Water | Resources
Residential VOC/toxicity testing in Oregon
Question from kris
Greetings Debra,
We relocated to Oregon in part to escape heavy pollution in LA as we have a son who has autism and suffers from enhanced allergy attacks.
Themove has helped a lot, but I’m learning now of toxins potentially in the home and I’m not sure where to start.
Is there testing available on the residential scale that could let me know of contaminants and their levels?
I see lots of kits online but I’m not sure which to choose and we cannot seem to find an air quality service here in Oregon (near Eugene).
Thank you for any help and for your website.
Debra’s Answer
One of the services I offer is home inspections, where I can go to a home or non-industrial workspace, evaluate the toxic chemicals there and tell you how to replace them with safe products. I am available to travel anywhere in the world.
I’ve been doing this for more than thirty years, so I can identify toxic products by looking at them and recognizing toxic materials.
You could have someone come out and take a variety of tests for thousands of dollars. I don’t do those tests and don’t recommend them because they aren’t very useful for finding specific chemicals. Rather, if you know the chemical is there, it can measure how much is there.
It’s not so important to me to know the levels because I like to eliminate any toxic chemicals found.
You could start with any of the home test kits.
The fastest thing to do would be to have me come take a look, as I can tell you what’s toxic, which are most toxic and therefore most important to improve first, and tell you what to replace it with.
I also answer questions over the phone.
Someone Who Can’t Read, Can’t Read a Toxics Warning Label
My guest today is Sharon Hillestad, the most passionate advocate I’ve ever met for helping children learn to read. Today we’ll be talking about how important it is to be able to read to protect yourself and your family from toxic chemicals in consumer products, why we need to reform how reading is taught in schools, and what you can do right now to help someone you might know learn to read using the time-tested method of phonics. Sharon is the Director of Tutors at the Community Learning Center in Clearwater, Florida, a literacy organization formed to service children who need more phonics education that they are getting in school. She earned her elementary education degree in 1966 and was a classroom teacher in Wisconsin and Minnesota. From 1977-1986, Sharon was a leader in the Home Schooling Movement. She joined the Reading Reform Foundation in 1980 and was its Minnesota Representative for five years; now she is the Florida State Representative for The National Right to Read Foundation, which continues the work of the earlier foundation. Sharon is “the mother of three wonderful adult children and 12 brilliant grandchildren.” www.communitylearningcentertutoring.com | www.nrrf.org
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Someone Who Can’t Read, Can’t Read a Toxics Warning Label
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Sharon Hillestad
Date of Broadcast: February 24, 2014
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic-free. And it is a toxic world. There are many, many toxic chemicals. But not everything is toxic. And that’s what we learn about on this show, how to identify what’s toxic and learn about how it can affect us, but also learn how to do the things to eliminate toxic exposures from our lives and to remove toxic chemicals from our bodies.
It is Monday, February 24th. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. And my guest today is a friend of mine, Sharon Hillestad. And she is one of the most passionate advocates I’ve ever met for helping children learn how to read.
Now, why are we doing a show about helping children how to read? It’s because if someone can’t read, they can’t read a toxics warning label. They can’t read my website. They can’t read my book. They can’t any kind of information on a label that might tell them that something is toxic.
And so, I think that in addition to having everybody know how to read—this is kind of off the subject, but related—I think we also need to be looking at the fact that toxics warning information is in words (and I was thinking about this this morning). And if people can’t read them, they can’t find out it’s a toxic product. We need to have visual (like there’s the skull and crossbones). But our warning label system actually has a few different levels. And there’s only a visual for the most dangerous. So in addition to skull and crossbones, we should maybe have a yellow and red and green patch or something on the label, so that people can tell at a glance, visually if this product is safe or has some degree of toxic exposure.
But for now, since we don’t have that, today we’re going to talk about reading. And we’re going to talk about what the problems are about why children can’t read. Did you know that we have so many children who are going through school, and they don’t know how to read? We’re going to talk about that. And we’re going to also talk about what you can do to help children who are not reading—or even adults who are not reading—because we all need to learn how to read. We all need to know how to read.
I’ll tell you that my parents taught me how to read when I was four years old. They didn’t leave it to the school systems. They taught me how to read. So when I went to kindergarten, I already knew how to read (and my other classmates didn’t). And they actually thought I was so precocious that they took me out of kindergarten, and they put me in first grade because I knew how to read.
Anyway… hi, Sharon!
SHARON HILLESTAD: Thanks, Debra.
DEBRA: Thanks so much for being here. Sharon, how did you become interested in the problem of reading?
SHARON HILLESTAD: Well, I was always curious because even when I was going to grade school in a country school in Wisconsin, all 8th grade—you kind of get a view on a lot of things that way—there were two boys in my school that did not learn how to read. The teacher was still working with them when one of them was in eighth grade and trying still to learn how to read.
And then, I went to teacher’s college, and then I taught school in Minnesota and Wisconsin (not so very many years, the first two years in the ‘60s). And I found that there would be two or three children in each class that I taught that were in the lower reading group, struggling to learn how to read. And I realized I had really [inaudible 03:48] to teach them.
And then, later, when I had my own children, then it really hit me, that if this child that I had, if he goes to school, he’s going to be taught like the way I was teaching, and he’s going to be at the bottom of the class.
So, that’s when I got super interested. I read a book called Why Johnny Can’t Read. And it made all the difference in how I taught my own child and how I’ve been teaching other children since then.
DEBRA: Well, what does that book say?
SHARON HILLESTAD: That book reveals the fact that—it’s called Why Johnny Can’t Read. Johnny can’t read because Johnny hasn’t been taught all the English language words. The book was published in 1955. And it became a bestseller. Parents were reading it all over the place. I even heard about it as a child.
The book exposed the fact that how first graders were being taught to read had changed. For a thousand years or so, children had been taught to learn the sounds of the letters, and then blends those sounds to words. They then learned grammar and saw how the words get organized so that you can have a comprehensive sentence.
Well, that all changed.
By the time I was trained as a teacher—and this is by the book. It was so pertinent to me because this was exactly how I had been taught to teach kids to read, with whole words: up, down, Dick, Jane, […]—you know, flash card words rather than phonic drills. And in fact, I had been taught not to teach phonics. That drilling was detrimental to a student. And of course, there are some children that are not going to learn to read unless they do learn phonics.
Anyway, what was also pointed out is how dyslexia gets established. It’s a child who doesn’t learn to read easily.
Some people learn to read very easily. I think you must’ve at age four?
DEBRA: I think I must have. And I also think that I must’ve been taught with phonics because even today, if I come up against a word that I don’t know, I will just sound it out by each syllable. I never learned to just recognize a word as a word. I learned each syllable and putting those syllables together. And I still use that today. And I never had problems reading—never, never, never—once I learned it.
I know that you’re writing a book that hasn’t been published yet. I was looking through your book, but I was also looking through some websites that you gave me the URL’s of. And one of them was talking about how there’s—and we’ll talk more about the cider. But one of them has 44 parts of the language. And if you know that there’s only 44, and you learn them, and you put them together, then it’s so easy. It’s like a puzzle. You just put the pieces together and it forms a word. You can read that word, and then you can know what it sounds like. You can get the definition of that word, and you have a word. It’s just so easy.
But when that is not learned by a child, then I can see great difficulties—great difficulties.
We’ll talk more about that later. But you read the book, and then what happened? Tell us more about how you went from there to where you are today.
SHARON HILLESTAD: Oh, wow! When I read the book, I realized that what I had been taught to teach them in my teacher’s college was actually a toxic curriculum. So it’s not just chemicals that are toxic, but this curriculum was toxic.
Anyway, it changed everything for me. And I homeschooled my son. Reading did not come natural for him. So it had to be done step by step, little by little, and work on getting a win. Get a gain, “Oh, we know this. We can read this small book, now we can read a bigger one.” And he ended up being a scientist. He works as a scientist at the Mayo Clinic. He’s wonderful. He can write scientific papers. He got his PhD.
Well, I didn’t think that was ever going to happen when the child was seven years old and wasn’t reading. My only goal was to make sure that he could handle his life as a literate person. I didn’t know he was going to go away past me, you know? But he did!
And so that’s what happens when we just do things correctly.
See, there’s a new label. We’re quite used to the label “ADD” which is “attention deficiency disorder.” Well, there’s another label that is more appropriate—and it’s NBT. NBT stands for “never been taught.” So there are children who had never been taught the sounds of the letters or how the vowels make the various sounds.
DEBRA: I need to interrupt you for a minute because we need to go to break. But we’ll talk more about this when we come back.
My guest today is Sharon Hillestad. She’s an advocate for reading. She’s the Director of Tutors at the Community Learning Center in Clearwater, Florida. She’s a friend of mine. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. And we’ll be right back!
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Sharon Hillestad. She’s an advocate for helping children to read by using phonics and the Director of Tutors at the Community Learning Center in Clearwater, Florida.
She’s also the Florida State Representative for the National Right to Read Foundation. They also help children learn to read through phonics.
If you go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, you can get the website address for her Community Learning Center and also for the National Right to Read Foundation (which has a lot of resources on it).
So Sharon, tell us more. Before the break, you were talking about not taught children (hasn’t been taught). So tell us more about that. But also, tell us what are the problems that are going on today with why children aren’t learning to read.
SHARON HILLESTAD: Oh, there are some huge problems that result from that because when children are in class, and they’re unable to comprehend what’s happening, they can’t keep up with the other students or do the worksheets, then they may act up. It’s actually pretty certain that they’re going to act out.
So then they get in trouble. They become fidgety, and they can’t focus. And so then we end up with them being on drugs.
The recent statistic I heard is like one in seven children are now diagnosed ADD or ADHD (hyperactive thrown in there). And then, of course, the remedy is not to give them an easier gradient, like teach them the sounds of the letters and so forth and teach them to blend.
So, it’s not just how the child in here that knew all the sounds of the letters, but he didn’t have enough practice in blending the sounds.
DEBRA: Give us an example of what blending would be.
