Water | Resources
Electrosensitivity and Smart Meters
My guest is André Fauteux, Editor and Publisher of La Maison du 21e siècle (21st-Century Housing) magazine, a Quebec-based, French trimestrial on healthy and sustainable housing which he founded in 1994. During the summer of 1988, Andre was a reporter for the Montreal Gazette daily. There he wrote about a little girl with leukemia whose parents were trying to raised $100,000 to pay for a bone marrow transplant in the US. Sadly, the effort failed and Danielle Hebert passed away. Moved by this, André began investigating the causes of leukemia and learned that pesticides and magnetic fields were suspected triggers. He has dedicated his career to seeking and communicating ways of preventing and fixing environmental diseases and disasters. In 1990-91, while writing for a housing weekly (Habitabec) and freelancing for a New Age magazine (Guide Ressources), he had the good fortune of discovering his mission by learning about Building Biology and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s Healthy Housing initiative. Andre will talk about electrosensitivity and why smart meters are making some people sick. http://maisonsaine.ca/electrosmog/
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Electrosensitivity and Smart Meters
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: André Fauteux
Date of Broadcast: February 27, 2015
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.
Even though there may be toxic chemicals in our consumer products, surrounding the environment, in the news every day, and even other dangers such as electromagnetic fields (which we’re going to be talking about today), there are things that each one of us can do to live a less toxic life, and flourish, and prosper and be happy and productive, and everything that we want to be without being affected by toxic chemicals or other dangers. We can remove them from our homes and our bodies, and feel a lot better. That’s the whole point of this show.
Today is Monday, May 27, 2013. It’s Memorial Day. And I just want to talk for a minute about Memorial Day, which was started after the Civil War. And it is to honor (and still is) and remember those men and women who defended our country in our armed forces.
I, myself, am descended from patriots who fought in the Revolutionary War. And while I’m not an official member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, my grandmother was and my great aunt was; both were members. And I traced our genealogy back to nine ancestors, who fought for freedom in our country.
And so I very much am aware of the necessities sometimes. While I very much think that we can live without or that would be fine with me, I think there are times when we need to stand up for freedom. And I am very appreciative of those men and women in the past who have stood up for the freedom in our country so that we have freedoms today to make choices like choices to not use toxic chemicals.
So today we’re going to talk about electromagnetic fields and electrosensitivity and smart meters. And my guest actually is from Canada. His name is André Fauteux, and he’s the Editor and Publisher of La Maison du 21e siècle. Now I have to say 21st Century in French. The English name of the magazine is 21st Century Housing. He’s based in Quebec, and the magazine is about healthy and sustainable housing.
Welcome, André. I’m so pleased to have you on.
ANDRÉ FAUTEUX: Hi, Debra. Thanks for your interest. Glad to be here.
DEBRA: Good. So tell us how you became interested in the field of toxic chemicals have electromagnetic fields and led you to make a whole regular magazine. And I should also say that André sends me new articles about electromagnetic sensitivity and electromagnetic fields and what’s going on around the world; multiple articles every week. And of everybody I know, he knows more about this subject than anyone. So I’m very, very interested in what he has to say today.
But tell us your story first, André.
ANDRÉ FAUTEUX: Yes. I began in my twenties when I had serious back aches. I was a reporter for the Montreal Gazette Daily and I wrote a story on a little girl who had leukemia and passed away. So I was really moved by that and wondering what causes leukemia.
So I started to speak to different doctors. I spoke to a dermatologist, who was fighting herbicide applications on lawns, Dr. June Irwin, and she told me that many cancers were linked to herbicide use; 2, 4-D was linked directly to leukemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
And so I began, actually, after my internship at the Gazette, writing for Housing Newspaper for five years. And I devote a specialty, a beat in healthy and sustainable housing, and speaking to a lot of architects and engineers, but also chemists, toxicologists and physicians.
I became a specialist ever since 1990, even focusing on all the home pollutants. And I did link it also to myself, my own back aches, and a moderate level also of food sensitivities. I linked them to the fact that I did a lot of painting as a teenager – you know, with a roller over my head and I was just in my shorts. [Inaudible 00:05:44] a whole, little cloud all of my body. So I had to wash my body a few times with bar soap.
So a couple of years later, when I began writing a lot about multiple chemical sensitivity, doctors told me, “For sure that was not very good for your health.”
DEBRA: I had a similar experience where before I knew anything about chemical sensitivity or being poisoned by toxic chemicals, I was very interested in interior design. And so whenever I had the opportunity, I was always doing things like painting.
But one day, I had a new boyfriend and he had a renovated house in Berkeley, California; a beautiful, old house, where the bathroom had been not well-constructed and didn’t have any tile. And the shower was painted concrete. And every time I would take a shower in this little, tiny cubicle, I would get paint chips all over my body because the paint was peeling.
And so one day I said, “I’m just going to take all these layers and layers of paint off.”
And really it was not bigger than three-by-three feet.
ANDRÉ FAUTEUX: Did you know if it was lead paint?
DEBRA: Well, I didn’t know it was lead paint but here’s even worse, I took the most toxic paint stripper. I think it was called Thompson’s or something. And I applied it all over this little space. And then I took a single razor blade, and I stood there for hours scraping that paint off the walls, breathing in all the fumes. And my naked body absorbing them.
That was not the smartest thing I ever did. But I didn’t know. I didn’t know. And I’m sure that people still do things like that all the time.
ANDRÉ FAUTEUX: Of course.
DEBRA: Go on with your story.
ANDRÉ FAUTEUX: Well that’s why I’ve been writing for 20 years about prevention and solution because people don’t know.
DEBRA: That’s right. That’s why I do it too.
ANDRÉ FAUTEUX: What I learned also is that it could be chemicals, it could be mold or electric shock; all sorts of shock to your nervous system that make you chemically, and even electromagnetically sensitive. It’s happened with mold and people getting shocks; a telephone, how do you say this? Receptionist. An earpiece? They get a shock in their ear?
A lady writing to me today that she got lightning bolt spread in her ear and became electro-sensitive because of that.
And the issue is interesting for many years because it turns out that in Quebec, we have the highest levels, among the highest in the world, levels of exposure to 60-hertz magnetic field. Those are the fields caused by domestic electricity; all in your household wiring and in power lines. And the current is when you turn on an appliance. You get a magnetic field when a current is circulating.
And in Quebec, 70% of our homes are heated with electricity. So we have very, very high magnetic field levels.
And it turns out, I did investigations and we also happen to have the highest rates of cancer for children, and leukemia, brain and breast cancer, with the general population. And those are all suspected to be linked to magnetic fields, electric and magnetic fields. It’s a big issue here in Quebec.
DEBRA: Sounds like it is.
So I would like to know, could you just explain, very simply, because we have 45 seconds until the break, about what are EMFs? Let’s just start with that.
ANDRÉ FAUTEUX: Well that’s when the current, when you turn on an appliance, you get [inaudible 00:10:01] or current, and that’s a magnetic field. And when it only has voltage or tension that’s an electric field. Even though your appliance is turned off, you still have electric field. Those are also suspected to be linked to leukemia and allergies.
So that’s why it’s good at night to, some people are very sensitive, they shut off all the power in their bedroom even at the main breaker; even the electrical tension, so they won’t have also electric fields, not only magnetic fields.
DEBRA: We’ll talk more about electromagnetic fields, how they can affect your health, smart meters and all kinds of related things with André Fauteux, Editor and Publisher of the 21st Century Housing Magazine.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio.
=COMMERCIAL BREAK=
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Okay, André, back to you. Now, explain what electrosensitivity is.
ANDRÉ FAUTEUX: Well, much like chemical sensitivity, some people react to very, very low doses of electric and magnetic fields that most people don’t react to. And surveys in Europe have shown, national surveys in several countries have shown that the percentage of people saying they are electro-sensitive went from under 1 per cent around 1994 in Sweden, to around 10 per cent in several countries; even up to 13 per cent in Germany, around 2004. And Scandivania, in 2000, it was the first region in the world where at least 50 per cent of people used a cell phone daily. And that’s where most countries, northern countries, where most people start saying they’re electro-sensitive because it’s really toxic overload.
And what happens is that people will get headaches, mostly, sleeping problems, digestive problems, even mood disorders. And it goes all the way down to your skin burning and having candidiasism, noise in your ear and all of that.
So for some people it can get very, very devastating. And what’s very, very sad is that doctors often send them to psychiatry. They say they’re depressed.
And we had a conference in Montreal with Professor [inaudible 00:16:04] from Ontario, and Dr. Roy Fox from Halifax, Nova Scotia, who treat people with environmental illnesses. And they both confirmed that it’s really not psychosomatic and if the first treatment is giving them an antidepressant, it can actually make their condition worse.
DEBRA: I would think so. Many years ago I when I first started studying EMFs, I wouldn’t call myself an expert in EMFs by any means, but it seemed to relate to being an environmental exposure such as toxic chemicals and environmental exposure that make us sick. So I have learned something about it.
I don’t consider myself to be electro-sensitive but it is real to me that people could be electrically sensitive.
The thing that was most interesting to me about is that our bodies have electromagnetic fields, as part of their natural construction – and the Earth does as well. And that the way it’s designed is that our bodies are supposed to be picking up that same vibration from the earth and that they entrain to be the same.
Our bodies are supposed to have the same vibration as the environment. But what ends up happening with all these electromagnetic devices, including just wires in our walls, is that they vibrate at a different rate. And to me, anything that interrupts the natural connection between the environment and our bodies or even our bodies and the cosmos; however the cosmos may be affecting us here on earth.
Whatever interrupts that natural connection is not good for our health. If it’s logically not good for our health then that’s the way it looks to me.
ANDRÉ FAUTEUX: Absolutely. I agree with you. Life on earth developed with the direct current from the universe and the earth, and that comes and goes in one direction. And the synthetic electricity we produce, it changes direction or polarities 60 times per second, if you take 60-hertz, domestic electricity. But then for radio waves and microwaves, they go in the kilohertz and megahertz and the gigahertz. So up to billions of times per second, it’s vibrating, changing polarities. And all the wireless devices now, they pulse this, which means that it’s on and off thousands of times, millions of times, or billions of times per second.
