Water | Swimming Pools
Moldex Mold Inhibiting Paint
Question from Daisy
We’re renovating our house and I’m wondering about Moldex mold-inhibiting paint for the bathrooms? I saw it in a “green” products store, but I’d like to know how this paint compares to other paints as far as VOC’s or other problem ingredients.
Debra’s Answer
Well, it looks fine to me. The MSDS for Moldex Paint lists NO regulated hazardous chemicals and the mold-inhibiting agent is a silver, which does not outgas.
So fine with me if you want to use this.
In my bathroom I used colored clay plaster from [American Clay Plaster]=Naomi find listing on Debra’s List for link. It’s just made from natural minerals and has no petroleum ingredients at all. It absorbs moisture and then releases it, so mold doesn’t get created in the first place. That’s a more natural approach.
Toxic Chemicals in Children’s Products
My guests today are Erika Schreder and Nancy Uding from Washington Toxics Coalition. We’ll be talking about their report Chemicals Revealed, which analyzes reports filed with the Washington State Department of Ecology (Ecology) by manufacturers, in compliance with the state’s Children’s Safe Products Act of 2008. More than 5,000 reports were filed that contained a total of 41 chemicals identified by Ecology as a concern for children’s health. Erika, Science Director, leads the Washington Toxics Coalition’s research program. She has worked on the Washington Toxics Coalition staff since 1997. She has led studies including an investigation of sources of pollution to Puget Sound, tests of toxic chemicals in toys and other children’s products, and biomonitoring studies of toxics in pregnant women and other Washingtonians. In the past, she led efforts to secure protections for salmon from pesticides and win greater support for organic and sustainable agriculture. She obtained an M.S. in ecology from the University of Michigan and a B.S. in molecular biology from MIT. Nancy, author of the report, has a Bachelor’s degree in Ecosystems Analysis from Huxley College at Western Washington University, and a Master’s in Environmental Engineering from the University of Washington. She studied freshwater and marine ecosystems as an undergrad and studied bioremediation of toxic organic compounds and the environmental chemistry of pollutants in grad school. Nancy has professional experience in hazardous waste management and in waste water engineering, but also has experience representing the interests of families of children with special needs at Seattle Children’s Hospital. http://watoxics.org/chemicalsrevealed
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Toxic Chemicals in Children’s Products
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Erika Schreder
Date of Broadcast: September 18, 2013
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world. And today, we are really going to find out how toxic the world is because I have some guests from Washington Toxics Coalition who are going to tell us about studies and reports and all kinds of things to tell us what toxic chemicals are in children’s products.
But first, I want to say Happy Pollution Prevention Week. The third full week in September is always Pollution Prevention Week.
I’ve been doing this all these many years, 30 years, and I didn’t know every year when is Pollution Prevention Week. But evidently, it’s been going on for a while, launched by the US Environmental Protection Agency. And it’s dedicated to preventing and reducing pollution.
According to the EPA, the US annually produces millions of tons of pollution and spends tens of billions of dollars per year controlling it in the form of cleanups, storm water management and education, and other things.
So, this week—and this week only—the EPA encourages us to look at our lifestyles and brainstorm changes we can make in our daily lives.
Well, we do that every day here, Monday through Friday, noon eastern. That’s exactly what we do, look at our lifestyles, and find out what kind of changes we can make in our daily lives.
Some examples, according to the EPA, include saving energy and money by looking for the Energy Star label to find energy efficient electronics and appliances. And that does reduce pollution going out in the environment that is generated by energy use.
Also, we can save water by looking for the Water Sense label to find water efficient products which can save over 5000 gallons of water per year per household and keep water supplies at safe levels. That’s a good thing to do.
The EPA also urges us to pick safer products by looking for the EPA’s Design for the Environment Safer Product label. Plus, there are many, many, many other things. And we talk about those here.
That’s about all we need to say about this.
As long as we’re talking about millions of things—Washington Toxics Coalition, whose representatives are here today, sent out an e-mail this week in which they revealed that the American Chemistry Council, the ACC, spends—how much do you think—$100-million a year to continue to use toxic chemicals while people like Washington Toxics and you and I are fighting to stop toxic chemicals. They’re spending $100 million a year in order to keep them on the market. That’s a lot of money.
I’m going to introduce my guests now. Hi, Erika and Nancy, are you both there?
ERIKA SCHREDER: I’m here. This is Erika.
