My guests today are Diana Kaye and James Hahn, husband and wife, and co-founders of their USDA certified organic business Terressentials. They own a small organic farm in lovely Middletown Valley, Maryland and have operated their organic herbal personal care products business there since 1996. We’ll be talking about what “organic” means, their experience as organic farmers and problems with the organic system. Terressentials was originally started in Virginia in 1992. It grew out of their search for chemical-free products after Diana’s personal experience with cancer and chemotherapy in 1988. Prior to Diana’s cancer, they were involved in commercial architecture in Washington DC. Diana and James are proud to be an authentic USDA certified organic and Fair Made USA business. They are obsessive organic researchers and artisan handcrafters of more than one hundred USDA certified organic gourmet personal care products that they offer through their two organic stores in Frederick County, Maryland, through a network of select retail partners across the US, and to customers around the world via their informative web site. www.debralynndadd.com/debras-list/terressentials

 

 

LISTEN TO OTHER SHOWS WITH DIANA KAYE & JAMES HAHN

 

• GMOs in Personal Care Products
• Toxics in Essential Oils?
• How to Restore Your “Virgin Hair”
• How to Read a Label on Organic Personal Care Products
• More About “Organic”: Politics and the Regulation of Marketplace Distribution
• The Challenges of Achieving Organic Certification
• Why One Couple Decided to Get an Organic Farm and Make USDA Certified Organic Gourmet Personal Care Products

 

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
What Organic Means – From the Experience of Being Organic Farmers

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Diana Kaye and James Hahn

Date of Broadcast: July 23, 2014

DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic-free. It is July 23^rd 2014. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida where we’re having a sunny day. I’m going to get right to my guest because we have a lot to talk about today.

We’re going to talk about organic, what it means, what it’s like to be inside the organic process. My guests today are Diana Kaye and James Hahn, husband and wife and co-founders of the USDA certified organic business, Terressentials. They make some wonderful personal care products out of organic ingredients, many of which they grow themselves on their farm. Others are very carefully selected according to their very high standards, their personal standards.

I’ve been using some of their products lately. They’re absolutely wonderful especially they have some that are fragrance-free and some that are scented with essential oils. And the fragrances are amazing!

I’ve tried a lot of products over the years, but these, they’re fresh and clean and not overwhelming and simple. I have lemon soap that I have in my kitchen sink. I’m washing my hair with their cool mint hair wash. They’re just refreshing and lovely to use. They are exceptional – not that all other products are not. There’s many, many wonderful products, but these fragrances and just the way these products are put together are unusual and outstanding.

Anyway, so I have both Diana and Jim on the line. Last time, Diana has been on the show before. They were going to be on before and James had to go and work, do something on the farm. Today, we’re going to talk to Jim too.

So hi, Diana and Jim.

James Hahn: Hi, Debra.

Diana Kaye: Hi, Debra. That was such an opening. I’m not sure we can live up to that.

James Hahn: No.

Diana Kaye: But thank you. That was awfully kind of you.

James Hahn: Very nice.

DEBRA: You’re welcome.

Diana Kaye: We’re happy to hear that you are enjoying real organic products.

DEBRA: Yes, and that’s what we’re going to be talking about today, what is a real organic product. I do want to say that you’ve been doing your business since 1992. So you’ve been doing this for a long time. So why don’t you start out and just tell us a little bit about how you came to do your business and become organic farmers?

James Hahn: Go ahead, Diana.

Diana Kaye: Sure, sure. Well, really, our journey into the world or organic started with my personal experience with non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and an urgent situation that didn’t really leave me with a lot of time to evaluate treatment options. It was very aggressive. It happened very quickly and I ended up doing experimental chemotherapy, which is – phew! Talk about an experiment.

So Jim knew me before the pre-cancer, pre-chemo and saw what I went through and then at first hand was right there with me and dealing with the aftermath. The chemo that I dealt with was an experimental protocol in that because my cancer was so aggressive, they doubled the dose in half the time and it really took a huge toll on my body. My body reacted by becoming extremely sensitive to synthetic chemicals.

I became a very reactive person after the chemo. I would have problems breathing, migraine/headaches, bizarre rashes. We didn’t know what was going on. And the doctors, conventional western medicine, the answer often is, “Well, here’s one drug. And if you have a side effect, let us give you another drug to treat that.”

