water.
Another thing that you hear our commercials for every day on my radio show is liquid zeolite, pure body liquid zeolite. And that will remove radiation from your body, if you have radiation in your body. Zeolite is the thing that they use when there was a meltdown in a nuclear reactor. They bring in the zeolite to absorb the radiation. And so this zeolite product will remove radiation from parts of your body.
So again, just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and click on the little magnifying glass icon, type in “radiation,” and you’ll get several different articles that I have written with more information about where it is in consumer products, and what you can do.
Okay, back to you, Dr. Gilbert.
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: Yes, I wanted to mention too another [supporting] source is radon gasses. So radon can [inaudible 00:23:15], so I encourage your listeners to have their homes [inaudible 00:23:18] for radon, to clean certain parts of their [inaudible 00:23:21]. It tends to be more [inaudible 00:23:24] hard rock foundations—Pennsylvania for example.
And you can accumulate radon gasses which are radioactive. And if you’re a smoker, you’ll increase probability of lung cancer from inhalation of radon gas.
DEBRA: And of course, if you’re smoking around children, you’ll increase their chances of cancer as well.
Tell us about the health effects of radiation.
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: So there are different health effects. The primary one is [inaudible 00:23:54] about cancer. For example, and you have to [inaudible 00:23:56] elements are positive. Strontium, for example, goes to bone, so it can damage the bone marrow and cause leukemia and other blood types of cancers.
If you get plutonium or other particles in your lungs, you can get lung cancer. And the particles also go to your kidneys. [inaudible 00:24:14] substitutes for potassium, so it distributes [inaudible 00:24:20] phosphorous, it distributes throughout the body. So that can cause radioactivity in a variety of organs.
So my primary concern is cancer, although exposure to radioactive gamma rays, for example, can increase likelihood of glaucoma, and having it in the lungs or the lenses in the eye, and other things like that.
So there’s a range of health effects, but the primary one is concern about cancer—the damage to [inaudible 00:24:48] resulting from damage to your DNA.
DEBRA: Yes, that just seems like such a fundamental thing—to damage your DNA.
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: Yes. Like I mentioned, we have some kind of repair mechanisms, but that can easily be overwhelmed. And everybody’s familiar with skin cancers that are caused by too much exposure to the sun. And we actually use sun blocks and other chemicals to block—sunscreens, but they also have their own side effects, and many of them now use nanoparticles to block the sun’s rays.
And the greenhouse gasses in the ozone reduce the amount of ozone, and [inaudible 00:25:24] increases ultraviolet light, and ultraviolet light is more energetic, and that causes increase of likelihood of skin cancers.
So we have to be very careful to guard our natural environment. The earth is a very precious thing that is being damaged by our release of materials. I think that [inaudible 00:25:42] materials, and you gave a great list of the, Debra, is [inaudible 00:25:45] increase in the background radiation [inaudible 00:25:49] Fukushima is really increasing the background radiation [inaudible 00:25:54] in our environment.
We don’t really want to go there.
DEBRA: No, we don’t need that. We need to take another break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest is Dr. Stephen Gilbert. His website is Toxipedia.org where you can get a whole lot of information about radiation, and all kinds of other toxic chemicals. It’s the best, most complete, most easy to understand information that I think is on the internet. And so I hope you all will go there and get a free copy of A Small Dose of Toxicology.
And we’ll be right back to talk more about radiation.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Dr. Stephen Gilbert, toxicologist, author of A Small Dose of Toxicology, and his website, where you can get a free copy of his book, is Toxipedia.org.
Dr. Gilbert, one of the things I love about your work is that it’s very interesting to read all the historical associations that you have. You just don’t tell us, for example, that radiation causes cancer. You tell us a story of how they discovered that.
Would you tell us that story?
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: Yes, that’s a very interesting story, how that came about, and starting at the turn of the century, what [inaudible 00:27:11] and other that discovered the x-ray, about Curie discovering uranium. It’s really the fundamentals of science that were discovered from Einstein, [inaudible 00:27:21] and developing of, as I’ve mentioned before, the B
Reactor, and the Manhattan Project in Chicago [inaudible 00:27:28].
The B Reactor at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation was the first large scale reactor to go critical, and they built a number of other reactors to create plutonium.
So the first use of nuclear was with x-rays, and [inaudible 00:27:44] evolved into creating nuclear weapons. [inaudible 00:27:48] talk about that—the nuclear power because right now, the nuclear power plants that were [inaudible 00:27:53] peace program were—Fukushima’s [inaudible 00:28:00] Mark II, Mark I and Mark II reactors were not very safe. That’s what melted down in Fukushima.
But these reactors were basically designed to boil water, and create steam to their electricity. The nuclear reaction at Hanford was designed with a different purpose—to create plutonium, to extract plutonium for nuclear weapons.
[inaudible 00:28:19] northwest, and Bangor Submarine Base is one of the largest concentration of nuclear weapons in the world. We spend enormous quantities of money [inaudible 00:28:29] radiation. And this is the legacy of the Cold War, but somehow that war is ongoing with nuclear weapons. And then we create all this nuclear waste from the nuclear power reactors.
So [inaudible 00:28:42] be thoughtful about radiation, and the creation of more radioactive materials that we’re doing for the war efforts, as well as for nuclear power. So I think that it has a long complicated history. We tried to document some of the history, particularly around Hanford, in a website called The Washington Nuclear Museum and Education Center, which [inaudible 00:29:04] look at the worldwide implication of Hanford.
[inaudible 00:29:07] some more insights and history of this [inaudible 00:29:10] nuclear weapons that [inaudible 00:29:12] in Las Vegas, when you get tired of gambling and things like that, the Nuclear Testing Museum, that’s within walking distance from the Center Las Vegas, go over there and look at the number of weapons that were detonated. Over a thousand nuclear weapons were detonated outside of Las Vegas to [inaudible 00:29:28] radiation.
There are a lot of studies done on health effects. And we [inaudible 00:29:34] Marshall islands’ story, a really important culture there.
So have done a lot of damage with nuclear material, and we continue to do that with our exposure of radiation material, and increasing the background levels of radiation in our environment.
It’s why I urge people to [inaudible 00:29:51] legacy of [inaudible 00:29:57] material. We’re really creating a lot of waste for future generations to deal with.
DEBRA: I agree. And I think that something like using nuclear weapons and the nuclear waste that comes from nuclear power plants, it seems like such a big issue. It’s not like going into a grocery store and buying organic [inaudible 00:30:18].
What are some of the things that we can do to help that bigger problem?
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: This is a huge issue. A lot of our nuclear plants are aging. I would urge everybody to look around, and look at the nuclear power plants that they have in their state and ask [inaudible 00:30:37] questions.
When we have that campaign right now in Washington, we have one nuclear reactor. It’s the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
And ask the questions about how that plant is doing, and are we really generating energy that is useful. It’s useful energy, but what are the byproducts generation? What are the waste products that are being produced? Where is the waste going?
Right now, we don’t have any plans for the nuclear waste [inaudible 00:31:06]. These plants generate enormous quantities of nuclear waste from the [inaudible 00:31:11] fuel rods that are using these reactors.
And also, the nuclear weapons industry, it’s enormous. We spend a lot of money on that. We’re now looking at redesigning nuclear bombs when what we really need to be doing is retiring these weapons and urge our congressional leaders to move toward a nuclear-free United States.
DEBRA: Yay. Yes. And I would just say that in my own life, I’ve noticed that there are ways to be with people that result in conflict, and ways to be with people that result in harmony and friendship. And I, for one, don’t think that we need to have nuclear bombs. I think what we need to do is improve our relations with other countries. And I think that that’s possible that we can live in a [inaudible 00:31:55].
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: I really agree with that. If you look worldwide, the issues with North Korea and South Korea, North Korea nuclear weapons, India and Pakistan is a very serious area. The positions for self-responsibility just [inaudible 00:32:09] report on [inaudible 00:32:11] that is the Pakistan and India [inaudible 00:32:13] even a minor exchange of nuclear weapons, it could kill 2-billion people from creating a nuclear famine from the dust and the changes in the environment that were let loose by just the detonation of very few nuclear weapons.
So we don’t need nuclear weapons to solve world problems. There’s no problem it’s going to solve.
DEBRA: I think that everybody should just lay down their nuclear weapons and if we have to have pistols at dawn or whatever, do something else, but don’t use nuclear weapons because that would just be a tragic [inaudible 00:32:46]
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: [inaudible 00:32:46] submarines roaming the ocean with nuclear weapons in them.
DEBRA: No, I totally agree with that. I totally agree. Well, the story I wanted you to tell us was about the Radium Girls.
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: The Radium Girls, that’s a fascinating story. So the Radium Girls, after World War I, you can’t even [inaudible 00:33:08] also used this during World War II to [inaudible 00:33:13].
But the Radium Girls worked for a corporation that was painting [inaudible 00:33:17] painted the watch dials and other instrument. And they used the tips of these brushes to paint the radium onto the watches, and they would sharpen these tips by putting it in their mouth.