Now, your self are all electric; our whole body is electric, and we were not trained to be compatible with this power. So it’s over time, the chronic exposure daily, and especially all night long, you want to really shut off power in your home, and especially avoid wireless devices at night because that’s one when your body needs to recover.
For instance, you have a hormone called melatonin, which is a potent anti-cancer agent, and your brain starts producing it. There’s a gland in your brain that produces that beginning at 9:00 o’clock at night. So ideally, you should be in pitch black, pitch dark, total darkness in your bedroom starting at 9:00 o’clock at night and all night long.
So many people wear masks because if you want to fight disease and repair your DNA breaks, which are normal during the day (we all have some damage to our DNA). But the problem is people work at night. They have light in their eyes or also magnetic fields have the same impact. They stop the production of melatonin. That’s really worrisome.
I’d like to tell you if you have a minute. There’s a French oncologist in Paris that I spoke to. And he’s got a wonderful research. He’s got about 500 electro-sensitive patients and they did brain scans and blood tests. And what they found is that people with elecrosensitivities, they have problems with blood circulation in their brain. They also have higher histamine levels like an allergic reaction. And also very high stress protein.
And we also know that electromagnetic fields will open the blood brain barrier. That’s a filter that prevents pollutants from entering your brain. When you’re exposed to these fields, mercury and other pollutants can go directly in your brain and harm it.
Now, we know there are more and more brain tumors developing in the wireless era.
DEBRA: That’s so interesting about how the electromagnetics actually make toxic chemicals more toxic. We’ll talk more about that and smart meters and everything else about electrosensitivity with André Fauteux after the break. He’s the Publisher of the magazine, 21st Century Housing from Canada. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio.
=COMMERCIAL BREAK=
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and I’m here today with my guest, André Fauteux. André, would you say the name of your magazine in French?
ANDRÉ FAUTEUX: La Maison du 21e siècle, which is the 21st Century Housing.
DEBRA: Thank you. I took a little French but I still can’t read it and pronounce it. I can say bonjour and I can order a little bit [inaudible 00:26:49].
ANDRÉ FAUTEUX: Luckily, I grew up in an English neighborhood.
DEBRA: Okay, so we were talking about electrosensitivities and how they can make your ears hurt. What did you say again about that it opens the blood brain barriers so that then toxic chemicals can get through more easily?
ANDRÉ FAUTEUX: Yes, exactly. Henry [inaudible 00:27:18] is a scientist from University of Washington who studied I believe with a few scientists. That’s worrisome. As I was saying, it’s a chronic exposure. Some alternative health devices can help you with specific low frequency electrical treatment but being exposed all the time, of course, those are one of the impacts. The toxins going to the brain. I would also like to mention heart problems, diabetes and different neurological disorders, including multiple sclerosis.
People who reduce their exposure to EMFs, they feel better. That’s what Dr. Fox somehow was telling us this week. I’ve been giving testimonials for 20 years now. But to that effect, there are a lot of things that we can do to reduce our exposure.
DEBRA: So I’m always telling people, and I think that’s probably the logic, those on the same track as they work with toxics, is if people start out by saying, “Well, what’s the point of me doing anything if I’m not sick? If I’m not feeling the symptoms?”
And I know at first, myself, and I know other people too, they look for the toxic chemicals that they are physically reacting to (what toxic chemical gives me a headache, for example).
ANDRÉ FAUTEUX: The two things I can answer to that, sometimes you’re not sick but you’re just on the verge of getting sick and you don’t know it. Or you have symptoms that you’re not relating to chemicals or to EMFs or both.
That’s the case for many, many people with chronic pain and chronic diseases. And the electrosensitivity, as I’ve said, every year it’s going up. In the last decade, the exposure to radiofrequency in microwaves, from wireless devices exploded. It’s millions of times higher; just the ambient exposure.
If you live in a city, you’re well above levels of exposure that have biological impacts. They’re not necessarily making you sick but they have the potential to make you sick. They’ll affect the transport of calcium; they’ll affect your big DNA. Different things are happening in your body and you don’t know. But you’re preparing cancers and other diseases.
And that’s well-documented with thousands and thousands of studies since the 1940s because the military are very aware of the effects of microwaves. They’ve been using them as non-lethal weapons for many, many years.
DEBRA: I’m sitting here scribbling more and more questions when you talk. I’m scribbling down questions to ask you. But I know that you wanted to talk about smart meters, specifically. So let’s talk about that.
ANDRÉ FAUTEUX: Well that’s it. Again, it’s maybe 5 or 10 per cent of people that we expect will get sick from them if they’re pretty close to the smart meters. These are meters, in that your consumption data to the utility, wirelessly, using microwaves.
And around the world, there’s a neurosurgeon in Australia, Vini Khurana. His website is BrainSurgery.us but he’s in Australia, and he says that most complaints are from people living or spending a lot of time 10 feet or less from a smart meter; on your bedroom, the wall outside, because it’ll go through materials. And these are pulsing microwaves; thousands of times a day. And people get the typical electrosensitivity symptoms of headaches and sleep problems and what have you.
So it’s not everyone that is reacting but already, thousands of people are. And what the utilities will tell you is, no, no. It’s not dangerous because the meter ignitions are thousands of times below those of a cordless phone or a cell phone or a cell tower.
But there are two answers to that. One is you can choose to live far away from a cell tower. You should be at least 500 meters from one. You could choose also not to use a cordless or cell phone because you are sensitive or you don’t want to become sensitive. And the other thing is that if you take utilities, they just talk about your average, daily dose with a smart meter. That’s not what’s harming people. It’s the thousands of pulses which just last a fraction of a second, which your body is not adapting too. Those thousands are often, at least once or twice per minute, you get these peak power ignitions. They are making people sick.
So more and more people are realizing this. They just don’t want one of those meters and utilities and governments are imposing them. Sometimes people obtain the right to opt out, but you have to pay. Here in Quebec, they are asking people that they pay $17 per month to opt out and have a non-emitting meter.
That means they’re taxing you to be healthy; to protect your health. To protect your life, you are going to pay 17-bucks a month for the rest of your life to be healthy.
So I’m pretty confident that it’s going to go to Court or a Human Rights Tribunal beucase those are really unfair taxes.
DEBRA: It is unfair taxes. But also, we should have the average world be toxic or dangerous, and then how to pay extra money to not have that. There should be an ethic which says, “What we do in our world support life.” Rather than having an ethic that goes, “It doesn’t matter what we do to support life as long as we’re making money,” which I think is probably the way businesses think right now.
And I’m not saying 100% of the instances. And certainly, there are businesses that are paying more attention. It’s just like this rampant disregard of life is the norm, is just amazing to me.
ANDRÉ FAUTEUX: Yes. I agree with you. I don’t want to sound cynical but the reality of our world is business before prevention. Governments, civil servants, our elected officials, the industry, they know that chemical pollutants and electromagnetic pollution and chronic exposure are making people sick, and that we could save billions of dollars in health cost if we did prevention. But because they don’t have the smoking gun to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, they don’t want to apply what’s called precautionary principle, which says that if you have reasonable doubt, if most experts say it’s probably dangerous, then we should reduce our exposure.
Like we did in Quebec, we banned our herbicide.
DEBRA: Good for you.
ANDRÉ FAUTEUX: We have a law that went to Supreme Court and won. And others have followed too. Even though after that, the government had to compensate I think [inaudible 00:34:24] and that’s okay. The politician said, “Okay, we’re willing to compensate for your loss of business but we’re going to protect public health, and especially children’s health.”
DEBRA: Yay! That’s what I like to hear. All right, we’re going to talk more after the break with André Fauteux from Quebec. He’s the Editor and Publisher of 21st Century Housing Magazine. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world.
=COMMERCIAL BREAK=
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is André Fauteux, Editor and Publisher of 21st Century Housing.
André, I was going to give your URL. It’s a Canadian website and so it’s in French, of course. MaisonSaine, is that right?
ANDRÉ FAUTEUX: Yes. We have English articles for your listeners on it.
DEBRA: Yes, there are some of those articles. I found them. But I am encouraging André to have more English articles. And I suggested to him that he put one of those little translators on his website so that we can read more of the articles.
I’m going to spell it for our English-speaking listeners. It’s M-A-I-S-O-N S-A-I-N-E.ca.
And the easiest way to get there is to go to my website, ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and you’ll see it there. You can just click right through on the link.
So here’s my burning question, and we’ll actually get to this one. So I’m mostly concerned. I think if there is one thing that has stood out for me in everything that you said today, is really, the fact that exposure to electromagnetic fields can make toxic chemicals more toxic because it makes your body more able to absorb the toxic chemicals. And so even if somebody had no concern about EMG at all, but is concerned about toxic chemicals, that would be a reason to protect one’s self; take the steps to protect one’s self from EMFs.
And I know that I pay attention to EMFs. I had a bell inspection where I actually have a whole team of bell biologists-in-training and take measurements of all kinds of things. And they located the strongest EMFs switch in my house where the cordless phone was, which immediately went in the trash.
And I also had a…
ANDRÉ FAUTEUX: I did that too.
DEBRA: …battery back-up that was sitting under my desk. And I’m literally sitting on top of the battery back-up. And that was the next thing that went in the trash.
Otherwise, my levels of EMFs in the house were pretty good. And even though I have the 27-inch screen on my computer, by the time I am sitting two feet away from it, the EMFs are practically nothing.
So I got rid of the biggest things and I also have a little thing, a Pong case for my cell phone, but I don’t don’t put it up against my head anymore. I only use the speaker phone. And I know some people have gotten rid of their landlines entirely. I still have my landline, I still use it. And I only use my cell phone when I absolutely need to use my cell phone. I just carry for emergencies or if people need to reach me.
So I’m not on a cellphone all day long since I saw that photo which shows how far the radiation reaches into your brain, [inaudible 00:42:10] your whole head.
So I don’t even put my cell phone near my head, but what I feel like I’m powerless to do anything about is the ambient level of all these wireless, WiFi, everything. Even in my own house, the WiFi from neighboring houses are in my house. And all those towers, you name it, we’re just being zapped every minute of every day. And I don’t know what to do about that.