And so it ended up that they said that they were able to arrest the growth of this aggressive tumor that I had, but I had a whole host of drugs they wanted me to continue to take to treat all of these problems that had developed. And again, many of the drugs were to treat side effects.

I was having a hard time with all of these drugs and dealing with it at age 29. The doctors really said, “Well, your option is you’re going to have to learn to live with it” and that was unacceptable to me and Jim.

So we began researching what happened to me, how I got the cancer, what was causing me to have these strange reactions. I essentially was chemically sensitive. At the time, there was no Internet, so this was a lot of research done through the Library of Congress. We lived in Washington D.C. at the time, university libraries, looking up lots of things on microfilms.

DEBRA: I remember those days. I was there doing it too.

Diana Kaye: Yeah! So it was very tedious and it took us several years. But what we essentially learned was that in order for me to regained my health and give my body a chance to rebuild itself, we were going to have to find the purest, possible fuel for our bodies. So Jim was joining me with this. So that meant pure, organic foods. We began using distilled water.

We learned also about skin absorption and inhalation. Our previous backgrounds before going into this business – well, Jim is a registered architect and my background was designed. In fact, we met working for an architectural firm in D.C. So we actually took courses in non-toxic building design, designing for handicap individuals. And in this particular case, it was also individual who were handicapped or disabled due to exposures to chemicals in building supplies.

So the more we learned, the more we realized that we had to make a lot of changes and we did. We couldn’t find personal care products anywhere. We searched health food stores that we could find that met our standards, which would be free from synthetic detergents, synthetic emulsifiers, synthetic fragrances, synthetic preservatives and on and on and on.

So we began making some products for ourselves. And at the time, I was involved with some chemical sensitivity support group and a lymphoma support group and people there in different parts of the country were saying the same thing, “We can’t find clean products” and we realized that there was a need.

And that is how our business was started as a mail order catalog. We offered a lot of books in our catalog at that time, again, because there wasn’t an Internet to help educate people about what they can do to reduce their toxic exposures and offering them alternative products.

We found that we wanted to get out of the city, escape Arlington, Virginia in D.C. because of all the pollution there. And we realized that to do our business, we didn’t need to be in the city and we wanted to be able to grow organically some herbs.

So for several years, we looked for and found an old sheep farm in Maryland and we’ve been here for 18 years. Our business progressed from selling plants to dealing with the increased demand for our personal care products, which today is really what we do.

We actually grow herbs for our experimenting and to create new products, but our demand is such that we actually buy today our herbs from certified organic farms from all over the world, our herbs and oils and butters. That’s kind of where we are right now.

DEBRA: Well, that’s a wonderful story. It’s very similar to my own in terms of starting out because of the damage that my body had from chemical exposures as yours did. It’s interesting that you ended up having cancer and chemical sensitivities because I think that most people don’t realize how much of cancer is associated actually with exposure to toxic chemicals and that there’s all you know, there’s all these attention on the cure, but not so much on the prevention.

And so I just want to really emphasize that part of your story that if you’re concerned about cancer or you want to recover from cancer, the first thing to do is remove toxic chemicals that cause cancer from your life.

Diana Kaye: Debra, that is the most important point.

James Hahn: Sure.

Diana Kaye: One of the things I didn’t mention (and I’m so glad you touched on) is exactly that in our course of figuring out what happened to me, we discovered that I had many toxic exposures in my life and that most likely, I was sensitive to different chemicals, but didn’t know it and didn’t understand what was happening to me. So the ultimate end result was that I had chemical overload, which ended up in the aggressive non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, which now has been linked to chemical exposures.

DEBRA: We need to take a break. When we come back, we’re going to talk with Jim and Diana about their experience with organic farming and being certified to be USDA organic certified. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guests today are Diana Kaye and James Hahn from Terressentials. Their website is Terressentials.com. You can also just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and see the listing for their show, the show today and it’s got a link to their website.

And so, tell us now, you got an organic farm and then you started with the organic certification process. Well, wait! First, let me ask you, you said at the beginning that now, having tried your products that I have an experience with what real organic is, so what would be not real organic? Tell us about that difference.

Diana Kaye: Go ahead, Jim.

James Hahn: Well, basically what it comes down to – well, if we’re talking about food, the word ‘organic’ is regulated by the USDA and the Organic Foods Production Act spells out a whole set of rules and regulations to be followed.