But the radium is a bone-seeking radioactive material. And the radium would get into the bones and cause cancers of various sorts, mouth sores and things like that.
There were some jokes about, “Radium just make your teeth glow a little bit better.”
But t turned out, the owner of these plants and the scientists involved [inaudible 00:33:48] material but just didn’t take [inaudible 00:33:53]. The workers were not given any guides in taking any precautions.
So five of the women that were exposed to radiation were dying from radium exposure sued, and this is one of the first suits that resulted in monetary compensation. It really set the stage to some changes in workplace injuries and considerations of workplace exposure to materials—not just radium. But radium is a classic example of workers being exploited and exposed to very toxic material while where knowledgeable people are very cautious about it.
So it’s a great story. I urge you to take a look at that story, and look into the Radium Girls. There’s a play about it, and I think a movie.
DEBRA: A movie? Wow. You have in the radium chapter of A Small Dose of Toxicology, there’s a little quote from an article where it tells about how the women painted their teeth and faces, and then turned off the lights for a laugh.
And I can just see these women being completely innocent, and not knowing that they’re putting radioactive stuff on their faces. And yet they’re doing it because it would make them light up, just like the dials.
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: Yes, [inaudible 00:35:05]. It’s really tragic. It’s a really horrible situation, and it is completely avoidable.
DEBRA: And another example of this workplace exposure that’s even earlier was the mercury that was used to make hats.
The phrase “the Mad Hatter” came from hat makers being exposed to mercury, which affected [inaudible 00:35:28].
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: The Mad Hatter [inaudible 00:35:29], Alice in Wonderland, the Mat Hatter from exposure to mercury from hat building. And that was another really important story in trying to understand how [inaudible 00:35:40].
Both of these we knew are potential hazards, and we just disregarded workplace safety.
DEBRA: And that’s still going on. That’s still going on.
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: We need to be always vigil about that.
DEBRA: Yes, that needs to be fixed. There’s so much work to do. Anyway, we only have about a minute left. Are there any final words you’d like to give?
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: I think that we really need to be thinking about future generations, and creation of more nuclear waste is not consistent with our concern about future generations and child health because somebody has to deal with this waste. We have no good [inaudible 00:36:15] right now, and we definitely need to curtail our use of nuclear weapons, and reducing our nuclear weapons.
There’s no reason for the world to have 17,000 nuclear weapons in the world and spend billions and billions of dollars on management and developing new delivery systems for nuclear weapons.
So radiation is all over the place. We need to be very cautious about it. I urge everybody to learn a little bit more about it.
DEBRA: Thank you so much. And a good way to learn about it, as I said before, is to go to Toxipedia.org. There’s free information just right there that you can find about radiation. You can also read the radiation chapter in A Small Dose of Toxicology, Dr. Gilbert’s free book about toxic chemical exposures and what you can do, so you can understand the chemicals.
You can also go to my website, ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. Go up to the menu at the top. There’s a little icon that looks like a magnifying glass. Just click on that and type “radiation” in the search box, and several articles will come up, and you can find out more about what you can do to protect yourself more about where those toxic chemicals in consumer products. You can find out about Cory Trusty’s soap that you can wash radiation off your skin if you’re exposed to it.
And there are just lots of information about all kinds of toxic chemicals, and what you can do about it on my website Again, that’s ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. And thank you very much, Dr. Gilbert, for being with us today.
STEPHEN G. GILBERT: You’re very welcome. I really appreciate your show, Debra. Thank you so much.
DEBRA: Thank you.
Wallpaper seam repair
Question from di
I have severe MCS. I’m looking for a way to repair wallpaper seams.
I love the old wallpaper and would just like to re-stick some of the edges and seams without it showing or aging on the paper.
What would you suggest?
I have two types of old paper…….the paper variety and old vinyl of some sort.
Thanks.
di
Debra’s Answer
I’ve never repaired wallpaper. Haven’t a clue.
Readers, any suggestions?
Is There Lead in Mikasa Antique White Dinnerware?
Question from Kim
I recently purchased Mikasa’s Antique White Dinnerware set, but a friend of mine told me that I should not because it contains lead. I cannot find anything definitive on the web that confirms or contradicts this. Can you help direct me to an authoritative source that addresses this concern? Thank you advance for your assistance.
Debra’s Answer
This is a thorny question. I did quite a lot of research on this some years back and the gist of it was:
* all the companies now say their products meet state and federal guidelines (I just called Mikasa and that’s what they said
* there’s no such thing as 100% lead free because there is lead in the clay naturally and lead in the atmosphere.
The only way to know is to test. The least expensive way to test for lead is with LeadCheck swabs, which you can get for about $25 in the paint department at Home Depot.
Read more:
Is Cermic Dishware Safe?
Safe Dinnerware
Dishware Labeled “Prop 65 Compliant for Lead & Cadmium”
The Logic and Science Behind the Paleo Diet
My guest today is Liz Wolf, author of Eat the Yolks, an excellent book that gives all the logic and science behind the Paleo diet. Liz is a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (NTP™) certified by the Nutritional Therapy Association who is passionate about dismantling widespread nutrition myths and discovering the truth about food. 
She works with individuals, businesses, and nonprofits to develop nutrition programming based around real, whole foods, and she documents her personal adventures in cooking, nutrition, and homesteading on her much-loved blog. When she’s not enjoying fresh eggs from her free-range chicken flock or hanging out with her goats, dog, or husband, she’s serving as ambassador for her favorite nonprofits: Steve’s Club National Program, which provides athletic training and mentorship to at-risk youth; and The First Twenty, an organization dedicated to improving the long-term health of America’s firefighters. www.realfoodliz.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
The Logic and Science Behind the Paleo Diet
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Liz Wolf
Date of Broadcast: April 20, 2014
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic-free.
Today is Thursday, April 10th, 2014. And I’m here in Clearwater, Florida, where the sun is shining, and there’s a nice little breeze, so it’s a beautiful spring day.
And today, we’re going to talk about food again. If you’ve been listening all week, we’ve had a preponderance of food shows this week. But that’s just the way it falls. I do try to do some programming, so that it makes sense and there’s a variety. But sometimes, people are available in certain days, and so a lot of food people were available this week.
But food is an extremely important subject. It’s so, so important because the whole issue of toxic chemicals is very present in foods. But there’s also the issue of food themselves having a harmful effect on your body. Even if you just go to the store, and buy a piece of meat, or buy eggs, or produce or something, if you buy certain ones that have certain—the way they were raised, or toxic chemicals in them and things, even just regular old food can be harmful to your health, and there are better choices to be made.
But today, we’re actually going to talk about the Paleo diet because I’ve been writing about that on my food blog at ToxicFreeKitchen.com. I recent went on a Paleo diet for 30 days, and lost some weight, and my blood sugar went down, and my thyroid got better. And so I was very pleased with that result, and have been continuing on that.
But also, if you were listening yesterday, I also have a lot of experience with the Weston Price diet and those principles. And so today, we’re going to talk about the Paleo diet. And my guest is—I had a page open where I was going to tell you all about my guest.
My guest is Liz Wolf, and she’ll actually tell you about herself.
She’s the author of a book called “Eat the Yolks—Discover Paleo, Fight Food Price, and Reclaim Your Health.”
When I started reading this book, I couldn’t put it down. Fortunately, I was at a point where I had a few days where I was waiting a lot somewhere, and needed something to do, and I was able to sit here and read the book, which I read from cover to cover because it has a lot of information in it about what are the problems with food and what are the good food choices.
So, we’ll find out all about that today.
Hi, Liz.
LIZ WOLF: Thanks for having me on here for your food boot camp week.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. Well, I think you’re a good person to have on because—well, tell us your story because you, like me, like everybody else who has made a transition, started out eating just regular, standard American food. And we’ve made changes in our lives.
Let’s hear about that first. How did you go from eating standard American food to the wonderful diet you have today?
LIZ WOLF: Oh, my, I feel like I bounced around probably much like most people do when they’re trying to figure out what to eat.
DEBRA: I did that too.
LIZ WOLF: We’re told to eat one thing, and I guess, I probably considered the standard American diet, whatever the government was saying was supposed to be healthy. I’m sure that was always on the back of my mind as “Well, that’s what we’re supposed to eat.” And that’s the baseline, and that’s how you get as healthy you can get. It’s probably by eating the standard American diet.
However, I did a lot of diet with a capital D dieting—bouncing around from this diet food, which is certainly packaged, processed, boxed, bagged, encapsulated, all kinds of processed junk that had the word “natural” or “diet” or “low calorie” or “low carb” or whatever that’s plastered across it that wasn’t necessarily one of the recommendations of the US government.
But at that point, I don’t know if I was really seeking health or seeking weight loss at all cost or whatever I was looking for.
But I was certainly floundering and bouncing around quite a bit from diet to diet. And all the while, I think my body was showing the signs of toxicity.