SHARON HILLESTAD: So, the letter A, the most common sound that it makes is ă as in “apple.” So to learn how to blend B and A together, he actually needs to have someone model it for him like going “ba… ba, ra, ca, da, fa…” So, he’s using the blending. And he knew the individual sounds.
So, that’s the problem. Putting him on drugs is not going to assist him. And even flunking him in first grade, and then doing the same program the next year is not going to assist him. So I was able to set his mother up so that she can teach him. She’ll do the blending the exercises that he needs.
Our English language have almost like 15 vowel sounds. So those five vowels like A can make three different sounds, and it depends upon the pattern of words that it’s done.
So, when you study the subject, well then you know how to teach it […] And there are plenty of ways to study the subject now. There are lots of books on it. And it doesn’t take very long to be able to teach someone else how to read.
It took 60 years to really teach all the teachers how not to teach correctly. It took that long because the teachers that were in the classroom that knew how to do it refused to just Dick & Jane flash cards. But they were often teaching in secret. They weren’t supervised so closely. Now they are supervised so closely that even if they know how to do this, they probably won’t be allowed to do it.
I mean, this seems to be pretty incredible, but it’s true.
DEBRA: It does seem incredible.
So, tell us how children are taught to read today supposedly—how they’re being taught, but not reading. How are they being taught that ends up with them not reading?
SHARON HILLESTAD: There’s something called the DOLCH word. Your audience can google that, and they can download all the DOLCHE word.
Well, the kindergarten children have to learn a set number of DOLCHE words, 40 of them I think. And for instance, they will have all the sounds of A in those words without seeing the same sound several times. They will see it in different ways. They’ll get the word “wall.” So these are “wall” words. They’re stuck up on the wall.” Well here, the A has the third sound the “au” sound. And they’ll have the word like “ate”, and now it has what they call the long A sound. Then they’ll have the word “at” which has the short A sound.
And this happens with every single vowel. So then, the children, they have to memorize these words. So then they’re just memorizing them as pictures (like the word becomes a symbol).
And then, if they get phonics later, for some, alright, they’ll now be able to go back and sound out that first sound.
They have the first thing that they learned—did you ever try to re-learn something. Just as an older person, learning the computer, there are some things I still do by hand rather than computers just because learning can be kind of painful and you’d just rather do it the old way.
So, if we teach children, first of all, to memorize whole words, and now we’re going to teach them some phonics—seldom do they teach them enough of it actually or drill it enough—there’s going to be a certain number of kids kind of fall to the bottom. And I noticed that even when I was teaching in the ‘60s, I didn’t have too many classrooms, but in my third grade classroom, every single classroom I had had two to three kids that were struggling with reading, about a year behind. Well, that counts up if every classroom has that. That kind of statistic, we end up with 90 million adults who cannot read above the fourth grade level.
DEBRA: Ninety million adults? Like rig ht now, there are 90 million adults who can’t read in the world or in the United States?
SHARON HILLESTAD: Right! That’s called functionally illiterate. Literate means you can read and write. Illiterate you cannot read and write. And we can expect that we’re going to have illiterate people that have never been taught to read and write. But functionally illiterate, that label came only after people were—oh, I’ll get off. Is this break time again?
DEBRA: It’s time to go to the break. But we’ll talk about this when we come back.
SHARON HILLESTAD: Okay, good.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Sharon Hillestad. And we’re talking about reading and the necessity of being literate because, if you can’t read, you can’t read a toxics warning label. You can’t read about toxic chemicals and safer alternatives. So we need to know how to read.
We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Sharon Hillestad.
She’s from the Community Learning Center in Clearwater, Florida. And she’s also the Florida State Representative for the National Right to Read Foundation. So, she’s one of the most passionate advocates I’ve ever met for helping children learn to read. And we’re talking about this today because if a person can’t read, they can’t read a toxics warning label. They can’t read any of the information needed to educate themselves about what’s toxic and what’s not.
We could do things like put visual warning labels on products. I can make more videos, things like that. But people need to read.
Sharon, tell us more reasons why people need to read.
SHARON HILLESTAD: Well, wouldn’t you want the truck driver in front of you able to read?
DEBRA: Yes! Yes, it’s kind of crazy when you think about how many people don’t know how to read. They can’t read street signs. They can’t read instructions on a cake mix. They can’t read a magazine. They can’t read the deposit slip at the bank.
SHARON HILLESTAD: Yes. And this is a new label that we didn’t use to have. It’s called “functional illiterate.” So a person who’s functionally illiterate is one who has been to school. You’re an illiterate if you haven’t been taught.
But you’re a functional illiterate if you’ve been taught, but you haven’t learned.
DEBRA: Oh, my God!
SHARON HILLESTAD: So that’s why it’s called “functional illiterate.” It’s reading at a fourth grader below level.
And it’s determined that if you read at this level, you cannot handle many of the words.
I had a 22-year old woman who came in here about five years ago. And she wanted to do better on her job. She was a nursing assistant. She actually couldn’t get to be a nursing assistant. She was kind of just stuck in the kitchen or some place. And it was because she could not read the words on the test that would allow her to move up in her job.
She was a very smart girl, but she never caught on to the phonics. So at 11th grade, she quit school. She didn’t graduate. And her reading level was a little over second grade as far as the tests that I could give her. She did not know how to work with the vowels at all.
And so, in just a very few lessons, her reading started to improve because she knew her short vowel sounds.
Then we worked on the letter teams, the ea and all the letter team type things, ou. She called me up near Christmas time that year, “Sharon, I just read the word ‘ornament’” she says, “Dang! I didn’t think I could ever do that.”
Anyway, eventually, that girl was able to take the test and get the job that she wanted to get, move up. She was able to get more money. And I saw her out in public one time. She stopped me and told me, “You see that car over there? I was just able to buy that because of you.” It was really because of her, because she had the nerve to just call up and demand to learn to read. She told me over the phone, she says, “Well, yeah, I can read, but I can’t read all the words on the back of my driver’s license.”
She couldn’t read all the words. She thought she had to memorize all of them.
Anyway, two years later, I’m tutoring her kindergartener and her second grader. And they’re sounding out words like “cat” and “cut” and “bat” and “bit.” She’s watching them, and she said, “Sharon, I didn’t know how to do that when I was their age, did I?” “You sure didn’t. You had to wait until you were 22 years old before somebody,” which was me at that time, “taught you how to do that.”
And so that’s the miracle that can be done by people who just know the phonics method, have a program. And by all means, I encourage all your listeners to go to your website because they can download a phonics program.
DEBRA: Yeah, just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and you’ll see Sharon’s description of the show today. It has the website address for the Community Learning Center, but also for the National Right to Read Foundation because they have so many materials there. You can just download them, and you can start helping your child to read. You can start helping an adult that you know who doesn’t know how to read or who is functionally illiterate.
You can help them learn how to read.
Sharon, when did they start not teaching phonics? I think I must’ve slipped in right under the edge there because I did have phonics and that’s what my parents knew to do. When did they stop teaching that?
SHARON HILLESTAD: Yeah, some school districts have thrown out all the phonics materials and muzzled their phonics teachers as early as the ‘30s.
DEBRA: Wow!
SHARON HILLESTAD: And so then students that needed that direction weren’t getting it starting in the ‘30s.
Well now teachers kept teaching it anyway (including my teacher). So I had Dick & Jane books, but I also had a phonics workbook. Well, it would be better not to have to have Dick & Jane and just do the phonics for a while, so that when you learn that A says ă, you’ll learn a whole bunch of words where it says ă. And if you learn I says ĭ, you’ll learn a whole bunch of words.
In fact, if the children just learns the short vowel sounds—ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ, ŭ (these are the short vowels of the five vowels)—they would be able to read over 1500 words without memorization (i.e. fast, mop, sit). Look at the confidence then that they would have in that. So then you can teach them what the E does to the vowel, then you can teach them the double vowels and the reason why the vowels change their sounds. And it’s a big game.
Instead of that, we’re just making it a total drudgery for the children because they have to memorize words like their pictures. And children will do that. But you know what? It adds up. By the time they get in fourth grade, they can’t memorize more words. And if they haven’t realized themselves that they can find out words or somebody hasn’t taught them, then they will be a very low level reader. They won’t read books. They just won’t read books, then they won’t write books. And they won’t write letters to the editor.
DEBRA: They just won’t communicate. And communication is so fundamental to life. I think the most important thing in life at all is communication. If you can’t communicate—I mean, a lot of people can communicate verbally, but the written word is so important as well in today’s world to get your message out, whatever it is that you have to say.
And just having that confidence that you know that you can communicate I think makes a big difference for people.
We need to take the next break, but we’ll be right back. My guest is Sharon Hillestad. She’s the Director of Tutors at the Community Learning Center in Clearwater, Florida, and also the Florida representative for the National Right to Read Foundation. Actually, we do have the right to be able to read.
So, you can go to my website, find out how to get to her websites at ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. And we’ll be back that. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. We’ll be back in a minute.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Sharon Hillestad.
She’s the Director of Tutoring at the Community Learning Center in Clearwater, Florida. And we’re talking about reading today because if you can’t read, you can’t read a toxics warning label.
There are so much information that we need to have in order to protect ourselves from toxic chemicals in consumer products today that we need to be able to read and get that information because not all of it is on radio, not all of it is visual. You need to be able to read.
And if you know somebody who doesn’t read or is functionally illiterate, then there’s something you can do. You can help them learn to read with phonics.
You know, Sharon, I was just thinking over the break that, in the dictionary—and I even looked it up to make sure I was right—the words are spelled out in syllables.
SHARON HILLESTAD: Yeah!
DEBRA: And so we haven’t lost that in the dictionary.
SHARON HILLESTAD: No, right. And so if the child can find out these small words, then all the syllables are, they can find both up three or four letters at a time. And of course, each syllable has one vowel sound. And so they just go from vowel sound to vowel sound.
I think there’s something perhaps the listeners might be interested in—and that is the definition of dyslexia.
DEBRA: Oh, please tell us.
SHARON HILLESTAD: Well, during the ‘20s, parents thought that something had to be wrong with their children’s brains because their children weren’t learning to read. And so they took their kids to Dr. Samuel Orton.
Now, Dr. Samuel Orton was a neurosurgeon and one of the very first brain doctors.