In our particular field, body care products, USDA says, “We don’t feel that that…” — how would you say it, Diana? “We don’t feel that we need to enforce the regulations.”

Diana Kaye: Right. The USDA has pronounced years ago that personal care product companies are free to get certified through the Federal Organic Regulations, which is known to everyone as the National Organic Program. However, they have said that they don’t feel that they need to enforce the National Organic Program regulation in the personal care marketplace.

DEBRA: What does that mean? In practice, what does that mean?

Diana Kaye: Well, it means that if a company is not certified to the USDA Organic National Program by a legally accredited organic certifier and doesn’t have an organic certificate, then they are not organic. And the sad thing is the majority of companies that we have seen in the personal care marketplace that claim to be organic are not certified by a third-party accredited certification agency and they are making claims, but these are unsubstantiated and unverified claims.

Jim and I find this really disheartening because consumers, many of them don’t understand the National Organic Program regulations. Many consumers are completely unaware that the rules are not being enforced in the personal care marketplace.

And what happens is that people trust that the word ‘organic’ means something in personal care and they will often pay significantly more money for products that make an organic claim, often very boldly on the front label of the product or on the home page of the website and yet, the product formulation is actually conventional synthetic, industrial cosmetic ingredient, not meeting the qualifications for organic certification in any way.

DEBRA: So let me get this right. So people are putting the word ‘organic’ on the label, but it’s not just that they are not organic and they’re not certified. It’s that they’re not even organic.

James Hahn: That’s correct.

Diana Kaye: Many, yes, many products.

James Hahn: That’s correct. And one thing we’ve noticed is that a lot of journalists and writers who are talking about organic issues appear to be completely unaware of this. We see articles that say, “When you see the word ‘organic’, that means it follows the USDA regulations and 95% of the content is organic.” As Diana says, it doesn’t apply to everything. That applies only to food and that is so seldom brought out.

DEBRA: So the USDA Organic Program is only monitoring in the world of food and not in the world of personal care. That is what we have seen. They said that if someone files a complaint, they’ll look into it, but they are not actively monitoring the personal care marketplace.

This is what we find so sad. There are many companies selling products over the Internet, but there are still (and over the years, there had been) a number of companies that were selling via the health food channels and even mainstream grocery story channels. These companies for years were using the word ‘organic’ with abandon.

However, the Organic Consumers Association really called out this misrepresentation and got a lot of media attention to expose this practice. And as a result of that, there had been several class action lawsuit in the personal care marketplace. But the number of companies that have been named in these lawsuits has been – very few companies out of the many, many companies that are out there.

So basically, what’s happening is the enforcement is now being left up to attorney rather than the regulatory body of the USDA. We find that really sad and extremely frustrating because we constantly hear from people who are so proud that they are taking steps to help improve their health and reduce their chemical load and to leave lighter footprint on the planet. We’ve actually had people come into our store and bring a little shopping bag from the Organic Salon saying, “Oh, I just got this organic shampoo.”

So it puts us in an awkward position because we want to help educate and inform the public. And many times, when we do that, it’s the whole ‘don’t shoot the messenger’ thing. Please don’t shoot us!

DEBRA: I understand.

Diana Kaye: Right! If we take that bottle and we turned it around and we look up on the computer the ingredient – we have often had people get really angry with us. We understand what’s happening. They get angry because we pointed out unfortunately that they got duped. And later, perhaps they resolve that situation, but we would rather talk about beautiful organic ingredients and the impact of organic agriculture. But too many times, we have to deal with re-educating people and informing about this labeling issue.

DEBRA: Well, we’ll talk more about this when we come back from the break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today are Diana Kaye and James Hahn from Terressentials. You can go to their website at Terressentials.com. We’ll be back to talk more about what’s really organic and organic certification and how you can choose the best organic personal care products.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guests today are Diana Kaye and James Hahn, husband and wife, co-founders of their USDA certified organic business, Terressentials.

Now, I do want to hear about organic certification, but I want to ask you another question first. So are the ingredients in your products – I know that every ingredient in your product is USDA certified organic. But is there in the personal care world the equivalent of being a certified organic product?

I know with food, there’s different amounts of percentages of organic that need to be in the food product in order to get the USDA seal. Is there a comparable program like that for USDA in the personal care products?

James Hahn: It’s exactly the same program. In fact, there is no separate program under the USDA for personal care products. What that means is the ingredients that we use in our products basically are food. They’re things like organic coco butter, organic essential oils, organic extracts. They’re made from plants.

