Super Search

Water | Swimming Pools

Antimicrobials on From Front Loading Washing Machines

Question from Dori

Looking for a new front loading washing machine. I am told they now all use antimicrobial coating on the door gaskets.
What are the coatings made of? Do they leach into the environment or contaminate my clothing? What are the risks/safety for a person with MCS?

Thanks,

Dori

Debra’s Answer

This antimicrobial thing is getting ridiculous! The other day I went to buy a pair of scissors and all but one pair had antimicrobials!

There are a number of different types of antimicrobials with varying toxicity. If it says “Microban” on the label that’s triclosan and you want to stay away from that, but I don’t know what type of antimicrobial they use on washing machine gaskets and it may differ from manufacturer to manufacturer.

Ask the manufacturer what the antimicrobial is and let me know. Then I can better answer your question.

Debra 🙂

Add Comment

New Movie on Toxics: Unacceptable Levels

Ed BrownMy guest today is filmmaker Ed Brown, who created the new film “Unacceptable Levels.” The film examines the results of the chemical revolution of the 1940s through the eyes of Ed, a father seeking to understand the world in which he and his wife are raising their children. This documentary was made by one man and his camera traveling extensively to find and interview top minds in the fields of science, advocacy, and law. Weaving their testimonies into a compelling narrative, Brown presents us with the story of how the chemical revolution brought us to where we are, and of where, if we’re not vigilant, it may take us. We’ll be talking about what Ed learned by making this film, how it changed his viewpoint about toxic chemicals, and what changes he’s made in his life to reduce exposure to toxic chemicals. www.unacceptablelevels.com

read-transcript

 

 


transcript

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
New Movie on Toxics: Unacceptable Levels

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Ed Brown

Date of Broadcast: May 08, 2014

DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic-free.

Today is a very special day because tomorrow is the Hollywood premiere of a new documentary film about toxic chemical exposure. And it’s really, really good. I’ve watched it twice in fact. And this filmmaker who is with us today has put together a very complex subject into something that is extremely easy to watch and understand.

I would just say that he’s done such a good job with this that I would just tell everybody. Just watch this film for 120 minutes (or 1 hour and 20 minutes) and then go directly to my website because this film tells you all the reasons why you should be doing everything that I’ve been talking about people should be doing for the last 30 years.

And this is just the perfect introduction to anybody. I mean if you know all about toxic chemicals and you want to introduce somebody to the subject, this would be the perfect thing to have them watch. If you know about toxic chemicals and you want to learn more about the bigger picture, this would be the perfect film to watch. It just is excellent, excellent, excellent.

And I’m so happy to have the filmmaker on today. This is Ed Brown. Hi, Ed.

ED BROWN: Hi Debra. What an amazing introduction. Thank you so much. I’m honored.

DEBRA: You’re welcome. You did a great job. You just did a great job. And for the listeners to know, I watched the film a few months ago and then I wanted to have Ed on then, but there’s other stuff going on and the film wasn’t released at the time.

Now, the film is being released tomorrow and I watched it again today and I loved it just as much today. It’s a documentary film, but it really tells the story of Ed and his curiosity and his concern about what’s going on with the toxic chemicals in the world.

And he interviews the top people in the field. Well, I didn’t get interviewed. No, the thing is though I’m not the top person in the world about the toxic problems. I’m the top person on the world about the solutions. What are the non-toxic solutions?

And what Ed did was he went and interviewed all the people who can tell you the story of what is the problem. And it’s just an exceptional statement of what is the problem.

Anyway, Ed, tell us. I’m going to let you talk. I’m not going to talk through the whole show.

ED BROWN: No, I love you and your thoughts. I think I’m incredibly boring compared to you.

DEBRA: Well, I was not bored with your film for one second. I want to hear about—you tell in the film your story about what led you to be interested in doing this. If you would just tell us that, that would be great.

ED BROWN: Of course. I like to say you are one of the top people obviously working on solutions. And you are one of the key elements to absolutely solving this problem, which is […] across the board.

DEBRA: Thank you.

ED BROWN: And I just want to state that fact. I’m sure your listeners know that. I’m spreading the word every single day about you and your work.

DEBRA: Thank you.

ED BROWN: This film, like everyone else, our lives all tell stories, whether it’s going to be on the movie screen or whether to family members or friends. I just happened to have a camera and I started looking into this issue.

My wife had two miscarriages out of three pregnancies. And quite frankly, I believe the doctors we had on both miscarriages, they didn’t know why this happened. Nature takes its course. It’s probably for the best, et cetera.

And so, after the second one, she had a procedure, which was a D&C. It was right after that that I got really angry—not at the doctors, not at anyone in particular. But I got mad thinking what’s really going on. I keep hearing the same thing. Everybody is sick. I don’t know anyone who isn’t on some kind of medication. Everybody had some chronic illness. I mean I think we can all agree that we all know somebody who has cancer.

DEBRA: Yes.

ED BROWN: I started thinking maybe there’s something connected here. Maybe there are some dots here that I’m missing.

I started doing some research and I started to learn a little bit more about what’s really going on, I realized that there are so many dots that people haven’t been able to connect.

I just took it upon myself to learn all about this subject that affects every single human being on this planet every single day, no matter what your financial status, no matter what your race or your religion or your age or your sex. It affects everyone equally.

And what I found out is that no one lives a healthier or better life with so many toxic chemicals inside their bodies. Ultimately, that’s why I took this journey myself.

DEBRA: Yes. I agree with everything that you said. And what I found for myself was that when I did all the research that you did at the time in 1978 when I started, we didn’t have as much information as we have today. We didn’t have all those organizations and all the people that are working on it that you interviewed. Nobody, I don’t think any of them were doing it in 1978. So I had much less to work with when I started researching.

But it became really clear to me and as you state at the end of the film that we all need to do something for ourselves. In the film, you go through talking about toxic chemicals in water, in food and personal care products and all these different things. And you also talk about how our laws do not protect us from these things. And when you try to change at the regulatory level, there are lobbyists and people who are posing that.

You talk about our healthcare system. And the thing about healthcare is that you can go to so many doctors who don’t even recognize that toxic chemicals are the basic cause of most of the illness that most of us are having.

And to go to a doctor and get a drug—well, you don’t say this on the film, but I’m going to say it. To go to the doctor and get a drug does not solve the problem of toxic chemicals in your body or in the environment. It just puts another toxic chemical in your body.

We need to have this massive reorientation of every part of society to understand that this is a problem that all of us are experiencing, all of us are being harmed by. And all of us together need to change it.

ED BROWN: I couldn’t agree more. And by the way, Debra, I was only three years old when you started looking into this problem. I wish I could have been a part of it ever since then.

But let’s think about it. You’ve been looking into it for that long and other people have recognized it as well, but you’ve been incredibly influential in taking on this fight.

That’s what your viewers, I’m sure, know and your listeners. I think that they really need to understand across the board that this is everyone’s problem. It’s not going away any time soon.

And yeah, wherever you get sick—hopefully you don’t—if you get sick, you go into a doctor’s office, what they’re not trained at is prevention. What they don’t know a lot about is anything about toxic chemicals. Maybe they know a little bit.

But for the most part, what they’re really, really great at is treating symptoms of a problem. They’re not really great at getting into the root of the issue.

And so the healthcare industry, they have to re-prioritize a lot of the different ways of doing things. I think that over the course of the next 20 to 30 years, I think they have to, I hope at least.

DEBRA: Well, 30 years ago, most of the doctors were just regular medical doctors and over the past 30 years, there have been new fields coming out like functional medicine and things like that. And there are a lot of doctors now that are alternative who are MDs who have said, “Wait a minute. I need to do something else.” And they go off and say, “Let’s look at toxic chemicals. Let’s look at modalities. Let’s look at nutrition.”

I worked with a doctor who is a chiropractor by training. That’s how he gets his doctor status. But he has trained himself in all kinds of other things and he completely agrees with me that we need to reduce toxic chemical exposure and we need to get adequate nutrition. Most people don’t get enough nutrition in order to have their detox systems in their bodies working.

Simple things like this—oh, we need to take a break. I’m talking to you instead of watching the time. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is filmmaker, Ed Brown.

We’re talking about his new film, Unacceptable Levels, which is opening tomorrow in Hollywood. You can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and scroll down the page and you’ll see a little banner ad for his movie. If you click on that, you can order your own copy or rent it. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is filmmaker, Ed Brown. He’s the creator of the new film, Unacceptable Levels, which is all about our exposure to toxic chemicals and what’s going on in the world.

It premieres tomorrow in Hollywood. You can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com today and pre-order by clicking on the banner. Scroll down until you see Ed’s nice smile and below that, there’s a banner out that says, Unacceptable Levels. You can click on that.

I guess tomorrow, there’s access to the film. Is that correct, Ed?

ED BROWN: Yes, that’s correct. Yeah, tomorrow, everybody with internet connection would be able to access the film anywhere and anytime as long as you have a smart phone or a tablet, even TVs. Yeah, you connect it to…

DEBRA: Or a desktop computer.

ED BROWN: It’s exciting. It’s exciting.

DEBRA: Yeah, I’m very excited about it. Tell us what it was like to go on this—was it a two year journey? You traveled around and you interviewed people. What was that experience like?

ED BROWN: That was a challenge to put it lightly. I didn’t have a clue. It was just me and my camera and my tripod. And I’m staying in a lot of different places all over the world by myself. For the most part, it was difficult.

I was working at a restaurant waiting tables, which you’ll see in the film. That’s where it all started for me. I was waiting tables and I only had one day a week to film because the restaurant was closed on Monday. So I really had to scramble during the week making phone calls and trying to set up as many interviews as I could if I needed to go to a particular area because I didn’t really have a lot of money to use either.

So yeah, I had inherently some troubles. We decided to embark on a film and you’re doing it all by yourself. Obviously, there’s going to be a lot of pitfalls headed your way and a lot of road blocks. But totally, I was able to navigate my way through that.

So first of all, the photography about two years and then it took another two years to finish editing it and honing it and really working with the story into what you’re about to see. Yeah, it’s about a four-year process.

I think I’ve earned some kind of honorary degree somehow, I hope. I don’t know what it would be in chemistry or filmmaking, but I hope somebody can give me something for this. I’m joking.

DEBRA: Well, I would at least acknowledge you because I know what it’s like to be one person wanting to make a difference because I have been doing everything that I do without any funding, without any organizations, just being one person.

So I really honor you for doing that and I understand the feeling that you must have had of seeing what was wrong and then saying, “Wait, I need to tell other people.” That’s what happened to me too.

Once I got sick and I discovered what was making me sick, I said, “Wait, this whole thing could have been avoided if somebody had just told me there were toxic chemicals out there and they were in my products and they were in the food and they were in my perfume and in my water and in my bed and in my body.” If somebody had just told me that, I could have done something to prevent being sick.

And nobody was talking about it and so I had to do that. And I did it all alone just like you did it all alone and I think that a lot of people who are very effective in this world have done things all alone. I totally commend you for deciding to do it and continuing to do it and bringing this information to people who need to have it.

ED BROWN: I certainly appreciate that. And Debra, your story is much more heroic than my own. I’ll always say that. Your perseverance is shining though every single day.

For all of us, if I would have failed—there were a lot of desperate times financially for myself, I have two kids and my wife who tries to take care of them as best as she could. There were a lot of very, very challenging instances where I felt like we weren’t going to make it to the finish line, but I knew that I had to.

I knew I had to see it for myself to the end. A lot of wherewithal and a lot of dedication to this, I saw a lot of people that kept encouraging me to keep going. And their strong will really helped me to make it to the end as well.

And if I didn’t make it, if I failed to do that, this information wouldn’t be available tomorrow to everybody across the globe. And we all need it and that’s the point.

DEBRA: We do all need it, but everyone needs to understand. You did such a great job of starting at the beginning and showing how we got to where we are today and showing that after World War II in the mid 1940s that there had been all these chemists available working on the chemical warfare of World War II that they had developed new things.

And now what are you going to do with all the chemists? And there were cheap raw materials in the form of oil and they just started making things and all these new substances and all these new products and there was money available and people were buying them. It seemed like this wonderful new world and yet, there was this dark side that didn’t start being apparent until some years later.

And now, it’s very, very clear from the evidence, the scientific evidence that these chemicals are toxic and all of us are being affected, all of us need to do something about it and you really showed that. I don’t want to say in an entertaining way because it’s not an entertaining subject.

ED BROWN: Yeah. I see how delicate you’re trying to put it and I can appreciate that because you wouldn’t want to make it seem like this is entertaining, but you have to have that value and appeal to get people to reciprocate.

If you make it just factually based, it could be completely boring and people would get turned off and then you’re not able to make any difference with the subject material that you’re using.

DEBRA: I would say certainly you have presented it in an accessible way and in a way that is not dry and boring at all.

ED BROWN: Yes.

DEBRA: And you interspersed with humor. My publicist once said, “David Letterman wanted to have you on his show, but he couldn’t think of anything funny to say about toxics.” So I wasn’t on David Letterman.

But you actually came up with some clips of people making jokes about toxic substances. And so the way you put it together, you took a subject that can be difficult to understand, difficult to listen to and at times horrifying, and you made it very human.

I just want people to understand that if you hear this word, “documentary about toxic chemicals,” that you don’t think that this is going to be something boring that you don’t want to watch. It is something that you want to watch and it’s something that you want to share with your family and friends and co-workers because everybody needs to have this information, everybody needs to have the truth about the world that we live in so that we can do something about it.

We’re going to take another break and we’ll be right back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is filmmaker, Ed Brown who made Unacceptable Levels.

It’s opening tomorrow in Hollywood. You can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com right now, during the break and click on the banner ad to pre-order your copy. You can buy it or you can rent it and it will be available tomorrow. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is filmmaker, Ed Brown who made the new film, Unacceptable Levels, which opens tomorrow.

I wanted to ask you a two-part question. Here’s the first question. What did you find most horrifying in your research? What was the thing that you said, “This is just unacceptable.”

ED BROWN: That’s a way to start, right?

DEBRA: Yeah, a way to start. But what was the thing that got you emotionally?