NANCY UDING: Hi, Debra. This is Nancy. Good morning.
DEBRA: Hi, good morning. Well, it’s afternoon here, but it’s morning and afternoon everywhere that’s somebody’s listening probably.
They’re from the Washington Toxics Coalition. And Washington Toxics Coalition does a lot of things that they’ll tell you about.
But what we’re going to be talking about today is their report, “Chemicals Revealed” which analyzes reports filed with the Washington State Department of Ecology by manufacturers in compliance with the State’s Children’s Safe Products Act of 2008.
And more than 5000 reports that were filed that contain chemicals that is on Washington State’s list of 66 chemicals of concern, and they found 41 of those chemicals that are a problem for children’s health in those 5000 reports, the same chemicals over and over again.
So Erika, why don’t you start, and tell us a little bit about how you personally got interested in toxic chemicals.
ERIKA SCHREDER: Well, I’ve been here at the Washington Toxics Coalition for more than 15 years, but I did get here in a roundabout way. My training is in molecular biology and in plant ecology. And so, I was actually doing research on sustainable agricultural practices and got interested in pesticides.
And so, I actually worked on pesticides for a number of years here at the Toxics Coalition, trained and built up our sustainable agriculture here in Washington, and also get some restrictions in place to eliminate the use of some of the most toxic pesticides.
And from there, I broadened out to working on other toxic chemicals. And that’s where I am today.
DEBRA: Very good. Nancy, how did you get into toxic chemicals?
NANCY UDING: Well, I’ve been interested in toxic chemicals through my education and early professional life. I’ve studied ecosystems and environmental engineering. And I also worked in hazardous waste management professionally.
But toxic chemicals really hit home for me once I started a family. I have a daughter who was diagnosed with being on the autism spectrum and with learning disabilities. And the big learning I had from that situation is that a lot of these issues that our young children are having to deal with, there can be a combination of genetic predisposition plus an environmental assault.
And I know many, many families in a similar situation.
And so, a lot of times, I feel like this environmental assault can very well include toxic chemicals. So, in my personal choice to work with my daughter and her issues, we used some of the so-called alternative treatment for autism spectrum, which included things like chelating for heavy metals and doing some toxic protocols with a naturopathic physician.
So, it really hit home for me because so many young people and so many individuals have different sensitivities, and it varies by the individual. And so I think we need to be really looking at for what we can do to really minimize exposure that everyone has to toxic chemicals.
DEBRA: Yeah, I agree. When I first became interested myself more than 30 years ago, it was because toxic chemicals were making me sick. It started with my immune system. But as I started studying it, I went, “Wait a minute. It’s not just about me being sensitive like an allergy. I’m not just this unique person. There are toxic chemicals in consumer products that are poisoning everyone.”
And that’s when I started writing about it because this is something we can do something about. We don’t have to just sit here and be poisoned.
So, tell us about Washington Toxics. When did that start? And what do you do as an organization?
ERIKA SCHREDER: Well, we’re a 30-year-old organization, so we’ve been here in Washington for quite some time. And we also, as an organization, started out by working on pesticides, helping local community groups fight spraying especially in forest settings.
But today, we are a tightly-focused organization, working to create a healthier and just world by promoting safer products, safer chemicals and practices, to create a healthier future. And we do that using groundbreaking research. We use topnotch advocacy, grassroots organizing. And we provide consumer information.
DEBRA: Good. I actually read a lot of what you write, and what the organization produces. And I have long admired your organization for the research that you do because that research needs to be done.
So, let’s talk about your Chemicals Revealed report. Why don’t we start with the Washington State Children’s Safe Products
Act? What’s that about?
ERIKA SCHREDER: Yes, I can give you some background on that and how this information came to be. So, it was back in 2007—you probably remember, and I’m sure a lot of listeners remember—it was the summer of 2007 we found out that Thomas the Tank Engine had lead. And that that toy was not alone, that many of our kids’ favorite toys were contaminated with high levels of lead. And it came as a shock to many people that that was actually legal. As long as it wasn’t in the paint, we allowed lead in toys and other children’s products.
And so, we had actually been working at that time to test children’s products because we had found using an XRF analyzer that a lot of children’s products had lead, arsenic, cadmium. And so we were concerned about it. And we’re actually in the middle of doing testing of kids’ products right when that news started to break.