I’ve dealt with acne. And from the time I was very young, I had eczema in my arms and my ears. And I was tired. I didn’t sleep well. I just wasn’t happy with my body. And I think that’s evident, not just the way I felt, but also in the fact that I never stuck with one thing because nothing ever enlightened me in any way.
DEBRA: I know. I know. I felt when I did this Paleo diet for 30 days—and I’m still doing it. And so it’s been maybe three months now, I think. When did I start it? The end of January, January or February, March. So it’s a little over two months.
But what I felt was that I had finally come home to the list of foods that worked for my body well. I knew that I could just eat off this list, and put it together in any way that I wanted to, and that my body would feel good day after day.
And then after the first 30 days, then I went, and I tried to eat some other things, that didn’t work so well. I just went back to my list. My body calming down.
I think that these are the foods that our bodies are designed to eat. And it’s a matter of recognizing that and figuring out all the things that you need to do to make that transition.
So, particularly, how did you find Paleo, and what was it like for you to start that?
LIZ WOLF: What happened was I was still on the same track of trying to change my body through whatever extreme diet and exercise I could find, and I had heard about this thing called CrossFit, which was apparently the toughest workout that I would ever do.
And so I reached out to a local gym. At the time, I was looking in Kansas City. So I went to this gym with the expectation that I would get some counseling as to how to cut more calories without—I think I said on the book “without passing out on my way to the break room” out of total exhaustion while getting a really, really tough workout. And what I ended up getting was an education in real food.
Sometimes, I call it Paleo, and sometimes I call it real food. Truly, it doesn’t so much matter to me because at this point I think it’s just real food. It’s just real, whole, single ingredient foods that people have eating for hundreds and thousands of years. So, thinking of it that way makes more sense to me.
But what ended up happening at this gym was yes, I got a great workout, a more functional workout than I ever had before.
But I also got a hold of this idea that if I wanted to feel better, if I wanted to look better, I need to just feel better. And if I wanted to feel better, I needed to eat real food.
And so, I started incorporating this principle, and wow, I see improvements in my energy levels and my skin. And I start to also not so much—I don’t want to say that, “all of a sudden, I lost all this weight, and I met all my goals.” My goals change. I didn’t care so much about […] as much as I cared about health, and feeling great, and being as capable as I could possibly be.
So, my whole life changed just from A to Z since my introduction to real food.
DEBRA: Yes. Well, you’re being nourished. That was one of the things that I found was that even though—
When I was six years old, my mother—and this was a long time ago—my mother was very interested in health foods. This was before natural food stores, health food stores.
So, there was a store where I lived in Oakland, California (it’s probably still there). It’s a big center where they ground their whole wheat flour fresh, and they had bulk nuts and dried fruits and all these health food store things.
So, she had the idea that we should drink something that she called green drink which is probably equivalent to what we would call a green smoothie now. And so she would take all these greens—lettuce and spinach and celery, and all these things—and just put them in a blender. It was not a very good blender, so it came out goopy.
LIZ WOLF: A little bit chunky.
DEBRA: It was yucky. No, she had another one. I was going to say she put a Maraschino cherry at the bottom. But she had this other one. We had a green drink and a pink drink. And this was our healthy diet. It was green drink and pink drink.
Pink drink was cottage cheese and milk and strawberry-flavored Quick. Do you know what that is? Nestle’s Quick?
LIZ WOLF: Yes, I do.
DEBRA: Yes. Okay, so strawberry-flavored Quick. And at the bottom was a Maraschino cherry because that was the only way she could get us to drink it. It tasted so horrible. And the texture was so horrible.
But then after that, she gave up on that. And so my diet was McDonald’s, Shakey’s Pizza and Jack in the Box, and TV dinners.
And then I became an adult, and I decided that I was going to make my own food choices.
But we’ll talk about that after we come back from the break.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Liz Wolf. She’s going to be talking about some food myths and the good things to eat.
We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Liz Wolf, author of Eat the Yolks.
Liz, now, I have my piece of paper in front of me. So you are a nutritional therapy practitioner, certified nutritional therapy practitioner. What is that?
LIZ WOLF: A nutritional therapy practitioner is basically a holistic nutrition professional. I’m certified by the Nutritional Therapy Association.
And what I do with a client would be to just evaluate the nutrient content of what they’re eating, their challenges with regards to digestion or maybe potential mineral deficiencies, that type of that, and just help them carve out a diet that’s appropriate for them and what they’re dealing with.
I have to be very clear about my credentials. I am not a registered dietician. I’m not a clinical nutritionist. So there are limits to what I can do, but I certainly can help people get a little better nourished.
DEBRA: And you could help them transition to a real food diet like what we’re going to be talking about today, as opposed to—I don’t want to say anything bad about regular nutritionists. But aren’t usual nutritionists trained in other ways of thinking?
Like you would go to an ordinary nutritionist and say, “Can you help me be on a Paleo diet?”
LIZ WOLF: Generally, that’s not going to go over well.
DEBRA: Good! So, somebody needs some help making this kind of transition, they could go to you, or they could go to someone else who is a nutritional therapy practitioner.
LIZ WOLF: Absolutely! And NutritionalTherapy.com is the website for the governing organization if you want to find somebody near you. And a lot of us, a lot of the nutritional therapy practitioners in the United States, we’re writing books, we’re talking about these things online. So a lot of this information we’re putting out there for free, or for a lot less than the cost of a consultation because so many people truly have the same questions, the same concerns.
When I talk about in Eat the Yolks is the history of how we got here because one of the biggest questions I get is “If all this food is toxic, and we should be eating these other foods that we’ve been told to be afraid of, how is that even possible? How did we even get here?” And I think that’s important information.
DEBRA: Well, how did we get here?
LIZ WOLF: Oh, my goodness.
DEBRA: I know. It’s a whole book worth. We’re not going to get through the whole entire thing. But before we start talking about that, why don’t you just describe—you have in your book a basic food philosophy in a hundred words. Why don’t you just give your summary of what you think people should eat?
LIZ WOLF: Just real food, the food that has always been food in some form—animals that are raised in their natural environment and plants that are grown in nutrient-dense soil.
DEBRA: And so, what you’re really getting is very high nutrient-dense food, as opposed to, even if you were to go to the supermarket, and buy a fresh apple, it’s not going to have as much nutrition as if you were to get an organic apple, for example, and it’s also going to have lots of pesticides in it.
So, if you buy that organic apple, you’re getting good nutrition, and you’re also getting not toxic chemicals.
So, it’s important with real foods that you buy the pastured beef and all of those things because those are the products that have more nutrients in them, yes?
LIZ WOLF: Yes. And I know that’s actually one of the biggest challenges, I think, that folks face, is having to shop different.
Our industrial food system, number one, is set up so that we’re really dependent on it. Most people have forgotten how to grow and raise their own food, and that is a tragedy because many of us cannot, even if we wanted to, be responsible for our own nourishment. We have to rely on other people and on supermarkets and what-not.
But I think that paradigm is very rapidly fainting, I think, in part thanks to the Weston A. Price Foundation, the Paleo Movement, people that are really emphasizing and demanding better food. We’re starting to see more grass-fed beef even at the supermarket and you see a lot more local farms listed on EatWild.com.
Farmers markets are—five years ago, there were no farmers markets where I lived. And now, there are two huge farmers markets. So it’s becoming more affordable and more possible to shop that way, and get really nutrient-rich food more so than it was five years ago which is really encouraging.
DEBRA: I agree. I see that too. And I am very encouraged about it. I think it’s still more expensive to buy these foods. But if you do things—
Sally Fallon was on yesterday, and we were talking that I was raising chickens in my backyard (and I see you raise chickens too). It was very inexpensive to raise my chickens, and get those pastured eggs right in my own backyard. I can now buy pastured eggs at my local natural food store.
But I was talking to the stockperson, and he was saying that they got this special deal on these pastured eggs. And so they were selling them for the same prices just as organic eggs like $4 a dozen. He said, usually, the price would be $7 or $8 per a dozen eggs that I could get in my own backyard for less than $4 a dozen.
But I did have chickens and the police came and took them away. I’ve said that many times on this show because it annoys me that I can’t have chickens in my backyard.
LIZ WOLF: It absolutely blows my mind that we are literally prevented by law from raising our own nutrient-dense food appropriately in a low-waste environment in our own homes.
DEBRA: Yes, and I think that that’s one of the obstacles that needs to be overcome. It’s another thing that is getting better and better in different localities across the nation where some of these old laws against people having chickens in their backyards are being overturned by popular demand.
Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened in my community yet, but we’re working on it because I think that we should have the freedom to grow our own food, even in our front yards instead of a lawn.
LIZ WOLF: Agreed, agreed.
DEBRA: Yes, absolutely. So there are so many questions I want to ask you, but we’re already coming very close to the break, and I don’t want to ask you a question and have you start and not be able to finish. So tell us just a little about your chickens for a few seconds.