ED BROWN: I always go back to the more disgusting ones, the toxic ones. That’s the one thing that blew me away. I just couldn’t understand. I don’t know. The toxic sludge

DEBRA: Tell us what toxic sludge is.

ED BROWN: It’s huge recently.

DEBRA: Just give us the details about toxic sludge.

ED BROWN: Yes. The toxic sludge are sewage systems or humans’ sewage systems. It was designed in a particular way to collect everything that you flush down the toilet. Everything that goes down, we collect it. It’s tried and then what do you do with it?

It doesn’t magically disappear. It doesn’t magically just go away. This is something that again blew me away because this is something I never really thought about. It’s out of sight, out of mind […]

And what I found out was that our sewage systems collect these stuff. It’s dried and then transported. They don’t take it to the moon. They don’t take it and dump it in the ocean. And it’s extremely toxic. It’s called toxic sludge because all of the contaminants that go down into the sewage systems—pharmaceuticals drugs, heavy metals, pesticides and other contaminants and stuff like that.

All this stuff that’s collected is not magically disinfected. They don’t do anything to change the matter itself. And again, they take it and transport it onto our farmland and it’s called bio solids. So it goes from being called toxic sludge and with some regulatory magic and then they renamed it “bio solid,” which sounded much nicer than toxic sludge.

But anyway, we have 60% of our farmland being fertilized by this stuff. The things, the plants that are being grown out of this stuff and farm animals, we’re going to be eating it. It’s a bizarre scenario, but that’s the situation we find ourselves.

DEBRA: It actually is traditional. We put manure of animals on farmland and that’s considered to be a good organic practice. And way before, all throughout history, both animal and human manure have been used to fertilize the land.

But the part that is different nowadays is that all the toxic chemicals that we’re exposed to that we eat, that we breed, that we drink, that we put on our skin get eliminated through our intestines. And so then when you take that material that is the toxic waste of our bodies being eliminated and then you put that on the farmland, that’s not the same thing.

ED BROWN: Yeah, it’s true. I still find the marketing of this to be fascinating because if they just called it tacky human waste or something like that, it doesn’t change the product. It changes your mindset as to how you view it. And that’s what they did, which is crazy.

DEBRA: Yeah. The second half of the question is I want to ask you, what did you learn that gave you the greatest hope?

ED BROWN: That there are so many amazing people just like yourself, Debra, out there working every single day not just to educate, but to make the world a better place.

That might sound a cliché and that might sound hoaky, but I’ve met so many amazing people and I’ve worked with so many amazing organizations, so many amazing companies that are at the forefront of this problem that have been taking it on for decades. That should give everybody a high degree of hope that we have so many great people out there struggling every single day to take on the biggest challenge we’ve ever faced as a human civilization. And we should have more every single day, joining in this along with each other and holding hands and working together to do this.

DEBRA: Yes.

ED BROWN: Again, it might sound cliché, but it’s not. These are people that take these issues seriously and we all have a very, very deep responsibility for the next generation to do everything we can to make their lives better than we had it. And I have three children now. I had two at the time when I finished the movie. That’s what they deserve from us.

And looking in their faces, looking into their smiles and making them understand that I’m here in every single way, it’s all […], they give me hope and all the people working out there in this facility are really given hope as well.

DEBRA: I find out every day on this radio show. I am interviewing people around the world who are doing things to make the world safer and they’re working at every level from retailers and manufacturers through regulations and everything.

I don’t feel, like we talked earlier about each of us being one person doing something by ourselves, but we’re not. We’re one person, but we’re a part of a much bigger picture of all these other individuals on the planet that are working towards having a less toxic world or a non-toxic world, a toxic-free world.

Sometimes, I stop and think we have so much information about this, so much knowledge about how to live toxic-free and we can see it if we know where to look. You can see it all around and that’s what I keep trying to show people, “Look here, look there,” because you can make these toxic-free choices that exist for you. It’s right here today. And yet, there are still so many people who don’t even know that there’s a problem.

ED BROWN: Yeah!

DEBRA: Go ahead.

ED BROWN: Yeah. I live in Central Pennsylvania. I wouldn’t exactly call it the Mecca for green living and toxic-free lifestyle or anything like that.

And I think that they give me a viewpoint that was completely necessary for the story to be told.

If I grew up and lived in San Francisco, I think it would be much different. I mean it’s an accepted way of life and people are quite educated on what it is out there.

But this is a film that needs to and has to ultimately reach the individuals who have no idea that this is happening. It’s not to say that everybody that’s been working in this field can’t use reinforcement. I mean I am going to suggest that as well.

But I would say that the people like my parents, people like my friends who don’t have any idea that this is a problem and may not over the course of a lifetime, unless something really bad happens to them and they look into it, themselves, that’s where this comes down to.

And nobody is average. I know we never say that average people need this information, but everybody does.

DEBRA: Everybody needs it. Absolutely. We need to go to another break, but we’ll be right back. My guest today is filmmaker, Ed Brown, who created the new film Unacceptable Levels.

It opens tomorrow in Hollywood and you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. Click on the banner ad for Unacceptable Levels and you can pre-order it and you’ll get it tomorrow. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is filmmaker, Ed Brown who created the new film Unacceptable Levels.

And I’ll just say once more because this is the last segment of the show and I know we’re going to just keep talking right to the end. If you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, scroll down the page and you’ll see the banner ad for Unacceptable Levels. Just click on it. You can order a rental, you can order the film itself and it will be available tomorrow.

I think it would be a great idea to invite your friends over to watch it together, talk about what all you can do, what each of you are doing already to be less toxic. Just really help each other and your friends and neighbors to be able to live in a less toxic way.

And if you need some information about that, you can listen to Toxic Free Talk Radio. You can go to my website. Go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. Go to the top. There’s a whole menu of things that you can find on my site, including if you click on Shop, there are more than 500 websites selling toxic-free products of all kinds. You can go to the Q&A.

You can go to the search box, which is a little thing that looks like a magnifying glass and type in any product that you’re looking for and you’ll probably get something. There are books that you can read. There’s a blog about how you can detox toxic chemicals out of your body. There’s just so much information.

Watch the film and Ed will inspire you to do something and then you can go to my website and find out how to do something. That’s how these two things fit together.

ED BROWN: I think it’s great. I mean that’s exactly the progression people should go through. You need to educate yourself about it and then have a solution lined up for it as well and a plan.

DEBRA: Yeah. Ed, I just want to tell you that you’re breaking up a little. I’m wondering if the producer can call you back, but let’s just continue.

ED BROWN: Am I still here?

DEBRA: Yeah. You’re still breaking up, but I want to know if people hear what you’re saying. My producer—oh, he says that you sound fine in the studio, so let’s just keep going on. Maybe it’s just my receiving end that’s breaking up.

So tell us some things that you did in your life to be less toxic as a result of you doing this research.

ED BROWN: One of the first things I started doing was I have changed the crib mattress that the kids were sleeping on. That was really, really important.

Why? That’s because the child sleeps on a crib mattress eight to 15 hours every single day. Flame retardants and other chemicals would be going straight to their bodies as they’re breathing. And that’s one of the first things that I always try to say to my other parents as well. Try changing that.

And I also changed my cleaning products. Every time you spray a particular surfactant, it might have an antimicrobial agent into it and stuff like that, you’re inhaling it. You’re putting them onto your skin. I don’t know how you’re cleaning. Ultimately, I needed to do that too, so I’ve changed that.

And now I just use white vinegar and rubbing alcohol to clean everything with. It’s cheaper and it’s effective.

And also when it comes to food, we don’t eat anything, but organic. And that to me is a really smart way of eliminating a lot of toxins that get into us every single day.

So you got to think about what you’re breathing, what you’re drinking, what you’re eating and how you’re sleeping. Those are really the four areas. If you can, make changes there quickly.

Our water filtration system is of the utmost importance. There’s over 250 contaminants in every single drop of water that’s coming from the tap.

It’s not to say that it’s horrifically bad and it’s not to say that bottled water is any better. They’re just sitting back and saying they have to disinfect it and stuff like that. I understand it. But you need to get a water filtration system that’s going to take out the disinfectants and what-not and other trace contaminants that pass through on municipal water facility.

You should think about what you’re doing, what you’re breathing, what you’re eating, what you’re drinking, how you’re sleeping. So those four areas, you make those consorted efforts. Take small steps if you need to. Take big leaps if you’d like to.

And then you‘ll find, over the course of five to 10 years, you may have avoided a lot of struggle in your body. And it’s just ultimately better for everybody like this and especially young kids, starting out at a very young age.

DEBRA: It is ultimately better and I know a lot of times, people think, especially if they watch your film and they may say, “Oh, everything is toxic.” Well, it is.

ED BROWN: Yeah, I just did that.

DEBRA: It is and it isn’t. There are things that are more toxic. For example, cleaning products are a big toxic category of products. And pesticides are a big category and your bed is a big toxic category.

If you change any of those things and use the less toxic ones, the ones like instead of a polyurethane foam mattress, you sleep on an organic cotton mattress. I have an organic wool mattress. If you make that kind of change, it may be that your life is now not 100% toxic-free, but it’s less toxic and you just keep making it less and less and less.

And what I found in myself and others over the years, especially if you have some illness or chronic condition is that there’s such a chance that it’s related to toxic chemicals. As you reduce your toxic chemical exposure, you should be feeling better and better and better.

And even if we don’t get to 100% zero toxics, everybody can reduce the amount of toxics that they’re exposed to enough to make a significant difference in your health. That has been shown over and over and over again. If you just start with the things that you’re exposed to at home, then it can make a huge difference, just a huge difference.

ED BROWN: You’re actually right. I always go with that sentiment, taking steps, again small steps, budgetary mind steps and always moving in that direction. Find small incremental changes and it will have a huge impact.

DEBRA: It will. It will. We only have about four minutes left. Is there anything that you want to say that we haven’t talked about?

ED BROWN: Of course, there are a lot of things that I’d love to talk about. I’m fascinated by one of your ads by the way, thinking about what it would take […] and if I could do that every single day. I think that would be a tough one. I don’t know why I was fixated on that, listening to it, thinking, “That’s heavy stuff.”

I think what we’re doing when it comes to these toxic chemicals, the one thing that—and I’m not chastising the industry and I’m not chastising scientists that do not believe that this is such a big deal. But starting with something, let’s just say a blueberry, one blueberry has 42 trace contaminants and pesticides on it. Some of those are neurotoxins, some of those are carcinogens and some of those have reproductive problems.

That’s one blueberry.

Let’s say you really like blueberries and you eat a handful of them and let’s just say you really like tomatoes and strawberries as well and you like to eat a lot of those every single day. And if you just make a change in those and go organic with some of the really soft skinned fruits and vegetables, you’ll find that your body will reciprocate.

That’s where we get a lot of the pay loads from pesticides and phosphates and stuff like that and other issues that are related to the food that we’re eating like insecticides and fungicides and avicides and stuff like that.

Think about it for a second. This is a great analogy that I give to everybody. If you had two tomatoes, both of those are organic. You watched somebody take one of those tomatoes and they sprayed […] all over it, even if they washed it off really, really well, would you want to eat it? Most people say no.

And I always say what’s the difference between a farmer doing that in a field multiple times over the course of its growth to seeing that in front of your face.

So, really still, the out of sight, out of mind mentality needs to be changed. And that’s why I want to try to encourage people to […] even if it’s made and manufactured and all that stuff and you don’t see any of that happening.

That’s the whole point of this film. It’s just like the Wizard of Oz , we’re pulling the curtain back. You don’t see any of this kind of stuff happening over here. And that’s what this film is trying to expose. It’s exposing our exposures.

I really hope everybody enjoys it. I hope everybody goes to your website, clicks on the banner link and watches it tomorrow when it goes live. And again Debra, you made a great point, sharing it with your friends and family and getting the conversation move in the right direction. It’s ultimately going to be our salvation across the board. It will do everybody a great deal of good to change the way we’ve been doing things, absolutely.

DEBRA: Yes, I completely agree. You were talking about the out of sight, out of mind and I have a friend who gives talks about things toxic. And one of the things that he does is he brings a can of pesticide with him and he holds up an apple and he said, “Now, I’m going to spray this with pesticides,” and people go, “No!”

ED BROWN: It’s real, right?

DEBRA: If you spray a pesticide on an apple right in front of somebody, they will not eat it. And yet, they are spraying the same pesticides on the apples in the orchard and then it’s coming to you.

Anyway, I need to say thank you so much because we’re about to be done with the show. I just need to say thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you so much for doing what you’ve done and I hope that a lot of people watch the film and talk about it and that it just opens the door for so many more people to know about this.

ED BROWN: Absolutely. Pleasure is all mine.

DEBRA: Thank you. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. Remember to go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and click on the banner ad and get your copy of the film, Unacceptable Levels.

Green Sheetrock

Question from Sandy

I posted a question last week on sheetrock, but forgot to ask one of the the most important questions. Would green sheetrock be equally as safe as white sheetrock..which would you recommend?

Thanks

Sandy

Debra’s Answer

When I first looked at your question I thought of a piece of green sheetrock I saw years ago that was coated with a think green waxy substance that smelled terrible.

Today that seems to have been replaced with a product with this description:

Sheetrock UltraLight mold tough gypsum panels are lightweight gypsum wallboard panels and have a noncombustible, moisture resistant gypsum core encased in moisture- and mold-resistant. 100-percent recycled green face and brown back paper.

I called US Gypsum and got from them the MSDS for this product, to find out what the mold inhibitor is.

It turned out to be Sodium Pyrithione. Here is a statement from USG about why they use it.

Here is the data sheet from the manufacturer for Sodium Pyrithione

If you wanted to use green sheetrock, it’s unlikely you would have any exposure to the fungicide after it was painted. But it’s not meant to be water-resistant.

In my bathroom and kitchen, I tiled the walls up seven feet to have waterproof walls. My bathroom is sooooo waterproof.

If you are wanting to install tile, use cement backerboard. That will firmly hold the tile in place.