Now, Dr. Orton looked over the kids’ brains and couldn’t find anything wrong with them. So then he started to look over how they were being taught to read. And he found, one for one, every children brought to him had been taught to read with the new method at that time which was whole word.
So, what he did is he got phonics teachers. And there were a bunch of them around since this was during the ‘20s. He got these phonics teachers to work with the kids and put them through a phonics program. And every single one recovered and became able to read.
He concluded that they would never have had a reading problem if they had been taught with phonics in the first place. He’s the one that named this brain problem “dyslexia.” And the symptoms of dyslexia are a lot of reversals, […], and misunderstanding in reading. And the cure was teach them how the language works.
The English language does have a complex phonics system. It’s not a one for one. Some of our letters make more than one sound. And some of our sounds are made in two or three different ways. So, to not teach it step by step and carefully is criminal as far as I’m concerned. I just consider it absolutely criminal.
So, that’s what we’re trying to handle here. Any teacher who wants to learn how to do it right can come here and we’ll show them how.
DEBRA: I was thinking about how this applies to so many different things. I’m a very good reader, but I’m not good at math. And I think that I was taught well to read by being taught through phonics, but I wasn’t taught in whatever the equivalent is of phonics about how to understand numbers and how to understand math.
It actually wasn’t until maybe 10 years ago that I read a book (the name of it escapes me at the moment). It was all about numbers. It was just about the numbers one through ten. And it showed how the number appeared in nature and different characteristics of the number.
And so it wasn’t just an abstract thought that this is a one or a three. It really had meaning. There was like poetry and mythology and all these things. It’s like the numbers became real to me.
And I think that one can be taught any subject by breaking it down into those essential pieces, and then you can put it together. Like I’m a really good cook. I learned how to cook when I was six years old. But a lot of people who would be like “cooking illiterate,” they could pick up a cookbook, and it could say, “Beat the egg, and sauté the mushrooms,” and they would have no idea if that meant if they could read it. They would not understand what those terms meant because they haven’t learned the bits and pieces.
But once you learn how to boil water and beat an egg and those kinds of things, you can put that together to make all kinds of food.
And I think that’s true for probably any subject.
SHARON HILLESTAD: Sure, you got to learn it step by step and learn the essentials and learn the easiest things first.
DEBRA: Yes!
SHARON HILLESTAD: Boiling water is like the foundation. If we taught the children the sounds of B, A and T, and then taught them that B and A together would blend out “ba” and then help them to blend out the whole world—you know, you just teach the easiest thing first.
I had this little first grader that was in here Friday night. One of his words was penguin. Now, he’ll remember that word because it’s the longest word in the book. It starts with a P. Okay, so that’s “penguin.” But that’s the way a lot of kids are learning to read. What’s the first letter? Then they guess it from the context of the sentence.
So, I had a mother recently bring in three children that we’re helping. I checked out the mom, and she’s reading under a third grade level, and she didn’t even know it. She knew she was a bad speller, but she didn’t know she was that bad of a reader because she would guess words. She’d just guess, “Oh, if it starts with a D, it must be blah.” Anyway…
DEBRA: Wow! It’s just so unnecessary. In some ways, what you’re talking about is as unnecessary as people being exposed to toxic chemicals because we know what the answer is. We know that the way to teach children how to read is use phonics. We know that there are non-toxic products available for every toxic product that there is. It’s just a matter of knowing these things.
And it’s so unnecessary for people to not read. It’s so unnecessary for people to be made ill by toxic chemical exposure. It’s just making that choice, you know?
SHARON HILLESTAD: Yeah, it’s solving problems. And the inability to solve problems starts with an unwillingness to confess to the problem.
So, the simplest thing is to just look, and then evaluate. Now, what’s wrong with this? What’s right with this? And then, do something about it.
And so, I’m glad you’re doing what you’re doing in your field of expertise. And I hope I help as many people as you do.
DEBRA: Well, I’m sure you do, Sharon, because it’s just so fundamental. I mean, I think what each of us are doing is just one of those fundamental things of life.
We’re almost getting to the end of the show. There was one more thing that I wanted to mention that I know you work with too—and that is looking up words in the dictionary.
I mean, you can read, you could write, and then the next step is about understanding and being able to communicate to another person and have that person understand what you’re saying, have that other person’s communication have you understand what it’s saying. And as a writer, I look up a lot of words. I just look up a lot of words. I try to use the correct word for what it is that I’m wanting to say. And if I’m ever uncertain, I look up the words.
And to look up words in the dictionary, you need to be able to read. You need to be able to see those syllables and put them together as a word.
I would just encourage anybody who hasn’t been using a dictionary to get a dictionary. You even have to get a paper one because they’re online. I use online dictionaries all the time. I have one built into my computer. It came with my computer. It’s actually my paper dictionary. And so you have that comprehension.
In the field of toxics, there are so many words that are new words that people don’t know what those words even mean. And so it’s something that you have to learn. You need to learn what formaldehyde is and how it affects you if you’re going to understand what people are talking about when they’re discussing this subject.
And unfortunately, this is a subject that people need to know something about.
So, I just wanted to get that in on this show.
SHARON HILLESTAD: Oh, we’re very big on dictionary too. And in fact, we give dictionaries away to families to make sure that they have a dictionary in their home because a lot of families don’t. It’s good if they can get online and get it, but there are families that don’t have computers or maybe it’s just not handy. I think it’s handy sometimes just to look it up on a regular dictionary.
DEBRA: I think so too. I have several regular dictionaries in my house. I have one next to the bed. So if I’m reading in bed, I’m not going to jump out of bed and go look in the computer.
SHARON HILLESTAD: Right, yeah, yeah.
DEBRA: But also, I’m happy that I have a dictionary in my cellphone, so that if I’m out some place, I can just look up a word.
SHARON HILLESTAD: Oh, yeah. There’s no excuse these days. There’s just no excuse not to understand what you’re talking about and what you’re hearing.
Do you know, also, when we talk about illiteracy, being able to read what other people write, and then being able to write what you want to write—
I read two months ago that people would put ads on the Internet to sell things, and they would misspell the term.
One guy caught on to that. He was looking through the ads for a whole bunch of machines. And he saw one that was spelled very oddly. And he thought, “I wonder if they mean something else.” And he got something that should’ve cost him about $150 for $25.
DEBRA: Wow! I need to interrupt you now because the show is over.
SHARON HILLESTAD: Okay!
DEBRA: The music is going to come on in about five seconds. So thank you so much for being with me, Sharon.
This is Sharon Hillestad. Please go to Toxic Free Talk Radio. Find out how to get to her website. And find out more about how you can help people learn how to read with phonics.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio.
PCBs Are Still Present in Some Consumer Products
Polychlorinated biphenyls, aka PCBs, have been banned in the United States since 1979. Recent studies, however, have found that one PCB in particular, PCB 11, is still being found in yellow pigments commonly used in paint and for printing clothing and paper. It’s leaching into the air and water and also found in human blood samples.
“For the current study, Rodenburg and other researchers tested readily available consumer goods for the chemical. They found PCB 11 in all 16 pieces of the yellow-printed clothing they tested, most of them children’s items. They also found it in all 28 ink-treated paper samples, including maps, glossy magazine advertisements, postcards, and colored newsprint, that were manufactured abroad. And it was in 15 out of 18 U.S.-manufactured paper goods tested. According to other research, the chemical is also present in yellow paint.”
Source:
PCBs Banned for Decades but Still Lurking in Some Yellow Products
Safe Glue for Toilet Installation
Question from Angelique
The plumbers can fasten almost all the pipes in our bathroom with “no hub bands,” which are rubber bands and metal clamps (I assume this is the safest thing for me!)
However, the ring where the toilet meets the floor has to be glued, and our plumber warned us that this is a very stinky glue that the chemically-sensitive clients he knows could smell for days. I don’t know if I need to be too worried about it, as we will still have weeks of remodeling after they glue that thing in, but still, I’d like to know the safest and/or least smelly ABS glue.
Debra’s Answer
I’m not sure you need glue. There is a wax ring that seals the pipe.
Here are some instructions. No mention of glue. I’ve installed toilets in my house and don’t recall any glue.
Designing a Toxic-Free Home
My guest today is Lisa K. Tharp, founder of K. Tharp Design. Lisa caught my attention when she demonstrated her understanding of design practices that are healthy for people the planet in her design of the award-winning Concord Green Healthy Home. We’ll be talking about how she incorporates toxic-free choices in design and how you can too. Plus, Lisa will share her 5 steps for recovery for people with MCS. K. Tharp Design is a full-service, boutique design firm specializing in luxury level interiors—environments thoughtfully designed to satisfy and delight the senses. Whether designing a relaxed beach house, gracious country home or sophisticated city residence, Lisa loves helping each client find and reflect their own personal style in spaces that are inviting, comfortable and functional. Lisa hit the Boston design scene in 2012, when her first project landed on the cover of Design New England magazine and was broadcast by This Old House Productions. Visual skills, honed from years of filming and photography during Lisa’s first career in video production and brand management (Time Life, HBO, Kraft General Foods) inform her sense of composition, lighting and scale. Inspired by each new project’s architecture, local vernacular and setting, Lisa calls upon classical proportions, modern form, fine art and nature itself to produce work described as “a fresh take on classic design”. She collaborates with architects and building teams on new construction and renovations, and often creates bespoke furnishings, lighting and original art for her clients. www.ktharpdesign.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Designing a Toxic-Free Home
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Lisa K. Tharp
Date of Broadcast: February 19, 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, how to live toxic-free. And we do that because there are so many toxic chemicals out there. But what we need to do is see the world through toxic-free glasses.
I had this idea the other day that it’s like if you were to say walk down the street and only look at people who are only wearing red shirts, you would walk down the street, and you’d be able to see a red shirt because you know what the color red is if you aren’t color blind (but most people know what the color red is).
If you gain the ability to understand what is toxic and what is toxic-free, you can go through the world and say, “This is toxic-free… this is toxic… this is toxic-free… this is toxic.”
And that’s what my work is about, being able to help you recognize what is toxic free and the things that you can do to reduce your toxic exposures and to eliminate toxic chemicals from your body.