ANDRÉ FAUTEUX: Well, there are a lot of things we can do. I did a one-hour interview with Professor [inaudible 00:42:54] who is a [inaudible 00:42:57] toxicologist specializing in EMFs for 13 years now. She’s got 10 papers she actually published with her own money. It’s very hard to get funding for these scientists. And she found the cordless deck phones relate to heart problems and also the blood sugar levels. I was mentioning all of that. She is also working with multiple sclerosis people.
So you can look on my website for this long article with 12 ways of reducing exposure. And indeed, some people have no choice but to move because their neighbors’ WiFi, what have you, are going through the walls. Some of them will put aluminum to block the waves.
That’s true. That’s the old bounce back, but the old bounce back can concentrate. You’ll shoot it back in your neighbor’s face. Or if you have aluminum in your house and you’re using a wireless device, then it’s going to bounce back all over and concentrated in the room. So you have to be conscious of that.
One of the building biologists I speak to, who is an expert Sal LaDuca – he recommends using concrete cement products. Those are better at shielding and they won’t reflect the microwave.
Well, that’s one way of doing it.
The first thing you want to do is keep a distance. The AM and FM radio antennas, they could be a couple of kilometers away, a couple of miles away. The most sensitive people can be affected. Even a kilometer, just under a mile, some people feel the cell phone antenna. And power lines usually, you want to keep at least 500 meters away. I’m talking metric here, in Canada. But I think you get the proportion.
In your house, usually three feet away, most appliances are okay, but not the wireless. The wireless, they could be 500 or a thousand feet. Your cordless phone goes that far distant than the smart meters. It will be tens or hundreds or thousands of kilometers. They’re all going to talk to each other through a mesh grid, and the utilities put routers also on buildings and telephone poles.
So the higher density population, unfortunately, are getting more and more exposure. So more and more people are having to move to low density rural areas. And that goes against the grain of fighting climate change. You want to densify cities to have less car travel and burn less gas. It’s getting very hard if you want to densify urban development but on the other hand, you’ve got antennas on buildings making people sick.
DEBRA: Sometimes I feel we should just build ourselves a planet and start over and re-design intelligently. And I would like to see somebody build an area, a dense area, out of healthy materials with no EMFs and organic gardens all around. And everybody can walk everywhere.
Exactly half of all of this technology, but then you say, “Well, go find a spot on earth where all these things come together.” And it doesn’t exist. [cross-talking]
ANDRÉ FAUTEUX: They’re starting to build, I forgot where it is. In Virginia, I think, you have the most powerful, actually, the cleanest place in the US for EMFs because there’s an astronomy center, National Astronomy Center, I think in West Virginia. And people are building there because there is no radiofrequency, microwave interference there. Or else, they couldn’t monitor the outer space from that center.
DEBRA: That’s interesting. I didn’t know that.
ANDRÉ FAUTEUX: I forgot what it’s called. But in Europe, they’re building these White Zones, they call them, where there are no EMFs. And it’s true. You mentioned that to detoxify, some scientists have found that if you’re constantly exposed to EMFs, for instance, with autistic children, they found that they could help detoxify, get rid of their heavy metals, first by removing them from electromagnetic radiation.
So that’s the hope is that you want to reduce. Some people need to really [inaudible 00:47:38] settings. But most people, the first you just want to do is to reduce or break down to zero at least overnight when you’re sleeping. Protect yourself from any exposure. And of course, you need to have clean air, clean water, clean food to help you detox.
And there are several different techniques. Also what you want to do is to calm your brain, your nervous system, after getting poisoned with pesticides or lightning bolts or very high emission from power lines and antennas. Your nervous system, if you become electro-sensitive, it’s constantly in a fight or flight reaction.
Just that in itself is really obnoxious. And if you’re also someone who is working too hard, who is not sleeping enough, who is too emotional, you’re really not helping yourself.
So you can’t just blame the outside and blame others for the pollution. You have to do both things. You have to reduce your exposure but you also have to strengthen your immune system and also your nervous system, be it with meditation, Heart Math. Have you talked about the Heart Math Institute? It’s a kind of biofeedback that you do. You have it on your computer and you see how your heart rhythm, you get it coordinated with your breathing. And that really helps your brain waves to calm down.
And that’s part of curing one’s self from electrosensitivity according to Dr. Fox in Halifax. You really need to stop being in that fight or flight constant brain stress.
DEBRA: Well, this has been so interesting. Unfortunately, our time is up. And again, we’ve been talking with André Fauteux, Editor and Publisher at 21st Century Housing. Go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and next to his description of this show, you can go to his website where he has some articles in French and English. And that’s it for today for Toxic Free Talk Radio. Come back tomorrow to hear more about how you can thrive in a toxic world.
Safe Sneakers?
Question from Beth
I am looking for safe sneakers for myself and my toddler. Do you know of any specific brands that are are flame retardant free, polyurethane foam free, etc.? Do you think Aegis is safe and/or X-static (alternative to triclosan) as many sneakers are treated with these agents? May I ask what brands of shoes you wear? I’m just looking for the best options and realize that I may not find a perfect pair.
Thanks.
Debra’s Answer
I’m not sure you are going to find sneakers with these specifications. I’m looking at a pair or “organic cotton sneakers” online and they still have polyurethane foam padding and the soles are made from recycled rubber tires (which emit many toxic chemicals)
My favorite cotton shoes are espadrilles. I have no idea what they might be treated with, but they are made from very simple materials and I’ve never had a problem with them. Here’s the type I’m talking about : Asos Espadrilles. You can see in the photo they have cotton tops, some kind of natural rope sole, with some rubber.
I have a pair of leather sneakers I wear on vacations when I need a closed toe walking shoe. These are vegetable-tanned leather from Camper. Very sustainable company. Here’s one similar to the style I have: www.camper.com
But every day I wear my leather Mefisto sandals: www.mephistowebstore.com. I can do that here in Florida. I love these. I just buy one pair at a time and wear them until they wear out and buy another. They just are the most comfortable, least toxic shoe I’ve found for my climate. If I lived in San Francisco, I’d wear my Camper sneakers every day. I love those too.
Toxic Chemicals in Wood Pallets?
Question from Deborah
Are there toxins in wood pallets? I’m thinking of making a pallet garden using some vegetable plants. Thank you. Deborah
Debra’s Answer
Yes, there are toxins of various kinds in pallets. However, it depends on the pallet.
Here are some articles with points to consider about pallets:
How to Determine if a Wood Pallet is Safe for Use
Apartment Therapy: Upcycled Wooden Pallets: Green Resource of Toxic Trend? discusses various different types of health concerns associated with pallets
And just for interest sake: Here’s a copy of a historical document from 1959 about why pallets SHOULD be treated with preservatives, written at a time when they were not. They recommend treating with chlordane and DDT, pentachlorophenol and copper napthenate, all very toxic. DDT has been banned since. Preservatives for Wood Pallets
Mineral Deodorizer Bags for Closets
Question from D. Carlsle
Do you recommend mineral deodorizer bags to eliminate odors in closets? I used some a while ago and forgot the brand. What do you recommend?
Debra’s Answer
I’m assuming you are referring to the mineral zeolite for removing odors. Yes, those are fine.
There are many places to buy them (just google “zeolite odor removing granules”).
Here’s a link to the zeolite page on Nirvana Safe Haven, run by a woman with MCS, who is very knowledgeable about removing odors: http://www.nontoxic.com/zeoliteodor/zeoliteodorcontrol.html
Body Friendly Natural Furniture
My guest is Patrick Clark from Carolina Morning. Patrick has been researching and writing about design, nutrition, deep ecology, sleep, metabolism, minimalism and somatics for over 20 years. His unconventional approach to increasing wellness and energy through an integrated system uses nature, metabolism, and consciousness as the starting point of design. Patrick got into his eclectic line of work from a personal desire to heal from illness. He ‘brought himself back from the dead’ after experiencing two decades of declining health and trying diets and modalities that failed miserably. He found that diet alone was not the answer. The answer came in multiple parts: environment, nutrition, sleep, and exercise. Now, after ten years of putting together a unique protocol based on cutting edge research, he has invented a line of revolutionary ‘body friendly’ furniture as well as highly effective, nutrient dense, anti-oxidant rich recipes and wellness formulas. Patrick has a certificate in Permaculture Design as well as Outdoor Leadership from the Wilderness Education Association. We’ll talk about Patrick’s cutting edge viewpoint for health and how he translated what he learned into products we use every day. www.paleoalltheway.com/wool-sleeping-bag
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Body Friendly Natural Furniture
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Patrick Clark
Date of Broadcast: May 23, 2013
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. Even though there are many toxic chemicals around in the environment and in consumer products that we use every day, we don’t have to be exposed to them. We don’t have to get sick from them. We don’t have to not think clearly because of them.
We can live healthy happy productive lives because there are many, many things that are not toxic.
Today, we’re going to be talking about Body Friendly Natural Furniture made out of natural materials but also fitted particularly to the health of your body.
But before we do that, I want to tell you about a video I saw. It’s an incredible video. It’s about a man in the smoky mountains I think who, after many heart surgeries, gave up taking his drugs and spent his money for his prescription drugs for the many illnesses that he had, and spent the money instead on harmonicas which he distributed to local schools along with harmonica lessons because they didn’t have a music program as part of their budget I guess. I remember when I was a child, we had music programs but they got cut all over the place.
So, when after the first month, he didn’t die because he didn’t take his drugs. The next month, he spent the money he would’ve spent on prescription drugs on more harmonicas—and the next month, and the next month, and the next month.
And this video is about what happened. It just is incredibly wonderful. I mean, me being a musician, it particularly speaks to me. But it really shows that there are many things in life that we can do that are not toxic and are even actually beyond just looking at the material side of life that we can be doing all kinds of things to make the world a better place by giving of ourselves.
And the way to find those, I put it on my website. Just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. Across the top, there’s a link to the right where it says “Living as Nature.” And then scroll down that page, it’s number two right down. Click on the video and watch it. It will just make your day.
I particularly wanted to point this video out today because my guest, Patrick Clark from Carolina Morning, is very nature-oriented. And he really did take a look at how nature works and what’s going on with the natural laws of the planet and our bodies and everything in order to put together the product that he offers.