LIZ WOLF: My chickens are silver laced Wyandotte. We ended up with one rooster. We got pullets. They’re a breed that can be fixed. So when they hatch, you’re supposed to be able to tell the male from the females. So we did end up with one rooster.
We started out with 18. And unfortunately, this is our first year of homesteading adventures, and we’ve learned a lot of lessons the hard ways. So we’ve lost some to stray dogs and a couple to sky predators.
But they’re wonderful. They provide us with eggs every day, and we couldn’t be more grateful for that.
DEBRA: Yes, I just love chickens. I love chickens. I love chickens.
LIZ WOLF: They’re so funny.
DEBRA: They are. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest is Liz Wolf, author of Eat the Yolks. She has a website, RealFoodLiz.com, where she has a blog and all kinds of things. So you can check that out too.
We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Liz Wolf, author of Eat the Yolks.
And her website is RealFoodLiz.com.
Liz, there’s so much in your book that we could talk about. We could talk for hours and hours and hours for everything. But you mentioned before, how did we get from there to here, or how did we get from healthy food to that industrial food?
LIZ WOLF: Our fake food culture.
DEBRA: Our fake food culture, yes. Why don’t you just talk about whatever aspect that you’d like to talk about first, and then I’ll ask you some questions?
LIZ WOLF: Well, I love this question, how did we get here, because it’s a little more complicated.
Back when Paleo man was roaming the world, everything was great. And then we started eating grains 10,000 years ago.
And the now, everybody is sick, which I think a lot of times is what people perceives the premises of Paleo diet to be.
And I do take a bit of license with the Paleo concept because I think it’s important that we look at, not just what healthy humans eat for hundreds of thousands of years (which would have been animals in the natural environment and plants grown in soil that could support them), but it’s more about, I think, how we got away from the foods of our ancestors.
And even the foods that our grandparents used to eat—homegrown plants, and free range chicken, and free range chicken eggs, and things like that—but how we got from there to this culture based around soy bean oil, how do we process food, and that’s about it, that’s basically what we’re told to eat.
We’re told to eat low fat, so whatever we’re eating, the fat and those naturally nutrient-rich fat soluble vitamins, we’re missing out on those.
So, it’s more for me, I focus on the last 50 years of food quality.
DEBRA: I think that’s where we really went wrong. So tell us about that.
LIZ WOLF: I agree. So, here’s what happened in a nutshell. Some people used some information for their own corporate gain, the government adopted those standards, and here we are.
DEBRA: Oh, that was in a nutshell. Thanks.
LIZ WOLF: Yes, absolutely. So really, what happened, I think, was we got really, really paranoid about skyrocketing, most importantly, heart disease. And in looking for the responsible party, we ended up—and I say “we,” really, the scientists that were working on this at the time—lumping together trans fats and saturated fat.
And that was one of the real sticking points where from that point on, I think, we were looking at saturated fats from natural sources like animals, egg yolks, red meat and things like that as the same as trans fats.
And so, we were lumping those together, but at the same point, we were eating all of these trans fats-laden margarine, and we’re starting to eat more and more processed foods that were full of trans fats, and our health risks just continued to get worse—stroke and cardiovascular disease, in the 1980s and beyond, obesity.
So, things just got worse. And obviously, I had to write a whole book about this because it’s really tough to encapsulate it in a nutshell, but it had a lot to do with bad science that was adopted by the government and turned into food policy.
DEBRA: Well, let’s just focus on one aspect because I think that there’s a lot of converging things that people started eating low fat, and too much high fructose corn syrup, and too many carbs, and wheat flour. All kinds of things went wrong during that 50-year period. But let’s just pick one of those.
I’d like you to talk mostly right now about fat because I think that one of the things about the Paleo diet or the Weston A.
Price diet that’s really important is that people need to eat more fat because there are nutrients in fat that we’re not getting if we’re on a low fat diet.
I think that people have been on a low fat diet long enough to see that that diet doesn’t work. And yet, it’s still in our consciousness that we should be eating low fat, low fat, low fat.
So, could you tell more about what is the myth behind this, so that people will have more scientific information about why they should be eating more fat?
LIZ WOLF: It’s so interesting to me when I was researching my book to come across this quote from Walter Willett, who is a public health professional—I think, chair of the Public Health Department at Harvard or something like that. He basically said flat out that the low fat diet has had unintended health consequences for millions of Americans. And the reason for that is because, as you said, real, natural fat, including fat from properly-raised animals is full of nutrition. It’s full of fat-soluble vitamins.
Fat-soluble vitamins A, B, K2, vitamin E as well, these are all critical to human health. And that’s becoming more obvious now with some research that’s going on thanks to the Weston A. Price Foundation. Chris Masterjohn is doing amazing work.
I cite him in my book quite a book.
But these fat-soluble vitamins determine the quality of almost every cell—how healthy we are at a cellular level. And this low fat diet, which really came about because of these misconceptions about what causes heart disease, and the role of saturated fats and cholesterol had to play, combining with this fear of calories, and thinking, “if we want to be healthy, and if we want to lose weight, we have to eat fewer calories” rather than more nutrient-dense food that packs a better nutrition punch maybe with a fewer bites than we would need in, say, a 100-calorie pack, or a diet granola bar, or something like that, like I said, it’s a lot of these rolled into one.
DEBRA: Well, I really have to say—and I’ve been saying this a lot, but I want to say it again right now—is that it’s been very revealing to me since I’ve been on this very focused Paleo diet that I am much less hungry, and so I eat less food. And I mentioned this to my doctor, and he said—my doctor who, by the way, an M.D. doctor who, by the way, says, “You just stay on this Paleo diet for the rest of your life and all your health problems will go away and never come back.”
He said that. He said to just stay on the diet that I was on and walk half-an-hour a day, and I will be very healthy for many, many years. But that makes sense to me because I already see the benefits.
Not that I was eating so bad before, but there were just certain things that I’ve changed. And one of them really is to pay attention to the nutrient-dense foods. When I’m eating more nutrient-dense foods, especially more fat, I am not hungry, and so I eat less food, and I lose weight.
So, calories aren’t calories aren’t calories.
I mean, I can eat a hundred of those 100-calorie packs, and I would not get the nutrition that I get from a few tablespoons of fat.
And I also wanted to say, if you’re listening to this, and you think, “Oh, I need to eat more fat,” that doesn’t go eat the fattening French fries. It means eat real fat from animals in its natural state like butter, like lard, like bacon.
I know some people are horrified listening to us. But no, what we’re talking about is really pasture-raised butter and things like that which you can get.
We’ll talk more about this when we come back from the break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Liz Wolf. She’s the author of Eat the Yolks. We’ll be right back.
Liz, we only have 10 minutes left, and there’s so much more to talk about, so I want to make sure that I get some of these things in.
LIZ WOLF: I’ll try to keep my answers brief.
DEBRA: No, it’s okay. I want to make sure that everybody gets your website, which is RealFoodLiz.com. During the break, I’ve been looking at your website. Right now, I’m looking at a very creative recipe for butternut crusted roasted red pepper quiche.
One of the things I love about this is that you really have a limited list of foods, but everybody is so creative about how you use them in all these ways. So instead of having wheat crust, you have butternut. Tell us about this recipe.
LIZ WOLF: Oh, it’s so delicious! I can’t even tell you. Really, I actually ate that. It was meant for the whole week, but I ate the whole thing that day.
But if you think about—maybe we’re eliminating food, and it feels like we’re not free to enjoy some food, but think of the entire vegetable kingdom, the whole span of amazing things that we have to eat—
And this recipe, it’s just a crustless piece with this perfectly […] wheat butternut squash sliced really thinly, and used as the crust is so delicious. And it’s so easy.
I am not a good cook. I never have been. This is really simple. You just slice the butternut squash thin, lay it out around the dish, bake it for 10 minutes, and then pour in the egg mixture with the roasted red peppers, a few spices, and you bake it.
And then you have breakfast for the whole week done.
DEBRA: I am going to try that. It sounds fabulous.
LIZ WOLF: It is so good.
DEBRA: And another thing I wanted to get in here is reading your blog, you’re talking about skincare. You have a big sign that says, “Fix your skin naturally.” So tell us about how eating this way changes your skin.
LIZ WOLF: I love that you asked me that. That’s my other passion, and I thought you and I would definitely relate on that point, which is removing toxins not just from the diet, but from you skincare routine, and how you care for your body on the outside, and your home, and everything like that.
So, that’s one of my products, the Skintervention Guide, which is based on everything that I did over the course of three/four years to take my skin from really frustrating, in need of four or five different topical medications—I was prescribed oral antibiotics, topical antibiotics, topical sulfur. Anything that you can imagine, I was using to try and fix my skin.
And getting to whole, real food, and a natural non-toxic skin care routine was a complete turning point for me.