Today is Wednesday, February 19th 2014. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. The sun is shining. And we’re going to be talking about designing a toxic-free home today.
My guest is Lisa K. Tharp, Founder of K. Tharp Design. And I’ve been looking at Lisa’s website. As I’ve been waiting for the show to start, I looked at it before. But I’ve just been kind of browsing through it this morning. Her work has been featured, her toxic-free work has been featured in over a dozen mainstream design magazines in the last two years. He work is beautiful!
In fact, I chose a photo of one of her designs to be on the home page of my website. And she also understands what it means to be toxic-free.
Welcome to the show, Lisa.
LISA THARP: Hello! Thank you so much for having me. And thank you for your nice words about my work. Let me return the favor. Your work has been an absolute gift to everyone looking for information on healthy living. I know I use the Debra’s List regularly when I am checking up on new materials. So thank you for all that you’ve done for everyone.
DEBRA: Thank you, thank you. It’s my pleasure actually. I love doing this.
And you know, when I look at your designs, your test is just my taste. I would design something like that. You choose the same colors and you have the same sensibilities.
But before we get into all of that, tell everybody how you got interested in things that are toxic free. How did you get from being an average person who has no awareness of these issues into doing what you’re doing?
LISA THARP: Well, there’s always a particular pivotal event, isn’t there?
DEBRA: Yes, there is.
LISA THARP: I always, since I was a child, had a great interest in architecture and interior design. But my interest in healthy design came much later. I personally was exposed to toxic and moldy building materials for an extended period of time. And in the years that followed, I noticed that my immune system was really impacted.
And this was followed by losing two immediate family members both younger than me to cancer. And it was at that point I decided something is really wrong and I need to take action. I wasn’t sure at the time how to go about it, but I just started learning all that I could about creating a healthier indoor environment.
And I was frankly astounded at the simple things that are within our power to do. It’s just we need the information.
DEBRA: Yes.
LISA THARP: And so, I took that information and decided to actually build a healthy house, not only for my own family, but also to model best practices, and use as many non-toxic materials as possible. So we built the Concord Green Healthy House. And I figured that so many others could benefit from all the time I spent doing the research and learning. And so I set up a blog, Concord Green, to blog about the journey along the way and feature many of the materials and design features that I was learning about and incorporating into the design.
And now I’m able to help my clients make their homes healthier too and try and do it as much as possible. I’m always suggesting ways that you can improve the health of your home.
DEBRA: I’m really impressed with how you’ve integrated the whole idea of using non-toxic materials with the other principles of how you design like bringing nature indoors and the colors that you use and vernacular design and things. So give us an overview of what your design philosophy is.
LISA THARP: Well, I do believe that we can learn a lot from our past when things were simpler. When you think about our ancestors, we built with deep respect for nature. They didn’t have the ability to turn on a thermostat switch. So they had to orient their homes towards the warm summer sun on the southern exposure and chill themselves from the northern winds with positioning their homes, your shade trees for summer shade and evergreens for winter, wind protection, these kinds of things.
And those are just examples. That’s a northeast example. Of course, in southern climates, the opposite would be true.
But the idea of our history in building science and in design is very reflective of nature’s realities. And the more we start to move away from that and make things a little bit overly complex, the more difficult things become. And I think that’s true with most things in life.
DEBRA: Yes, I think so too.
LISA THARP: But in design, my designs, I talk about the luxury of simplicity. You don’t need so much. You need to smartly design your spaces so that you have good storage where you need it, comfortable furniture, but no more than what you need. And we set out to try and prove that simplicity can still be lovely and beautiful and comfortable. It does not have to be Spartan.
I also love to reclaim and reuse things that are in good condition and are not moldy, repurpose things. I’ve done antique wood tables as a bath vanity, stuck some things in it for example.
So, my philosophy is that it’s got to be non-toxic (as non-toxic as possible), be a guard at your door and figure out what is safe to bring into your home. Treat your home like your sanctuary which is what it should be.
DEBRA: I also like to take old things and make them new in a toxic-free way. One of my favorite things is I used to be married to a man who—and we’re still very good friends—was very good with his hands. He had all those building and remodeling skills. And that’s how I got my house. He didn’t build it, but he remodeled it.
I needed an island for my kitchen. And so what we did was we just went out. One of the things we love to do was go to architectural salvage and go to antique stores and just see what kind of old, not moldy things, not toxic things, that we could come up and make them into something new.
But the kitchen island in my kitchen is made from an old Singer sewing machine table. It didn’t have the sewing machine in it anymore, but it had these good iron legs. And it still has the pedal on it. And so it’s this great conversation piece. We put a new top on it. And I just love it. I love it!
LISA THARP: It looks great! And it’s one of a kind. And that’s the nice thing about it.
DEBRA: It is one of a kind. It is, it is.
LISA THARP: You have a story and a memory associated with at piece.
Taking as much and putting your own personality and your own interest into your home is the best possible way to create a sanctuary that really reflects who you are.
And the flipside of course is to your point about not moldy. We have to be very careful when we’re salvaging. I got in trouble once on a project using a desk that was antique that turned out to be toxically moldy. The painter, his assistant, accidentally […] spewed lead dust and moldy spores everywhere. It was pretty much a disaster. So, you have to be very careful.
DEBRA: Yeah, you do.
LISA THARP: It’s a good thing to try and reuse things. But you do have to put your health at the first priority.
DEBRA: I think so too. And I think that that’s one of the things. There’s this big emphasis environmentally on re-use. But if we just re-use everything indiscriminately, we will end up running into a lot of toxic things.
LISA THARP: We need to take a break, but we’ll be right back. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Lisa K. Tharp, interior designer. She’s the Founder of K. Tharp Design. And when we come back, we’ll be talking about some toxic things that are found in interior design, products that we want to watch out for. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Lisa K. Tharp, Founder of K. Tharp Designs. She does very beautiful toxic-free designs. You might want to go take a look at her website which is KTharpDesign.com.
Lisa, before the break, we were talking about watching out for some toxic things like lead and mold in materials that we might re-use for design. Tell us about some other toxic chemicals that you’ve run into in the past that people should watch out for when they’re considering interior design projects.
LISA THARP: Sure! There are lots of different categories, but we could probably break them down into a few.
One is finishes, so paints and floor finishes are all going to be off-gassing if they’re typical or traditional type products. They will off-gas for a period of weeks, months or even years well after that new paint smell is gone.
There are resins and formaldehyde and adhesives in our furniture if it’s not solid sold. Our kitchen cabinetry, these are all, again, off-gassing and causing issues for the immune system.
There are some other things that are considerations that are not materials, per se, but the way our houses mechanically work. Is that okay for me to get into?
DEBRA: Sure, go ahead.
LISA THARP: So, any time we have things that are off-gassing, it’s affecting our indoor air quality. But the bigger problem is that we are then spreading the indoor air quality issue around.
DEBRA: Yes, do talk about that. Do talk about that.
LISA THARP: I point specifically to the wonder of forced hot air and central air conditioning. This, to me, is a central problem in our modern day house design.
During the oil crisis of the ‘70s, we started trying to be energy efficient without understanding the need for fresh air, so we ziplocked up our homes and tried to seal them tight.
Then we turned on the forced hot air and central air conditioning. And now we’re blowing whatever particulates, whatever off-gassing, whatever fumes that are in our space. We are now making them airborne and easy to breathe. It is my feeling that that is one of the main reasons why asthma rates are so on the rise in this country.
Furthermore, the duct work itself is typically a breathing ground mixture of dust and air conditioning condensation. So even if we don’t have a mold problem anywhere else in the house, we are probably breathing one in the duct work, and again, spreading it around by turning on those systems.
Also, another modern convenience is that we’ve attached our garages to our home. And sometimes, we’re even sleeping in rooms above our garage. You just don’t want to be sharing indoor air with car exhaust. And that’s pretty hard to avoid unless you’re not parking your car in the garage.
DEBRA: I don’t park my car in the garage.
LISA THARP: Okay. In fact, a lot of people don’t do that.
DEBRA: But another thing that I see (because one of the things that I do is I go to people’s homes and do a toxic assessment of them and tell them what’s toxic and what they can do about it), a lot of times what I see in homes is that the air intake for the central heating or air system is in the garage. And sitting next to this air intake are pesticide cans and cans of paint and things that are giving off fumes. It’s going right into the house.
LISA THARP: I mean, things that we grow up just assuming it was okay—the gasoline, the open can of gasoline for the lawn mower—all these things that we got used to growing up in a time when plastics were big and polyester was the miracle fabric, these are all things that we got accustomed to. Of course, you put pesticides on the lawn; that’s how you get a green lawn.
So, it’s a bit about stepping back and saying, “Let’s go back to a simpler time and see what we can learn.” Can we use simpler materials? Can we use simpler materials for our mattress? Does it have to be filled with polyurethane foam and flame retardant that we’re breathing in every night? Or can we use organic cotton, wool, natural latex? These are all options for us that are all healthier than the typical mattress products that are being sold to us.
So, it’s about stepping back and just really thinking. And once you do that, it starts to become quite easy. And then it’s just a matter of looking around and saying, “What resources are available to me? How do I substitute out the toxic floor finish for something that’s safe—or the paint?” It’s just a matter of making a little bit of advanced planning, preparation. And then you can solve most of these problems pretty easily.
DEBRA: I find that it’s pretty easy to solve them too. And I’ve been doing this for more than 30 years. And 30 years ago, it was a lot more difficult to find these products. But now today, there are of course specialty products that you have to get online or from a specialty boutique store. But even places like Home Depot and Lowe’s, you can go and buy a less toxic paint or some of these supplies.
I have a rug in my hallway, a 100% wool rug, that I just bought at Home Depot—not ‘just’, I bought it 12 years ago at Home Depot. But it’s not impossible to find these things in mainstream stores now. You just need to know where to be looking and what to look for. Things have changed a lot.