So welcome to the show Patrick.
PATRICK CLARK: Thank you, Debra. It’s wonderful to be here.
DEBRA: Thank you. And you’re there near Ashville, right?
PATRICK CLARK: Yes. It’s Ashville, North Carolina.
DEBRA: It’s so beautiful there, so beautiful.
PATRICK CLARK: Yes, it is, especially today.
DEBRA: I can imagine.
Now, to start, tell us your story about how you went from probably—well, maybe not, an average person to someone who has such a different view point than our industrial viewpoint and how that’s changed your life?
PATRICK CLARK: Yes. Well, I never was an average person. I started out in life wandering around the trails behind my house and the […] valley near the Great Smoky Mountains, just kind of playing with things. I built little shelters and would go around. I was out in nature.
It was really hard to put me into school. I rebelled like as much as anyone possibly could. I ended up going to a school. I came out of school—college and everything—and I still haven’t changed. I still liked what I liked and things still didn’t feel right to me about how we were being forced to live a certain life that was uncomfortable. It seem to be stifling something I might call ‘life energy’.
So I just ended up not even thinking what I was doing. But what I always did, I just kept doing. I just kept tinkering with my environment. I wasn’t working in office settings. I would stack things up a certain way, and prop things up different ways until I felt like it was right. I just kept doing that. Until eventually, it ended up in the concept of Body Friendly Furniture.
DEBRA: Well, tell us about—you told me that you brought yourself back from the dead after surrendering to decades of declining health. Tell us more about what you went through and what you found started to work.
PATRICK CLARK: Yes. And that is like a slightly different subject. But since everything is really extremely connected, it’s good to talk about. I had I think what I call the dark night of the body.
DEBRA: I like that.
PATRICK CLARK: And I see that in people. It’s almost how we get to you, into your paradigm here, Debra. It’s like until it hits us and we get sick, we don’t really believe people.
DEBRA: Mm-hmmm…
PATRICK CLARK: That it’s just hard to believe that people are getting sick from things you can’t see. So, I ended up becoming toxic because of course no one even used that word back then. And there wasn’t even the concept of ‘green building’ and all those kinds of things. So I ended up toxic, and chronic fatigue and multiple chemical sensitivities.
I guess, in a way, that led up to part of some of my ideas about furniture because I needed to find some way of resting, being able to rest the body and recuperate and restore energy while I was working.
DEBRA: So what was the first thing that you tried when you wanted to get better? And what were some of the sentiments that you had?
PATRICK CLARK: It was being fatigued and just having brain fog.
DEBRA: Yes.
PATRICK CLARK: Yes, and just depleted where you get up and—I mean part of it was the acute part where I could not even get out of bed. And that’s…
DEBRA: I know what that’s like because I went through that too.
PATRICK CLARK: Yes, exactly. And then that led to eventually moving out of that place that was extremely toxic and then actually building a very tiny house because it was really impossible to find a clean place at that time.
DEBRA: Yes.
PATRICK CLARK: And part of the time was, like you, living in a tent outside for periods and things like that.
So, yeah, it ended up living I had this new environment of a tiny place, a tiny house, very tiny. And it was so tiny, there wasn’t room for furniture. And I started like re-thinking furniture in the terms of small space, multi-use body-friendly and Feng Shui.
DEBRA: I know what Feng Shui is. But I’m sure some of my listeners don’t. So explain what Feng Shui is.
PATRICK CLARK: Feng Shui is it’s the art of placement. It’s a Chinese art, Asian and ancient science art of placement, so that things are arranged the most auspiciously for energy-flow.
DEBRA: Give an example of what you will do to the entrance of the house for Feng Shui.
PATRICK CLARK: Well, for example like you wouldn’t have clutter. And you would make the entrance be extremely obvious that this is the entrance. Make it stand out as an entrance. Make it real obvious, so that let’s just say the word energy can flow through in and out easily.
DEBRA: Mm-hmmm…
PATRICK CLARK: And clutter is one of the things that Feng Shui is really down on. Western Culture is like a nightmare for Feng Shui. That’s why minimalism and small spaces are like already halfway there as far as Feng Shui because you can’t have clutter.
DEBRA: That’s right. And I think that’s really hard for people nevertheless.
PATRICK CLARK: Yes.
DEBRA: We need to take a break. We’ll be back after this message and talk more about Body Friendly Furniture. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. We’re talking with Patrick Clark from Carolina Morning. And you can go to his website at BodyFriendlyFurniture.com.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And we’re here with Patrick Clark from Carolina Morning talking about Body Friendly Natural Furniture.
Patrick, before we talk about your furniture, tell us about some of the toxic chemicals that may be encountered in furniture that would be making people sick. Why should they be interested in yours and not just go down to the local furniture store?
PATRICK CLARK: Because there are literally hundreds of chemicals in just about anything that you buy, touch, or look at right now in our environment—formaldehyde, PBDE’s, flame retardant chemicals, glues, adhesives, nylon itself is toxic—it’s just a chemical soup. And if you are going to do the first step to health, I would recommend doing a complete overhaul of your indoor environment.
DEBRA: I recommend that too. I’ve said on other shows that I got to a point where it just became clear to me that it was kind of your social study of chemicals, that what I needed to do was just make this quantum leave out of the industrial world.
PATRICK CLARK: Yes, exactly, because it’s overwhelming. It doesn’t matter. A poison is a poison at one point. You realize that.
DEBRA: Yes. And so I can see in your work that you’ve come to a similar realization that I didn’t see. You just need to look to nature and see what you find there.
So, tell us. When you looked at nature, what did you find? What are the materials that you used that are supportive to life?
PATRICK CLARK: Yes, that’s right. We look at nature because—I call it non-synthetic materials. What we ended up finding out that the available materials are cotton, buckwheat wholes, kapok (which is a seed from the kapok tree from the Amazon) and…
DEBRA: It’s very fluffy for those of you who don’t knw.
PATRICK CLARK: Fluffy, it’s a downing material, yeah.
DEBRA: Kapok, it’s really downing and fluffy. And it doesn’t compress like cotton.
PATRICK CLARK: Exactly! And wool. So combining with those four things, that’s what we found made the best combination.
DEBRA: Good! And then you also use wood, solid wood.
PATRICK CLARK: Yes. We have solid wood for our bed frame system. That’s popular from the Eastern United States right near us. And then we have some of our furniture (not the bedding, but the desk and chairs) made from—it’s called Madex M-A-D-E-X. And it is a Forest Stewardship Council certified non-toxic medium density fiber cord.
DEBRA: And do you know what’s in Madex?
PATRICK CLARK: It is from 100% recycled like saw-dust and some kind of adhesive that’s non-formaldehyde. That’s non-toxic.
DEBRA: Yes. I’m familiar with Madex. And it’s a pretty non-toxic thing.
PATRICK CLARK: Yes.
DEBRA: Yes. Okay. So could you…
PATRICK CLARK: I would…
DEBRA: Go ahead.
PATRICK CLARK: I think I’ll just throw in about the finish. We have a really nice finish too that is a whey-based Vermont Natural Coatings and…
DEBRA: I love Vermont Natural Coating!
PATRICK CLARK: Oh cool. Yehey!
And the other thing about it is we add another dimension to it. It’s a magic element that adds some health enhancing qualities that’s called EM—it’s an EM ceramic powder. I’ll talk about that later, but it’s a really nice material.
DEBRA: I didn’t know that you could mix it with—well, I’m slightly familiar with it. But that’s interesting that you could mix it with the finish. And we can talk about that later.
So, I know that you’ve put different modalities together so that you have a basic philosophy that you’re working throughout from. So could you just explain that so that we know what your viewpoint is?
PATRICK CLARK: Yes. It started with kind of an instinctual feeling like “something’s wrong here.” And as I went to work wherever, in different settings, it was always like, “Something’s wrong here. I just don’t feel alive. I don’t really want to be here.” And as I did research, there’s some definite physical problems issues with sedentary lifestyle. And they had not been solved.
In fact, they had barely been even mentioned at the time I started the research. And a sedentary lifestyle, it also has another name (or maybe several). One of them is called ‘office illness’ and ‘metabolic syndrome.’ And it has a lot of—mostly with metabolism and alignment and circulation and breathing. It crunches our body into a shape that it’s not supposed to be in. It reduces the amount of oxygen that you can bring into your lungs. It also causes chronic back pain and leading to serious back issues.
And just to show you what a scale we’re talking about, the back pain (an undefinable back pain) is the second leading cause of people missing work.
DEBRA: I didn’t know that, but I’m not surprised.
PATRICK CLARK: And the only other thing is the common cold. And there’s $4 billion spent on the back pain industry, and I don’t even think they include the chiropractor and massage that they may not be associating with a sedentary lifestyle.
DEBRA: Yes. Well, I can see that you’re looking at like if we were not in an industrial world, we would be out in nature walking around all the time. We would probably be walking from place to place instead of riding in a car. We would be gathering our food, and we would be hunting. We would be carrying logs for fire, all these things would be an extremely physical kind of life.
PATRICK CLARK: Yes.
DEBRA: And now we have a very sedentary life where we’re sitting all day, and then we go pay for a gym membership and drive to an air-conditioned building where we have machines exercise for us.
PATRICK CLARK: Yes, exactly.
DEBRA: That does not make sense.
PATRICK CLARK: It’s not a good design, is it?
DEBRA: It’s not a good design. Well, we’re going to take another break. And we’ll be back with Patrick Clark from Carolina Morning after this. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And we’re here with Patrick Clark from Carolina Morning. His website is BodyFriendlyFurniture.com. He’s going to tell us—what is Body Friendly Furniture, Patrick?
PATRICK CLARK: Yes. Good question. It is furniture that encourages movement. It gets you to move and it alternates active positions where you’re actually exercising with passive positions where you’re resting and restoring your energy.
DEBRA: Well, I’m not sure what that looks like. Let me see an example of how that would be.
PATRICK CLARK: Good question.
DEBRA: I can’t imagine sitting in a chair exercising.
PATRICK CLARK: Yes. It’s a new concept. Well, active sitting is actually exercise. So active sitting, you probably know—I mean you may not know what that is.