But it wasn’t just one thing that did it. It was healing my body from the outside, changing my food and getting those nutrients (especially fat-soluble vitamins) and also helping to heal my digestive system, which I think has really suffered for many years of everything from antibiotics to processed food.
DEBRA: Well, what you’ve just described as being a remedy for skin really is what I’ve come to see as being the remedy for health, that no matter what’s wrong with your body, it’s basically those steps of healing different parts of—you know, your intestinal system, healing your liver, so that your liver can process all these toxins, healing your kidneys, et cetera.
And the way that you do that is by removing toxic chemicals, eating good foods, getting all the nutrition that you need, and letting your body detox, and everything comes back. It’s about that simple.
LIZ WOLF: It really is.
DEBRA: Now, here’s the big, burning question I want to make sure we talk about. And that is:
I’ve done a lot of reading online and books about Paleo, just like with the Paleo diet now. I wanted to see what everybody was saying. You would think that it would be very straightforward, but there are a lot of opinions and different viewpoints about what the Paleo diet is.
And one of the reasons why I like your book is because it’s very real food-oriented (and I already had that real food orientation from the Weston A. Price Foundation, and Sally Fallon’s book, Nourishing Traditions, which I’ve read many, many years ago). And so, we’re in agreement on that.
But not everybody has that viewpoint. So, could you speak to this big variety of Paleo diets?
LIZ WOLF: Definitely! Well, the Original Paleo Diet book by Loren Cordain, the granddaddy of the modern Paleo Movement, I think, that is the rulebook that a lot of people go by. And when we really get down to brass tacks, there is no rulebook when it comes to eating. We’re all bio-individuals. Different things work on different people. We all have ancestry from different parts of the world.
So, we all have a different story, a different math that turned on different genes, and turned off different propensities. So we are all so different—and too different to say one list of rule works for everybody.
I think the rule that processed food is not food, is not so much a rule than it is common sense.
DEBRA: Yes, I think so too.
LIZ WOLF: I just think that that’ the baseline. Get rid of industrial processed food, see what you have left. And from there, it’s really just animals, plants, maybe some dairy, things like butter (which I eat daily), quality foods that we can get from the earth, hunt, gather, grow if we wanted to.
And that’s what I love about the Weston A. Price Foundation, which really changed how I felt about real food. I was really steep in the Paleo Movement, but moving into the Weston A. Price, and learning about sustainable farming, and how we can produce foods that is most nourishing, that works for us best that has a long history in the human diet, that’s the big picture that I like to look at.
I think a lot of times we get so mired in the “rules,” we forget to think about where the nutrition is. And generally, those things line up with Paleo foods, the Weston A. Price friendly foods, and where the nutrition is. But we lose sight of the forest for the trees.
So I just think let’s get rid of the processed food, let’s get back to our roots, and eat things that we could produce ourselves if we needed to and just start from that baseline.
DEBRA: I think that’s just about my baseline too. Talk a little bit about not eating dairy and not eating grains.
LIZ WOLF: Sure! Well, I eat raw dairy from pastured cows. We get it from a farmer just right down the street from us. It’s a food that works for me.
And I talk in the book about how I think maybe the Paleo community has it wrong when it comes to dairy. There are just so many gray areas. I think we need to really understand why we started eating dairy in the first place. And that’s because it’s a very nourishing food when it’s done right. So I think there’s room for dairy.
As far as greens go, again—
DEBRA: I want to say something about dairy before you go into grains. Well, I just thought about the Maasai in Africa. They live on milk. Now, we’d call that a traditional culture or a Paleo—I mean, they’ve been living on milk since time immemorial.
They keep their cows, and they live on milk, and that’s dairy.
LIZ WOLF: And it’s an extremely nourishing food.
And the same goes for organ meat. Liver is really rich in vitamin A—so is raw dairy. Now, if you have an animal that you could use for dairy, rather than actually killing that animal, and eating its meat—and I’m thinking from a very ancestral perspective, someone who really, really needs to ensure their own food supply—it makes a lot more sense to make use of the dairy than it does to lose that animal in a one-off shot as the same nutrient. That’s a little harsh, I guess, but it’s true.
DEBRA: But that makes sense. It makes sense. So then cheese arose from needing to preserve the milk, having a certain supply of milk, and that they’re not just going to throw the milk away when the cow is producing more than the people need to drink. And they also need to have food in the future. And so they can take a certain portion, and cheese got developed.
All these things came from those ancient cultures. Cheese is not an industrial food. But processed, pasteurized cheese is an industrial food.
LIZ WOLF: And processed cheese products.
DEBRA: Yes. So what we need to be looking at is not eliminate all cheese, but to be looking at what’s the difference between the modern, processed, pasteurized cheese product, and actual, real cheese made from raw millk—which does exist and it’s pretty easy to get.
LIZ WOLF: It’s context. It’s all about context.
Lists of rules are very, very helpful to take some of the burden off of figuring everything out all at once. So if someone says, “These are Paleo foods. Just eat these for 30 days and see how you do,” for the most part, I think people are like, “Wow! I feel great after 30 days” and they’re convinced.
But then at that point, I think that’s when you need to start really speaking knowledge about what you’re eating and why, and that’s what has always been the most fascinating to me, the context.
DEBRA: I’ll give you one minute to talk about grains, and then we’re done. Didn’t that go fast?
LIZ WOLF: Oh, my gosh. That went so fast. Well, I think for the most part, the grains that people are eating are not the grains that our ancestors ate since they began developing 10,000 years ago. So, we’re talking about modern wheat, which is different than it was 20 years ago today.
So, we’re actually looking at modern bread and processed food. If you look at the ingredients label, you can hardly identify half of them.
There are people who do well with traditionally produced grains—soaked, sprouted, traditional fermented sourdough. And I have no problem with that. But I think, again, the most important thing is to look at what’s actually a food with a long history in our diet, what’s a processed food, and most importantly, how does our body tolerate it.
So, any food that bothers our bodies needs to be evaluated, whether that’s a strawberry or a grain, or highly-processed dairy. So it’s really that awareness of your body, and what you could tolerate.
DEBRA: I agree. And I would also just to add quickly that the more people remove toxic chemicals from their body, the more foods they tolerate. And I used to work in a doctor’s office where I saw that very clearly. So that’s something to consider too.
It’s not just the food itself, but is it organic or not organic, or raw or not raw, or your toxic levels and everything.
Anyway, we’re at the end. Thank you so much, Liz, for being with me.
LIZ WOLF: Thank you.
DEBRA: Her book is Eat the Yolks, and her website is RealFoodLiz.com. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. You can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com.
Nourishing Traditions: Bringing Traditional Foods to Modern Life
My guest today, Sally Fallon Morell is author of the bestselling cookbook Nourishing Traditions and The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby and Child Care. She is the founding president of the Weston A. Price Foundation. We’ll be talking about how Dr. Weston Price researched traditional cultures to learn about nutrition and what we really should be eating for good health. Sally is a journalist, chef, nutrition researcher, homemaker, and community activist. Her lifelong interest in the subject of nutrition began in the early 1970s when she read Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price. Called the “Isaac Newton of Nutrition,” Price traveled the world over studying healthy primitive populations and their diets. The unforgettable photographs contained in his book document the beautiful facial structure and superb physiques of isolated groups consuming only whole, natural foods. Price noted that all of these diets contained a source of good quality animal fat, which provided numerous factors necessary for the full expression of our genetic potential and optimum health. Ms. Morell applied the principles of the Price research to the feeding of her own children, and proved for herself that a diet rich in animal fats, and containing the protective factors in old fashioned foodstuffs like cod liver oil, liver and eggs, make for sturdy cheerful children with a high immunity to illness. And since she has been educating the world on how to enjoy this diet deliciously. www.westonaprice.org
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Nourishing Traditions: Bringing Traditional Foods to Modern Life
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Sally Fallon Morell
Date of Broadcast: April 09, 2014
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and to live toxic-free.
Today, we’re going to talk about food. We’re going to talk about food that is truly, deeply healthy, and comes from our traditions, our human traditions in food.
Today is—what is the date today? Wednesday, April 9, 2014. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. The sun is shining. And my guest today is Sally Fallon Morell.
She’s the founder of the Weston Price Foundation, and the author of a wonderful, wonderful book called “Nourishing Traditions,” which I’ve been studying and eating from since it first came out, I think, 15 years ago or something like that.
Sally is on the line, but I want to tell you about my experience with her work before we talk to her because it’s changed a lot for me about how I think about food and my health, and I want to really emphasize the importance of what she’s done.
First of all, I want to say, Sally is going to tell us her story from her viewpoint, but I’m going to tell it to you from my viewpoint.
Sally is one of these people who figured out that something was right in a world where a lot is wrong. And she figured out a right way to eat. She fed her family, and she saw the results, and she said, “I need to do something to bring this to the world.”
I’m assuming she said that because her actions followed from that kind of thought. And so she wrote a book. She started an organization, The Western Price Foundation (and there’s much, much accumulated information on that site. When you become a member, you can have access to all of it).