LISA THARP: And there are two levels of action. The first is the building envelope itself. I don’t want to minimize that. Not everyone has a chance to build a house from scratch. They have an HVAC system currently in their home. And so people say to me, “Well, what do I do with my existing situation?” There are things one can do and we can talk more about that if you like in some detail. But the things that have to do with the building envelope are more complex. But again, there are things even there that you can do even without leaving your current home.
DEBRA: I find that too. In fact, I love to take old houses and fix them up.
We need to go to break. But we’ll talk about all the great things that you can do with the building envelope and inside the rooms when we come back with Lisa K. Tharp. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio.
We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Lisa K. Tharp, Founder of K. Tharp Design. Her website is KTharpDesign.com. She does beautiful toxic-free interior design.
So Lisa, let’s talk about design now and the solutions that you’ve come up with. We could talk a lot about toxic chemicals and safer materials. But first, I want to ask you how, if at all, does design choices play into being a solution for making things less toxic?
LISA THARP: And when you say “design choices,” are you talking about interior…
DEBRA: I’m not talking materials. I’m not talking about materials, but I’m asking—I don’t know the answer to this question. Is it possible that making choices that have to do with design choices could then reduce a toxic exposure? I’m thinking of, for example, if you put a window on a south-facing wall, then it would help bring in heat, and you would have to use less light bulbs.
LISA THARP: Oh, okay, building design.
DEBRA: And so both in the building design and in choices that you might make with furnishings, are there design choices that could be made that would give a less toxic result? Maybe you would make a choice to use a material that you wouldn’t have to then paint or something like that.
LISA THARP: Right, right. Yes, absolutely. So, on the building envelop itself, if you research just a little bit about passive design, you’ll understand that heating and cooling as much as possible without mechanical means is the best way to go.
DEBRA: I agree.
LISA THARP: So yes, if you’re in a northern climate, most of your windows should be on the southern side of the house. If you can build large shade trees that are deciduous so they drop their leaves in the winter so they get all the sun in, and they shade the home in the summer time, that’s all great.
So, as much as you can do passively as possible…
And then, mechanically, I would do everything you can to avoid blowing systems. I recommend hot water radiant or radiators. This is under the floor, the radiant; and radiators, there are modern radiators that are nothing like the steam clunkers that you think of at your older homes. I would make sure that you order them uncoated because some of them are coated with epoxies that continue to off-gas when the hot water heats them.
For air conditioning, ceiling fans are a wonderful choice—box fans, portable fans. But if you do really want air conditioning, I recommend either putting in a window AC unit here or there or using the newer ductless air conditioning. These are mini-splits, they’re called. All of these are detailed on the blog that I was writing that’s at ConcordGreen.Blogspot.com. There are articles on all of these choices and resources to learn more.
DEBRA: I’m going to go look at that, your article, especially about air conditioning because I’m faced with an air conditioning dilemma at this point in time. Living in Florida, you really have to have some kind of air conditioning half of the year. And it has as much to do with humidity as heat.
When I moved into this house, I had an old clunker air conditioner that kind of has been on its last leg ever since.
And right now, I don’t have air conditioning. It’s fine because it’s winter. But my thermostat went out and I’m going to have to get a new thermostat. But soon, I’m going to have to get a new air conditioning. To get a whole house air conditioning is thousands and thousands of dollars. And I’m really looking at what can I do instead of that.
LISA THARP: And you’re inviting all sorts of problems that we covered earlier in this conversation. The important thing too to avoid in any sort of air conditioning mechanical system is antimicrobial coating which have become very popular. Kenmore still offers the window unit that does not have those antimicrobial coating which are being used as big marketing slogans, but they’re not good for us.
DEBRA: They’re especially not good for us. I’m going to be writing about those soon.
LISA THARP: So, if you’re heating and cooling as much as possible, passively then, with smart mechanicals, bring in as much fresh air as you can. Open the windows if you’re in the heat of summer, in the early morning and late that night, to kind of flush the house. If you have the means to add in an energy recovery ventilator, that keeps the temperature from going out the window, but it brings fresh air in. You can also attach filters to it, HEPA filters, for particulates and carbon for off-gassing and fumes.
Those are all, again, mechanical things you can do to keep that fresh air coming in that we used to get automatically when our windows were draftier and our doors were draftier.
DEBRA: Yes, yes.
LISA THARP: The other thing I tell people is attics, not basements. If you want bonus space in your home, look up, don’t look down. Basements are notorious for humidity and mold. You do need to dehumidify in your basement. Even if you don’t have flooding, you need to ventilate it. And that can be as simple as hooking up a bathroom-type fan with some sort of small exhaust that’s got a screen on it so nothing, no one crawls in. Ventilate your basement.
And then, do everything you can to disconnect that basement air from the rest of your interior space. So if folks have interior doors to their basement, I tell them to weather strip all around it, so that any sort of moisture air is not really mixing. You’re trying to minimize the sharing of air from your main living spaces to your basement.
And then, there are all of the wonderful non-toxic materials that are out there now. “Green,” I learned, does not necessarily equal healthy. In fact, some of the most difficult insulation choices you can have in your home would be closed cell insulation. It’s the pride and joy of energy efficiency. But it will give you headaches and all sorts of other nasty impacts if you’re at all sensitive.
So, question the necessity of each chemical that’s coming into your home. Do I need to seal my dining room table or is it fine—you know, that more patina’d look?
Check for any allergens. A lot of people are allergic to the terpenes found in various species of wood, so you do need to seal it. But seal it with something that’s non-toxic.
Be like a bouncer at the door. “You can’t come in unless you meet certain criteria.”
DEBRA: Yeah! I like that. I like that a lot.
LISA THARP: And one of my favorite lines—and I don’t get paid by them to say this. ECOS Organics is a line from the UK that now manufactures here States-side. And they have not only in my opinion the best non-toxic paint, they also have non-toxic floor finishes. They have sealers, radiator paints. Their line is terrific.
DEBRA: Yeah, I had them on. I interviewed with them. And they are! I love their line too.
LISA THARP: Oh, great.
DEBRA: We need to go to break, but we’ll be right back. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And I’m here with my guest today, Lisa K. Tharp, Founder of K. Tharp Design. And that’s KTharpDesign.com. And you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Lisa K. Tharp, Founder of K. Tharp Design. And we’ve been talking about how to create toxic-free interiors, designing a toxic-free home.
Lisa, we’re in our last segment now, so we only have a short period of time. But I want to make sure that you get a little bit of time to talk about the design aspect, the furnishing aspects as well as the building envelope. And then, there’s another thing that we want to talk about later as well. So let’s get this all in.
LISA THARP: Okay! Well, I think the first thing I tell folks is to remove wall-to-wall carpeting if at all possible.
DEBRA: That’s the first thing I say too!
LISA THARP: Go with bare floors. You can paint them. You can seal them with the non-toxic varnishes, tile floors, concrete floors. You can do beautiful things. So that’s a major area to hit right away. I use all natural textiles whenever possible. I avoid stain treatments. I use solid wood furniture or unfinished, untreated wicker.
And I can just send the paint to the manufacturer and have them put non-toxic paint on things.
I love using upholstery that is either slip covers so it’s washable, removable cushions, and washable covers.
These are all great tricks of the trade to make sure that your home is both comfortable and also safe.
DEBRA: Yes. And there are a lot of materials now. As I’ve said earlier, 30 years ago when I started, it was really difficult to get these things. But now, you can get them. Everything that you could need to do an interior in your home, you can do in a toxic-free way. Wouldn’t you say that’s true?
LISA THARP: Absolutely!
DEBRA: It’s pretty easy.
LISA THARP: It just takes paying attention to it, doing a little bit of research, tapping into all of the folks out there who are moving in this direction with furniture lines and finishes, et cetera.
DEBRA: And even accessories and pillows and all those kinds of little things. I would say that there’s really not a limit on what kind of design you could create and doing it toxic-free. It’s not like you have to do it all in beige or anything like that.
LISA THARP: That’s absolutely true. You know, a lot of green design was very modern-looking. And again, with the Concord Green Healthy House, I set out to try and show that healthy and green design can also look very traditional. I mean, it’s a very fairly traditional vernacular with a bit of a fresh twist in places.
DEBRA: It is very traditional, yeah.
LISA THARP: You do not need to be limited. You just need to do a little bit of extra homework. Anything is possible.
DEBRA: I would totally agree.
So, you put together, on your blog, five steps for chemical sensitivity recovery. And I thought that we should talk about that because not only does it apply to people specifically who have immune system problems, but it really is—the points that you put together, I completely agree with. And I think they apply to anybody who is needing to recover from any kind of chemical damage. And that’s just about everybody who lives in our toxic world. Some people are more recovered than others, but we’ve all been affected.
So, let’s just go through those five points.
LISA THARP: Sure! I mean, it’s the belief that, just like with the architecture, the return to nature. It’s the belief that your body is powerful and that your immune system knows what to do. Why are we having all these epidemics of life-threatening food allergies and hypersensitivity and autoimmune disorders, all sorts of things? It’s because our immune systems are a bit on overdrive or they’re overburdened.
So, it’s all about taking a few simple steps to unburden the immune system and let it do its own job. And I’ve seen amazing recoveries time and time again.
So, in step one—which is what we’ve been focusing on—is creating a safe home environment that allows your body to begin a healing process.
Step two is physical. Your body was designed to work. And even if you’re bedridden, start doing little things in bed that you can do to make yourself stronger. Build up to walking each day, getting outside and getting as much fresh air into your lungs and sweating and absorbing that sunshine. These are critically important parts to the physical aspects of your healing. You’ll be stronger, you’ll be calmer, and you’ll sleep better.
DEBRA: And you need to exercise. You need to move your body in order for your body to process and excrete the toxic chemicals that are already in your body. This is a critically important part.
LISA THARP: Again, it’s just doing what your body was meant to do.
And then, step number three is nutrition. It’s feeding your body the things it was meant to it. The old “eat your vegetables” couldn’t be more true. Organic vegetables, the more you can put those into your diets and take out the inflammatory foods like dairy, gluten, and processed foods, replacing caffeine and alcohol with water, and ultimately, taking a quality probiotic to restore gut health—
In olden days, they talk about how the gut is the center of an individual’s health. And it remains true to this day.