So, we were poised and ready with legislation to propose, which eventually became the Children’s Safe Products Act, which was passed in 2008.
DEBRA: Okay, I need to interrupt you because we need to go to a break. But we can talk more about this when we come back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guests today are Erika Schreder and Nancy Uding from Washington Toxics Coalition. And we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. And my guests today are Erika Schreder and Nancy Uding from Washington Toxics Coalition. And we’re talking about their report called Chemicals Revealed, which is about toxic chemicals in children’s products. They studied more than 5000 children’s products and found 41 chemicals known to the State of Washington to be harmful to children.
You were talking about the Washington State Children’s Safe Products Act, so tell us more about that.
ERIKA SCHREDER: So, the Act did two things. One, it banned some of the chemicals that we knew were already showing up in children’s products. And those were lead, cadmium and phthalates. And then, the other thing it did was set up a system where we can learn more about what toxics were present in kids’ products because I think the lead surprise really taught us that there was a lot we didn’t know. Government agencies didn’t have that information, members of the public didn’t have the information. And so we didn’t really know where to go next to make those products safer.
So, the law set up a system that requires manufacturers to report when products that they sell or market to children contain chemicals that cause cancer, hormone disruption, nerve system toxicity, et cetera.
DEBRA: Go ahead, Nancy.
NANCY UDING: This is Nancy. So the system for reporting, the report requirements actually kicked in last year in 2012. And so, with Chemicals Revealed, we took the first two rounds of reporting by manufacturers’ reports to the State for the chemicals that are in products that they’ve been selling in the State of Washington over the time period. So, Chemicals Revealed is a summary of the information that is in all those of manufacturers’ reports.
And so we were surprised. It was very shocking to see that over 5000 products on shelves in stores in Washington State contained toxic chemicals. And these are children’s products. So, we wanted to put this report together, so people had access to this information. This is really one of a kind information. There isn’t any other reporting requirement like this anywhere else in the country. And of course, many of the manufacturers that were selling products in Washington State with these chemicals, they’re selling in other parts of the country as well.
DEBRA: It seems to me when I hear the idea that there needs to be a report, that a manufacturer needs to say, “Yes, I have these toxic chemicals in my product,” I get chills because what kind of a person would knowingly make and sell a product where they would sign a piece of paper that says, “Yes, I’m making a product that has toxic chemicals that are known to cause harm to children.” I just think that that’s an amazing thing that that even exists in the world.
NANCY UDING: Yes, it is amazing that even exists in the world. And the reason it does is we don’t have adequate laws that are protecting us from these chemicals.
And so, our federal laws, or the Toxic Substances Control Act, that’s supposed to be protecting us from toxic chemicals, is really doing a very poor job of protecting us. And that’s why we do actions like this at the state level, so we can protect people where we can.
But part of it too is that people just don’t really know. A lot of times, when we talk about toxic chemicals being in children’s products, a lot of people, when they hear that, are just shocked because it’s like, “Really? Aren’t we protecting our children?
And aren’t there laws working for us?”
Well, it’s good that we have this information because people can start to realize that we aren’t being adequately protected, and we need to go further and pass new policies both at the state and at the national levels to protect ourselves and our children.
And in the spirit of Pollution Prevention Week, that’s the change that we can make in our daily lives, is to get involved in the process, both in our own states and at the federal level, and try and get these chemicals off the shelves.
DEBRA: Are these chemicals required to be revealed on the labels of the products?
NANCY UDING: No, they aren’t.
ERIKA SCHREDER: The way it’s set up is there’s a public database, so they don’t have to be on the label. But remember, the public can look on the database, and get the information. It’s not, unfortunately, product-specific, so it’s a little bit more general than that.
For example, Walmart would have to report, instead of a certain Princess Barbie Doll contains this phthalate, they would instead report that dolls contain this phthalate.
DEBRA: I think that every single product should be required to—I understand about trade secrets, and I understand about labeling laws and things like that. But I think that consumers need to know what’s in the product, and that every single product should, either on their label or on their website or there should be some database somewhere, even if it’s not publicly accessible that says everything that’s in every product. Children can be poisoned and can have an acute poisoning, immediate poisoning, and you can go to the Poison Control Center, and they can’t find out what’s in products.