I mean, you wouldn’t want to eat paste, for example. There are no industrial chemical input of any kind that go into our product. So it is the exact same standard that applies to the food products in the store, a pie or a drink or anything like that. It’s exactly the same set of standards.

DEBRA: Okay! Alright, so tell us about getting certified. What’s that process like?

Diana Kaye: Well, could I back up just to clarify one thing?

DEBRA: Sure.

Diana Kaye: Because we would like to make everything really crystal clear.

James Hahn: That’s right.

Diana Kaye: Not every single ingredient in our product is a certified organic ingredient [gasp]. For example, the way that the regulations are written, you are required to use organic materials. However, it’s not just the ingredients that are regulated. The regulation covers how ingredients are grown on the farm, how they’re harvested. And here’s the key – key, key, important point – how they are processed or handled to make the finish product.

Whether it be pasta sauce or body lotion, whether it be bread or body cream, the processing rules and the amount of ingredients in your product determine your degree of certification.

There is a list called the National List of Prohibited and Allowed Substances. Everyone who is certified is required to adhere to that list. They have rules for how you can process different raw materials, organic botanicals, for example.

There are ingredients that are used in food. And here’s an interesting point. For instance, baking soda is not an organic material, it is allowed because it’s essential for the use in baked goods. Clays are used in food because they are used as filtering medium. There are certain clays that are approved for use that are on this national list.

It’s very specific. In order to make use of the organic seal, the USDA seal on a product label or front label, your product has to be 95% organic botanicals processed in an accordance with the regulation. And the remaining 5% might be ingredients like baking soda or other ingredients that may not be organic or agricultural in origin, but are on the National List of Approved Substances.

DEBRA: I think this is a really, really important point. I’m glad that you brought it up because this is true for other kinds of products as well. I think that people in a sense – how can I say this. I was just having this conversation with somebody this week about how organic applies to only the agricultural botanical part of a product, but a lot of products (like you mentioned, baked goods), they need to use something like baking soda. That’s strictly speaking not organic because it’s not a botanical item.

Diana Kaye: Correct.

DEBRA: And that would be true. I was trying to think of something that was 100% organic. Well, something that’s 100% organic could be something like the mattress that I sleep on is 100% organic.

Diana Kaye: Probably not.

DEBRA: Well…

Diana Kaye: According to the rules…

DEBRA: I would say…

Diana Kaye: I was just going to jump in and tell you just a little tidbit.

DEBRA: Okay.

Diana Kaye: People don’t even understand even in the food world, for example, we have a lip protector where every single ingredient in that product is organic. However, if an apple was rinsed with a wash that contained hydrogen peroxide in water, that apple would no longer be 100% organic. That’s how strict the rules are.

DEBRA: Okay, I get it.

Diana Kaye: And that apple…

DEBRA: Yeah, okay.

Diana Kaye: Yeah! So you couldn’t even call your product 100% organic if one ingredient was washed with a rinse water that has hydrogen peroxide.

James Hahn: Although that particular apple could be called “organic” and that’s fine.

Diana Kaye: Absolutely, yeah.

DEBRA: Well, the apple could be called organic because it was grown organically, right? But then in the processing, it was washed with hydrogen peroxide. So now, the processing is not organic.

Diana Kaye: Correct! So it’s kicked down from 100% organic to organic.

DEBRA: This is really…

Diana Kaye: The USDA is complicated.

DEBRA: No, but I’m glad that we’re talking about this because there is this whole thing where I know the consumers say, “Well, I want it to be 100%” and in fact, somebody this week told me that they get more results when they run ads if it has the word ‘100%’ in it, it has those numbers, 100%. That’s the thing that people respond to in ads. And yet I think that the USDA organic is correct for a product for using the seal because there’s all these ways that it’s not going to be 100% and yet consumers have this idea it needs to be 100%. But what else is in there if it’s not 100%?

Diana Kaye: Exactly. And the truth of the matter is in all product categories whether personal care and/or food, it is extremely rare to find a product that can be labeled 100% organic because that is how strict our USDA rules are.

And by the way, they are the most strict set of regulations of any country in the world.