Add Comment

The Organically Clean Home

Linda CragoToday my guest is Becky Rapinchuk of CleanMama.net, a blog that tells you how to simplify and organizee your housekeeping while also using nontoxic cleaners. Becky is the author of The Organically Clean Home, and offers free printables on her site, such as cleaning recipes for using castile soap, lemons, borax, vinegar, and baking soda. 150 Everyday Organic Cleaning Products You Can Make Yourself - The Natural, Chemical-Free WayHas been featured on Oprah.com and HGTV and has also provided content and cleaning consulting for Scotch-Brite (3M), Peapod/Reckitt, Cafemom.com, and Bissell. Circle of Moms named Clean Mama one of the Top 25 Home Management Blogs, iVillage named her as one of the 10 Organizers You Should Be Following on Pinterest, and Skinny Scoop named Clean Mama one of the Top 25 Organization Blogs. Rapinchuk is also Answer.com’s housekeeping expert. www.cleanmama.net

Becky’s Free 55 Simple Cleaning Recipes for using castile soap, lemons, borax, vinegar and baking soda to clean your house.

 

read-transcript

 

 


transcript

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
The Organically Clean Home

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Becky Rapinchuk

Date of Broadcast: May 7, 2014

DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio, where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world, and live toxic-free.
It’s Wednesday, May 7, 2014. Today, we’re going to be talking about cleaning your house—your favorite thing. Not my favorite thing, but I was talking to a friend of mine the other day about cleaning, and she said that she loves to clean her house because she loves how beautiful it is at the end, and how orderly it is, and how beautiful to have a shiny surface on your table.

And I thought that that was just lovely because I do like my house to look nice. I look like my house to be orderly and beautiful, and cleaning it is the way to get there. Interesting.

So today, my guest is Becky, I hope I’m saying this right, Rapinchuk. She’ll correct me. I’ll ask her. She’s has a blog named CleanMamma.net, and she’s written a book called “The Organically Clean Home” that has 150 recipes for making your own cleaners at home.

So that’s what we’re going to be talking about today.

The thing that’s different about Becky that I’ll tell you is that her book and her website actually organizes you, helps you organize yourself to get your cleaning done in a non-toxic way. And that’s the key difference, I think, is actually getting it done.

Hi, Becky.

BECKY RAPINCHUK: Hi. How are you?

DEBRA: I’m good. And how do you say your name?

BECKY RAPINCHUK: You said it correctly. It’s Rapinchuk.

DEBRA: Rapinchuk, good. Do you remember the Mary Tyler Moore Show?

BECKY RAPINCHUK: I do. I just watched it the other night actually.

DEBRA: I used to when I was a kid. The Mary Tyler Moore Show was my favorite show. And every Saturday night, I would be right there to watch the Mary Tyler Moore Show. And you know, there was Ted the newscaster, who could never pronounce anything.

And I understand exactly his situation because people come on the show, and suddenly, I look at their name and I go, “How am I supposed to say that?”
I can say that because people have difficulty saying my name too. And I’m on the radio. They don’t know how to pronounce my name.

So Rapinchuk, Becky Rapinchuk, CleanMama.net, and her book is “The Organically Clean Home.”

Becky, how did you get interested in writing about non-toxic cleaners?

BECKY RAPINCHUK: Well, it started a long time ago—years ago, I guess, when my oldest sprayed cleaning products on her face. And I had bought from watching commercials. They showed it to be used on high chairs, tables and tabletops, and places where kids were.

And it was supposed to be sprayed right around them, and it was totally safe, supposedly.

But once she sprayed it all over herself, I panicked a little bit and read the back, and it said you had to call poison control. That was where I said, “Hold on.”

This is marketed for moms. You don’t need to rinse it. You’re supposed to spray it on their high chairs, what they’re eating off of. And it’s toxic?

So that was where I started doing a little investigating, and I just started looking for non-toxic cleaners to purchase, and safer, more environmentally-sound cleaners. And it was pretty expensive, just because I was trying all these different things, trying to find the right thing that worked.

When I started the process, it was about eight years ago, and there weren’t quite as many options on the market at that point. And frankly, they didn’t work very well. They just weren’t up to my expectations, I guess.

After years of sampling different cleaners and trying to find something that would actually work that I enjoyed working with, and that I didn’t feel like was playing a huge dent in the back of my pocket, I started making my own cleaners, and realizing that that way, I would know exactly how much of any given ingredient was in it, what I was using, what it smelled like, what it didn’t smell like.

So that was where that quest came for me. It was an eye-opening experience and scary, nonetheless, that I just had no idea.

And I would also say that I tend to err on the side of germaphobe. And so when my daughter was little, I wanted everything to be germ-free. That was real big concern for me too, so I just really had a hard time coming to grips with the actual cleaning process.

It doesn’t have to be sanitized. We’re not in a hospital. Just [meeting] that difference too.

DEBRA: Well, I can appreciate all the work that went into this. I’ve been making my own cleaning products for more than 30 years because when I first became interested in this subject back in 1978 actually, there were no books like yours or mine.

And so I couldn’t just go to a book and find out, “Well, how am I supposed to clean my house now if I wanted to avoid toxic chemicals?”

And so I just started out with baking soda and vinegar, and finding out how to use those, and regular soap. And that’s still what I clean my house with.

So I’m really interested to read all these other 150 recipes because you’re giving recipes for how to do things like clean your showerhead. I’ve never cleaned my showerhead. But I think we probably should.

And you’ve got tile cleaner, and citrus wood cleaner, and toy cleaner, and room freshening spray, and all these things that I don’t ever do. You’re giving me new ways to clean my house.

But I know it works. I know that what all these recipes that Becky is giving you in this book, I know that the whole concept works. I know that it works to use baking soda, vinegar, soap and lemon juice. She uses about a dozen different non-toxic ingredients.

And you just get those basic things, start mixing, and you can very inexpensively clean your house for most reasons that you might want to clean it and not have any plastic bottles that go to the landfill, and all those kinds of things.

So this is a really great thing.

I’d like us to say a little bit about what the toxic chemicals are, and problems with toxic cleaning products? Do you want to talk about that?

BECKY RAPINCHUK: Yes. I think that the big issue is that if you look at the back of a label of any cleaning product, or a lot of cleaning products that are in the store, there are ingredients that you don’t recognize. The problem is we don’t know that maybe it says it’s flammable, so you’ll think, “Well, I’m not going to put it near my heating vent, so I’m fine.”

But when you actually start to investigate what’s in the product, it’s so much worse than just being flammable. It’s because it’s caustic.

Fumes can be produced if you use it in a small space. If your child gets into, it could send them to the emergency room or worse.

People aren’t educated to know that just because it says it’s safe for your family, it doesn’t mean that it really is. And you really need to take responsibility for what you’re putting into your home, and on your kitchen table, and in your washing machine, as well as what you’re putting back into the environment too as it washes on the drain. Those things also leech back into your drinking water.

To me that’s a little snippet of the problem with the toxic chemicals.

DEBRA: Also, in addition to that, most cleaning products, because not 100% of them, there are some things you can go to the supermarket and buy [Bon Ami’s]. It’s totally non-toxic.

But most cleaning products that you’re going to see at the supermarket are actually household hazardous waste. If you don’t use all of them, you’re supposed to take them to the household hazardous waste disposal. They’re not supposed to go in the trash. And they’re governed by those laws as hazardous waste.

Also, another thing is that cleaning products are not required by law to even put their ingredients on the label. So if there are some ingredients on the label, there are probably a lot of ingredients that are not listed.

When I first started researching cleaning products, I had to go to industry—we’ll take a break, and we’ll talk a little bit about this more when we come back.

You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Becky Rapinchuk. Her website is CleanMama.net. And you should go there because she has a lot of information. She has a blog. She’s got some free stuffs that you can download. And she’s the author of The Organically Clean Home.

We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and today, my guest is Becky Rapinchuk. She’s at CleanMama.net, and the author of “The Organically Clean Home.”Before the break, we were talking about cleaning products being household hazardous waste. And I actually wanted to say, so all you listeners know, that cleaning products are regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and though the 1960 Federal Hazardous Substances Labeling Act.

This is really important to know because every type of product is labeled differently. And the law about cleaning products is that they are not required to list everything on the label, but they are required to put warning labels on like “toxic,” “extremely toxic,” “corrosive,” “sensitizer,” “danger,” “warning,” “caution,” and skull and crossbones like you see on drain cleaner. It has skull and crossbones.

Originally, these warning labels meant bad. They actually meant something that they showed a degree of toxicity, but over time, that’s all been eroded.

So here we have a situation where we have probably the most toxic products in your home that children can, if they are under the sink, just grab them and drink them, and be very harmed.

But the warning labels, we can’t find out what’s in them because it’s not required for the manufacturers to reveal that. The warning labels are not always correct, and as Becky mentioned, they’re being advertised as being safe when they aren’t.

And all of these are reasons to just skip them all together, the commercial products.

Now, of course, there are some products that are much better than the most toxic ones, and some brands that you’ll find in the nature food store that these are immensely better.

But as Becky said, and I totally agree with her, this is really an area of life where you want to know what’s in the product. You really want to know what’s in the product. And when you make them yourselves, you have total control over what goes in it, you can make a product that is unscented, you can make it scented with an essential oil that is one that you like, and you just have total control.

And I like having total control over my environment.

So Becky, let’s talk about some of your cleaning recipes, but before that, first, let’s talk about organizing because I think that probably it’s just as important to know how to organize your cleaning, so that you feel in control of what you’re doing, and you know it’s getting done, as it is what products you’re using.

So give us some first hints about organizing.

BECKY RAPINCHUK: I think having a cleaning routine is key. My cleaning routine is essentially in my head at this point. I just know on Mondays, I clean the bathrooms, and Tuesdays, I dust, and I have specific jobs that I take care of around the home every day, and then specific jobs that I rotate through the week.

And having that organized just makes it on autopilot. It keeps it easier. It doesn’t make it as big of a deal as you might think it is.

DEBRA: When I first saw this, I thought, “A cleaning routine? Gee, you do something every day. How do you find the time?”
And then I thought, “She must be cleaning all day long.”

But then I thought, no. Actually, what happens to me is that I’m very busy with my work as many people are. And I’m sure you are too.

But I’m so busy with that that I’m not even thinking about this. And then I get to the end of the week, and it’s Saturday, and I’ve got a load of laundry, and I need to dust, and I need to do this and do that.

And it doesn’t all get done.

And so I can see that if I were to integrate cleaning into my life on a daily basis and say, “Okay, I’m going to do my laundry on Monday,” that it could actually get done because I could put in a load. And fortunately, I work at home, so I could put in a load of laundry, come and work, take out the laundry, and it just gets integrated into life instead of piled up.

BECKY RAPINCHUK:And I think that’s the key. If you hadn’t been doing a cleaning routine, and you decided you’re going to follow mine, so Mondays, we clean all the bathrooms. And that’s the big task for the day.

It might take you longer, but if you start cleaning your bathrooms every Monday, it’s much quicker because it’s not all piled up, and there isn’t a whole bunch of toothpaste on the mirror that you have to clean off. It’s just a quick wipe down, quick spray, quick clean and move on.

I think that everyone’s busy and having to waste time cleaning on a whole Saturday or before you’re having company coming, have to throw your whole house into shape before they come, it’s a shame because it can be a 10 to 15 minutes a day routine if you just start making yourself do that.

That’s where the organization part of cleaning routine comes in.

I have one that works really well for me, works really well readers of my blog, and instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, I always suggest just try mine. And then just decide what doesn’t work for you, and tweak for yourself.

But just start with one because if you’re anything like me, if I’m actually working, trying to formulate this cleaning routine, I’d get all caught up in the formulation of it. And by the time it comes to clean, I’m sick of it. I don’t want to do it anyway.

So just try someone’s cleaning routine, see what works for you and what doesn’t.

And another thing that I think is really helpful is to do a load of laundry every day. If it’s one person, if it’s just you in your house, or you and a spouse, you might not have to do a load of laundry every day. But if you have three kids like I do, if you don’t do laundry every day, you’ll be doing it for an entire day.

DEBRA: Yes, I’ve had that experience.

Talking about routines, one of the things that I decided that I needed to do in my life some time ago was to learn how to manage my money. And you can read all kinds of books about managing your money, but I figured out that what I needed to do was manage it in a way that worked for me.

And it was this gradual process to not doing my bookkeeping at all, to just looking at the account statement at the end of the month, to keeping track of it monthly, and then keeping track of it weekly. And then I went to keeping track of it daily.

And so every morning, I would get up and say, “Okay, I’m going to take this 10 minutes and just see where I am financially.”

And that actually ended up working out the best because every day, I knew how much money I had, how much money I needed, what bill I need to pay, and nothing was late, and I wasn’t overdrawn, and any of those things.

And so I think that it was just a matter of learning what worked best for me. And I think that now, you’re bringing to my attention that I could apply the idea of a routine to cleaning also. And then my house would always be in order and clean.

We need to go to break. We need to go to break, but we’ll be right back. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest is Becky Rapinchuk of CleanMama.net. She’s the author of The Organically Clean Home, and we’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA:You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Becky Rapinchuk. She’s at CleanMama.net, and the author of The Organically Clean Home.

As I said, she’s got lots of stuff to download. She’s got some free stuffs and paid stuff all about organizing and non-toxic cleaners you can make at home.

So Becky, I’m looking in your book at the section called “A Cleaning Routine that Works.” Why don’t we just go through the cleaning routine of what you do each day? And we’ll talk a little bit about how you do these things, and I’m [inaudible 00:19:02] the fact that you do them.

So on Monday, what you do is sweep the floors. So tell us how you sweep the floors.

BECKY RAPINCHUK:Every day there are four tasks that I do. And so sweep the floors is one, and that’s usually more of a check of the floors. So under the kitchen table is typically a hot spot where crumbs and different things that need to be cleaned up. So I do a little sweep or vacuum under the kitchen table.

Then the mudroom needs a little sweep. And if there’s anything in the bathrooms that needs a specific sweeping, usually, I just wait and do that on my actual vacuuming day. But every day, I just do a visual quick check of the floors.

DEBRA: And then you do a de-clutter.

BECKY RAPINCHUK:De-clutter for me is anything on the surfaces that doesn’t belong there. So the stack of mail that needs to be put away. The kids come home and empty their backpacks, and there is more paper than there should be. So that needs to be sorted.

Most of it just ends up being recycled, but those are the things that clutter up.