NANCY UDING: I believe we have the right to know what’s in everything that we’re using. But again, the laws and the manufacturing processes could be very complex. And also, the information that we know about these chemicals, it changes over time. There are a lot of chemicals right now that are out on the market that are being used and are in the products that we’re using. Right now, we don’t even know what kind of harm they can cause because the research and the science isn’t up to date on some of them.
DEBRA: I agree.
NANCY UDING: So, pretty much our approach is that we want to keep these chemicals out of products, first and foremost, and that the best way to do so is to work on changing some of our chemical policies.
And also, we want to protect everyone. When I was a new mom, I had no idea what some of the kinds of toxic hazards that I had to look out for. We want to protect everybody too.
DEBRA: I agree.
NANCY UDING: You don’t want to have consumers have to look at labels.
DEBRA: Wouldn’t that be great if we didn’t have to read labels?
NANCY UDING: I know! That would be great.
DEBRA: We need to take another break. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. And we’ll be back with my guests, Erika Schreder and Nancy Uding from Washington Toxics Coalition. And when we come back, we’ll hear more about their report, Chemicals Revealed, over 5000 kids’ products containing toxic chemicals.
DEBRA: I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. If you’d like to read this report we’re talking about called Chemicals Revealed from the Washington Toxics Coalition, you can go to my website, ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and scroll down until you see today’s show. All the shows are listed for this week. And at the end of the description of this show, there’s the URL for page that has this report on it.
And also, you can go to the WashingtonToxics.org website, and it’s there. It’s WAToxics.org.
NANCY UDING: Yes, WAToxics.org.
DEBRA: WAToxics.org, yes. And there’s lots and lots and lots of information there. When you go to their website, you can get a lot of information. You can sign up for their newsletter, and they’ll send you alerts and all kinds of things. And you can also make a donation because, remember, the American Chemical Council is spending $100 million a year to support the continued use of toxic chemicals and to make there not be stringent regulations that would prevent the use of toxic chemicals.
They have $100 million a year. And we have us. So everybody needs to help.
NANCY UDING: Yes, thank you.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. Tell us some of the specific findings in the report.
NANCY UDING: Well, some of the specific findings—there’s a lot of report. There are 5000 reports. One thing that we did in Chemicals Revealed was summarize some of the main types of chemicals that we saw being reported. And so, some of those chemicals are toxic heavy metals, such as mercury, cadmium. And then a couple of newcomers that we don’t hear too much about—molybdenum, antimony and cobalt—were reported.
Cobalt was reported over a thousand times. It also had a few reports of arsenic, believe it or not, which is quite surprising.
We also saw a lot of phthalates on the list reported. And phthalates are used as—
DEBRA: Plasticizers.
NANCY UDING: —plasticizers. And they’re used in a lot of different products. We saw them in all kinds of things—clothing, toys, baby products. And phthalates are hormone disrupters. So they’re of a concern in that regard. But many, many products contain phthalates.
And then there were other things like industrial solvents that appeared to be contaminants in the manufacturing process—solvents like ethylene glycol, which we also know as antifreeze, methyl ethyl ketone, toluene, those kinds of industrial solvents.
There are traces of those chemicals in many of these products.
And so yes, again, you were remarking there were 41 chemicals off of the list of 66 of high concern […]
One thing we did see too is that, in terms of products reported, clothing was reported the most often with almost 3000 of the reports for clothing, and then combined with footwear. So that really raises some red flags for us. The issue of clothing is something that we probably ought to be looking at more closely.
There are also a lot of toys and games and children’s jewelry and accessories; again, many baby products, such as baby car seats and baby bath, and safety products, changing mat, a lot of bedding, a lot of arts and crafts toys.
So, it’s just a wide variety of products that people use every day, and that their children are in contact with every day.
DEBRA: Something like clothing, they’re wearing it all day long, or bedding, they’re sleeping in a bed all night long, and their skin is touching this. It’s very easy for these toxic chemicals and metals to get right in through their skin.
I wanted to ask you, I’m looking at the report, and so I just want to clarify, the companies that were reporting are retailers, not manufacturers?
NANCY UDING: Well, the companies that are reporting are manufacturers. And some—that’s kind of a complicated situation because some retailers manufacture their own brand, or their own products. And so, in that case, they would be reporting their products. In other cases—and this is a little tricky area with the whole reporting requirement—there are some retailers that purchase. They have products manufactured for them that they purchased, and then they sell the products.