She does scientific research. Everything that she says is based in science and research. It’s not her opinion. It’s based in something. She has other equally high integrity researchers around her who are also researching with the same kind of intelligence and thoughtfulness.
The organization puts on incredible conferences. I had the honor of being invited to speak about five years ago (I went to San Francisco and spoke at their conference).
And let me tell you. I’ve been to a lot of conferences on subjects that are health-related. And what you do is that you go to a hotel, and you’re expected to eat the regular hotel conference food, which is usually not very delicious, it’s not organic, and it’s not healthy for you.
Well, when you go to the Weston Price Foundation Conference—and I would recommend that you go to the Weston Price Foundation Conference—just eat the food because when I went, it was a revelation as to what food is supposed to taste like, and also, how it feels in your body. All of the things that Sally writes about, all of the things that she speaks about, about food, were right there being demonstrated.
They had Weston Price Foundation members preparing the food at the conference. And they brought in the food. They didn’t use the hotel food, they brought it in. And we all ate the best food that we’ve ever eaten. It was really incredible.
When I went to the conference, I tasted the food, I saw the members. I saw how happy and healthy everybody was. It was like being in another world. And it’s the world that we all could have if we just ate the way we should be eating.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Wow, thank you.
DEBRA: Hi, Sally.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Hi.
DEBRA: That’s what I wanted to say. So I am very pleased that you are here today with us. I just have to thank you for the excellent work that you’ve done and continue to do.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Well, I appreciate that. And I’m so glad that you started off talking about children because your narrative is accurate. I raised my children according to this diet. I had read the words of Weston Price and applied his principles to raising my children.
DEBRA: Tell us about Weston Price’s work. I want to allow you to explain it. That’s why I didn’t go into it.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Weston Price was a dentist who traveled throughout the world, studying isolated, primitive people to, first of all, ascertain were they healthy. And he found 14 groups that were superbly healthy as manifested first and foremost by their teeth. They had beautiful, broad faces, all of them had straight teeth, and hardly any cavities at all. Some groups had no cavities.
And then he looked at their diets. Now, these diets, of course, were different everywhere he went. The Eskimo diet was different from the Southeast diet, and the Alpine Swiss diet was different from the Gaelic diet.
But there were certain underlying characteristics: and 1) was, of course, there were no processed foods in these diets, 2) is that all of the diets had animal foods in them (there were no vegan diets), and 3) and this is the really critical one, was the very high levels of vitamins and minerals, especially what we call the fat-soluble vitamins. These are vitamins A, D and K, which we can only get from few foods.
We get them from organ meats, egg yolks, butter, cream, the fats of animals, certain types of shellfish and oily fish, fish eggs. And they need to be from animals who are outside in the sunlight, eating green pasture. And then you get a maximizing of these fat-soluble vitamins.
And our mission is a real uphill battle because these are the foods that people are being told not to eat, people have been avoiding now for over a generation. And they are the very foods that traditional cultures valued most of all for having healthy babies, having a healthy pregnancy, healthy babies, healthy reproduction.
So, we really stress these foods. We have created a network of chapters, local chapters, that help you find these foods, and help you buy direct from farmers because it’s very hard to find these healthy foods.
DEBRA: They are! I’ve known about this diet since Nourishing Traditions first came out. But it’s been a very long route for me to apply these things in my life. It’s not because I’m not interested, or that I don’t think that they’re a good idea, but I live in Florida. I live in an area of Florida that is not like living in San Francisco or New York or some place where you can get a lot of food. I had a very hard time.
I joined my local chapter, and I found out where I could get these things. But they were so few and far between. They were expensive. To get to the farmer was maybe an hour and a half drive. And finally, finally, right in the last few months, I can actually buy pastured eggs off my natural food store.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Good! These things are coming. It’s getting easier. Raw milk is one of our big themes. We really promote the consumption of raw milk. And that’s becoming more available.
We have Dr. Price, of course, who suggested cod liver oil. And we now have a really wonderful cod liver oil that’s manufactured in the United States. It’s the only cod liver oil that has all the natural vitamins and it’s not heated during processing.
So yes, it’s becoming easier. Raw milk, for example, is becoming much more available.
Well, these are the foods that create healthy children. And I saw it happen in my own children. Just to give you an example. I needed braces. All of my brothers and sisters needed braces. None of my children needed braces. So, you can reverse that narrowing of the palate in a generation or two with the right food.
So, you’re right. I just thought, “Well, the world needs to know about this. There are so many dietary schemes out there and theories about how we should eat. But none of them is based on how real people eat.”
And so we like to say that we show the scientific validation of traditional food wisdom. And if you can find a food with food tradition, and then show that the science validates that, then I’d be pretty sure that you’re on the right track.
DEBRA: I totally agree with you. I totally agree with you. And I understand how you felt that the world needed to know that.
That’s because when I found out that toxic chemicals were making me sick, and that I could get well by not being around them, I said, “Oh, my god.” It just became something I had to do for the rest of my life until the whole world gets it.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: When you raise children on the side, they might have a much greater tolerance for toxins.
We’ve always had toxins in our environment. Smoke is loaded with toxins. And of course, there was much more exposure to smoke amongst traditional culture.
DEBRA: Well, I think we have a combination. We need to go to break, but I want to say this one thing.
It’s clear to me that what’s going on in the world today is we have a combination of inadequate nutrition, which makes our bodies not function as well as they could, and then we have too many toxic chemicals which are also destroying the function. But also, our lack of nutrition makes it, as you said, more difficult to tolerate the toxic things within the environment.
So, it really goes hand in hand. We need to reduce toxics and increase nutrition.
And we’re going to go to break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Sally Fallon Morell from the Weston Price Foundation. She’s actually the founder of the Weston Price Foundation.
We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Sally Fallon Morell. She’s the founder of the Weston Price Foundation and author of Nourishing Tradition and other books.
Sally, tell us what’s going on in the world today with how people eat and why that’s a problem for health. What are the problems that you’re solving with the Weston Price diet?
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Well, let’s just talk about the toxins for a moment. One of the key things that we need in our bodies to eliminate toxins is saturated fat. Saturated fats support the enzymes that your body uses to get rid of toxins. And our bodies have a very wonderful system for getting rid of toxins because we’ve always been exposed to toxins.
And without plenty of saturated fats in the diet, and the cell membrane, and also if you’re eating the industrial fats and oils, the liquid oils, and the partially hydrogenated oils, they replace saturated fats in your cell membranes, and these enzymes can’t work anymore.
And this is one of the reasons we’re seeing so many people so sensitive to toxins, especially these children who started off their lives on low fat diet, not getting these good animal foods and so forth.
Now, another thing that’s critical for getting rid of toxins is vitamin A. And most doctors today will tell you that vitamin A is toxic. And we’re extremely deficient as a population in vitamin A. And this is why we recommend cod liver oil to make sure that we’re getting adequate vitamin A every day. And vitamin A is our number one vitamin to defend us against toxins.
DEBRA: I have a question. Let me ask you this.
So one of the things that I’ve run into in eating all the things that you recommend is that my body is actually pretty sensitive to different foods and has been since I was born, so I don’t eat any seafood, for example, because it actually makes me sick to eat it. And I can’t event put it in my mouth without gagging. And so to take cod liver oil is like an impossible thing.
So, for those of us who can’t take cod liver oil, what do you suggest is the next best thing?
SALLY FALLON MORELL: So then you need to eat liver. Every day, you need to eat liver just for vitamin A. Now, probably the easiest type of liver to eat is chicken liver or duck liver. It’s much milder than beef liver, and you can make a delicious pate with it.
DEBRA: I love chicken liver pate.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Yes, and chicken liver pate will have vitamin D and vitamin K as well. But you really need that vitamin A, and it’s hard to get it if you’re not taking some kind of liver product—either cod liver oil or liver.
DEBRA: Okay, I’m going to go get some organic chicken livers and make pate. I have a great recipe.
Okay, what’s next?
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Well, the saturated fats and the vitamin A, and then just a good wholesome diet. I think it’s really critical not to let your blood sugar get too low. When that happens, you become more sensitive to toxin. And that means eating three good meals a day with plenty of fat and protein in every meal.
So, you don’t want a real high carb diet….
DEBRA: …which is what most people eat.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: And by the way, I want to say though, we’re not against carbs. A lot of traditional cultures had lots of carbs in their diet. But the key thing is to get those vitamins and minerals in your food.
DEBRA: And the vitamins and minerals are in the animal proteins and fats.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Well, the key ones. But they’re also in good plant foods as well.
DEBRA: So, tell us then what are the basics of the Weston Price diet?
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Well, it’s good whole foods, especially good animal foods—so meats and organ meats from pastured animals. And you always eat your meat with the fats. Traditional cultures never ate lean meat. They knew that it would make them sick. And it makes you sick by depleting vitamin A.
You need vitamin A to digest protein. And if you just eat a lot of protein, you’ll deplete yourself of vitamin A, if you eat the protein with the fat.