James Hahn: By far… by far…

DEBRA: I know that because I actually had someone on the show who is part of the committee that sets those standards. It’s the highest – I forgot what it’s called, but it’s the one that makes the list, the organization that makes the list. We were talking about what goes on that list and how they make those decisions. I could see how strict it was and I thought at the time that if every single product had that kind of program behind it where the standards were that strict, it would completely change the marketplace.

Diana Kaye: It would!

James Hahn: I totally agree.

DEBRA: We need to go to break. Wouldn’t that be fabulous if all products were made according to something akin to the USDA organic standards? Amazing! That would be amazing.

When we come back, we’re going to hear more about the USDA organic standards and see how wonderful they are. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guests today are Diana Kaye and James Hahn from Terressentials and they’re at Terressentials.com. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guests today are Diana Kaye and James Hahn, husband and wife and co-founders and owners of the USDA certified organic business, Terressentials where they make real organic personal care products.

Diana and James, I’m looking at the clock and we’re finally getting to talk about you.

Diana Kaye: We know we get on these rolls and soap boxes, don’t we?

DEBRA: No, but everything that we’ve been talking about is so important.

Diana Kaye: It is.

DEBRA: I don’t want to – let’s just get started because we only have about 10 minutes before the show is over.

James Hahn: Okay.

DEBRA: And that’s certainly not enough to talk about the USDA certified organic program in full. Let’s get started and then we’ll have another show and we’ll talk more about it. We’ll just do a show just on the certification program now that we’ve set it all up.

Diana Kaye: Oh, boy!

DEBRA: What else would you like to say at this point?

Diana Kaye: Well, I think there’s another thing that – Jim and I were discussing this. This happens every day with us. There’s something else that’s happening in the personal care world. It’s happening in the food world, but I’m going to point out what it is and then we can kind of delve in to the two different aspects, food versus personal care.

In the personal care world, what we have seen that has been happening over the past 10 years is that the industry itself in the United States and Europe, there are different manufacturers and their suppliers and also, their distribution partners had been getting together and they had been creating their own set of “organic” standards. These are not government standards. They are not standards that have been created with public input. They are not a law in any of these countries – and this is happening in the United States.

We’re very frustrated with this because the National Organic Program federal law in the United States says that you may not have a standard that competes with the National Organic Program of the United States of America.

And so we find it very depressing and disheartening that these different industry groups are coming up with their own standards and some of the products are now even saying ‘certified to this standard’ and the consumer have no idea. They’re thoroughly confused. We’ve talked to hundreds of people and some of them are saying that these standards mean that that’s the certifier and it’s not. It’s such a confusion situation for people.

That’s the personal care. In the food world, the United States has made what’s called a reciprocity agreement with the European Union. The European Union standard – and we also have one now with Canada. The Canadian standard and the European Union organic standards are different in some ways from the U.S. standard. Ours is still the most strict.

But due to international trade, they created this agreement, this reciprocity agreement that has been in effect since 2011 (actually, since June of 2011) where the United States said, “Okay, we’re going to accept any product that’s been certified in the European Union as equal to a U.S. certified organic product in the spirit of international cooperation and trade.” We did the same thing for Canada.

In the food world, there are some differences in the food processing and handling, but most consumers aren’t aware of this. But still, even in the food world, you’re not going to have artificial flavor showing up in a product that comes from Europe or artificial fragrant (in other words, a petrochemical fragrant) because no country allows artificial fragrant to be allowed in an organic product.

Natural flavors is a whole other topic for conversation at another time. But in the personal care world, unfortunately, the processing standards allow many chemicals to be used in the processing that are prohibited under USDA regulation, preservatives to be used which are prohibited under the USDA regulation.

So essentially, what we have in the personal care marketplace is a giant mess.

DEBRA: That’s so unfortunate.

Diana Kaye: I just wanted to add that because…

DEBRA: I’m glad that you did. It’s so unfortunate that it’s a mess, but as life evolves, I think we go from chaos to order. And so I’m hoping at some point it will become more orderly and more understandable. But I think that change is happening.

I remember back, I’ve been doing this since 1978, that’s when I first started. I lived in Northern California in the San Francisco Bay area. I remember when we first started having organic food and California certified organic farmers (I don’t know when they started), but I remember that, “Here’s a certification? What do we do with this? What does it mean?” And now, there’s a lot of certifications for a lot of different things.

There was a time when there were a lot of local certifications. And then the USDA came along and said, “We’re going to have a national certification.” And so there is one certification instead of all these local one.