And then [inaudible 00:20:29] little toys around the table. There are different things that just need to be tidied up and checked up for the day.

I find that doing a de-clutter, typically, it will be right around in the morning, after everyone goes to school or before they go to school.

If I can get them to cooperate, to do a little de-clutter or before bed, we definitely, every night, set the time for 5 to 10 minutes, then run around and pick stuff up, and then get ready for bed.

DEBRA: I think you just said an important thing. I was thinking about time. You said you set the timer, and then you just do it for that period of time.

I think it comes into play with people thinking like me that we don’t have time to do this.

I have a friend who does things in 15-minute increments, which is even too long for me. She plays the cello and she has given herself 15 minutes a day to practice her cello, even though she’s very, very busy. She takes out 15 minutes to practice her cello, and she even was writing a book 15 minutes a day. That’s her time period.

If she wants to do something, she can give herself 15 minutes

But I was even thinking—I once timed how long a minute is. And a minute actually sounds like not very much time. But it’s amazing to set a timer for one minute, and see how much you can get done in a minute.

And I was thinking, even if I just said, “Okay, I’m going to take one minute to just look around and see how much I can put away in one minute.”

When I first ready de-clutter, the first thing that came to my mind was somebody having a very, very messy house. And I don’t have a messy house, but I have lived with people who are very, very messy.

But there are things like I’ll come home, and if there is a clean surface like my dining table, and I’m tired, I’ll just drop everything on the dining table. And it needs to get put away.

And so even if I were to take one minute or two minutes, and just handle those little things on a daily basis, I think that would really work.

BECKY RAPINCHUK: Yes, and I think even if you were someone that have an incredibly messy house, and you didn’t know where to start, if you just said, “I’m going to de-clutter for five minutes every day,” and it might take you six months.

DEBRA:Yes, but the house would change.

BECKY RAPINCHUK:But it will change, and then that process will continue, and it will just be easier every single day.

DEBRA:Yes, I think that’s a really important point.

So then item #3 of your four is to do a load of laundry, which we already mentioned, and then wipe counters.

But what I’d like you to tell us is let’s talk about the products that you make to do your laundry because you mentioned here having a laundry detergent. Do you know what page that’s on? I just want to go and look at it.

BECKY RAPINCHUK:Let’s see here. I have a couple of different recipes.

DEBRA:Yes, what are they?

BECKY RAPINCHUK:But on page 108 is where it starts. And that’s lemon and clove powdered laundry soap.

DEBRA:There it is. So tell us about that recipe.

BECKY RAPINCHUK: I used castile soap, a bar of that, two cups of borax, two cups of washing soda, a cup of baking soda, and then lemon essential oil and clove essential oil. The bar soap is grated, and I just do that by hand, and then carefully mix the powders together.

I do it in a large, plastic bag just because you don’t want to inhale any of that dust no matter what are those. So I just mix it up that way, and put it in a jar, and just add two tablespoons per load to my wash.

It’s a great formula, it completely dissolves, and I really like the addition of the castile soap, the vegetable-based soap to it.

DEBRA:So you don’t have any problem with hard water? Maybe you don’t have hard water, but sometimes people have difficulty using soap-based products in hard water.

BECKY RAPINCHUK:I haven’t, and I have tested in hard water, soft water, and it’s the same result that the soap completely dissolves. I haven’t had that problem.

DEBRA:This looks like it would save a lot of money too.

BECKY RAPINCHUK:Yes, it’s a great formula, and I like the lemon and the clove. That’s my personal favorite essential oil combination, but you could also not use any essential oil, or you could use peppermint and eucalyptus or lavender and orange.

With each recipe, I try to give a couple of different combinations of scents that you could try.

DEBRA:These look like really good recipes. I’ve been doing this a while, so I have an idea of what works, and you’ve got some good ones too.

So then what do you wipe your counters with?

BECKY RAPINCHUK:It depends. I have granite countertops, so sometimes, I would just mix up liquid castile soap and warm water, and use a sponge and wash them down, or I’ll mix up my all-purpose cleaner as well. If I need to disinfect, I’ll use a disinfecting cleaner.

And I can go into that more. I think we’re going to a break.

DEBRA: Yes, we do need to go to the break. We’ll go to the break, and then when we come back, we’ll talk about disinfecting because I know that that’s a big question for a lot of people.

This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and we’re talking today with Becky Rapinchuk from CleanMama.net, and her book is The Organically Clean Home. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA:You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and today, my guest is Becky Rapinchuk of CleanMama.net. Her book is The Organically Clean Home.

So Becky, tell us about disinfectants. I actually looked them up during the break, and I see that you have quite a few for different reasons.

BECKY RAPINCHUK: Well, it depends. Sometimes you’re going to need to actually [inaudible 00:27:23]. And you can do that naturally. You don’t need toxic chemicals to eradicate germs.

One of my favorite ways to disinfect is with tea tree oil. The scent is strong, but after you use a little bit, you get more used to it. But it definitely does a great job with disinfecting, killing germs. Tea tree oil can also be used to get rid of mold.

If you have a little bit of mold on your grout and your bathroom, you can spray that and it will take care of that as well without having to use bleach, which is what people mostly use for that.

I have a couple of different recipes. Some of them are for bathrooms specifically, or just for countertops, or for kitchens. A lot of the disinfecting has to do with the scent to.

Some people don’t like the smell of vinegar. It has taken me a while to come around to the smell. If that would be someone like you, you can also use a little bit of vinegar and vodka as well, or rubbing alcohol. I have a great recipe for the bathroom disinfecting that’s on page 84, and it has vinegar, vodka, lavender and lemon essential oil and water.

I’d love that smells. It’s very subtle, and it also does a great job with disinfecting bathroom counters. You could use it in your kitchen as well if you wanted to, but that’s a good one.

DEBRA: I just wanted to mention something I wrote in a book that’s no longer in print called Home Safe Home. I told a story about I was going through my great aunt’s things after her death. It was my responsibility to take care of all of her things. And I found a book. I found a very old book that was about making perfume.

It was published in England in 1927. And in that book, they were talking about how they found that the women that worked in the flower-growing district of France had fewer number cases of tuberculosis.

And so they started looking at this, and they found that there were all these flowers that even just being exposed to them as flowers turned out to be disinfectants.

And so there was a list in the book of the most disinfecting plant oils, essential oils, and listed in order for their bactericidal properties.

And the highest one, the best one was cinnamon, and then cloves, verbena, lavender, patchouli, angelica, juniper, sandalwood, cedar, thyme, lemon, pine, wormwood and extracts of jasmine and tuberose.

So any of those essential oils actually could be added to a homemade recipe in order to make give it more disinfecting qualities.

BECKY RAPINCHUK:That’s fascinating too.

DEBRA:Yes, old research. I’ve been working in this field for more than 30 years, and I was just thinking the other day about how 30 years ago, there was information of a certain type that was widely available. And nowadays, even that information from 30 years ago isn’t available, and how as time goes by, we tend to lose information.

And so you think about information like this that is almost a hundred years ago, they knew this, and we don’t know it now.

And so one of the things that I often do when I’m looking for something non-toxic is that I go look at the past because we’ve only had so many toxic chemicals since mid-1940’s. Not that there weren’t toxic chemicals before that but the great proliferation of everything being made out of petroleum has only been since the 1940’s.

And prior to that people did everything we do today. Well, they didn’t have computers, but they wore clothes, and they did their laundry, and they cleaned their house, and they wrote letters, and all these things. And they did everything without those toxic chemicals.

BECKY RAPINCHUK:That’s amazing.

DEBRA:Yes, it is amazing. It was a different world, and this is a different world. I look at how life has change since I was born, and we didn’t have computers, we didn’t have nylon stockings, we didn’t have plastic. I’m not that old.

BECKY RAPINCHUK: All the latest and greatest things or what you think are the latest and greatest things, I think people are starting to realize that they’re actually not so great. It might clean your floor, but it’s also going to slowly poison you. That’s not what you want.

DEBRA:I should just add here that we were talking earlier about the warning labels and the Poison Control Center and all the things related to toxic chemicals and cleaning products. There’s a difference between what is Poison Control Center is about.

The Poison Control Center and what those labels are that say caution and poison and all of that, those are for what are called acute exposures, which means if your child drank it, or something like that.

But then there’s what’s called chronic exposure, and that’s the day-in, day-out. You didn’t drink the cleaning product, but you’re breathing it all the time.

And when people are cleaning all the time, they’re spreading toxic chemicals throughout their homes, even if your children aren’t cleaning, they’re breathing that and they’re breathing it day-in and day-out.

Actually, very few people relatively are going to drink cleaning products, but all of us are being, unless you’re using a non-toxic cleaner, everybody is being exposed to all these toxic chemicals day-in, day-out. The children are being exposed to them. The babies are being exposed to them. The pregnant mothers are being exposed to them. And everybody is being affected by these cleaning products.

And so this is something my research has shown that cleaning products are among the most toxic exposures you have in your home.

And to me, it’s so easy to change this. It’s so easy. It’s so inexpensive that everyone listening today, if you haven’t already made the switch to non-toxic cleaning products, you can do it very inexpensively.

Just get a copy of Becky’s book. Just go to her website.

Actually, I want to tell everybody that at the top, there’s a link that says “Clean Mama Printables.” Just go there. I’m clicking on “Free Printables.” Where’s the one with the 55 recipes?

BECKY RAPINCHUK:There’s a link on my sidebar to that one as well.

DEBRA:So go where it says the 55 recipes. I’m not finding it at the moment because I’m talking and looking at the same time.

It’s a free printable, and it has 11 recipes for castile soap, how to use castile soap, 11 recipes for how to use baking soda, 11 recipes for—here it is, 55 Simple Cleaning Recipes. I’m clicking on it.

For castile soap, lemons, borax, vinegar and baking soda. And for less than $10, probably, maybe $15, you could buy those five things.

On any Saturday, you could read these free printables, and you could follow the instructions. Everybody could do that.

BECKY RAPINCHUK: If you buy a bag of baking soda at Costco, it’s $4 or $5, it will last you a year or more.

DEBRA:Yes, and even if you just buy a small box of baking soda, it’s a dollar. If you just want to start there. And it’s a dollar for a little bottle of vinegar. And I just bought a box of borax. It was $4.99. Lemons are very inexpensive and castile soap is maybe $5.

So you can get started, and here are all these instructions for free. And if you like what you see, go and get Becky’s book. You can get other things on her website. She’s done a really good job of putting these together.

So we’ve got about a minute left. So is there any final words you’d like to say?

BECKY RAPINCHUK:Thank you so much for having me, and I would encourage anyone that’s looking into creating their own cleaning products to also maybe get a glass bottle or a stronger bottle that will last for a little bit for you to put your spray cleaners in, and maybe put a cute label on it, and own it.

DEBRA:I’ll tell you what I did. I took my vinegar bottle, which is really heavy glass, and I just took the squirter thing. You can even buy them at the hardware store. And it fit exactly into the small vinegar bottle.

As long as I don’t drop it, it’s very easy. That’s what I use to clean my windows.

So we need to go. So thank you so much, Becky, for [inaudible 00:37:28] and being on the show.

BECKY RAPINCHUK:Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

DEBRA:I wish you well with everything that you’re doing. Everybody should go to her website and get this free information. Take a look at what she’s got. CleanMama.net. And you can also go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com to find out more about the upcoming shows and the past shows are all there to listen to in the archives.

Tomorrow, we’re going to have a special treat because there’s a new film coming out. The premiere is on Friday. It’s called

Unacceptable Levels, and it’s all about toxic chemicals. Tomorrow, I’m having the filmmaker on, Ed Brown, and he’s going to tell us all about making the film, and what he learned. And we’re going to learn about toxic chemicals.

Bye.

Can Dry Cleaning be Less Toxic?

Joy OnaschMy guest today is Joy Onasch, who oversees the community and small business program at the Toxics Use Reduction Institute at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She manages the community grants which are awarded each year to community-based or municipal organizations striving to reduce or eliminate toxics. Focus areas of the community and small business program currently include reducing or eliminating toxics in the home (including cleaning and building materials), pesticides, the cosmetology industry, auto shops, and perchloroethylene in dry cleaning. Today we will be talking specifically about dry cleaning, how dry cleaning establishments can become less toxic and how you can choose a less toxic dry cleaner. Joy is an engineer with over fifteen years of experience with industry, government, and institutions, assisting them with environmental compliance issues and pollution prevention projects. Her technical focus areas include hazardous waste, stormwater, wastewater, oil storage, and toxics use reduction. Joy earned a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Union College and a Master’s in Engineering and Policy from Washington University in St. Louis. She is a registered Professional Engineer in three states and a registered Toxics Use Reduction Planner in Massachusetts. www.turi.org

 

read-transcript

 

 


transcript

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Can Dry Cleaning Be Less Toxic

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: : Joy Onasch

Date of Broadcast: May 06, 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.
There are so many toxic chemicals around, but not everything is toxic and there are so many people who are doing things, many wonderful things to make the world less toxic and those are the people that I talk to in this show and that you get to hear. And we get to discuss how we can make this world a better place and less toxic.

Yesterday, I started reading from a book that I got recently called It Always Seem Impossible until It’s Done. It’s just a book full of quotations, inspiring quotations about getting through the difficult times to reach your goals and to do the thing that you want. And I know that sometimes it can seem difficult to make the switch to live toxic-free. So I want to be giving you some of these quotes as inspiration.

Today’s quote is from Walt Disney. We all know Walt Disney. And he says, “You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.”

Certainly, getting really sick from toxic chemicals like I did was a kick in the teeth. But what it did for me is that it made me wake up and say, “Wait a minute. There are toxic chemicals all around me and they are making me sick and they’re probably making other people sick and there are ways that I can live.” I had to find those ways way back in 1982 when nobody was writing about this.

But I found ways and things that were less toxic and I started doing them and my health started improving. And what that did is it woke me up. It made me say, “Wait a minute. There’s a danger here. There’s something I can do about it.” And I started doing something about it.

And so today, my health just gets better and better the older I get. That’s not usually the way it is, but the older I get, my health gets better and better because I am being exposed to fewer and fewer toxic things and I’m getting more nutrition to support my body’s health and my health just gets better and better.