So that’s a critical, important piece—especially with people who have had illnesses, they probably have been on antiobiotics, which is taking away their own digestive track’s ability to fight off disease and chronic illnesses. This is the way to restore that fighting power back into your own body.
DEBRA: I agree.
LISA THARP: Number four is medical. And this is one where you should rule out anything else that might be going on. For many people, it’s food allergies or Candida albicans which is an overgrowth of yeast that is fed by the typical American diet of carbsn and sugars. It could be leaky gut. It could be something else. You should just make sure that you run at least the testing for food allergies and Candida to rule those out.
And if they are present—some people think that the majority of Americans have Candida albicans, there’s yeast overgrowth. Once you clear that up, you’ll be amazed at how much better everything else is working.
DEBRA: I would agree with you. I think most people have it. I think toxic chemicals, especially in food and water (we’re drinking chlorinated water or water with chlorine or chloramines on it for disinfection), it kills all those microorganisms in your gut, and then Candida just grows and grows and grows. And most people are drinking that water, and they don’t even know what’s going on in their gut.
So, the whole thing about gut restoration is I think a key factor to the whole recovery from the chemical damage in your body. Our poor bodies, I just want to say that if you’re being exposed to the typical amount of toxic chemicals that goes on in this country, it’s like an onslaught into your body.
So it really is this two-pronged approach of reducing the amount of chemicals you’re putting into your body, getting those toxic chemicals out of your body. And the third thing is this whole restoration project. It really is like a body restoration project.
LISA THARP: It is! And that leads us to the fifth step, which, I’ve always wondered, why do some people react so much more significantly than others to the same onslaught of toxicity. Why do some people have just much more extreme situations?
Usually, it’s because they’ve had one serious exposure that hyper-sensitized their body. This led me to the fifth step which is the mind-body connection.
For a long time, I rejected this idea. I though there are physical symptoms that people are experiencing. There’s no way that this is a mind-connection issue. But then I saw several people I trusted who had claims of chemical sensitivity full recovery through brain retraining.
And the idea of brain retraining is that we train the brain conditioned trigger of physical symptoms that result from a prior toxic exposure, the idea that the ancient part of our brain, the fight-or-flight instinct also is attuned to having been exposed to some toxic chemical or mold or whatever it was that got you to be sick in the first place, and the brain recognizes even minute amounts of that in your future and tries to flood your system with adrenaline and re-trigger those same physical symptoms even if you’re not in any real harm at that time.
And so there are programs out there, brain retraining, that actually try and stop the vicious cycle of your brain overreacting, triggering the adrenaline, developing the physical symptoms, and wearing own your immune system. And that, I recommend people check out as the fifth and last step in the full recovery program.
DEBRA: I agree that that happens. It’s like putting your hand on a fire, like on a hot stove, for example. So you put your hand on a hot stove, then your mind or your brain, however you understand it, it records that. It says, “I need to warn you, the next time you come near a hot stove, to not put your hand on it or you’ll burn it.” It’s just that same kind of mechanism.
And so you get exposed to these toxic chemicals, then your body can react even in the future to very minute amounts to exposures, and it multiplies. It does have an effect. The mind and the body are interconnected. So I completely agree that the mind has a factor in this.
I’m not saying that people who are sensitive to chemicals or who have a reaction to chemicals that it’s completely psychosomatic. These are toxic poisons. These chemicals are poisons. Recovering from our toxic world really is a multifaceted approach.
And that’s the end of the show. My goodness!
LISA THARP: Okay! Well, thank you very much for having me.
DEBRA: This has been Lisa Tharp. She’s at KTharpDesign.com. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio.
Are Acrylic Blackout Curtains OK?
Question from D.
I have had four polyester curtains with acrylic backing on my bedroom windows for one year. I have noticed no smell and no negative reactions. ( I am not chemically sensitive).
I then decided to put up six more curtains,made of the same material so they would match, on my very long section of closet doors. When I bought the new set of curtains, I noticed that the backing was made of acrylic. I then googled acrylic and realized that some people consider it to be a carcinogen.
If there is no smell, and the backing is not the typical foam-like blackout material, is the acrylic doing any harm? I presume it is VOCs that would be harmful? With 10 curtains, we would be sleeping exposed to a lot more VO C’s than when we had just four.
Should I take the financial hit and throw out these now ten curtains and purchase 100% cotton fabric to make new curtains? I am really just not sure how dangerous acrylic backing is…
Debra’s Answer
I myself would throw out the acrylic curtains and replace them with 100% cotton curtains.
I have some black curtains I bought at Target and after I washed them they were perfectly fine. I don’t see them on their website, so they may not carry them any more. This was a few years ago.
Home Environment Bamboo Sheets
Question from woksawi
I bought a few sets of bamboo sheets at a store closing sale. They were manufactured in China, by Home Environment.
I reacted to the sheets after washing and then whatever it was got stuck in washer. I’m wondering what it is but can’t find any contact info for the company online. The sheets say “100% rayon from bamboo” and “naturally sustainable, renewable, antibacterial”.
Anyone have experience with this brand? Know what it would be treated with? Know how to remove without vinegar (I’m sensitive to that). I
Any help welcome. Thanks!
Debra’s Answer
I don’t know what might be in these sheets that you are reacting to. Chemicals are used to break down the bamboo into rayon, but who knows what else might be added or what they may have picked up in transport from China.
To clean your washer, I had a problem with an odor in a washer and I tried a lot of things. What worked was a product called “washing machine cleaner.” You’ll find it in any supermarket on the cleaning products aisle. There are several brands, I bough Clorox brand. It’s basically superstrength chlorine bleach. But it removed the odor and rinsed clean and that was the end of that odor.
While I don’t use chlorine bleach on a regular basis, sometimes you have to remove toxic chemicals with other toxic chemicals.
Marmoleum Adhesive
Question from Allison
I’m having Marmoleum installed in a bathroom. I’m concerned about
possible long-term health dangers from the Forbo adhesive which contains the antimicrobial agent MicroSept. Another reader had asked you about it, and you advised her to ask the company if the Marmoleum will block the adhesive completely once installed.
This is Forbo’s response when I asked them that question:
“Once the adhesive is dry, there is nothing that should off-gas from it.”
The formula of MicroSept is proprietary, but if I send them a list of ingredients I’m worried about, they can ask their supplier if it contains them. Are there any ingredients I should ask them about? Or would their response to me about off-gassing be sufficiently reassuring?
Thanks so much, Debra.
Debra’s Answer
Here is the MSDS for MicroSept.
The hazardous ingredient is gluteraldehyde, but as they said, it should offgas during the curing process and stop outgassing once it is dry.
The MSDS for Forbo C-930 Conductive Adhesive says there are no hazardous ingredients that require reporting. I don’t know which specific adhesive you are using, but you could look up the MSDS and see what it says.
Forbo is a reputable company that has been making natural products for a long time. I know of many people who have installed it and have been happy with it.
I’m not concerned about this.
Area Rugs
Question from Stacey
Hello,
My question is about area rugs – can I assume any natural area rugs are safe (jute, sisal, or seagrass)? Some have latex backings, so should I ask if it is natural latex? Do you know of any safe rug pad to use (not sure if I need one)?
Thanks so much!
Stacey
Debra’s Answer
I’ve purchased a number of area rugs in the past with varied success. One was 100% jute and I could never get the smell out. I left it out in the sun and rain for a year and it still smelled.
On the other hand, when I moved into the house I live in now, I needed to cover an old heater return grate and bought a little 3×4 wool rug from Home Depot and it’s been fine since day one.
I tend to get the “rag rug” type of area rugs that I can throw in the washer.
I’ve listed some websites that sell area rugs on the Flooring page of Debra’s List.
Check these.
Creating the Perfect Organic Sofa
Today my guest is Aimee Robinson, Founder and Owner of EcoBalanza. They focuse exclusively on creating sofas and upholstered furniture made with organic, certified and natural materials. We’ll be talking about natural upholstered furniture, how it is made, fire retardants, and new regulations in California for upholstered furniture. Ecobalanza is the result of “an”obsessive effort to create the perfect sofa… one that is truly non-toxic: organic materials + true artisan crafted + socially responsible sources + comfortable + beautiful + durable.” Over the past 10 years, Aimee has researched materials and created a vertical supply chain where each material can be easily traced to its origin and producer and, when it comes to textiles, knowledge of all critical third party certifications and origins is key. A background in political science and social change plays a significant role in the commitment to work directly with women, farmers and artisans, and find ways to collaborate towards a more responsible and clean economy. www.debralynndadd.com/debras-list/ecobalanza
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Creating the Perfect Organic Sofa
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Aimee Robinson
Date of Broadcast: February 18, 2014
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to live toxic-free.
And that’s not being affected by toxic chemicals, not that we could be next to them and not have them cause danger to us, but by understanding how to choose products that don’t have toxic chemicals, how to do things to help our body better withstand those toxic chemical exposures that we have. We talk to people who are making products, choosing products, selling products, regulating products, all kinds of everybody who has anything to do with being toxic-free on this show.
Today is—what’s the date today—Tuesday, February 18th 2014. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. And today we’re going to be talking about sofas. Sofas have been in the news for quite a while because there’s been a lot of talk about fire retardants on sofas. There are some things going on in the state of California about new regulations to do with fire retardants. And there are some small manufacturers around the country who are making sofas without fire retardants out of natural materials.
And so, today, I’m going to be talking with Aimee Robinson. She’s the Founder of and Owner of EcoBalanza.
That’s in Seattle. And they focus exclusively on creating sofas and upholstered furniture made of organic certified and natural materials. Aimee set out to search for the perfect organic sofa and achieved that. She’s going to tell us about that.
Hi Aimee.
AIMEE ROBINSON: Hi Debra. How are you?
DEBRA: I’m good. Before we go on, I just want to say that if any of you are listening to this show every day, we did have Aimee on a couple of weeks ago, but that show got interrupted by an ice storm. So we’re just starting over again as if Aimee was not on before and this is the show!
Aimee, thank you for being here. First, tell us about your background. How did you get from being wherever you were before you decided to make sofas? And why did you decide to make a non-toxic sofa? How did that happen?