And so I think it’s all progressing. And as much of a mess as it is right now, I think it’s all moving in a direction. And having conversations like this move it all forward. I’m listening to everything you’re saying today and I’m thinking this is much more complex than I even knew. And this is something I’m studying every day. And so I can imagine how much more confusing it would be for consumers.

I was talking to somebody yesterday who actually owns a business selling non-toxic products and she was saying, “It’s all so complex, I can’t even… you know, I just want to go down to the store and buy a carton of eggs.” There’s so many things that you need to think about and we need to think about these things for every single product and for every single product, it’s different. Waaaa…

Diana Kaye: It’s true! We feel the same way when I go to the grocery store. But I know I want free range, pasture raised organic chicken eggs.

DEBRA: Yeah, yeah.

Diana Kaye: I know I want the Omega-3 fats, the good fat (not the Omega-6’s). I’ve been looking to actually having chickens here in our farm although Jim keeps saying, “No, you don’t have time to do that.”

James Hahn: It’s true.

DEBRA: I had chickens in my backyard and it was fabulous. I loved the eggs…

Diana Kaye: See…?

DEBRA: It didn’t take that much time, but…

Diana Kaye: Thank you. Thank you, Debra.

DEBRA: It really is worth it. It really is worth it… until the police came and took them away because they’re illegal where I live.

Diana Kaye: What?! Oh…

DEBRA: Yes, my chickens were confiscated.

Diana Kaye: That’s ridiculous! You know, that’s happening all across America and I think that’s going to be changing too.

DEBRA: I think so too.

James Hahn: Chicken police.

Diana Kaye: That’s great, a chicken police?

DEBRA: It is chicken police.

Diana Kaye: Don’t they have anything better to do?

DEBRA: No, but see, I’m going to tell you my big – this is my vision. Everybody in the world will come to have the same kind of values that you and I have and all the products on the shelves on the stores, everything that gets made and sold will all be as organic and non-toxic as possible. I think that day will come.

If you and I, both of you and I have been watching this and helping this whole movement towards less toxic things grow and expand over the last 25-30 years, don’t you see that it’s happening that we have more and more all the time?

Diana Kaye: Debra, you could be me talking. I mean, that’s why we do this, why we persist.

DEBRA: Me too.

Diana Kaye: Despite the frustrations that we have to deal with in the marketplace because we have a vision. We’ve been through that whole chemical sensitivity and cancer thing and we know there’s a better life. So that’s why we persist.

James Hahn: I might add that there’s a lot more interest and growing interest all the time in organic products. One thing that has come along with that is that now, there’s a whole lot more corporate influence in the entire world.

DEBRA: Oh, you know, that’s a whole other subject.

James Hahn: It sure is, it sure is.

DEBRA: I don’t know if there’s time because we’ve only got about 1 ½ minutes left.

James Hahn: Great!

DEBRA: So in that 1 ½ minutes, I’m going to just let you say just something very brief just to wrap up whatever you’d like to say that you haven’t said today without starting a new subject.

Diana Kaye: Okay. Well, I want to quickly throw this in. Debra, Jim and I, your books were really very valuable in helping me seriously to survive. I’m not sure that I really would’ve survived the after effects of the chemotherapy and recovered if I haven’t had information like yours to help me.

DEBRA: Thank you so much.

Diana Kaye: And the work that you have done, the educational work, your persistence over the years has been tremendous. It’s so valuable. We wanted to thank you for all the work that you’ve done because it is such a necessary thing in today’s world.

James Hahn: True.

DEBRA: Thank you, thank you. I just want to reach through the microphone and give you a hug.

Diana Kaye: I know! I’d like to do the same.a

James Hahn: Oh, I can feel it.

DEBRA: I know, I know. I totally understand. I totally understand your dedication and I appreciate it so much that if I didn’t have businesses like yours to promote, I wouldn’t have anything to do. I mean, it really is.

Diana Kaye: I think you’d find something, Debra.

DEBRA: So I know the music is going to start.

Diana Kaye: You’re a woman with many missions like me too.

DEBRA: Thank you. Well, you know, I’m going to come up to Washington and see you someday.

James Hahn: Okay!

Diana Kaye: Oh, you should.

DEBRA: Yeah. But I have to go now. We have to get off the air because the music is going to start playing. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio.

James Hahn: Thank you.

DEBRA: I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well.

Diana Kaye: Take care.