Everybody can have the same experience. If you have any kind of health problem, toxic chemicals are probably contributing to it. And if you start removing toxic chemicals from your home, from where you work, from your body, you will likely get better. That’s been my experience.

Anyway, I’m not worried about having a difficult situation because sometimes it wakes you up to see what needs to be done so that you can have a better life.

My guest today is Joy Onasch. She oversees the community and small business programs at the Toxics Use Reduction Institute at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. We had one of her colleagues on before, Liz Harriman and we talked about some things that they’re doing there at the Toxics Use Reduction Institute.

But today, we’re going to talk specifically about what she’s doing in the area of cleaning and especially dry cleaning, what she’s doing with small businesses, what the Toxics Use Reduction Institute does to help small businesses swipe out toxic chemicals and use things that are more toxic-free.

Hi, Joy.

JOY ONASCH: Hi, Debra.

DEBRA:
Thank you so much for being here with me.

JOY ONASCH: Thanks for having me.

DEBRA: Okay, so why don’t we start out by—Liz went into some of this before, but today is a new day with a new audience. So tell us what the Toxics Use Reduction Institute does.

JOY ONASCH: Sure. We are an organization at UMass Lowell as you mentioned that works with industries, small businesses, municipalities, communities, organizations to reduce the use of toxic chemicals across the state. And our information is available online to anybody anywhere who’s interested in obtaining it.

We focus on certain chemicals at certain times and also additional inquiries that come into the public or there are certain special areas that require attention, different chemicals at different times. But we provide training, we provide grants, we provide peer mentoring type working group. We have a laboratory service. We have a focus on policy research and analysis. We have a library that’s available online and for visiting if people wanted to come to UMass Lowell.

And so our main aim is to provide unbiased information about issues around toxics and alternatives that are available and work with the organizations, whether it’s a large industry or small community organization or any one in between in trying to find a feasible alternative for them to switch from the toxic chemicals. And by feasible, I mean something that’s going to work for them and something that makes economic sense for them.

DEBRA: Yeah. So it works around and win, win, win.

JOY ONASCH: Right.

DEBRA: I was really interested to see in your bio that you are a registered Toxics Use Reduction Planner. What is that?

JOY ONASCH: There are many of us across the State of Massachusetts.

DEBRA: I think that’s so wonderful. I think that that’s what I am too. I’m a Toxics Use Reduction Planner. I’m not certified, but that’s what I do.

JOY ONASCH: Right. That would certainly fit in the category. Yeah. TURI actually oversees a very formal program to certify planners. It requires that industries do this thing called the Toxics Use Reduction Plan every other year.
They [inaudible 00:05:30] and report their chemical use each year and then every other year, they have to go through this planning process. And part of the planning process requires that they have a certified Toxics Use Reduction Planner stamp off on their plans essentially. They can do the plan themselves and have a Toxics Use Reduction Planner.

We view it or they can hire or train an in-house person to become that Toxics Use Reduction Planner. And it means that they have been trained by us who are with intimate with what the process should be on finding alternatives and evaluating them and then they can [inaudible 00:06:03] off on these different plans.

The really unique thing about the program is that the companies are required to do this every other year, but they’re not actually required to implement anything. It’s up to them to learn from the process and find out that there are alternatives available and hey, maybe it’s even going to save me money if I go ahead and implement them, which is often the case.

DEBRA: I want to make sure that everybody listening understands that this is required by law in the State of Massachusetts, yes?

JOY ONASCH: Right. Back in 1989, the Toxics Use Reduction Act was implemented and since then, businesses who use chemicals over certain thresholds have to report on their use and go to the [inaudible 00:06:48] process.

DEBRA: It would be wonderful if every state in the union had that law so that all manufacturers will be having to take a look at what is their toxic use. And then everybody needs to start scaling back on the toxics.

California is coming up with something similar to that, I think. But that’s another show. We’ll talk about California another day.

JOY ONASCH: Right. A couple of states have tried to emulate our program or at least parts of it. I know I’ve talked to New Jersey and New York about the community programs that I work on and I know that Canada is starting to implement the Toxics Use Reduction Planners Program that I just described. So it’s definitely emulated both within the United States and obviously internationally.

Something again that’s unique is that it’s talking about the use of toxic, whereas other federal programs deal with the release of toxics, which is too late.

DEBRA: Ah! I am so glad you brought that up because I have never even thought of that. Yes.

JOY ONASCH: Yeah, the Toxics Release Inventory asks companies to report on the releases that [inaudible 00:08:03] the environment. So our program tries to get to the reduction of toxics before they’re even used, before they even enter the workplace or the manufacturing process so that they’re not able to be released in any [inaudible 00:08:15].

DEBRA: Right. That’s even better. Joy, tell us how did you get interested in the subject of toxics. How did you get trained to be this person who can do this?

JOY ONASCH: Let’s see. I am an engineer. I’m a mechanical engineer. It’s my undergraduate degree. And I went on to get a Master’s in Engineering and Policy, which I had been focused on environmental issues.

And then I worked in private consulting for about 15 years and somehow by chance, I ended up working on a lot of regulatory and compliance issues. So I did a lot of site visits to military facilities, hospitals, universities, looking at how they were managing their hazardous waste or waste water, the oil storage and helping them write a plan required by law.

And I ended up starting to get a little frustrated with the private consulting world and looking for something else. I came across the Toxics Use Reduction Institute and that’s what helped. It’s a job opening actually. It’s what helped me realize that I had been working with organizations to manage the waste and the toxics that they were using. But this was an opportunity to work with them, to reduce the use of it in the first place.

It gave a very different perspective, a very different way of working with people instead of pushing them into compliance and helping them with their compliance needs. I’m able to help them be more proactive in getting rid of the use of the toxic chemicals in the first place.

DEBRA: Yes. And when you do that, get rid of the toxic chemicals in the first place, then there’s no need for compliance because there’s nothing there that needs to be complied with.

We need to take a break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Joy Onasch from the Toxics Use Reduction Institute of the University of Massachusetts Lowell. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Joy Onasch from the Toxics Use Reduction Institute of the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Before the break, we were talking about you being a Toxics Use Reduction Planner. Could you just say a few words about how you might apply what you do with businesses to consumers, how we can use that same structure to think about reducing our toxics use?

JOY ONASCH: Sure. I guess for either small businesses or organizations or institutions or the personal consumers, it’s about understanding what you’re using and what you’re exposed to each day and thinking about making changes and investigating what other alternatives are out there that are feasible for you that perform in the same way that you are used to having something perform for you or being economically feasible for you to use.

We take the same approach, whether it’s a large corporation or a small entity that’s interested in finding alternatives and used to use the toxics. But I guess the first step really is doing an inventory about what you use or what you’re maybe exposed to, what services you use and toxic chemicals you may be exposed there and evaluating what alternatives may fit.

DEBRA: I think that that is so intelligent because I think that a lot of times for people, it seems overwhelming.

I wrote a book in 1984. My first published book in 1984 was just a directory of the non-toxic products that I could find at the time. I’d just like to say that the number of nontoxic options that are available now is so huge, it wouldn’t fit in a book. That’s why I have a website. And that’s how much we’ve improved in the last 30 years.

But I remember at the time, people would say, “Oh, I feel overwhelmed. Where do I start?” And so I wrote another book called The Nontoxic Home, which didn’t have any resources in it at all. It just said, “All right, let’s take a look at where the toxic chemicals are and what you’re being exposed to and what type of things are the alternatives.

I suppose that book was the book that was comparable to your inventory. But I think that right now today, that book isn’t available. I don’t have an equivalent book like that. But I’m looking at how I can provide that information in an organized way on my website so that somebody could look up shampoo and find out what toxic chemicals they might be exposed to. But I think that it is a good idea.

In that book, what I tried to do was organize the products from most toxic first to least toxic. And so some things at the beginning of the book were things like cleaning products and pesticides that are really toxic. And I was encouraging people to take the most toxic things that they could identify and replace those first. And I think that that’s probably the strategy across the boards.

JOY ONASCH: Absolutely. And also factoring in there, maybe what’s most approachable, especially for a consumer that it might be overwhelming for them to think about how to make one change with something else that seems real simple to them and I can go ahead and implement it. If making those small, low-hanging fruit changes gives them some confidence and some knowledge in where the resources are to make additional changes, that can assist as well.

DEBRA: Yeah. I always say start with whatever appeals to you, even if it’s buying organic pickles. Every time we go to the store, we’re making a choice. And I’m not expecting people to suddenly buy everything toxic-free particularly because there’s a certain amount of education that goes with it.

But if you can identify something like if you really like to eat, that’s probably a good place to start. It’s to just start buying organic food and then you’ve done something. Or it’s actually pretty easy to change cleaning products because you can just start using baking soda and vinegar and that will clean almost everything.

Even if you just go down to the natural food store and just pick any cleaning product off the shelf, it’s better than buying it at the supermarket. And anybody can do that.

JOY ONASCH: Right.

DEBRA: Okay, so the show is being about dry cleaning and I know that you’re working with dry cleaners. So let’s talk about that.

JOY ONASCH: Sure, sure. Yeah, so talking about making choices. If someone is in a profession or just in their lives, they don’t have time to do all their cleaning or they have special cleaning needs, they need to take stuff to the dry cleaners. The choice they can make is to search out a dry cleaner who is using alternative methods, not using the standard perchloroethylene solvent to clean their clothes.

DEBRA: So tell us, what are the health effects of using perchloroethylene? And are there other toxic chemicals? Why should people not be using this?

JOY ONASCH: Yeah. There are a couple of different levels of issues. But people who are exposed can have acute exposure issues or chronic exposure issues.

It is classified, under the US National Toxicology Program, as a reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen. The International Agency for Research on Cancer lists it as probably carcinogenic to humans.

And the other shorter term issues could be skin irritation, nausea, headaches, exacerbation of asthma, that type of an issue.

So those who are going to be most exposed are the people who are going to work with it most directly and that’s likely the people in the dry cleaning shop who are putting it into their machine and taking it out, cleaning the filters on the machines, opening the doors five or six times a day, depending on how many loads they do.

And then the consumer will have less exposure certainly, but it has been studied that PERC or perchloroethylene does come home on clothes that have been put through the solvent in the dry cleaning process. As the clothes come out of the machine, they get pressed and they get bagged in plastic bags and it comes home once you take the bag off in your closet or in your house. So the PERC is coming out of those clothes.

And they have put in place a law at the federal level, coming into play in 2020 where dry cleaning shops that use PERC are not going to be allowed in residential facilities anymore. And that’s because it has been studied that PERC is actually getting out from the shop and getting up into the residences that are above them.

DEBRA: Also you mean where there’s a dry cleaning shop on the ground floor of an apartment building or something like that?

JOY ONASCH: Right, which is mostly in the big cities. Even less so, not even in [inaudible 00:17:24] like that, but it did push the federal, EPA, to look at it and to put [inaudible 00:17:33]. So there are a couple of different ways of exposure for the public as well.

DEBRA: Good. We need to take another break and when we come back, we’ll talk more about dry cleaning with Joy Onasch from the Toxics Use Reduction Institute at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Joy Onasch from the Toxics Use Reduction Institute of the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

During the breaks, what I do is I check my emails just because people sometimes email me with questions. Somebody emailed. In fact, if you have a question and you want to email me during this show, you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and use the contact form there and it will come straight to me and I’ll check it during the break.

But I got an email from one of my readers. One of the things that I do is I send out an inspiring quote every morning and a reader had written back to me thanking me for this particular quote. And it was, “The biggest problem in the world could have been solved when it was small.” And that’s from Lao Tzu from Ancient China.

That’s so, so, so true with toxics. It’s so true because if we look and recognize that there’s a problem and do something about it before it turns into a really big problem, it’s so much easier to take care of and it really makes a huge difference. That’s not to say that it’s just a little problem because little problems turn into big problems.

Okay, Joy. So tell us about the different kinds of alternatives we have to using toxic dry cleaning. Within a dry cleaning industry, what you do is you help different businesses replace their toxic chemicals with not toxic chemicals. So what kinds of things are dry cleaning places using now that are less toxic?

JOY ONASCH: There are several different alternatives out there on the market. Probably the most popular is hydrocarbon based alternative that people have been switching to. It seems to do the job fairly well for them. The cost is fairly comparable for them compared to the regularly used solvent perchloroethylene.

The health issues and the environmental issues may not be as bad as the other alternatives out there. There is an issue with sustainability of it. But nonetheless, it’s been a very popular, easy to use, easy to learn replacement for PERC.

There are a few other alternatives out there in the market. One is acetals based. One is propylene-glycol ethers based. One is siloxane based. I’m a mechanical engineer, not a chemist, so I’m not going to go into exactly what the chemistries of these different alternatives are.

But I guess it suffices to say that TURI has done an analysis of these different alternatives and compared them all literally side by side, looking at their technical performance, their financial aspects, environmental and human health safety, regulatory issues.

And what has come out on top are two other ones that I haven’t mentioned. Carbon dioxide, which actually hasn’t gotten a lot of traction because the equipment is very expensive even though it’s a very clean way of cleaning clothes. But the other one is called professional wet cleaning and that’s the one that’s at the top of our evaluation as well as other organizations that have done similar evaluations.

So that’s the technology and the process that we work with cleaners in Massachusetts to help switch. We like to make the information available to them about these other alternatives.

But we have a bit of a budget that we’re able to financially assist with grant facilitates. And since that budget is limited, we choose to put our money towards the professional wet cleaning technology and assisting the facilities to switch over to that.

And not only does it rise to the top of the pile in those criteria elements that I mentioned, but if a shop switches from a solvent-based system to a professional wet cleaning system entirely, not using any other methods, they will save a lot of money on their energy bills, potentially their water bills, their health insurance, their medical bills.

We’ve had a lot of information about people just feeling so much better. Their employees are out sick much less, but again the electricity bills can be cut in half. We’ve seen it in some facilitates. And the water bills can be cut in half. We’ve seen it in some facilities.

It depends on what equipment they were using and what they’re switching to, how much of an impact they see. But it’s really made a big difference in their operating cost.