DEBRA: I have no idea what active sitting is.
PATRICK CLARK: Okay, alright! Well, that is…
DEBRA: All of this is new. You’ve invented this new thing.
PATRICK CLARK: Yes. We will start there. Okay, so…
DEBRA: We have no memories to draw upon.
PATRICK CLARK: Okay. So you know the idea is you mentioned about the hunter/gatherer type lifestyle where we kind of have this movement, constant movement, resting movement, hunting or whatever. THe idea is to create a lifestyle, something like that.
And the lifestyle is more important than the actual furniture. But you need furniture that can support that kind of lifestyle. So standing is actually an option. If you can somehow work while you stand, then you can do same thing while you’re standing than you can sitting on a desk.
DEBRA: You know, let’s just stop right there. Because that is I think a revolutionary concept. I sit at my desk all day long.
And I can’t imagine standing up all day long.
PATRICK CLARK: Yes.
DEBRA: And maybe it’s because my body is too weak from all these sitting.
PATRICK CLARK: Yes. No, I mean it is a process. And that’s one of the first things people see that they say, “Wait a minute.
I don’t know about standing—maybe for a little while. But all day? I don’t know.”
Well, that’s the whole point. The whole point is movement.
You’re right. If you stood all day, it wouldn’t probably be a good idea. So my furniture puts you from active type positions into passive positions, so that you can get some circulation and oxygen into your lungs and energy flowing. And then, when you have had enough of that, you can go into the passive position and then you restore your energy. But you need to do it in a way that your body is in alignment.
DEBRA: Oh!
DEBRA: I think I’m starting to get it. I sit in a chair all day long that is just a regular upright chair with a pedal on it. It’s a solid wood chair with a pedal on it (and a wooden desk). I think it’s at the right height. I can just put my arms comfortably bent on the desk and sit here and type.
And I think that the listeners should go to your website, BodyFriendlyFurniture.com and look at the pictures. You have a girl sitting in a reclining position with pedals all around, typing on her laptop. Now, I have a big 27-inch screen on my computer, so it needs to have a base. But I can imagine, if I start thinking about all the tasks that I do during the day, when I’m sitting for example needing to be upright when I’m typing, that’s one position. But when I’m speaking with somebody on the phone—like even the other day, what I wanted to do was go in the other room and lie down while I was talking to somebody on the phone. And I was trying to figure out how I could do that with all the things that I needed to write with and everything. Could I do that?
And so I could see that you could have a set-up whereby just being in one place, you could be able to be in a more active role (say when you’re typing on a computer), and then you could be resting while you’re talking on the phone.
PATRICK CLARK: Yes, exactly. And the floor is one of those places, to have space on the floor. And yes, you need to have props like sort of planned ahead that you’ve figured out where your screen needs to be, where keyboard needs to be, where you’re going to sit or stay, where your body’s going to be. And you have little props that are set up for different activities.
And that is what my line, Body Friendly Furniture, is.
DEBRA: So that you could figure it out in advance and make sure those spaces are there when you need them.
PATRICK CLARK: Exactly.
DEBRA: I really like the sound of that because my mind is just going a mile a minute about re-figuring this out and how I’m in my space in a completely different way than what you’re talking about. What I was just thinking was how I arrange the space in my office for optimum work production, not for optimum body comfort or what the energy level would be of my body after sitting here for a few hours or how my health would be.
I considered having toxic things, but I didn’t consider how the environment and the desk and the chair would actually support my body. It’s all arranged by what’s the workflow like.
PATRICK CLARK: Yes. That would be the right order though. Get the toxins out first. And then think about the next step of vitality, health and energy.
And the idea is that it’s to make it fun. I mean, it’s like you just sit there at the desk and that’s it. You don’t know. I mean the whole idea, this is productivity, this is creativity. It’s proven scientifically this increases the power of your brain. Movement makes your brain work more efficiently. So this actually becomes of extremely powerful way to work.
DEBRA: So even if we don’t have the perfect furniture, there is probably a lot of things we can do to be moving in our sedentary lifestyle in a different way. One of the things that I thought is that my massage therapist gave me a little roller thing for my feet. And so it feels so good as I’m sitting here to just roll my foot on this little thing.
PATRICK CLARK: Yes.
DEBRA: It’s got ridges on it. And I could see that it stimulates the blood flow in my feet, and it would stimulate the oxygen instead of just having the foot sit there just stationary. I could see that—now that I’m sitting here thinking about it, I could see that I could be moving my arms. I could be wriggling my shoulders. I could get up and do something instead of having everything at arm’s reach. I could place things to force me to get up out of my chair. All of these things are a whole different way of thinking.
I want to tell you that fact […] for a minute because one other thing that is so important about toxics is moving your lymph system. And I’m sure you know all about this, that the heart has a pump for our blood, but the lymp system is this whole system in our body that carries out the waste from yourself. It also carries out the toxic chemicals that come in. And if your lymph doesn’t move, then you continue to store those toxic chemicals.
So even whether you’re doing heavy lifting or going to the gym or whatever, even any kind of movement as you’re sitting at your desk all day is going to move your lymph system to some degree.
PATRICK CLARK: Exactly. That’s the whole idea behind the Body Friendly lifestyle. I think you’re getting it, Debra.
DEBRA: Oh, I’m so glad. Okay. We need to take a break. In fact, we’re past time with the break. So I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. And we’ll be back in a moment.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and we’re here with Patrick Clark from Carolina Morning. He’s up there in the beautiful Smoky Mountain—in a very non-toxic environment, I’m sure.
Patrick, tell us about your more innovative things like your Quantum Calming Mat and the Little Magic Desk and all those interesting things you have.
PATRICK CLARK: Yes. Sure. Well, there are problems with electro-magnetic fields in cellphone radiation and some things out there that aren’t so good for us. And so one solution is called EM ceramic powder. It comes from Japan from Dr. Kiruthika. And it’s been around for about 20 years.
Basically, this material, we put it in our bedding and our quantum calming mat and our finish, the finish in all of our furniture.
And what it does is it emits a frequency called infrared radiation. And that is a healing frequency to the human body. And our cells entrain to that frequency while you’re exposed to within three inches of it.
DEBRA: Hmmm…
PATRICK CLARK: That is one of the nice things we have in it. It reportedly calms you down. It actually does some detoxing of your blood and things like that.
DEBRA: Well, you know, I think that most people aren’t aware that the earth itself has its own vibratory frequency and that the wires that run through the walls and all the EMFs and the WI-FI and everything, that’s a different frequency.
But if our bodies, actually, if all these man-made frequencies weren’t here, our bodies actually line up with the frequency of the earth. I think that you would agree that part of the problem that’s going on is that we no longer have that frequency connection.
PATRICK CLARK: Yeah, exactly. If we can get out somewhat during the day in nature, that’s one of the best things.
Everyone’s talking about it now.
DEBRA: Yes.
PATRICK CLARK: But we are so missing that. We live in an artificial environment. We have not just chemical toxins, but the toxicity of electro-magnetic fields and artificial light is in itself a toxin that throws off our circadian rhythms.
And basically, what we’re trying to do with our business, our products, is provide the ways for people to go back closer to the nature to all of the things that you would be having if you weren’t in this artificial toxic environment.
DEBRA: Yes. Even doing things like going out—not necessarily lying in the sun if you’re concerned about sunburns or things like that. But even I find that if I failed to stress or everything, I just need to take a break.
One of the best things that I can do is just go out in the backyard and I just put a wool blanket down on the grass. I just lie down for 20 minutes and just neutralize. That’s probably the best word I could think of.
PATRICK CLARK: Yes. That’s…
DERBA: And again going back to that nature is a model kind of thing, our bodies are accustomed to having things like sunlight, connection to the earth where our bodies are actually on the earth. We’re used to walking barefoot, so that whatever earth energies there are can actually come into our bodies.
And so, in addition to the toxic chemicals being a detriment, we’re not getting our nourishment from nature. It goes way beyond food. And I think that’s a big element that’s missing in health as well.
PATRICK CLARK: Yes. I agree. And the dilemma is what do you do about when you’re in in an artificial environment…
DEBRA: Yes.
PATRICK CLARK: There’s a few ideas about—maybe you might call it “bio-remediation.” And EM or effective micro-organism is like a huge and inexpensive solution to a lot of this toxic problem—not just what we incorporate into our products, but you can actually put it in your paint and paint your house with it and use it for healthful cleaning. There’s a whole lot of range of things that you can do to create this more harmonious field around you.
DEBRA: Yes. Because we do need to have that. I know, for me, I’m a bit of a purist, and so I always want to tell people, “Just go out with nature.”
PATRICK CLARK: Yes.
DEBRA: Except that not everybody can do that the way that things are arranged today. And I could see that, particularly with the population (the density in Japan), that they would come up with something like this, so that the indoor-built environment can be healthier. There’s so much that needs to be undone in the world today.
Tell us about your mats. I forgot what it’s called.
PATRICK CLARK: Photon or quantum calming mat?
DEBRA: Your quantum calming mat, yes.
PATRICK CLARK: Quantum calming mat. Okay, yeah. The idea is if you could take a piece of earth and put it in your bedroom and sleep on the earth in your bedroom—you know, something like that—it would be calming and grounding.
You’re literally grounding as far as your electricity, pulling static electricity off your body. So that’s the idea behind this. It is basically a piece of organic fabric that’s coated with the EM ceramic powder which emits infrared frequency.
And another thing which is a gem stone, amethyst powder. And the amethyst powder has some healing qualities in itself and it actually amplifies the infrared by ten times.
DEBRA: Well, I didn’t know that. I love amethysts. And I’ve been thinking a lot about frequencies because I sing and play the piano. I sing in a choir and we’ve been talking about what is music and what is sound. Every sound has its own frequency as well. And frequencies, it seems like everything comes down to energy frequencies and yet that’s something that we’re so unaware of in our industrial culture.
But nature, don’t you think nature is fascinating?
PATRICK CLARK: I do. I do and I like that harmony and beauty and adding that into our lives.
DEBRA: Yes. I do too.
PATRICK CLARK: And everything with quantum physics. Everything really boils down to light and frequencies.