Lots of butter, cream, eggs, egg yolks—we do recommend plenty of seafood if you can tolerate it.
DEBRA: I know! That’s the one part I can’t eat. I just can’t eat it. But I know it’s very highly recommended.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: And then we recommend proper preparation of grain because grains can be quite toxic if they’re not properly prepared via fermentation process. So, in practice, that means you want a genuine sourdough bread, or you soak your oatmeal overnight to pre-digest it. And you eat your bread with plenty of butter, and you put butter and cream on your oatmeal, butter or cream.
And then we recommend fermented foods, lacto-fermented foods like sauerkraut, and lacto-fermented beverages like natural sodas like Kombucha.
And then the last thing is bone broth, good old-fashion chicken broth, beef broth. And that, by the way, is extremely detoxifying. The types of amino acids in the body help the liver detoxify.
DEBRA: Excellent! And you have a new book coming out in the fall called Nourishing Broths. I got an advanced copy, and it’s fantastic.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Good. I’m glad you did.
DEBRA: I want to say it’s as good as your other books, but I think it’s even better. Listeners, I want you to know that Sally just has this way of doing excellent, meticulous research. And then she tells you everything about the subject—the history, the science. And then she turns it into delicious food, so we can just apply all of that knowledge in the food that we eat.
And Nourishing Broth is no different than her other books in that regard.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Thank you. We’re very excited about the book, very excited.
DEBRA: Yes, I can hardly wait for it.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: I have another new book also—The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby and Child Care.
DEBRA: I saw that, and I didn’t know if it was a new book.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Well, it came out last year.
DEBRA: Okay, that’s probably why I didn’t know about it before. But I saw it. If people go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, in the description of today’s show, there is both Nourishing Traditions and the new baby book, and links to them, where you can buy them on Amazon.com.
We’ve got 20 seconds until we go to the break. So I didn’t want to ask you a new question. But we need to go in, let’s see, 15 seconds.
So WestonPrice.org is Sally’s—
SALLY FALLON MORELL: It’s WestonAPrice.org, W-E-S-T-O-N-A-P-R-I-C-E dot org, WestonAPrice.org.
DEBRA: WestonAPrice.org, that’s right.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: And we have a website called RealMilk.com
DEBRA: And we’ll talk about that after the break. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. And my guest today is Sally Fallon Morell. She’s the founder of the Weston Price Foundation, and author of Nourishing Traditions. And we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Sally Fallon Morell. She is the founder of the Weston Price Foundation and author of Nourishing Traditions and other books.
And just before the break, we were just mentioning raw milk. I know you have a campaign about this, Sally. Tell us what you’re doing, and the problems with milk, and why we should be drinking raw milk.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Well, one of the projects of the Weston A. Price Foundation is called “A Campaign for Real Milk.” It has a separate website—RealMilk.com. And our goal is to have raw milk—well, let’s say, “real milk.” And by “real milk,” we mean raw, whole milk from pastured cows, available in all 50 states where it’s legal to either sell or provide with cow shares some way. That’s available in all 50 states.
And we’ve actually gotten close to our goal. We’re 40 out of 50 now.
DEBRA: That’s wonderful!
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Yes, and we have a lot of legislation coming up in the states that don’t have it. In another 10 years, I think we will have met our goal.
My strategy in the teeth of a very hostile government—hostile agencies, hostile medical establishments, hostile public health establishments—is just to create implacable demand for this wonderful food. And we’ve done that by educating people on the health benefits of raw milk, the safety of raw milk.
And what’s also working in our favor is that industrial pasteurized milk is just very hard to tolerate. It’s got a lot of toxins in it.
And we have more and more people who simply cannot drink ultra-pasteurized or pasteurized milk.
The market for pasteurized milk is declining at 3% per year whereas the market for raw milk is growing in about 25% per year.
DEBRA: So, let me ask you this. So when people say they’re allergic to dairy, or when people are told to eliminate dairy, there’s a difference between industrial dairy and raw dairy.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: There absolutely is. We actually did a survey, and we found that 82% of people who were diagnosed as lactose intolerant could drink raw milk without any problem. And it is really hard to have a good healthy diet in the west if you’re not consuming dairy foods because they are our best source of calcium, they’re our best source of good fat, and lots and lots of other wonderful nutrients.
And they’re in a particularly appealing package. Most people really like milk and cream and butter and cheese.
DEBRA: I do. I love butter so much.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Yes, butter is our signature food.
DEBRA: I love butter so much that I eat bread only to hold the butter.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Exactly! You need to see teeth marks in the butter, or you don’t have enough butter on your bread.
DEBRA: I have been known—this is one of those things that people don’t like to admit, but I have been known to just eat butter with nothing else—a spoonful of butter.
And now, I’ve been making ghee. And I love ghee too. In fact, I think I like ghee even better than butter. And it’s wonderful to cook with.
I think that the key thing here is that we really need to be eating raw. But wait, I want to just amend what I just said.
It’s not just about milk. Raw milk versus industrial milk, I think is a really good example of the difference between how prevalent we’re all eating industrial food instead of what one might call a real food.
And so, a raw milk from a pastured cow would be a real food. But look, it’s illegal to even sell it in 10 states. And when you started, it was probably illegal to sell it in—
SALLY FALLON MORELL: By half the states, yes.
DEBRA: Yes, in Florida here, sometimes we get raw milk at my local natural food store, independently-owned. But it says on there, it’s for pet food. It’s only for pets.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: But that’s okay. There’s no law against eating pet foods.
DEBRA: Right. But that’s the way they have to sell it, which I think is—
SALLY FALLON MORELL: But they can sell it, and that’s the main thing.
DEBRA: It’s horrible!
SALLY FALLON MORELL: It’s just booming in Florida. Several dairies, and yeah, it’s just booming in Florida. And the health department just stepped back, and there hasn’t been any problems with it either.
DEBRA: No, there are no problems with it. I love raw milk. I think it tastes so much better. It’s actually easier for me to get raw goat milk here. And it’s just delicious. I can get cheeses made out of raw milk. So all the nutrition of raw milk is, I think, it can be available if you know how to get it.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: And that’s what we’ve done at the Weston A. Price Foundation. We’ve helped people find it.
We’ve created customers for raw milk farmers. It’s just booming. At least 10 million people in the United States drink raw milk.
DEBRA: That’s wonderful because I think that the way the world should be is that the norm is that we should just be able to go into any store and buy real foods and […]
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Yes, it’s very hard today. And I think we should be, but in actual fact, we aren’t. For example, it’s almost impossible to get pastured eggs in a store. And that’s why we recommend that everybody have a relationship with a farmer.
And a lot of our chapter leaders have created food clubs where they order online, and they get a big delivery of food once every two weeks from somebody’s garage. And that’s worked very well.
DEBRA: Well, another thing that I did—for a while, I had chickens in my backyard until the police came and took them. But they were the best eggs I had ever eaten. And it was such a wonderful experience to be able to feed them, and know what they were eating. And even to feed them grass and greens—
SALLY FALLON MORELL: In the old days, people fed chicken their scrap.
DEBRA: Right! And that’s what I did too. And so to be able to experience this whole life cycle of feeding my chickens what I wanted them to eat, and then an egg would appear—
The first time that happened, and I actually saw the egg in the nest, it was such a great day for me. It’s like you had such a separation of food if you think of eggs as being something in a carton at the store, then you see a chicken actually produce an egg, and then you take it inside, and you make an omelet, and then you eat it, it’s such an experience.
I just think that it should be legal to have chickens everywhere. People have backyards. You shouldn’t have the government come and take your chickens.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Yes, that’s our next fight. Our first fight is get raw milk legal everywhere.
DEBRA: Well, you’re doing a fabulous job. And I know that we’re all happy that you’re doing it, so that we can have our milk, so that we can have our eggs. It’s just you’re really taking us out of the industrial world and saying, “Here are the real things that people should be eating.”
SALLY FALLON MORELL: I’m not against industry. We need industry for cars and airplanes and all sorts of things—computers. But it’s just inappropriate to apply this industrial model to our food. It just doesn’t work.
DEBRA: I agree, I totally agree.
And we’re going to take another break. We’ll be right back with my guest, Sally Fallon Morell, Founder of the Weston Price Foundation and author of Nourishing Traditions. And that’s WestonAPrice.org, W-E-S-T-O-N-A “Price” dot-org.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. We’ll be back.
I’m looking at the Weston Price—I should say it right—Weston A. Price Foundation website. That’s Weston, W-E-S-T-O-N-A “Price.org.” And the kinds of thing that you’re going to find on here, if you just look over in the right-hand column, you’ll see that you can find the “Help me find nutrient-dense foods.” You can find a local chapter. They have a free brochure that you can read.
And one of the things that is right there on the homepage, about three-quarters of the way down, is a link that says “Differences between the Weston A. Price Foundation diet and the Paleo diet.”