We’ve seen paybacks between two and four years generally, which is pretty significant and pretty fast for a small busies like a dry cleaner that depends on public coming and going and bringing their clothes to them. It’s not always that a small business like that in the service industry would get such a quick payback.

DEBRA: I’d like you to explain what professional wet cleaning is. I think that most people don’t understand that what’s called dry cleaning is actually wet because it uses solvents.

And so if they’re taking in for professional wet cleaning now, they’ve got clothing with tags in it that says, “Dry clean only.” So explain what cleaning is. And is it okay to take in your dry clean only clothes?

JOY ONASCH: Right. Just a side note there, we’re actually working with the Federal Trade Commission. Right now, they have a proposed amendment to their Care Labeling Rule out right now that we’ve given comments to, to hopefully change that care label in garments to make it easier for the dry cleaners and for the consumers to understand what can and can’t be done with that cleaning, with that garment.

In the meantime though, yes, if a cleaner feels comfortable with using the professional wet cleaning system on something that says dry clean only, we have cleaners across Massachusetts now doing that. So if they’re trained and they’re knowledgeable in what they’re doing, there won’t be a problem.

DEBRA: Okay. So what is the process of wet cleaning?

JOY ONASCH: Right. It’s not your home laundry machine. We need to make that clear from the beginning.

DEBRA: Okay, good. It’s not just the cleaner throwing it in their laundry.

JOY ONASCH: Exactly. And if someone has a really nice wool suit, just don’t go throw it in your laundry machine instead.

So it is a several steps process that begins with a computer controlled washing machine, which has a detergent pumping system hooked to the back of it. So the cleaner will purchase certain different types of detergents, conditioners, softeners and other additives that get added to the pumping system.

The machine is computer-controlled and it’s programmed to have different programs run on it. So they might press one and it’s a wool jacket program. They might press two and it’s a silk cloth program. They can program, I don’t know, at least 50 programs. It’s in different machines for how different they want it to be. I’ve seen typically they only use 7 to 10 maybe different programs.

Anyway, so then the detergent, the other additives come into the pumping system and mixed with the water and the machine before either the water or the detergent touch the clothing, which is different than your home machine. Either your water comes in first or the detergent dumped on it first. So this mixture of the detergent, additives and your water creates its own solvent essentially to act on the clothes once the clothes are immersed in it.

So that’s the high tech end of the washer. Then at the end of the program, which only lasts 12 to 15 minutes maybe in the washer, it then goes to a dryer.

And the key on the dryer is that it needs to have what’s called a residual moisture control on it. That means that you can either time the dryer to end at the right time or you can program it to end with a certain amount of moisture left in your clothes.

And following the drying process, it goes on to what’s called [inaudible 00:26:07] equipment where the pieces go back on a form finisher and the clothes are pulled and steam blown through them to help them regain their shape and to get out the initial wrinkles in it. And then they’re touched up using pressing equipment.

DEBRA: Very interesting process. We need to take another break, but we’ll be back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Joy Onasch from the Toxics Use Reduction Institute of the University of Massachusetts Lowell. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Joy Onasch from the Toxics Use Reduction Institute of the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

I’m so used to saying the University of California. I had to stop for a second and say University of Massachusetts.So anything else you want to tell us about dry cleaning?

JOY ONASCH: Let’s see. I just think that maybe your audience is probably going to be consumers of the service, of dry cleaning.

DEBRA: Yes.

JOY ONASCH: So something that we have tried to work towards is educating the consumers that there are alternatives out there and suggesting that the more they inquire with their dry cleaner as to what they use, the more awareness the dry cleaners will have that there’s an interest and a need from the consumers for them to seek out alternatives.

There are only so many ways we can reach out to the public. We can’t go knock on every single person’s door. So the more ways we can educate the public about that.

Oftentimes when I talk to groups about different ways of reducing toxic chemicals, I suggest that they take home one little piece of homework or one little change to make. And I often suggest that the next time they go to the dry cleaner, simply ask that they can be told what is being used at the facility and even make the suggestion that, “Hey, have you looked into this professional wet cleaning? I’ve heard about it. I’m sure you’ll really get some terrific benefits out of it.”

DEBRA: If somebody wanted to find a professional wet cleaner in their community because people listen to this show actually all over the world, how would they find one? Is there a website that lists them?

JOY ONASCH: Unfortunately, there’s not a really reliable consolidated spot to go to. The EPA does list some on their website, but I found it to be very out of date.

DEBRA: Yeah.

JOY ONASCH: There are different makers of other alternatives that will list users of their alternative. For example, a siloxane material called Green Earth, if you go to their website, they list all the dry cleaners that use their particular alternatives.

And our website lists the wet cleaners that we worked with in Massachusetts to convert to dedicated wet cleaning. But if someone in Montana is interested in finding someone in their town, I’m afraid I don’t have a resource for them, except to go and explore and talk to the different dry cleaners in their area.

And one note of question I would give them is that if a dry cleaner has a sign outside that says, “Organic, environmentally friendly, earth friendly, back to nature,” or something like that, it’s actually often a red flag that they’re using one of the alternatives, but not professional wet cleaning.

DEBRA: Oh, that’s very good because I actually have a cleaner down the street from me that has one of those signs. I thought, “Oh, good,” but I didn’t go in and ask them.

Here’s my solution to dry cleaning. I haven’t dry-cleaned anything in 30 years.

JOY ONASCH: Yes. That’s the other alternative.

DEBRA: Yeah. When I found that you bring your clothes in front of a dry cleaner and they give out perchloroethylene, I decided I didn’t want to breed that in my house.

Here’s one thing you can do. If you can’t get to a dry cleaner that is less toxic and you absolutely have to dry clean your clothes, when you bring them home, hang them up outside on the patio or in your garage or someplace not in the living space, take the plastic bag off and let it air out not in your living space. So that’s the first thing.

JOY ONASCH: Exactly. And also to follow up on the issue with the green friendly signs that people will put out, if that is the alternative available to you in your community, it certainly may very well be better than another cleaner may be using. If you can’t find a professional wet cleaner to clean your clothes using one of these other alternatives, [inaudible 00:30:39] certainly be a very valuable alternative.

DEBRA: Yes. Yes. So then the other thing is that what I did was I just decided that I would make choices about the clothes that I wear that don’t require dry cleaning. And I wear mostly just cotton and linen. And in the wintertime—I live in Florida and I’m not working in an office, so I don’t have to wear wool suits or something like that. But I have a few sweaters and things that I just wash by hand.

I don’t know what I’d do if I had an expensive wool suit. But there are a lot of clothes that you can buy. You can buy linen jackets. I look for cotton jackets. I look professional enough for what I do with my life. And I can look pretty professional wearing cotton and linen clothes that don’t have to go to the dry cleaners.

And I just make those choices really, really carefully and then I wash everything in the washing machine. And if I really have to look crisp, you can just take your clothes down to a dry cleaning place and they can just iron it for you with a professional iron and it looks like you had it dry-cleaned.

JOY ONASCH: Right, exactly.

DEBRA: If that’s what you mean.

JOY ONASCH: It’s amazing what they can do with a presser.

DEBRA: Yeah, they can do things there with a presser that you can’t do at home.

JOY ONASCH: Exactly.

DEBRA: Yeah.

JOY ONASCH: There are definitely other ways to seek out alternative methods and processes. Yes.

DEBRA: Yeah. And you could also look for—Google is really good at finding local things now. And so you could just type in the name of your city and what cleaning and if there’s a wet cleaner, it should probably come up.

JOY ONASCH: Yeah, the trick is that a lot of the wet cleaners don’t yet advertise themselves as wet cleaners. They’re a little bit worried that the public will think that that means they’re just putting it in the laundry machine or think that they can do it at home.

Each cleaner that I’ve worked with in Massachusetts has taken a slightly different approach. Several of them have promoted the fact that they’re doing professional wet cleaning. Some of them wait until at least a year has gone by, that the consumers are still very happy with how their clothes are being cleaned and the cleaner feels very comfortable with the process and then they finally say, “Hey. Guess what. I’ve been cleaning your clothes in water for the last year. Don’t they smell great and look great?”

So sometimes, they don’t put themselves out there as doing wet cleaning because they’re afraid of how the consumers are going to interpret that language.

DEBRA: That’s a good point. There’s so much education that goes on with this because we have ideas about what words mean and then new technologies come up and we do need to learn the new technologies and consumers do need to be educated.

There need to be a shift. This is one of the things that I’ve talked to a lot of people about. I’ll say to a manufacturer, “Why don’t you make whatever it is less toxic?” And they’ll say, “Because I have to be able to make it in a way that my consumer wants it.”

And it’s not that consumers want toxic products, except that we’re so accustomed to how things are that are toxic.

JOY ONASCH: The performance.

DEBRA: The performance. I’ll just use as an example when I first started removing toxic chemicals from my life, I had found the perfect shade of red lipstick. It took me years to find this perfect shade and I finally got it and then I decided to remove toxic chemicals from my life and I went, “Wait a minute. No, no, no, no, no, we’re not giving up the red lipstick.”

And it really took me a while to really get how toxic that red dye was and everything else, the [inaudible 00:34:36] and everything that was in that red lipstick and then I was eating it and licking my lips and everything and then I was getting so much toxic exposure. And finally, I could get the picture that there was a skull and cross bones on my lips about that lipstick and I stopped using it.

But I found over the years that the easiest thing to do is to go find the nontoxic alternative and find something you like and get the replacement first and see that there’s a replacement and then you can let go of the old toxic thing.

JOY ONASCH: Right. That makes for a very simple approach.

DEBRA: Sometimes it is hard to let go of what is something that you’ve been comfortable with even if it is toxic.

JOY ONASCH: Right.

DEBRA: This has been an excellent show, Joy. Thank you so much for being on. We just have two and a fifth. Is there anything else you want to tell us about dry cleaning or TURI or living toxic-free?

JOY ONASCH: Let’s see. I guess to give a quick summary of the full program that I run here is the Community and Small Business Program. So I run a grant program. If there are any Massachusetts listeners, we welcome applications from community organizations and municipalities and small businesses who are interested in getting some grant money to help them implement a project to reduce the toxic chemicals, whether it’s in dry cleaning or pesticides and lawn care or house cleaners.

We have a whole list of projects on our website that have been done in the past to give you ideas. We have up to $20,000 available for large projects and $10,000 for smaller local projects.

And then my program also covers other small business sectors. I’ve been working with auto shops to reduce the use of solvent cleaners and nail salons to find alternatives to the toxic chemicals that they may use and limit their exposure.

There’s obviously much more on our website at TURI.org. And a lot of our program information can be found under the Home and Community tab. And the information about the dry cleaner is actually under our small business section.

DEBRA: Oh yeah, tell me where to look—I have the site right in front of me. Tell me where to look exactly and I’ll go there. Can you tell me exactly how to get there?

JOY ONASCH: Yeah. About the dry cleaning?

DEBRA: Yeah.

JOY ONASCH: If you go to the homepage and then go under Our Work and go to Business.

DEBRA: Our Work. Business. Okay.

JOY ONASCH: And then Small Businesses and Dry Cleaning. It’s varied. You can also just type in TURI.org/DryCleaning and it will get you there.

DEBRA: Oh, okay, good.

JOY ONASCH: It’s a shorter way to do it. But there’s information there about Massachusetts cleaners’ switch. And we have written up several case studies. We collect data from the dry cleaners and their performance and their cost from using solvent to using the wet cleaning. A bunch of our case studies that we’ve written up from that data are on our website if people are interested.

And there’s lots of information there that people can print out and take to their dry cleaners the next time they go by and ask what they use. They can take the information to help…

DEBRA: Joy, you’re breaking up. It’s also the end of the show. So I’m going to say thank you and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio. You can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com to find out more. Be well.

Heirloom Foods and Community Supported Agriculture

Linda CragoMy guest today is Linda Crago, owner of nine-acre Tree and Twig Heirloom Vegetable Farm in Niagara Region, Ontario, Canada. There she runs a Community Supported Agriculture program and grows heirloom varieties. We’ll be talking about the importance of heirloom foods and about buying organic food direct from a local farmer. Seventeen years ago, Linda quit her career as a social worker and began delivering baskets of organic vegetables to her former collegues who were interested in fresh produce. Without ever having heard of the “Community Supported Agriculture” concept, it was in fact what she was doing and her CSA was born. She now has two large hoophouses and a small one, all unheated, to extend her growing season to year-round and to “get my thousands of seedlings off to a roaring and robust start.” She also sells seed…”fabulous organic and heirloom seed, full of magic and possibility!” Her interest in heirlooms increases every year. Her seed comes from many sources around the world, she saves more and more seed herself and also shares her seed with others. Her most treasured business relationships are with those businesses, organizations and individuals who are selfless in their devotion to the cause of ensuring diversity by growing heirloom varieties and reoffering them. She is a lifetime member of Seed Savers Exchange and also a proud member of the rebel Kokopelli in France and Garden Organic. in England. Linda has organized the local Niagara Seedy Saturday for years, believing firmly that seed and gardening knowledge are to be shared. She is also entering into her eighth year as a test gardener for Rodale’s Organic Gardening magazine (her blog has some incredible garden info from very knowledgeable gardeners). In March 2009, Linda was awarded the Agriculture Enterprise Award at the Niagara Entrepreneur of the Year Award and in 2007, she received a regional Premier’s Award for Agri-Food Innovation Excellence from the Province of Ontario. www.treeandtwig.ca

 

read-transcript

 

 


transcript

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Heirloom Foods & Community Supported Agriculture

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Linda Crago

Date of Broadcast: May 05, 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 because there are lots of toxic chemicals out there. And so on this show, we talk about where those toxic chemicals are and what you can do to do something else so that you’re not being exposed to them.

We talk about how to remove them from your bodies, remove them from your homes, remove them from your business, remove them from your life and other more wonderful things that we can do to be happy, healthy and thrive in this world.

The other day, I was in a book store and I ran across the book called It Always Seems Impossible Until It’s Done. And it’s just a book about an inch thick and on each page, it has a quote that encourages. It’s very encouraging quotes for times when you’re doing something really big and you think, “I’m not going to make it. It’s not possible.” And these are just reminders that it is possible and we can do it.