DEBRA: Yes. It does. Well, we only just have a few minutes left. Is there something that you’d like to say that you haven’t said?
PATRICK CLARK: Yes. I would like to read a little thing from a customer if that’s okay.
DEBRA: Yes.
PATRICK CLARK: Okay. “I have lived with chronic back pain for 25 years. This pain has awakened me every night since its inception when I was 19 years old, now 44. I’ve used inversion tables, physical therapy, stretching, etc.”
“Within two hours of my first usage of the tilt chair and peace bench, I noticed a gradual relief in the constant strange feeling in my lower back.”
“By the time the first two hours were up, I reported 80% to 90% relief of all back pains, soreness, shoulders, dizziness and soreness, and 80% relief of neck soreness, aching and stiffness.”
And then, it goes on to say that, “They’re not advertised as miracle furnishings. But to me, they are. I never expected anything like this.”
DEBRA: Wow! So tell us more about those two pieces of furniture.
PATRICK CLARK: Yes. So it’s active sitting. That was that thing I described as active sitting where you’re basically sitting without leaning back into something?
DEBRA: Yes.
PATRICK CLARK: And what it does is it’s as if you’re toning, you’re actually aligning your body vertically so you’re toning the front and back of your core while you’re sitting doing sedentary work and stuff like that.
DEBRA: I’m starting to get this idea as you’re describing it as I’m sitting here. It’s hard to say because it’s not words that you are accustomed to having for a concept. But I’m really getting it, that I could be sitting here holding my body up. That’s it, I’m holding my body up with my muscles in an active way, so that I have to tighten my muscles to sit in that position versus slouching or having no support. That would make my body stronger.
PATRICK CLARK: Exactly! And it’s almost impossible to do in the normal chair. What you normally need is a tilt, a front-sloping, tilted seat because you need to tilt your pelvis to keep your back in the proper alignment.
DEBRA: Yes.
PATRICK CLARK: So it’s harder if…
DEBRA: I’m sitting here touching my pelvis while you’re talking.
PATRICK CLARK: Okay. You got it. So yes. Some people think it’s impossible because they haven’t quite figure it out that you have to have the right type of a surface to sit on.
DEBRA: Wow! This is amazing. This changed completely the way I think about things.
Well, Patrick, our time is up.
PATRICK CLARK: Okay. So…
DEBRA: I’m sorry to say that, but this has been fascinating. I’m so glad that you’re our guest today. This has been Patrick Clark from Carolina Morning. He’s at BodyFriendlyFurniture.com. I hope you will go take a look and see all the different things that he has.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. And I will be back tomorrow. You can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com.
If you enjoyed the show, tell your friends. You can listen to all the shows. They’re archived at ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com (including this one with Patrick). And so if you missed something or you wanted to hear to it again, just go listen to it. Tell your friends. And I’ll be back tomorrow.
Textile Truths: A Parent’s Guide to Fabric Selection for Baby
Question from Harmony Susalla
Here’s the latest toxic/info page I have recently released and probably what I most want to share with your audience: Harmony Art .
Organic Cotton: Behind the Scenes
My guest is Harmony Susalla, founder of Harmony Art Organic Design. Harmony has created designs and products for every retail level from Target and Walmart to Nordstrom and Williams-Sonoma and many points in between. Personal conviction and a desire to show the world that organic fabrics can be beautiful led Harmony, in 2005, to become the first textile company to offer only printed organic cotton fabrics and make them available by the yard for businesses and home sewers alike. Harmony Art’s stock fabrics feature organic cotton, wide-width, woven sateens and twills as well as knits. www.harmonayart.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Organic Cotton: Behind the Scenes
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Harmony Susalla
Date of Broadcast: May 22, 2013
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world even though there may be toxic chemicals all around us in consumer products and in the environment, and everywhere we look and everything we read about in the newspaper and listen to on the radio about how toxic everything is.
In fact, there’s a lot in the world that is not toxic. And that’s what we talk about here, how to protect ourselves from toxic chemicals, how to remove them from our homes, how to remove them from our bodies and all the wonderful things that are not toxic.
Today is Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. And today, we’re going to talk about organic cotton. We’re going to talk about some of the toxic chemicals that are in organic textiles, and we’re going to talk to a pioneer in the field of organic cotton. She was the first – I was going to say “the first woman,” but she’s the first person who created a business selling well-designed organic cotton fabrics that could be used for a variety of purposes, both commercially and for home sewers.
But before we meet our guest, I want to read you a quote from John Quincy Adams. Now, John Quincy Adams was the son of John Adams and Abigail Adams with John Adams being one of the founding founders of America, and I think the second president, if I’m remembering incorrectly. John Quincy Adams, his son was the sixth president of the United States. He said, “Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish. A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle. Take action on what you have and that is worth more than having a whole lot of information than doing nothing with it.”
I think that’s really vital to this whole question of toxics because we really do make change one step at a time, one product at a time. Even if you want to change everything about your house, you really just start with one product.
So whenever you’re listening to the show and something catches your ear, and you think, “That would be interesting. I could do that.” Whether it’s just starting to clean your windows with vinegar and water or deciding you want to get an organic cotton tee shirt, or whatever it is, start with one thing and see how wonderful it is and then do something else.
So our guest today is Harmony Susalla from Harmony Art. And as I said before, I have to get her bio. Harmony has created designs and products for every retail level from Target and Walmart, to Nordstrom and Williams-Sonoma and many points in between. Personal conviction and a desire to show the world that organic fabrics can be beautiful led Harmony in 2005 to become the first textile company to offer only printed, organic cotton fabrics and make them available by the yard for businesses and home sewers alike.
She didn’t say, “Well, maybe we’ll just continue to offer toxic fabrics and have a little corner. We’ll have a few that are organic.” No. She jumped wholeheartedly out of the toxic textile world into organics. And she’s here to talk to us about that.
Hi, Harmony.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Hello, Debra! Thank you for having me.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. I’m so glad you’re here. So please continue the story for our listeners and tell us about your story of how you decided that you were no longer going to be toxic and you were going to be a pioneer in the field of organic fabrics.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Sure! Well, I have to go back in 2004, which I can’t believe is almost 10 years ago now, I was working for a textile design firm. My job, which I loved, was getting to create the patterns and prints that ended up on a variety of consumer products all over the market. And I loved what I did and the company had tasked us all to figure out what’s the next big market was.
And so being me, I gave it some thought and I decided that the next big move was going to be green movement, the sustainability movement. Organic food was already out there, I was an early adapter of that believed in buying things that were made as thoughtfully as possible.
And so I said, well, I put together a DVD, I started doing research and what I found was, to my horror and surprise, was that cotton was one of the most heavily-sprayed crops in the world. And not only was it one of the most heavily sprayed, but what it was sprayed with was some of the most dangerous things in the world too. I had no idea. You think of cotton, you think of the natural fiber. Unfortunately, that’s not really the truth.
So I put together a DVD. I actually flew to Chicago and went to the All Things Organic tradeshow that used to happen there with my husband who is very supportive, and started researching and then made the pitch to the company, and they thought, “Oh, yes. That’s a good idea. So when we have time and when your deadlines are up, you can work on that project as sort of a side gig.”
And the more I knew, the more convinced I was that not only was this the new market, this is the way the whole entire market needed to go in.
DEBRA: I had a moment like that too. It was around 2000 when I was working with some partners to open some green boutiques. And as I was working on that I went, “Wait a minute! There’s no point in having green boutiques. All the products in the world need to be green.”
And at that particular point, I remember there was a mail order catalogue that had a roll of recycled paper on the cover that you could buy recycled toilet paper from this mail order catalogue. And I thought, “Wait a minute. People are not going to continue to buy recycled toilet paper especially with a mail order catalogue. It’s going to be on every shelves.”
And it is now. You can buy it almost anywhere.
HARMONY SUSALLA: I love that we’ve gotten to see it really emerge. I used to have to make the pitch that green was the next movement, and now I don’t even have to talk about that. Everybody knows it’s happened. It’s here.
DEBRA: It is. It is here and I think that’s very good.
HARMONY SUSALLA: So it is. I got to the point where every project that I had to work on that was conventional, it was like a piece of me was dying.
DEBRA: Yes, I understand.
HARMONY SUSALLA: I couldn’t hold out any longer with the hope that one day, my pet project would see the light of day. And so, ultimately, I had to leave to survive truly. And that led me to Harmony Art because when I went to try to find another job where I could just be doing something I could believe in, the job didn’t exist. There wasn’t anybody hiring organic cotton textile designers out there.
DEBRA: I actually had the same thing. There was nobody who were hiring non-toxic writers.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Exactly! You know what I’m talking about. You have to create your own world when it doesn’t exist for you to walk into.
I was actually at a green business network conference and the key note speaker was Julia Butterfly Hill. Do you know her?
DEBRA: I don’t know her personally, but I know who she is.
HARMONY SUSALLA: For those that are listening that don’t, she is the woman that lived in a redwood tree for years to try to save them from being shut down. I lived in a redwood forest. I have a strong connection to the trees. And so I was waiting in line to talk to her afterwards, after her lecture. And the woman behind me in line, I started this conversation with, and her name is Kate Scott, and she was an eco-apparel designer. This is late 2004. Not many people doing that. And I asked her, “Do you use prints in your organic apparel line?” And she said, “No.” And I said, “Well, why not?” She said, “Because there aren’t any.” And that was the lightbulb moment.
I said, “Well, if they existed, would you use them?” And she said, “Absolutely. It’s just, they don’t exist.” And I thought, well I know how to design prints. So I guess I need to fill this market need.
Little did I know about actual production or marketing or sales or accounting or any of the other hats. I knew how to design textile. So I’ve learned a lot. It’s been quite a journey and it’s been wonderful.
DEBRA: Well, you’ve certainly filled the niche beautifully. And we’ll hear more about the dangers of what’s going on in textiles and what you are offering as an organic cotton alternative after this message. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and I’m here with Harmony Susalla from Harmony Art.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and we’re here today with Harmony Susalla from Harmony Art, who was the first business to offer only organically grown cotton fabrics and make them available by the yard for business and home sewers.