AIMEE ROBINSON: I started by having a retail store that offered home furnishings. And so while I was doing that, I started researching. I fell in love with sofas because it was one of the things that we carried. But it still wasn’t perfect enough. And so it was a combination of researching […], learning more about […] conventional sofas, and then trying to find a way to create one that was completely as clean as possible, as non-toxic as possible while made […] beautiful.
So, once we started finding the materials—because we wanted to work with local suppliers directly and with small businesses and farms, I started working with a woman who was passionate about wool, and one thing led to another in terms of procuring especially with the materials and where they came from and how clean they were or not. I’m so sorry, I’m sort of a little scattered today.
DEBRA: It’s okay.
AIMEE ROBINSON: But yeah, we work with the design and the materials, yes.
DEBRA: Good! Tell us what made you interested in doing it without toxic chemicals in the first place. Why did you open a green store?
AIMEE ROBINSON: I did this with a partner. And we were looking to be able to offer things that were non-toxic.
She was into [inaudible 04:28]. I was into the social justice and the trade. And the combination of both was being able to offer things for the home that were responsibly sourced and that were cleaned and that created healthy environments.
Since we spend so much time indoors, especially in this type of a country where we’re inside all the time, we started looking at everything that’s in the house and people getting sick—so anywhere from what flooring, paint, furniture, everything we have in the house that being there so long and overexposed [inaudible 05:05].
People are getting sick. Everybody is getting sick […] And houses are very sealed, especially in certain types of countries. So no air circulation, no natural light, toxic materials, toxic carpets. It was kind of being able to provide all those, being able to support people in having a solutions and options for a healthy home.
DEBRA: Did you have a personal experience about that or did you know somebody? What made you aware of the issue?
AIMEE ROBINSON: It was mostly research—mostly research, I would say. I’m learning about the impact in a lot of other people.
I mean, one is leather. People, especially in certain places in the world, who work with leather […] are exposed to chromium. There’s a high mortality rate in young people because of that, because of cancer. It’s caused by the chemicals that are used to produce leather […]
And people not knowing that, [inaudible 06:24]. Yeah, there are people buying them because of them, because of those things that are in there. It’s a super toxic kind of industry. It’s chemically intensive, [inaudible 06:42]. So it’s polluting, it clings in the house. There are so many problems with it.
And once you start getting into every single thing that’s in your house, you start learning that it’s a time bomb.
DEBRA: It is! Yeah, it is. And there are different levels. It’s good that you’re looking all through—later on in the show, I want to talk about your work with your supply chain. But for right now, I just wanted to make note that there are different levels of looking at this. And the easiest part—and this isn’t even easy—is to just look at what is the exposure of the toxic chemical to the consumer as they’re using it.
But if you start looking back through what’s called the supply chain, then you get to things like, “Well, are the workers dying because this product is being made?” like you were talking about. And that’s a lot of research. I admire it highly that you’re doing that and looking that deeply at things. We do need to be considering what are the effects of our actions.
It’s not just what’s the effect on us, but it’s the effect on the workers and the environment and everything. That’s the ultimate things that we need to be looking at in terms of if we’re to live toxic-free would be to be free of toxic chemicals all the way down the line, to be free of toxic chemicals all throughout the environment and for all people. That would be the ultimate goal with that.
AIMEE ROBINSON: And one thing that you noted is […] everything is interconnected. It’s drinking polluted water. It goes up, and it still comes down through rain.
DEBRA: That’s right. It’s all connected.
AIMEE ROBINSON: So there’s not a boundary or nothing that will keep you from [inaudible 08:39] but that does not mean that it’s not coming back to us in so many other ways. So it’s all connected.
And I know that, initially, what’s our first area of influence? Of course, our personal life, our families, our homes.
And so that’s the first reason I found that people are concerned about finding non-toxic options. But it is essential to consider all the different aspects because it does have an impact whether you like it or not. We can’t really see it…
DEBRA: I completely agree, I completely agree. I completely agree. There is no “away” to send the toxic waste.
So we do need to be looking at it.
We need to take a break. When we come back, we’ll talk more about sofas with Aimee Robinson, Founder and Owner of EcoBalanza. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And we’ll be right back!
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Aimee Robinson, Founder and Owner of EcoBalanza where they focus exclusively on creating sofas and upholstery furniture made with organic certified and natural materials.
Aimee, let’s talk about what is toxic about a sofa. And I know that you’re constructing sofas all the time. So take us through how a sofa is constructed and different toxic chemicals that are encountered in the materials in a sofa.
AIMEE ROBINSON: Well, one thing that have been done before is that a sofa […] has to be certified at passing the fire retardant law. And so the chemicals are all throughout the sofa. The fabric, the battings, the foams, everything has a fire treatment. And on top of it, it’s synthetic, so it’s petrochemical as well. So everything in it is non-biodegradable and potentially toxic.
DEBRA: And some of the materials that are used, like particularly, I want to mention polyurethane foam, which is extremely flammable. It’s been called solid gasoline. I mean it’s basically 100% crude oil which is very flammable.
And then they put these toxic fire retardants on it in order to pass the fire retardant test.
AIMEE ROBINSON: Yes.
DEBRA: Also other things that could be used in a sofa could be adhesives which are toxic. But basically, I think that the basic thing is the synthetic materials plus all these toxic fire retardants.
AIMEE ROBINSON: And formaldehyde as well. So [inaudible 11:42] that are also toxic. They concentrate in the system over time. These particles that decompose when they break down, and you’re breathing them. And so there’s lots of […] toxicity in sofa.
DEBRA: If you have a stain-resistant finish or a water-repellent finish on a sofa, that is made from a formaldehyde resin that continues to outgas formaldehyde as you’re sitting on it. As you sit on it, it actually breaks it down and has it release formaldehyde.
So, this is what people across the country are sitting on and what babies are sitting on and what children are sitting on. And these toxic chemicals can cause a variety of health problems. It’s just amazing how toxic these are.
AIMEE ROBINSON: Allergies, neurological problems, there are all kinds of side effects—some are directly linked, some are not so directly linked. But basically, your immune system is having to fight all the time, all the time. And so, people leave themselves depleted. And in conjunction with other lifestyle things, it can be devastating […]
DEBRA: It’s hard to talk about this stuff. During the break, my producer wrote—I had a little chat with the producer—and he said the doctor of his wife read my book. She tossed out all her plastic cookware and switched to non-toxic cleaning supplies.
Once you start learning where these toxic chemicals are—I mean, when I started learning them, I thought, “Well, I don’t want this. Isn’t there some alternative?” And I started looking for alternatives.
So now you’ve provided an alternative to these toxic sofas.
AIMEE ROBINSON: Well, I just want to mention one thing that I thought about. Talking about the supply chain, [inaudible 13:50], we were talking about that, […] I think this is the part that’s really overwhelming for people. You have to research so much behind any product because there’s a lot of greenwashing happening.
There are a lot of green claims. You don’t know who made it, how they made it and what’s really in it and how it’s coming to you. It gets touted as “green” when, sometimes, it’s not. So that can be so daunting for people to even trust what they’re reading. And I find that a lot of people do get overwhelmed with that because […] it’s like going down the rabbit hole. You never know where you’re going to come out with everything that goes there.
DEBRA: I agree, I agree. So this is a reason why I have people like you on this show. There are some manufacturers who know what’s in their products.
I mean, I’ve been doing this research for more than 30 years. And a lot of people don’t even know what their materials are. You can ask the salesperson or you can even ask the manufacturer, and they just don’t know.
But somebody like Aimee here has done a tremendous amount of research. And so she knows what is in her product. And she has been very careful all the way down the line.
So, we need to go to break pretty soon, but let’s start just talking about the individual materials that you use. Let’s start with the covers. Tell us about the cover fabric.
AIMEE ROBINSON: The fabric that I chose to work with, almost all of them are either natural fibers or certified in some ways. So there are different types of certification. And it’s important that we look for fabrics that has some sort of third party certification where they test what the residual chemicals in the products are.
The textile industry is also very, very chemically intensive. Making fabric is really toxic. And so you want to make sure that there’s that third party certification because, that way, you know that if there’s any chemicals or heavy metals or anything that was used, it’s not at a level that may affect you. Fabrics are very toxic. So we need make sure of that.
Natural fibers breathe. They don’t hold odors. There are all these wonderful features about natural fibers. And there’s also those dyed with safe dyes, they’re treated and processed as cleanly as possible. Then you have one more level [inaudible 16:40] of the fabric that you have on.
So, certifications like EcoTex. GOTS is another. GOTS is really good. It stands for the Global Organic Textile Standard. The other one is…
DEBRA: Well, you can think during the break. You can think of that during the break. We’re talking about sofas, natural sofas, organic sofas with my guest, Aimee Robinson, Founder and Owner of EcoBalanza. That’s EcoBalanza.com. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. We’ll be back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Aimee Robinson, Founder and Owner of EcoBalanza where they make sofas and upholstered furniture with organic certified and natural materials.
So, before the break, Aimee, we were talking about certification for fabrics. You want to give us those names again and tell us something about the certifications?
AIMEE ROBINSON: So there are several. One is the highest one. It’s the Global Organic Textile Standard. The acronym is GOTS. And that one looks at the whole cycle. It looks at the material, […], the water treatment. It looks at the environmental impact. And also, they’re testing for the post-production (It’s probably to make sure the fabric is safe […]).
There’s the EcoTex Certification. They test for—that one just looks at the end product. They test for residual chemicals. There’s [inaudible 18:34] that also looks at the production cycle.
But the main ones would be EcoText and GOTS.
DEBRA: Those are the ones that I’ve seen most frequently. And one thing that I want to point out is that GOTS does have two certifications—one is for the fabric itself, and the other is for the fiber. Isn’t that right? There are two ways that it certifies?
AIMEE ROBINSON: I didn’t hear you, I’m sorry.
DEBRA: What I said was isn’t there are two ways that GOT certifies, one is to certify the fiber, and the other is to certify the fabric?
AIMEE ROBINSON: Yes.