Some manufacturers consider themselves as the manufacturer and responsible for reporting. But we do see other retailers seem to take a different interpretation of that and don’t consider themselves the manufacturers.
So, we see some companies that should probably be reporting more products that aren’t because they don’t consider themselves the manufacturer.
An interesting thing is that some of the biggest reporters, the manufacturers, actually have policies in place in their companies where they do have chemical restrictions list. And so they are taking the steps to reduce their chemical use in the manufacturing process. So, we like to really commend some of these companies for doing this.
But in terms of why they’re reporting so many products, it could be just because they know more about their products. They’ve been investigating it further and that they’re actually learning more about what toxic chemicals they’re using.
DEBRA: On other shows, I’ve been talking to manufacturers who are looking to see what the toxic chemical uses down in different layers, not just the top layer of what’s the ingredient that goes into the final making of the product, but what are the chemicals and processes that go into making the ingredients and down several layers.
And so, I think that you’re exactly right. The general public isn’t really aware of how much attention is being paid to toxics on the manufacturing level. And I think that there are some companies in particular that are taking this extremely seriously and are doing their best to, gradually, over time, replace those toxic chemicals with less toxic chemicals or remove all together.
And so, there is progress being made. And I think that you’re right, that if they’re reporting, it’s because they know.
I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I talked to manufacturers 20 years ago where they didn’t have a clue about anything. It’s just, “Well, I buy this container, and I mix it with this other container,” and that’s what their products are.
We need to take another break, but we’ll be right back after this with Erika Shreder and Nancy Uding from Washington Toxics Coalition. We’re talking about their report, Chemicals Revealed, and finding out about the toxic chemicals that are in children’s products. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. And today, my guests are Erika Schreder and Nancy Uding from Washington Toxics Coalition. And they wrote a report called Chemicals Revealed that tells us about toxic chemicals in children’s products.
Can you tell us why is there more of a concern for children than adults?
ERIKA SCHREDER: There are a few reasons that we’re more concerned about kids. The primary one is that they’re still developing. So if you have any toxic insult, then it can affect them the rest of their lives because their systems are still developing.
But also, they are less able to detoxify than adults are. And they tend to have greater exposures because, pound for pound, they eat more food, drink more water, breathe more air than adults do. And so by and large, they tend to actually have greater concentrations of these compounds in their bodies.
DEBRA: Yes, they do. People really need to keep in mind that if an adult and a child and a baby are all in the same room, they’re all going to have the same exposure, but the adult’s body is much bigger than the child’s, and the child’s is bigger than the baby’s.
And so, really, when you have a newborn baby in a toxic home, that baby is getting more exposure than anybody else. And we really need to be watching out for that. As you said, things that you are exposed to, just newborns in the room, things that babies are exposed to, it sets them up for having a having a healthy life or not a healthy life. And we need to keep that in mind.
It’s very important.
Another thing that I see here in the report is a sentence that says the use of hazardous chemicals in children’s products is unnecessary.
And I totally agree with you on that. And I just want to let people know that, even though there are many toxic products for children, there are also many not toxic products for children. There is organic clothing, there is organic bedding, there are toys made out of natural materials. And all these products, even though they’re a small percentage of what’s in the marketplace, they all do exist. And the parents can make those choices.
And if you go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and go up to the top of the page, there is a button that says “shop.” If you click on there, it will take you to Debra’s List, which is my compilation of many hundreds of websites that sell products that do not contain these toxic chemicals.
ERIKA SCHREDER: Another thing people can do in their search for toxic-free products is if you have retailers in your local area, and you want to be able to purchase toxic-free products, please contact your retailers and tell them that you support having toxic-free products available. And would they please take some of those toxic products off their shelves, and put less toxic and non-toxic products out there for people to purchase.
DEBRA: Don’t you think it would be nice if some consumers got together and demonstrated in front of some of these retailers.
They could carry signs out front that says, “No more toxic products.”
ERIKA SCHREDER: Well, people do do that. That is definitely a strategy. It’s also good to just start by making a phone call, and saying you’re a regular shopper at this store, and I really want to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals that I’m exposed to and my kids are exposed to.
Just ask them, will they please take some of these products off their shelf.
DEBRA: Well, I know that there’s a program called Mind the Store. I’ve had people on from that organization. We’ve talked about that. And there are ten top retailers that are being asked to do that.