Harmony, let’s talk about some of the toxic chemicals that are in just ordinary fabrics that led you to decide that you needed to go organic. And actually, I just put up your toxic truth infographic on my website today so listeners can go there to my Green Living Q&A. If you just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, across the top, there’s a menu with all different parts of my website, and just click on Q&A. And right now today, the very first one is Toxic Truth.
And this one is written for choosing baby fabrics, but you’ve got some toxic chemicals listed here as being, I’m assuming to be the most important ones. And do you want to talk to us about those three?
HARMONY SUSALLA: Sure. What’s interesting about textile is there’s the growing. Well, in the case of cotton, there are all the chemicals they put on in the growing process, which are really deadly and dangerous. And then there are the processing chemicals that they use to add color and design and finishing to the fabric. And the three that I think are some of the scariest are lead, formaldehyde and then PBDEs and BFRs, which are flame-retardant finishes.
And I personally, if I see wrinkle-free, which sounds fabulous and we love the idea of not having wrinkled clothes and not having to iron, but when I see that I immediately translate those words into doused in chemicals because that’s really what wrinkle-free means. And stain resistance. Same thing. If it’s not going to wrinkle and it’s not going to stain, it’s got some sort of chemical finish on it. And until they come up with healthy finishes, I avoid those like the plague. I’d rather have a wrinkle and a stain than to be slowly breathing in things.
DEBRA: And also, they never come off. You can wash and wash and wash. And especially with things like wrinkle-free, cotton sheets or polyester cotton sheets. You’re sleeping on that all night long in a cloud of formaldehyde.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Absolutely.
DEBRA: It’s just not a good thing for babies or adults.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Right. And some of the scariest statistics, and I try not to spend too much energy on it, but I think it’s important the people know. Otherwise, they’re not aware. But one out of six American children currently has the developmental disorder of some kind. That’s crazy. And 12.4 have been diagnosed with asthma. And these have been directly linked to things, to chemicals found in textiles. I’m not saying they’re the only cause of these things but we know for a fact that lead and flame-retardant finishes and formaldehyde cause cancer, leukemia, respiratory problems.
We did this Textile Truth. We designed it with the consumer in mind of how do we help educate in a way because as you know, Debra, everything is, you start to look and then you’ve jumped down the rabbit hole of information. It’s sort of an information overload.
And we also know that none of us lives in a perfectly toxic-free world or we’re not on this planet right now.
DEBRA: That’s also correct.
HARMONY SUSALLA: So how do you make steps? And I think that’s what you do so beautifully. It’s to help people take those first steps.
So we put this graphic together. And actually, it was the brain child of one of my distributors who said, “Harmony, we need the dirty dozen and the [inaudible 00:18:00] for fruits and vegetables. Where do you start? If you’re going to make a change, where should you make that change first? So we need that for textiles.” And it was not as easy as it would seem to put something like together. It took us about a year.
DEBRA: Well, let me ask you this question now because when I first started out, there was no information. I had to go to toxicology books and things like that. And as I started piecing everything together, I started out saying, “Well, now which chemicals do I need to avoid? And how much can I be exposed to them?” And those are the questions that I was asking.
And then there was a moment where I took a quantum leap and I said, “No, it’s not about how many chemicals can I be exposed to and what are they. It’s more about what can I use instead.”
And so when I started discovering things like – well, at the time, there were no organic textiles. But there was organic food. And so instead of trying to figure out which pesticide was on my cucumbers, I discovered organic food and I said, “Oh, well we just need to jump to organic food.”
And it’s the same thing with textiles. We just need to jump to organic textiles.
HARMONY SUSALLA: That would be nice. I like the sound of that. I don’t know that we’re all going to get there overnight though.
DEBRA: I don’t think we are either. And I think that people do need to understand why we need to make that leap. And also, there’s a push me, pull you leapfrog thing that happens between manufacturing and consumers where consumers can say all they want. I want organic textiles. But unless there are designers and manufacturers and distributors and retailers and the whole system is on board to supply those new organic textile products, then they’re not there for the consumers.
And so it all needs to go hand in hand, and it does take time. And it takes understanding why we need to make a switch, and also having the product available.
HARMONY SUSALLA: I couldn’t agree with you more. I absolutely couldn’t agree with you more. And on the Textile Truth, it says the rule of thumb is if it touches my baby for an extended period of time or covers some sensitive areas, opt for organic.
Like you said, bedding. To me, if you’re going to start nowhere else, the place that you lay your head for hours of a time, invest in organic.
And if your favorite store that has those jeans or whatever that fit you just perfectly doesn’t have organic, just start asking for it. Every time someone walks into a store and just says, “Oh, do you carry this in organic?” You’re planting seeds of change. Even if it doesn’t exist yet, marketers they want to know what consumers want.
DEBRA: Exactly.
HARMONY SUSALLA: If you said, maybe it’s just one person making the comments, if you said, and then next Tuesday someone else does two, at the next sales meeting, people are going to be, “People are asking for organic.”
It really does make a different, every little request.
DEBRA: Well, we need to go to break again but after the commercial message, we’ll be back with Harmony Susalla and talking about organic cotton. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio.
DEBRA: This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and we’re here today with Harmony Susalla from Harmony Art. And you can visit her website at HarmonyArt.com and see all her beautiful textiles.
Harmony, these are all based on – tell us how you do your patterns because they’re all based on patterns you find in nature, right?
HARMONY SUSALLA: It used to be when I worked for big companies, they would have you go trend shopping where you would go to other stores and see what was in the market, what was hot. And now, instead of going trend shopping, I go trend hiking. At least two days a week, I try to get out on our local trails and see what’s in bloom, what the plants are, what the ocean looks like, what the sky is like. And I find it so rewarding and such an infinite source of inspiration. It never ceases to amaze me. Even though I may be on the same trails, they’re different every time.
DEBRA: I found that too. One thing that I really appreciate about you, Harmony, and I think you probably appreciate about me too, is that we both really have a sense of nature that we see nature and participate in nature. But for us it’s not just a world that’s not toxic. That it’s a whole world in nature which is a different thing than the world of industrialism. And I really see that in everything that you do.
And I think that that’s really where we need to go. I had an experience just yesterday where I’m working with a friend, helping writing and editing a book. It had a reference to nature and somebody else read the book and I said, “Oh, you should take out this reference because nobody will know what you’re talking about. That people aren’t oriented to nature.”
And it’s just that when I heard that I couldn’t believe it. And yet, I know it’s true that for some people, it’s like you and I have a sense of experience and reality. And when we look in our memory banks and our knowledge and our experience, nature is there as a real, living, experiential thing. And there were people who are missing that. It’s just not part of their information set.
And that just really came home to me today and yesterday when I was thinking about that. That was just heartbreaking to me.
HARMONY SUSALLA: I was going to say you’re making me want to cry.
DEBRA: I know. Well, I did cry. It did make me want to cry because it’s such a rich experience to me. And to think that some people don’t have that, I don’t even know what to say.
And so that you base your designs through nature, that’s part of your reality and part of what you want to bring to people, is so special to me.
HARMONY SUSALLA: I think it is part, again, of that deep connection, it drives me to have my life’s work be something that contributes to its collective health. And I think we’re a lot less separate than we think to the natural world. We like to think of humans as above and having dominion over. Nature is ours to use and exploit when we’re no separate from it. We’re just another part of it.
DEBRA: We can’t survive without it.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Absolutely.
DEBRA: You can’t have air and water and food.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Yes, exactly.
DEBRA: Where do people think cotton comes from?
HARMONY SUSALLA: It does seem quite ludicrous not to understand that we’re in a symbiotic relationship.
DEBRA: I know but this is how far our industrial viewpoint has taken us that people think that nature is someplace else or non-existent.
But anyway, let’s talk about organic cotton. How do you choose organic cotton? How do you know it’s really organic? Tell us about GOTS. What does that mean?
HARMONY SUSALLA: GOTS is the Global Organic Textile Standard. And when I launched Harmony Art beginning in 2005, there were over 40 different organic standards, and trying to figure out what to use is really a challenge. And when you’re a small producer, your weight of your order is not that strong.
Thankfully, a couple of years later, the Global Organic Textile Standard emerged, and I was pro GOTS as soon as I heard about it, mainly because in addition to the chemical part in the processing that they address, they also have a fair trade section. And as we know, especially with the recent developments in Bangladesh and such, and the human element of how we treat people too, is a big part of textile. So Global Organic Textile Standard takes it from the cotton, the raw, organic cotton through the finish products so that you know that the people and the planet haven’t been harmed.
DEBRA: And of course, the end user is not being harmed as well. The consumer.
HARMONY SUSALLA: That’s important too. So GOTS, we just got certified our warehouse, our fabric had been, for a number of years that our warehouse got certified, a year and a half ago. So we can offer fully GOT-certified fabrics to our customer, which is usually small businesses or retailers that then sell the fabric to home sewers.
DEBRA: And you have on my website, on Debra’s List, I have several websites that sell home sewers that carry your fabrics. And you also have listed on your website a number of businesses that use your fabrics to make their products.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Absolutely. And people always ask, “What do people make with your fabrics?” It’s like, you name it.
DEBRA: Everything.
HARMONY SUSALLA: From dog beds to baby beds to women’s apparel and all points in between.
DEBRA: Yes, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful fabrics.
HARMONY SUSALLA: It’s really fun. Sorry.
DEBRA: I’m just sitting here thinking what should I ask you next.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Well, what’s really fun is watching it come to life. I make the fabric but I don’t make products. So when I see someone take it and then have a vision for it, I call it bringing it to life. And to see someone using it is just even that much more exciting for me. And I love that co-creating process, working together and the relationships have gotten to develop with Harmony Art have been so rich. To be working with likeminded people doing something that feels important is so rewarding rather than being a number on the spreadsheet that someone’s looking to find the cheaper way.
DEBRA: Do people come to you and say, “I want to make a baby blanket. Would you design something blah-blah-blah?”
HARMONY SUSALLA: Yes, we do customer exclusive designs for people. That happens less frequently than people buying my stock fabrics. But we absolutely have that capability and have done specific projects. In fact, I have a library online, it’s password-protected, of over a hundred designs that I love to see the light of day.