DEBRA: You could see something that says “certified organic cotton,” that means that the fiber is certified organic. You need to look for a certification that says “certified organic fabric,” and that would be that the whole process is organic and that there are no other toxic chemicals, that the whole process from beginning to end is organic.
AIMEE ROBINSON: Yes, exactly.
DEBRA: So tell us what other materials you use to make your sofas.
AIMEE ROBINSON: We also use organic cotton batting that’s US-grown. We buy that directly from the growers in the US. The conventional cotton, it’s sprayed with pesticides [inaudible 20:09] That’s another material.
And then we also use certified organic cotton as the first covers on the sofa. That’s underneath the final fabric.
It’s the [inaudible 20:36] fabric. And I chose natural fibers [inaudible 20:38].
And then, what else do we use? We use Global Organic Latex Standard certified latex [inaudible 20:49]. And that one is kind of the equivalent of the GOTS certification with the latex. There’s a lot of [inaudible 21:02] latex as well, so we need to make sure [inaudible 21:05] closest way to monitor that something is really what they say it is.
DEBRA: Yes. So if you see those certifications, then you know that these third party organizations have checked it out and that those are more trustworthy than if you just see a material that just says “wool” or anything that’s a natural fiber. There’s a lot of things that could be going into fabrics and batting. And these certifications tell you that they’re as clean as exists [inaudible 21:42].
AIMEE ROBINSON: Then we also use FCC certified wood and solid woods regarding any particle wood or any manufactured wood. So that one also ensures that you’re not contributing to deforestation, that it’s to the best of capacity responsibly harvested. And a solid wood frame is going to last forever. It helps with durability, structure and also that you’re not contributing to deforestation […]
What else?
DEBRA: I just wanted to mention and make a note about your wool covers, the wool cover that you use on your covers. One of the things that’s going on right now is that there’s a big shift going on in the state of California where, for many years, they have a flammability standard that had to do with the foam inside the sofa needed to be able to withstand an open flame test. And now they have a whole different kind of test that’s called the smolder test. It’s like you put a smoldering cigarette on it. And the cover needs to withstand that smoldering cigarette. So that totally changes everything.
And also, there are some sofas that are being allowed to be sold now. But by January 1st 2015 coming up, all the sofas sold in the state of California are going to need to meet the standard.
Now, wool is very difficult to ignite. And so if there’s one natural fiber that’s going to pass that test, it’s wool.
AIMEE ROBINSON: Yes. And it’s absolutely universal for everything else on the batting inside our sofas. So, we use several different types of wool. But we use one particular wool that comes from Germany. It’s certified organic. That also has to do with the sheets, with how it’s procured, the treatments, that it’s not treated.
Sometimes, wool, [inaudible 24:14], you denature it. You kind of straighten out the fibers, and then you crank it [inaudible 24:21]. How wool connects with each other is through these—there’s a quality in the fiber of the wool just by itself because these little hook in the fiber will hold on to each other. And so wool, to homogenize it, they can chemically treat it to be able to have it [inaudible 24:48].
So, we use actually use organic wool. And we use a German wool because, for me, with the sofa, just not only that the materials are quality and clean, but aesthetically…
DEBRA: Yes, I think that’s very important too.
We need to go to break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest is Aimee Robinson, Founder and Owner of EcoBalanza. We’ll talk more with Aimee right after this.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Aimee Robinson, Founder and Owner of EcoBalanza. They focus exclusively on creating sofas and upholstered furniture made with organic certified and natural materials. And she’s at EcoBalanza.com.
Aimee, let’s talk about supply chain. Could you first explain what that is?
AIMEE ROBINSON: It’s looking at where everything is coming from that we had talked about earlier—who is building it, where they’re growing it, who’s involved in the process of actually getting all the materials to me (what I use in my products and my sofas).
And so, for me, it’s what has been very, very important over the years because I’m able to make sure that I work with people that are doing what they say they’re doing, and also to work in a way that’s as socially responsible as possible—socially and environmentally.
So, […] with the wool, like I mentioned earlier, I started working with local, small, family-owned farms. They live in the farms [inaudible 26:53] And I know them. I know what they’re doing. I know how they’re doing everything. And so then I know how the wool is washed, who washes it and who [inaudible 27:08] it.
And it’s like that with every single—in most of the products that I use, I try to go as far back as I possibly can to know from how it’s grown or raised to the finished product to the best of my faculty [inaudible 27:26].
DEBRA: It’s a wonderful thing. Here in Florida where I live, there’s not much agriculture or manufacture of anything or artisan production. But when I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, I lived out in the woods in the [00:27:46], there was a lot of agriculture going on.
I remember having the experience of—I used to buy my food from what’s called a CSA, a community-supported agriculture. And the actual organic farm, the small, organic, family-owned farm, was very close to where I lived. It was just up the hill literally. I could go there, and I could work in the farm if I wanted to. And I could harvest my own food if I wanted to or I could get the weekly basket. I knew the farmer. I knew everybody that was growing anything in my local area.
I remember, one day, we had a wonderful dinner where we invited all the local growers to come and have dinner.
And I was part of it the prep staff that was prepping the food to make the dinner. And it was just so great to see here were all our farmers and we were having a meal with all their food. One hundred percent of the food was the farmers’ food.
AIMEE ROBINSON: Wow!
DEBRA: It was fabulous! It was just such a demonstration of feeling connected from farm to table that way. My bed that I sleep on is 100% wool Shepherd’s Dream. But when I bought it, I lived like, I don’t know, 50 miles from Shepherd’s Dream and where the wool was grown. I could go visit the sheep and all these things.
So, I know what you’re talking about. It’s such a wonderful experience to know that when I’m lying on that bed, I know where the sheep were that grew that wool. And so you end up having this real connection and also knowing what exactly is going on instead of having your products sourced way on the other side of the world where anything can be happening. You don’t know anything, you don’t know the people, you don’t know what’s happening.
AIMEE ROBINSON: Yeah, exactly.
DEBRA: And so this is just one of the things that’s so wonderful about local ingredients and working with local producers besides the fact that there’s this whole concept of vernacular, of having design come out of a local place, out of the materials of a local place. I just love that, that whole idea.
So, I think you’re doing great things about how conscious you are with every aspect of these materials. And this is something that really needs to be applied to every kind of product.
AIMEE ROBINSON: Yeah, yeah. We’ll have a whole different world if we all attempted to start doing things that way.
DEBRA: Yes, I totally agree.
So Aimee, we have only about five minutes left with the show. So I want to make sure, if there’s anything else that we haven’t talked about that you want to talk about, that we get that covered.
AIMEE ROBINSON: Well, I know we were talking about the materials that are in the sofa. We were talking about the wool. So yeah, the social aspect, the environmental aspect, there’s all these. I would say this to your listeners, pay attention to that [inaudible 31:08]. And the more that people start asking, it starts creating a need and it starts pushing the world in a new direction.
So, ask, ask, ask questions about everything. Stay curious because it’s important. It’s important to be informed. It can be daunting, but it’s so fascinating to learn where things come from, how they’re done, how we can do something different and better.
And also, sometimes, it’s not so cheap. It’s expensive to do things this way. But it’s looking more long-term. It’s changing that mentality from immediate and “I want it now” to long-term. I think about the things. I plan them when I get them whether it’s food or whatever it is. It’s a long-term thing. It’s a lifestyle. If I buy clothing, if I buy whatever, it’s not something that I just switch in the next two weeks, but this is something that I’ll keep for a while like heirloom […]
DEBRA: Yeah. I have a sofa that I made way before anybody was making natural fiber sofas online. And I designed it myself. I had it upholstered and everything. And I re-made it out of an old wood frame. I don’t even know how old it is. It’s at least 15 years old. It might be 20 years old. But it looks like a new sofa still.
All I have to do is drive down the street and see all these synthetic sofas with their ripped covers and the stuffing coming out and people would put them on the side of the street for the garbage to take them away. This is not what we’re talking about with this kind of sofa. You buy this sofa and you buy it once. That’s the sofa for the rest of your life. And then, you pass it down to your children. So, by the time you look at the cost versus the life, it’s really a bargain.
AIMEE ROBINSON: Yeah, it is. That’s it. I concur.
DEBRA: Well, thank you so much, Aimee, for being with me. I’m glad that we got to finish the show this time, and there wasn’t an ice storm.
AIMEE ROBINSON: I know! Third time’s a charm is sort of like what we were saying.
DEBRA: You can go visit Aimee at EcoBalanza.com. And I invite you to go visit my website. You can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. That will take you to my website. I have much more than this radio show. I have all kinds of different departments on my website including Debra’s List which is where you can go find hundreds of websites like Aimee’s that are selling toxic-free products. Also, I have a huge question and answer blog where if you have a question about how to live toxic-free, you can ask your question, and I will answer it for free (and also, my readers will answer with their information). I have something like 3000 questions on there already.
So, I’ve got a great search engine. I’ve got a blog devoted to—100% of everything on this blog is about how you remove toxic chemicals from your body, what kind of nutrition you can use, what kind of detox products to use, even things like what foods will remove toxic chemicals from your body, what you can use to support your detox organs. All that kind of information is there.
I’ve got a bookstore that has all kinds of books about what’s toxic and what’s not. I’ve even got a food blog because we talk on there about how to prepare organic, whole, real, natural, local, seasonal foods, what to store them in and what to cook them in, so that you can have toxic-free food.
So, I’ve been doing this for over 30 years. I’ve got lots of things figured out and lots of information on my website.
And of course, we are here talking to people about this subject every day.
Also, if you have a question that you want to ask me personally, you can call me up and ask me that question. I do do paid consultations on the phone. I even go out to people’s homes or businesses and look around and tell you what’s toxic and what you can do to make your home or workspace less toxic. I can come and speak to your group. I can come and speak to your business. I can help you develop new products.
Let’s see. What else could I do? But go to my website. It’s DebraLynnDadd.com or you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and get lots and lots of information. While you’re there, you can even sign up for my free newsletter just right on the home page. You can sign up for my free newsletter, and you will get to read the first chapter of my book, Toxic Free for free. When you get the welcome email, it’ll have a link to the first chapter of my book.
Thanks for being with me. We’ll be back tomorrow.