And since making a transition from our current toxic world to living to a toxic-free world or even making the changes in our own lives or work or businesses or anything can sometimes seem like this is an impossible task, so I’m just going to be reading, each day or so, I’m going to just pick one out of the book. I’m just going to open at random.

And today’s quote is “Big goals get big results. No goals get no results or somebody else’s results.” Each of us need to have our own goal about living toxic-free.

Oh, the person who said that was Mark Victor Hansen who is a writer and speaker. So, each of us need to have our own goals to have our own lives be toxic-free. And as we do that, then each of us is contributing to the world being toxic-free.

Now, of course, we need to sometimes do things that look at the bigger picture. But to just start right in our own lives, being toxic-free and set some goals and you’ll be able to accomplish this.

My guest today, she had some big goals. Her name is Linda Crago. She’s the owner of the nine acre farm called Tree and Twig Heirloom Vegetable Farm. She’s in the Niagara Region of Ontario, Canada.

She has a community-supported agriculture program and she grows heirloom varieties and we’re going to talk about all of that. What is a community-supported agriculture? What is the difference between heirloom varieties and other kinds of seed?

Hi, Linda. Thanks for being with me today.

LINDA CRAGO: Hi. I’m very pleased to be here. Thank you.

DEBRA: Thank you. So what’s the weather like on your farm?

LINDA CRAGO: It continues to be chilly. We have a very cold winter. And we’re just still struggling out of it. So at this point, it’s impossible to get out on the ground and get anything in it. We have a frost last night again. We’ll get there.

DEBRA: You will. You will. It’s about beautiful 70° here.

LINDA CRAGO: Sounds lovely.

DEBRA: It is. So I want to tell everybody that the way I found Linda was that I was looking for some photos to use on my website when I was starting my food blog which is at ToxicFreeKitchen.com. And I came across a picture of her beautiful heirloom carrots. I just had to use that picture and I wrote to her and she allowed me to do so.

But that’s how I found her. And then I started reading her site and I need to have Linda on the show because we’re going to be talking about two very important things. One is community-supported agriculture, which I’m going to let her tell you about it, and also heirloom varieties.

But first Linda, tell us how you became interested in doing what you do.

LINDA CRAGO: It was a pretty natural transition for me. I went to university to become a social worker and did that job for about 13 years. But I had grown up in a farm, so that was really always where my heart was.

And my mom was very much a gardener and grew many things so many years ago, 40 years ago at least in her garden that people are just discovering now. So it was a really natural thing for me.

DEBRA: Yes, it sounds like it was. So you started out, after being a social worker, you started delivering organic vegetables to people that you knew.

LINDA CRAGO: That’s right. Yeah, it was one of those things. I had moved out to the country from the small city of Welland and I had nine acres all of a sudden. And I was feeling a little stressed out at my job or should I say a lot stressed out at my job and my garden kept getting bigger and bigger. I was taking produce into work as so many people do when they have big gardens.

It just went from there. It seemed the logical thing. I was looking for something else to do for my own sanity really to some degree. And it was just a natural thing for me to fall into. And the people that have been getting my produce were interested in continuing to get it. So yeah, it just all went from there.

DEBRA: Good. So explain to us what community-supported agriculture program is.

LINDA CRAGO: It’s a pretty simple concept really. It just involves people, people buying a share of the farm essentially.

So you sign up at the beginning of the growing season. And usually the payment is received before the growing season even starts and any produce is received by the shareholders. Getting that money in advance really helps the farmers purchase the supplies for the season like seeds in particular and anything else they might require.

And then each farm sets the number of weeks that the growing season is going to be and […] accordingly. But every week through the growing season, they get whatever the farm is producing.

So usually traditionally, it has been baskets of vegetables that people are getting. A lot of people do it in different ways. I have talked to some people that do—their shares include meat and eggs and firewood and maple syrup and all sorts of different things.

But I would say by far the majority of people are receiving produce, primarily vegetables, sometimes a bit of fruit, some herbs involved. But yeah, that’s how it goes.

And the understanding is that I think most people that do this program make it clear to their shareholders that not every season is the same. So there might be or there are always some years where the season just isn’t successful because usually of the weather. You can have a very cool and wet growing season and you’re just not able to produce as much.

And people accept that you could also have the most wonderful growing season ever and the people are signing up for the same amount of money and getting a tremendous value because it has been such a fabulous season. But those are the reality of growing food.

Not every season is the same. Not every season is great. And not every season is terrible.

DEBRA: But that’s the way it is in nature and I think it’s important to say that community-supported agriculture is about…

LINDA CRAGO: That’s right. And most people that sign up to become involved in a CS, they are pretty in touch with that.

DEBRA: Yeah.

LINDA CRAGO: Occasionally, you get some people that can’t understand. So it is a bit of an education and getting people to look at the weather and think about the weather and think about the impact it has on growing because that’s certainly the reality for every farmer that’s ever been.

DEBRA: I think one of the things I like about it—and I actually have a lot to say about community-supported agriculture, but we’re going to come up on the break. So I’ll just say one thing to start. And that is that being involved in a community-supported agriculture program actually brings you closer to the experience that that food comes from nature.

And if you’re buying all your food from a supermarket or even a natural food store, they’re bringing in all kinds of foods from different places so that there’s a supply of food 365 days a year. And it’s not always seasonal because it’s coming from different places.

You get a more seasonal quality if you are buying at a farmers’ market. But when you do a CSA, you’re experiencing as the customer what the farmer experiences because what you get is the production of a farm just as if you were the farmer.

I did a CSA for a couple of years and then I moved. I wouldn’t have stopped doing the CSA if I hadn’t moved away. But it totally changed my relationship with food and I’ll tell you about that when we come back.

You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Linda Crago of Tree and Twig Heirloom Vegetable Farm. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Linda Crago from Tree and Twig Heirloom Vegetable Farm.

You can go see her. She’s in Canada. And you can go see her website, her farm and her website at TreeandTwig.ca. That’s a Canadian website. TreeandTwig.ca.

So Linda, when I was in California, I have lived out in a rural area north of San Francisco called Marin County over the Golden Gate Bridge. And there are a lot of little farms out there and I happened to live very close to a farm that had a CSA Program.

Now, I couldn’t walk there because it was straight uphill from where I lived. So I had to drive my car. But it was so wonderful because we, as the customers, were allowed to really participate in the farm. We could consider it to be our farm and go there and work there if we wanted to help with the harvest, if we wanted to help fill the baskets and deliver them if we wanted to.

We could do anything we wanted to or not. We could have whatever kind of level of participation we wanted to have.

And it was wonderful to get the basket because it was like Christmas morning every week. It was nice because we all went to a place, a commonplace to go pick up our baskets. So I got to see my neighbors when I showed up at 5:30 on Monday night to pick up my basket.

And I never knew what was going to be in there. And so the difference is to be thinking about what foods, what dishes are you going to prepare from the foods that are available in your place in that season rather than pulling a recipe out of a recipe book and then going to the supermarket and buying the ingredients.

That’s hugely, hugely, hugely different and it aligns us with nature in a way that I just think is magnificent.

LINDA CRAGO: And it doesn’t work for everybody because some people have a problem with that spontaneity in food preparation. I found there are some people that will sit down and plan their entire week of menus and then if they get a basket of vegetables for me, then they’re thrown off.

But it’s a different way of thinking and a lot of people definitely do buy into it. And the same things that you’re talking about or the same things that are happening here, people will call me and tell me that they are just so excited to get their baskets and it’s like Christmas morning. They look at them.

And because I grow a lot of really unusual things, some of the things that are in the baskets, they’re unsure of and they have never seen them or eaten some of these things before in their life. So I always try to…

DEBRA: But then you’ve done something new. You’ve done something new.

LINDA CRAGO: …get people out so they can look at some of these things growing in the garden. And I also pass along recipes so people know how to use some of the unusual produce. So that’s fun too.

DEBRA: I really like cooking this way because it’s very spontaneous and creative. But what it really requires is a different way of looking at food.

And this is something I’m trying to do in my food blog. I don’t think in terms of recipes. I think in terms of understanding a food and technique. I know how to boil water for example. No, I do know how to boil water. I mean that’s a little simplistic.

Like how you sauté something. I could sauté any vegetable for example. But a lot of people when I moved here to Florida because I’m from Northern California where people cook more than people cook here and I didn’t know that. I just thought that everybody cooks.

And here in Florida, people were just amazed that I knew how to cook. And people were asking me to give them cooking lessons because they haven’t met somebody who knew how to cook.

But I do know how to cook. I know about technique and I learned about new foods and I’m really always curious what this food can do. What can I do with it? Like eggs. You can do a lot of things with different vegetables, do different things. They taste differently whether they’re raw or whether they’re cooked. It just excites me to learn foods.

And once you learn a food, then you don’t have to have a recipe in front of you. You just say, “Well, I’m going to take this food and do this with it and add the spice or put on these green onions,” or whatever inspires me that day.

And I think that I would like to see everybody in the world cook that way because that’s the way people used to cook. They just went out of their backyards. So they went to the local farmer or they went down into the village square and picked out the food. And there are still places on earth today where that’s the way people eat. And I think that’s the natural way for us to eat, not going to the supermarket.

LINDA CRAGO: To me, because I grow all this food and it’s just out my backdoor, the best feeling for me in the world is to go out into the garden and pick what we’re going to have for dinner. And that’s generally what I do.

And I see the CSA in the same way. I just pick for everybody else so people get to have that experience as well without the incredible satisfaction that you get from growing your own food. But still, it’s very much like that.

DEBRA: Yeah.

LINDA CRAGO: To me, I love doing the CSA and the whole thing. But to me, the very best thing in the world is me being able to out with a basket and pick what I’m going to have for supper and feed my family. So it’s that loosely translated into the CSA I think. That’s a wonderful thing.

I’m not sure. I know your weather is quite different where you are. But up here, our seasons are so much shorter.

DEBRA: Actually, we have a short season here because our seasons are flipped. You can’t plant in the winter and we can’t grow in the summer. There’s very little we can grow in the summer.

LINDA CRAGO: Oh, okay.

DEBRA: And so our fall is like your spring. So in the fall, we start planting things and we grow things over the winter.
There are some things like I’ve grown cucumbers here and you can’t even plant them until January. And then by May, they’re done because they don’t last over the heat of the summer. It is very, very hot here 24 hours a day.

LINDA CRAGO: I’d be on that stuff if I lived where you live.

DEBRA: I know.

LINDA CRAGO: But our seasons are certainly different.

DEBRA: See that’s what happened to me is that…

LINDA CRAGO: Across the United States and Canada, you’re finding now that there are a lot of CSAs that are actually running year-round. Even in our climate, people are using a lot of really very simple growing techniques. You can grow in the winter.

A lot of leafy greens with chard, kale, spinach, all those really heart greens will survive in an unheated […] This winter was extreme for us.

DEBRA: I actually need to interrupt you because we need to go to break. The commercial is going to come play over you if we don’t stop talking.

LINDA CRAGO: No problem.

DEBRA: But we’ll be back. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio and we’re talking today with Linda Crago of Tree and Twig Heirloom Vegetable Farm in Ontario, Canada. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Linda Crago from Tree and Twig Heirloom Vegetable Farm in Niagara Region, Ontario, Canada.

Linda, are you near Niagara Falls?

LINDA CRAGO: Yeah. I’m about 45 minutes or so from Niagara Falls, pretty close.

DEBRA: I’ve actually never been there, but that’s a place that I’ve always wanted to go. I always wonder if they have something about Niagara Falls on TV. I always watch it.

LINDA CRAGO: Yeah. You’ll definitely have to get there and then you can come and visit me too.

DEBRA: I will. I will. Please go on with what you were saying about growing over the winter.

LINDA CRAGO: Yeah, I was just trying to emphasize how much CSA has changed over the years. I know in our region, a lot of them actually grow through the winter as well.

Usually when you think about a CSA previously, you would think of a CSA that was maybe 20 weeks long and producing for only about 20 weeks.

But a lot of them now will run through the winter and provide their members with certainly the root crops that you would expect that can be stored like potatoes and beets and carrots, squash as well, but also fresh greens, which is pretty neat because most people would think, in Canada or even in some of the colder northeastern states, that grow and can’t be done over the winter, but it certainly can and it’s very, very low tech.

That’s all I meant. It’s low tech and it’s very possible. So we’ve learned to expand our expectations of what can be done in a CSA. That’s pretty neat.

And just in terms of being a simple thing for farmers to pick up that increases their ability to support themselves through those difficult winter months as well. It’s an important thing to think about as well.

DEBRA: I really like that because it really does give the relationship between the farmer and the farmer’s community continuing on throughout the winter, through all the seasons.

Here in Florida, we actually build our things so we can grow through the summer, but they’re not your ordinary things that you find in the supermarket. Here where I live, we have some people that are very interested in community gardens and local growing and helping people set up, growing food in their backyards and things like that.

We only have one CSA that is all booked up and so I can’t even get into it. But we have two organic nurseries now very close to where I live. And the people who are interested, who are gardeners—like you are an agricultural person. I didn’t grow up with agriculture.

And there are people here that have been gardening all their lives and growing things. And so they are trying out the varieties that will grow here and sharing with the rest of us what we can eat even though they are unusual like Moringa trees. Do you have Moringa trees there?

LINDA CRAGO: No.

DEBRA: Probably not. It’s a tropical thing. But you can grow a Moringa tree. I should probably do a whole show just on Moringa trees because there are so many things that you can do with them. But unless you look outside of a supermarket, at what’s edible out in nature, you never find these other kinds of varieties.

And I really think that community-supported agriculture should be very, very widespread because it makes so much sense for people to be growing food right in a community and feeding the community and for people to be able to know the farmer and talk to them and just have that direct relationship. It’s very close to growing your food in your own backyard.

But let’s talk about heirloom.

LINDA CRAGO: If I could just add to that.

DEBRA: Go ahead. Please.

LINDA CRAGO: I think the other thing too is that it’s an excellent way for a farmer as well to market their produce. From a farmer’s point of view, it is community-supported because the produce is sold in advance so the farmer knows that they have that income so they can continue carrying on that lifestyle. That’s very important too.

So from a farmer’s point of view, it’s excellent too. So just to add that.