Every time you get a fabric printed, it’s very expensive, and then inventorying it and everything else.
DEBRA: Well, once again we have the commercial break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and we’re here with Harmony Susalla of Harmony Art. She designs 100% organic textiles and makes the yard available for businesses and home sewers. And her website is HarmonyArt.com. And we’ll be back after the break.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and we’ve been talking with Harmony Susalla from Harmony Art, and she designs 100% organic cotton fabrics which are produced by the yard and then made into all kinds of things with beautiful patterns that are based in patterns that you find in nature.
Harmony, could you tell us more about things, I’m looking at your website and you have a very interesting blog with different information about different aspects of the production. Tell us something more about that the listeners might not know about different parts of the production process, like dyes for example. I think the people know that a lot of pesticides are used in the growing of cotton and organic cotton is without those pesticides. But I think that most people don’t know very much about what happens next. So could you fill us in on what some of those steps are, what some of the problems are and how organic cotton is processed in a way that’s different?
HARMONY SUSALLA: Sure. The cotton has to be cleaned, then it gets spun into yarn, and then it’s either woven or knitted into fabric. And all along those steps, there are different chemicals that are often used, often petroleum-based with varying degrees of toxicity.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with William McDonough, the Cradle to Cradle.
DEBRA: That’s one of my favorite books. Cradle to Cradle.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Well, they did a study and found that over 8200 chemicals are routinely used in the production of textiles.
DEBRA: Oh, my god. I have no idea.
HARMONY SUSALLA: I know. It is crazy. But in each step, the dyes and then getting the dyes to adhere to the fabric, and then finishing the fabric and sometimes they put softeners on the fabric. As we’ve talked about a little bit before, there are symptoms and issues for flame-retardants. Don’t get me started on that topic. I think it’s possibly insane that we want to treat fabric so that it doesn’t catch fire.
DEBRA: When you’re not smoking a cigarette.
HARMONY SUSALLA: I don’t know. Did you see that report done by the Chicago Tribune last year?
DEBRA: Yes.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Absolutely phenomenal how the cigarette companies and the chemical companies are responsible for flame-retardants being added to all sorts of things. Rather than getting people to stop smoking, we’ll just cover their products in things that will poison them slowly, will kill you fast or burn you. You’ll just be poisoned slowly instead.
DEBRA: And then I’ll mix with all those other toxic chemicals that we’re being exposed to, and who knows what the result is of that mix and how they synergize together. This is why we just need to jump to organic cotton.
I won’t interrupt you.
HARMONY SUSALLA: No, the fact that it makes so little sense to me means it’s just a temporary thing. It’s nonsensical so it’s got to change. And I think there is a movement and a lot more awareness about flame-retardants. We see legislation coming up here in California to try to get rid of some of those requirements and foams and other things. So I think that there is hope on the horizon. In the meantime, all we can do is do the best we can.
DEBRA: Well, tell us more about dyes because I see low impact dyes. What does that mean?
HARMONY SUSALLA: That’s a good question. How about I define more impact?
DEBRA: Your things are very colorful.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Right. We use synthetic dyes. They’re not natural. And I’m sure you know this too that not everything that is natural is non-toxic.
DEBRA: That’s true. And not everything that is synthetic is toxic.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Right. So our dyes are not from a natural source. They’re not plant-based. They are synthetic but they have been screened for toxicity. And they’ve been screened so that the runoff from the water doesn’t end up back in the water systems. There is water treatment in place. They are monitoring that. That’s what the GOTS standard is all about, making sure that what you’re doing is done in the most thoughtful manner.
When I started, there was organic cotton available. It was just in, what I like to say, beautiful shades of oatmeal and granola. And well, I love oatmeal and granola colors but I thought, if this was going to go mainstream, it’s going to have to have some patterns and designs.
DEBRA: It doesn’t seem to have some design and some color and having gone through this whole fabric transition and watched it, oatmeal and granola, to what we have today, there was a certain time period when I was really looking at natural dyes, and I learned a lot about that subject. And one of the things about natural anything is that it’s temporary and fades out and biodegrades. One of the reasons why we have synthetic perfume, actually, the reason why we have synthetic perfume is because Coco Chanel decided that she wanted her perfume to last and last and last. And all the fragrances prior to Chanel Number 5, a woman would put it on at the beginning of the evening, and by the end of the evening, it was gone because it was all natural and it dissipated.
And Coco Chanel just happened to be there at that point in chemical history when synthetic things are being developed. And she found that there were synthetic fragrances and she made them popular.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Wow. I have no idea.
DEBRA: Yes, I didn’t know that before either. And now, I found that out. But it’s the same thing with natural dyes. That natural dyes are something that an artisan could work with, that you could make a color a color. But to make that same color over and over and over for thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands of yards is a different thing. It’s something all these natural things are really artisan things. And that if we had 100% artisan culture, then more of these things would be available.
And they are available on the artisan level. When you’re starting to work on the industrial level, then you need to use materials that industrial system can produce to then put products into the industrial system. And we do need to be doing that right now as we’re going through a transition because people are accustomed to buying things on an industrial level. So to have something like organic fabric with a low impact dye is such a step in the right direction. That even though it’s not 100% natural, it’s not harmful.
And I think that people have an idea that if something is synthetic or petrochemical, it’s going to be bad, period. And that’s not the case. And on the other hand, if it’s 100% natural, it’s going to be totally safe. And again, that’s not the case.
So really, it’s about finding the things that are safe whether they are synthetic or natural.
HARMONY SUSALLA: I agree. And what I find, for me, I think if everybody just look at their own life, what they do every day for a job or with their children or in the store, and just made the best decisions they could, and we’re not all going to get PhD’s in everything, but just your day-to-day decisions and just made a choice to live the life and contribute to the things you want to contribute to, we would have a different world really quickly, if everybody did that.
DEBRA: I think so too.
HARMONY SUSALLA: And I don’t think it’s as hard as it sounds. We’re not going to be perfect overnight but just the little things and the big things. If everybody decided to just do the best they could, imagine how powerful that could be.
DEBRA: It would be extremely powerful because we, as consumers, actually have all the power. If we were to stand up and say, “This is what we want,” then Walmart and everybody else would follow because they are constantly doing focus groups and surveys to find out what consumers want. And if consumers would just stand up stand up and say, “I want organic this and I want organic that,” then they would continue to be more and more in the stores as they are now. And we could completely eliminate toxic products of all kinds by simply refusing to buy them.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Absolutely. And it could be a lot quicker than waiting for governmental agencies or companies to make their own good decisions. If something stopped selling, they would stop making it.
DEBRA: That’s exactly right.
We’ve got about a minute left before the goodbye music comes on. But I want to just get this in really quick. When I was looking at the opening quote from John Quincy Adams, I was thinking, “Wait a minute. Was he part of the American Revolution? No.” It was John Adams. And I started thinking about the Revolution and you know how quickly it went. It wasn’t overnight. It wasn’t one year. But it was a very short period of time that the United States went from being colonies of Britain to being an independent country based on freedom.
And it could change that fast by people deciding that we’re not going to have these toxic products.
I’ve been doing this for 30 years. Thirty years is a relatively short period of time but it’s only been in the last 20 years and 10 years but there has been so many more non-toxic products. And we can just keep going at that pace and just keep going.
Anyway, we have to go.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Thank you, Debra. You are amazing. Thank you for all you do.
DEBRA: Thank you, Harmony. You are amazing too. And I’m so glad that you are here today. Her website is HarmonyArt.com. My website is ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. And we’ll be back tomorrow with more ways that you can thrive in a toxic world.
Glidden Paint: High Endurance Plus
Question from Bonnie Johnson
Glidden has a newer paint called High Endurance Plus. It is paint and primer and supposed to be low voc and low odor. Has anyone used it yet? I have a couple of projects coming up that need paint. I have used Mystic. Good coverage, low voc but I could smell it for about 3 months. The problem is trying to find it. I have to drive 60 miles to get some. Just curious about the Glidden. Thanks.
Debra’s Answer
I have no experience with this paint. Readers?
Cold Packs
Question from Gigi
I am looking to use cold packs for various body areas and joints. For instance, neck, shoulders, fingers, wrists, and knees. I like the ones that can be refrozen and shaped to the body parts like those offered by Chattanooga Colpac. However, some are made of vinyl and some are made of polyurethane that would be tossed in the freezer and reused. Given that I will be using a towel between myself and the ice pack, is there any reason to avoid either type? The vinyl ones do have some shapes that I will need. What are your recommendations? I am looking for good flexibility, good body part coverage and reuseability.
Debra’s Answer
The polyurethane packs are less toxic than the vinyl packs. However, the cold temperature contributes to inhibiting outgassing, so to use the vinyl packs would be less toxic than using a vinyl shower curtain, for example, where the heat would increase the outgassing of the vinyl.
You can wrap either in foil, which would block any chemicals but not block the cold.
Wood Finishes on Children’s Furniture
Question from Stacey
Dear Debra, I will appreciate your advice about wood finishes. After a lot of research, I have found many companies that offer solid wood children’s furniture,but I still have some doubts about the finishes. Since I so not have space to do it myself, I really need to be able to buy something that it is ready for use. And I am not sure about the results of totally unfinished wood, especially for kids. What do you think about these?: Danish oil beeswax polish clear lacquer linseed oil.
Thank you very much!
Debra’s Answer
Danish oil is a mixer of penetrating oil and varnish that hardens in the wood rather than on the wood. It can contain toxic solvents.
Beeswax polish is made from beeswax and is generally fine. Sometimes various chemicals are added, so you would need to find out whatever you can about the exact brand used.
Lacquer is a catch-all term for a natural or synthetic material dissolved in a solvent, which dries to form a hard protective coating. Shellac, made from ground beetles and alcohol, is a lacquer, but a lacquer could also be made from petroleum
Linseed oil is explained at Q&A: Tung Oil and Linseed Oil for Furniture Finish
I wish I could give you a simpler answer. It comes down to getting as much information as you can about the finishes and then evaluating the dangers.
See if you can find someone to apply a finish for you to a piece of unfinished furniture, then use Vermont Natural Coatings. That’s my favorite wood finish so far.