I was very interested in that because, recently, I went on a month of a very strict Paleo diet. And I did it because I was having some problems.
I’ve not been eating the American diet for 30 years. And when I found Nourishing Traditions, it changed a lot for me. But as I’ve said, I couldn’t actually eat everything because I can’t eat cod liver oil and things like that.
And so I’m not as healthy—I’m so much more healthy than I was 30 years ago or even 10 years ago or even 5 years ago.
But there are still things going on with my body. And I went on this Paleo diet which helped me a lot because I was eliminating some things that I hadn’t eliminated before. I know that you have grains on the Weston Price Foundation diet, but I have been eliminating grains. And I see that there are a lot of things that I haven’t been fully applying like preparing the grains properly and things like that.
So, I know a lot of people know about the Paleo diet. What I’ve learned about the Paleo diet is I went on a very particular type of Paleo diet which helped my body a lot for that month. And I still continue to be on it. But I can see the importance of adding these things back in, that you’re talking about, and doing them in the proper way, not just saying, “I’m going to go out and eat white bread,” but preparing the grains the way you do properly and things like that.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: The grains, our diet that allow for you to leave things out. Some people leave out grains, some people have to leave out dairy, some people have to leave out seafood.
DEBRA: Seafood, me.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Just because you’re not going to eat a certain food doesn’t mean it should apply to everyone.
But my real concern about the Paleo diet is way too high in protein, too low in fat, and that will deplete you of vitamin A faster than anything. And people can really get in trouble on this diet.
DEBRA: I did really well on this particular version that I have on my food blog, ToxicFreeKitchen.com. But I’ve been reading a lot of—I thought, “Well, let me look around on the internet and see what people are saying about the Paleo diet.” And there are so many versions.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Well, that’s the other thing. It’s very confusing. Some allow fats. But the main speakers for the Paleo diet, their books are extremely low fat. And you just actually can’t stay on a diet like that. You start getting cravings.
DEBRA: Well, the one that I went on, actually, I think they probably—the doctor that put it together, I think that she probably is applying Weston Price principles as well because she encourages fat on her Paleo diet. And so, I’ve been eating a lot of coconut oil and butter and things. And I’ve been doing really well.
And I’m not hungry. And that’s the thing. Every once in a while, I’ll go on some extreme lose seven pounds in seven days kind of diet or something. I did the HTC diet. Did I say that right? HTC, I think that’s right. I did that, and I took the injections, and all these things. I lost weight, and I gained it all back and more.
I started taking the injections, and then it turns out—
SALLY FALLON MORELL: The fat goes away and they come back with their friends.
DEBRA: Yeah, yeah! And I was hungry. I was hungry all the time. So when I went on this Paleo diet for 30 days, and have been continuing it, I ate a lot of fat. And I lost—I think it was 11 pounds in a month. But I was eating a lot of fat.
And I went to my doctor, and I said, “I’m not hungry on this diet.”
And he said, “Because you’re getting nourished.”
And so, I know that I’m not eating excess protein. I’m eating about three ounces of protein per meal. I’m eating my fat, I’m eating my vegetables, and I’m eating nuts and flaxseeds and things like that. And I’m doing really well on it. But it is a more adequate protein, the high fat. Real food as much as I can get.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Well, you really do need the fat, yes.
DEBRA: Yes. So I think that I put it together in a way that it considers the things that I need to do, but it is also following the principles as best as I can that you’re talking about.
I can’t say this enough about how much I admire this particular diet, and what it’s based on, and how well you’ve brought it into practical application in modern life because your recipes are delicious, your instructions are very, very clear, and it’s easy to do if you can actually get the food.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: And that was the big challenge. That was the big challenge. And that’s why we set up the chapter system. And I could tell you, these foods are so much more available now than when we started. The sourdough bread, lacto-fermented foods, homemade broths—you can buy all these things now. You don’t even have to make them.
And the number of farmers doing pasture-raised animal products has just increased exponentially. It’s really exciting to me to see this new kind of farming come in and just be prosperous.
DEBRA: So here’s another big question I want to ask you. I think that one of the obstacles that a lot of people have—and I know this has been a challenge for me too—is how do you actually get into the groove of preparing all this food? Especially,
I don’t have a lot of pre-prepared foods here, and so I find that I have to prepare everything. I have to just go get the best ingredients I can, and then do all the preparation. How do you work that into your life?
SALLY FALLON MORELL: I’ve been cooking since I’ve been five years old. And to me, I escape to the kitchen. In other words, there comes certain times during the day when I get tired of what I’m doing, and my relaxation is going to the kitchen and cooking.
A lot of people are afraid to cook and so forth. But I think if you start with simple things, just eggs and bacon for breakfast, and cheese and sourdough bread for lunch, there’s no preparation there at all. You buy the sourdough bread, you buy the cheese, you buy the butter.
One of the things that we tell people, the first thing they should learn to make is their own salad dressing. It’s very easy to make, and it replaces—I mean, the absolute worst garbage in the supermarket are those salad dressings.
So, start there. Learn to make your own salad dressing. And then you can be an artist making your salad.
It really isn’t hard to cook simple meals. Bacon and baked potato with butter, or steamed vegetables with butter, and roast chicken or something like that. Get a slow cooker. It’s very easy to cook in a slow cooker.
DEBRA: I agree. I think also for me, it’s helped to make a big pot of super stew over the weekend that I can then just portion out in a refrigerator. And then when it comes the time to eat it, it’s just a matter of warming it up.
I’ve discovered that my favorite breakfast is scrambled eggs with sweet potatoes in them. I just bake enough sweet potatoes for the week, and then I cool them off and peel them and chop them up, and I have a container of sweet potatoes ready to go into the ghee, in the pan, and I brown them up and put in green onions, and a couple of beaten eggs, and my breakfast is done in three minutes.
It’s just a matter, I think, of working out what it is that you like to eat, and see how you can prepare it, in the most efficient, quickest way.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Exactly!
DEBRA: But it is a transition for people who are accustomed to buying everything packaged.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Well, I have to say, there’s really no other way. If you’re not willing to prepare your own food, it can be done, but it will be a lot more expensive.
DEBRA: I totally agree with you. When I first moved here—I’ve been cooking since I was six. My father taught me how to cook. But when I moved here to Florida, I was astonished at the number of women who did not know how to cook. They were just incredulous that I knew how to cook, and that I would go to a potluck, and that I would bring something that I had made with my own two hands.
People started asking me for cooking lessons just because they taught my food tasted so good, and they didn’t know how to cook. And they really were opening cans, and taking frozen food out of the freezer, and warming them up. And that’s what they were feeding their families.
I think it’s a pleasure to cook, and I think everybody needs to learn.
Anyway, we’re getting very close to the end, about 30 seconds. The music is going to come on, and we’re going to be done.
So I just want to thank you so much for joining me today and all the work that you’ve been doing.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: You’re welcome. It was a pleasure to be here. And I should say the website is WestonAPrice.org. We really encourage your listeners to be members of the WestonAPrice.org.
DEBRA: I encourage that as well because it’s worthwhile for them to do. It really is going to improve our health more than anything else that I can imagine. And thank you, thank you, thank you.
SALLY FALLON MORELL: Alright! Well, thank you for having me.
DEBRA: You’re welcome.
Air Pollution is Now the World’s Single Largest Environmental Risk to Health
On March 25, the World Health Organization released data from 2012 that estimated around 7 million people died that year as a result of air pollution exposure. That’s 1 person in every 8.
The new data also showed a stronger link between both inoor and outdoor air pollution exposure and cardiovascular diseases, and between air pollution and cancer, This is in addition to air pollution’s known role in the development of respiratory diseases.
Outdoor air pollution-caused deaths — breakdown by disease:
40% — ischaemic heart disease
40% — stroke
11% — chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
6% – lung cancer
3% — acute lower respiratory infections in children
Indoor air pollution-caused deaths — breakdown by disease:
34% – stroke
26% – ischaemic heart disease
22% – COPD
12% – acute lower respiratory infections in children
6% – lung cancer
WHO estimates indoor air pollution was linked to 4.3 million deaths in 2012 in households cooking over coal, wood and biomass stoves. This produces particulate matter air pollution, which is linked to such diseases as ischaemic heart disease, strokes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, respiratory infections, and lung cancer.
I’m wondering if the number would be even higher if they considered deaths from other sources of indoor air pollution as well.
SOURCE:
WHO: 7 million premature deaths annually linked to air pollution
WHO: 7 million deaths annually linked to air pollution
World Health Organization Confirms Air Pollution Is World’s Single Largest Preventable Health Risk
The following week I interviewed Mary Rozenberg, Co-Founder of the Burning Issues website, on Toxic Free Talk Radio. Her website is all about the health effects of fine particle air pollution and what each of us can do to reduce our exposure individually and within our communiites. Listen to the interview at How Smoke From Fireplaces, Wood Stoves, BBQs and More Contribute to Outdoor Air Pollution and Affect Our Health.