DEBRA: I agree. It’s just good things all around. I want to say we were talking about taking things on the garden before. I want to say that when I lived in California, I had a garden. I got food for my CSA. I also had a garden.

And one of the best, most memorable meals I ever had was a day when I dug up new baby potatoes and planted right next to them were leeks. And I just dug up these potatoes and I steamed them and I put butter on them and sautéd the leeks. It was so delicious, so delicious because food from the farm and from the backyard just tastes so much better than the supermarket. If you have never eaten it, it’s indescribably different.

LINDA CRAGO: That’s right. And most people that are involved in a CSA experience, that big difference, I’ve had a number of people that have said there are certain vegetables they would never eat. They don’t like them. And then when they tried them right from my farm, they do like those vegetables. It’s a different experience altogether.

DEBRA: Yes, totally, totally. So I really encourage anyone who only eats from the supermarket or even the natural food store to get out and find a farm or somebody with a garden and taste. It will change your life. It will just change your entire concept about food.

So I want to make sure that we talk about—doesn’t the hour go by fast? I want to make sure we talk about heirloom varieties before the end of the show. In my garden, here’s my experience with heirloom varieties.

In my garden in California, I had a split level house. And so the garden was down on the lower level and then I had a whole story and then there was a deck. And I lived on the second story. The bottom story was a garage. And so I had this deck and I put a lot of soil over it. So this was 15 or 20 feet up in the air, this deck.

Down at the bottom, I would always put six heirloom tomato plants and I would plant them. I would dig a hole and I would put fish heads down there. And then I put black pepper on top of the fish heads so that the animals wouldn’t take them. And then I put in the plant.

By the end of the summer, every summer, without fail, these six tomato plants would have grown all the way up to the deck, 20 feet and they would be climbing all over the deck. So by the time we got to the Thanksgiving and remember this was California, I was just walking out of my second story deck and picking tomatoes off the plant.

That’s what you get with an heirloom plant. At least, that’s what I got.

LINDA CRAGO: Yeah, there are some varieties that are […], you’re absolutely right.

DEBRA: So we’ll talk more about the difference between heirloom plants and the other plants when we come back.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and I’m talking with Linda Crago of Tree and Twig Heirloom Vegetable Farm. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Linda Crago, owner of the nine acre Tree and Twig Heirloom Vegetable Farm in Niagara Region, Ontario, Canada.

Before the break, we started talking about heirloom seeds. Linda, tell us the difference between an heirloom seed and a hybrid seed.

LINDA CRAGO: Heirlooms are typically varieties of produce or flowers, herbs that have been in existence for more than—usually the figure is around 50 years. So they’re older varieties.

Often, they have a story associated with them such as they have been passed down from generation to generation in the family. But really most importantly for people that are growing them and saving seeds is the fact that they’re open pollinated, unlike a hybrid. It’s not possible to save seeds from a hybrid and have it come true to type whereas with an open pollinated seed, which is what all heirlooms are, you can save the seeds as long as you’re careful about cross-pollination issues.

So there are older varieties that have stood the test of time and they’re still around because they taste good. And a lot of hybrids are created not for their taste, but they’re created because they form in size or they ship well or they store well. Heirlooms are grown for taste.

DEBRA: Yes, heirlooms are grown for taste and hybrids are grown for industrialization.

LINDA CRAGO: Well, to some degree. I mean there are certainly hybrids that taste good. But I mean when you grow heirlooms, really what you’re doing is you’re preserving diversity.

We’ve lost so many vegetable varieties over the last 100 years. It’s hard to imagine and it’s really important to keep these varieties in existence.

DEBRA: Right. I agree. So what are some of your favorite heirlooms?

LINDA CRAGO: Well, my problem is I like it all. That’s why […]

DEBRA: That’s why you have a nine acre farm.

LINDA CRAGO: Yeah, exactly. I really love the heirloom tomatoes. I grow lots and lots of heirloom tomatoes. And some of the ones that are my favorites are ones that are actually unassuming, but have some really valuable characteristics of course, beyond tasting just great.

There’s one that I really like the taste of in particular and I like the fact that in our climate, it’s super early and it’s always the first tomato out of my garden. Usually people in this area get their tomatoes planted around the 24th of May or so. That’s usually considered to be like our frost-free time.

These tomatoes, I can get usually within 50 days of getting them in my garden, which is phenomenal. So that variety that I’m speaking about is a little Czechoslovakian heirloom called Stupice. That’s the pronunciation, but the spelling is S-T-U-P-I-C-E. I love that one.

But I also love the diversity of the heirloom tomatoes. There are more than 10,000 different varieties.

DEBRA: Wow.

LINDA CRAGO: So every color that you can imagine, black and purple and brown.

DEBRA: I’ve seen a lot of them.

LINDA CRAGO: Yeah, yellow, orange, bicolors, whites, greens. The diversity is incredible in color, in shape, in size. There are some that are fluted, some that are smooth, some that have peach skins. I mean it’s just incredible, some amazing, amazing produce.

DEBRA: When I lived in California in the rural area of West Marin, I had a neighbor who had a tomato farm. She grew tomatoes and sold them. And all she grew was tomatoes. And so you would go over to her property and it would just be tomato plant after tomato plant. And all she grew was heirlooms.

And so I got to try a lot of heirloom tomatoes because I had her so close by and we were friends. And she would take them to the farmers’ market and stuff.

It’s just wonderful to see that diversity. And then you walk into the supermarket and there’s one kind of tomato. You could go to the natural food store.

I think actually you can go to the supermarket and maybe get three or four tomatoes, different types of tomatoes. But to get those heirlooms and see those with stripes and the different colors and make a salad out of them or just taste them one by one and see how they’re different that you really see the amazing diversity that is in nature of things that we can eat and that we’ve really narrowed them down to the supermarket varieties.

And it’s just so, so, so important, in our own backyards and in our own small farms, to be maintaining that genetic material.

LINDA CRAGO: That’s exactly right.

DEBRA: Yes.

LINDA CRAGO: And it’s not just tomatoes. There are so many amazing heirlooms, squashes and peppers and potatoes.

DEBRA: Carrots.

LINDA CRAGO: Diversity, you can’t even imagine if the only place you’ve ever shopped is a grocery store. There are some amazing things, amazing tastes. That’s really what it’s all about.

DEBRA: Yes.

LINDA CRAGO: Yeah, it’s wonderful. It’s a wonderful world.

DEBRA: And what a wonderful thing to do all day long.

LINDA CRAGO: You’ve got it. That’s great.

DEBRA: To be out there with the plants. Well, we’re getting to the end of our time, but we still have about five minutes left. Is there anything that you’d like to talk about that I haven’t asked you?

LINDA CRAGO: I am trying to think now. But just really, I would like to stress how important the heirlooms are.

One organization that I just love is in your country. It’s in Decorah, Iowa. It’s a nonprofit organization whose work is only maintaining heirloom varieties, Seed Savers Exchange.

DEBRA: Yes. I’ve known that for years. Tell us about that.

LINDA CRAGO: They do fabulous work. I think in their collection, they have tens of thousands of different seeds that they have maintained and they’ve collected varieties from all over the world and they’re trying to pass them along to individuals that are members or nonmembers.

And I just can’t stress enough how important the work that they’re doing is and what a real difference they’ve made. So if people are interested in looking them up and supporting their work, I think it’s tremendous and I think it’s very important. So you’ve got a wonderful organization.

DEBRA: Yes, they’ve been around for quite a while. And I have been recommending them a lot.
You also mentioned in your bio a couple of other organizations, Kokopelli in France and Garden Organic in England. Can you tell us about those?

LINDA CRAGO: There are a number of organizations that I’m involved with and it’s interesting to see the number of organizations that are springing up in countries really all over the world who are interested in preserving their nation’s produce, their nation’s heirlooms. Really if you look around the world, nearly every country has one now.

But Kokopelli is an interesting one because they do a lot of good outreach work as well. They’re in France, but they go into third world countries and distribute open pollinated heirloom seeds and teach people how to grow them and how to save seeds.

But they do some fabulous work and are really worthy of support as well. But it’s great. I think the interest in heirlooms is growing all the time. The way that we can preserve these varieties is to eat them, which sounds strange, but […]

DEBRA: No, I understand. It is. It is exactly the way to preserve them. It’s to eat them and grow them. I think that growing food—more and more, it is obvious to me that growing food is one of those basic life skills that everyone should have and that everybody used to have. Turn the clock back a couple of hundred years, everybody grew their food.

LINDA CRAGO: That’s right.

DEBRA: And they took their food to the village square and traded it with their neighbors and it was all extremely, extremely local and no corporations involved, just people helping each other eat.

I’m not against industrialization, but there’s so much that industry takes over that we could just be doing for ourselves. And I just think it’s such a beautiful thing for people to know how to grow, for people to help each other grow these foods to help each other understand how to prepare them and store them and to take responsibility and control for our food and our nourishment.

It’s such a fundamental thing and it’s such a direct connection with nature that I think a lot of people have lost and I’d really love to see […]

LINDA CRAGO: And I think it’s important to get children involved in it too. And it’s gratifying to see that a lot of schools are picking up on that in our area anyways and are introducing gardening programs. There’s tremendous satisfaction to be had from growing your own food.

DEBRA: And eating it.

LINDA CRAGO: […] It’s a very stress-free activity and there’s so much satisfaction from seeing what can grow from one teeny-tiny seed. It’s great when you can expose children to that as well and get them interested from the get-go.

DEBRA: Yes, I completely agree. Well, it has been a pleasure to have you on, Linda. This is just one of my favorite subjects and it’s always so good to see people who are doing these things that are—I mean this is not the normal thing that most people are doing.

And so I so appreciate your being able to decide for yourself that that’s what you want to do and do it and set an example.

LINDA CRAGO: Thank you. And it’s been a pleasure being on your show. And when you visit Niagara Falls, climb over and see me.

A Box of Chocolates for Mother’s Day

Question from Craig

Hi, Debra. I have a question. What boxes of chocolate do you recommend for Mother’s Day? Thanks.

Craig

Debra’s Answer

If you want chocolates in a pretty gift box, I don’t know of any organic chocolates you can buy in a store, but you might be able to order online. I started to do a search and found some, but they didn’t list their ingredients, so I couldn’t evaluate the sweeteners etc.

But let me say this about gifts. The best gifts are gifts that will make the receiver happy. If a box of chocolates says “I love you” to your Mom, then you should give her a box of chocolates of the kind SHE likes. Having a special treat one day out of the year is fine.

Of the boxes of chocolates that are generally available, I would choose Godiva. Not organic, has sugar, but no artificial ingredients or additives. It’s “all natural” unless they’ve changed since I last looked at the label. I recommended Godiva Chocolates in my first book Nontoxic & Natural in 1984. There was no organic chocolate then, and these were the best because they were all natural.

They are delicious and a very special gift.

Also look for a local chocolatier where you live. You can go in the shop and ask about ingredients and they will fill a box of chocolates you choose, just for your mom.

Add Comment

Simmons BeautyRest Mattresses Are Free of Some Toxic Chemicals, But Not All

Question from KER

Hi, just saw a segment on a shopping channel, while channel-surfing. The Simmons BeautyRest company was hyping its foam inside the mattress – saying it containted no formaldehyde, no chlorofluorocarbons, no lead, no mercury. They talked about how other mattresses smell a lot when you take off the plastic wrapper; theirs to not, because there is no outgassing. I am SO skeptical, but oh, if only. Their website says nothing about this! Any comments? Thanks!

Debra’s Answer

Well, there is some information about this.

I found it on the website North Shore Bedding, which says

Simmons Mattresses Screenshot

I also found it on a complaints about these mattresses to the Consumer Product Safety Commission:
www.saferproducts.gov/ViewIncident/1232160

And here’s a press release announcing these mattresses are certified by GREENGUARD because of the CertiPUR-US certified foam.

www.prweb.com/releases/2010/10/prweb4646034.htm

But here’s the thing. I researched this foam extensively. It’s polyurethane foam made with a whole list of toxic chemicals (which I will write about another day).

Notice that it says LOW emissions, not NO emissions.

Then it says it’s made without “prohibited phthalates.” Um hmmm. All the foams are made without prohibited phthalates. They are prohibited by law. So nothing different here.

No CFCs. Well, CFCs were banned in 1978, so, again, no polyurethane foam is made with them.

Typically mercury, lead and other heavy metals are also not used to make polyurethane foam.

Formaldehyde also is not part of the polyurethane foam formula.

And PBDE’s have been banned in the United States since 2004. Again, no foam would have them for this reason.

It’s great the mattress doesn’t contain any of these chemicals. But it does contain other chemicals.

In fact, this certified foam is no different than any other polyurethane foam. It’s just telling you that it doesn’t contain chemicals that wouldn’t be there in the first place.

It’s like putting a label on a can of pineapple that says “fat-free.” Well, yes, there is no fat in this can of pineapple, but neither to any other pineapples contain fat.

By contract, organic cotton, for example, has NO emissions. I don’t want to sleep on a LOW emission mattress. When you see that phrase “low emissions” it means there are emissions of toxic chemicals. Certainly there might be less toxic chemicals than other mattresses, but it’s more emissions than natural fibers.

I’ll stick with my organic wool mattress, thank you.

Add Comment

How Safe is Sheetrock?

Question from Sandy

We may have to put new sheetrock on a bedroom wall. Do you find sheetrock, tapping and mudding that would have to be done, to be inert as far as bothering those with EI.

Thanks

Sandy

Debra’s Answer

I can tell you that I have installed many walls with ordinary sheetrock, tape and mud, and never had a problem with it.

Some people with MCS prefer using Murco products,  but these need to be ordered by mail. They are totally fine, I just in the past haven’t had time for a special order, and found that once the mud dries and it is painted there is no odor.

The concern with regular sheetrock is that it is susceptible to mold growth.  Some alternatives that are more resistant magnesium oxide boards such as Dragonboard and MagBoard.

Translator

Visitor site map

 

“EnviroKlenz"

“Happsy"

ARE TOXIC PRODUCTS HIDDEN IN YOUR HOME?

Toxic Products Don’t Always Have Warning Labels. Find Out About 3 Hidden Toxic Products That You Can Remove From Your Home Right Now.