And I do know, I’ve been in some of these stores like Target, and I’ve noticed over the years that there are less toxic chemicals, but there are still more that can be taken off the shelves. And so it’s just a matter of letting retailers and manufacturers know that you want toxic-free products.
Consumers have a lot of power. And if we don’t buy those toxic products, they’ll stop making them.
You’ve been doing this for a long time. I’ve been doing it for a long time. Washington Toxics has been doing this for a long time.
And don’t you see that, even though there is still a long way to go, that we have made progress?
ERIKA SCHREDER: We’re definitely seeing response from many manufacturers and from retailers. Just last week, there was a big announcement from, I think it was Proctor & Gamble, that they are phasing triclosan and phthalates out of their products.
These companies are starting to see that consumers want safer products and products that they can feel confident in. And I think the retailers are also sensitive to that. And that’s why we’re working with Mind the Store to really target these retailers and ask them to stop selling products that contain any of these hundred toxic chemicals that we’re asking them to phase out.
DEBRA: Yes, I agree. I’m working with them too. I think that’s a great idea. I would like to see that to happen.
You know, I’ve spent 30 years trying to help consumers recognize the difference between a toxic product and a non-toxic product. But what I’d really like is to be out of a job and to just be able to walk into any store at any time and know that anything that I look at on the shelf is something that’s safe to buy.
And that’s really where we should be because all technology exists to do that. There’s no reason why we need toxic chemicals.
And it’s just a matter of choice, marketing, and understanding all those things. But I do see times are changing. Times are changing. And I think that there’s a lot more awareness than there used to be.
So, at the end of your report, you have some recommendations. You want to tell us what those are?
NANCY UDING: Sure! One thing that we like to recommend to people is, of course, get involved, and talk to your local policy makers and your national policy makers, your congress members, to pass toxic chemical policy changes that will keep the chemicals out of products that we use every day. So, just get involved and become active.
We also recommend that other states pass reporting requirement laws because the information that we got from the Children’s Safe Products Act has just been really great information to have if it’s hard to look at and hard to realize that there are so many products that have toxic chemicals. It’s still really important for us to all to know as consumers. It’s also really important for policy makers to know this as well.
And in addition to looking at the national federal chemical policy situation, we need to change TSCA and reform TSCA, but we also need to be able to work on protecting people at the state level. And states should be able to take action and get toxic chemicals out of products.
And again, we really support the Mind the Store campaign. And we call on retailers to take toxic chemicals of their shelves.
DEBRA: Sometimes I feel like walking around with a little roll of stickers that say “toxic” and just put them on the shelves—guerilla advertising.
ERIKA SCHREDER: The other thing I wanted to mention is that, as Nancy was saying, we’re recommending that other states passed similar policies that would at least give us that first step of getting the information. And the number of states did consider that type of legislation last year. So people are interested in getting involved at the state level where we’re really seeing a lot of change.
They can go to the SaferStates.org website and see what’s happening in other states, what organizations are active that they can start to work with.
And there’s also actually a great article on the homepage of that website right now about the type of law, what’s happened in Washington and other states.
DEBRA: That’s great to know that. See, there are all these activities going on. We are going to get these toxic chemicals out of products, I am sure of it, in my lifetime.
So, we only have about a minute left. Are there any final words you’d like to say, each of you?
ERIKA SCHREDER: Well, I would just like to say thanks for having us on the show. It’s really great to be here.
DEBRA: You’re welcome.
ERIKA SCHREDER: And also, again, we’d love to ask people to check out our website. It’s WAToxics.org, WAToxics. And we have tons of information on there including lots of recommendations. We did just do an e-mail newsletter about something that you can do about addressing the situation of toxic chemicals in clothing. So, if you can go to our website and search for “toxics in my tee shirt,” then you’ll get a few recommendations that we have for parents.
And just thanks for having us and Happy Pollution Prevention Week.
DEBRA: Happy Pollution Prevention Week to you too.
So, did both of you say something? I couldn’t tell. Yes, I think you did.
Well, we just have a few seconds left. So thank you very much for being with us. Everybody should go to Washington Toxics Coalition website, which is WAToxics.org. Sign up for their newsletter, make a donation, help them do their work because they’re the ones that are doing the research about toxic chemicals, health effects, where they are in products, and all of those kinds of things.
You can also go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. You can find out who else is going to be on this week. And you can also listen to past shows. We’ve got all kinds of great guests just like these, people who are making products, who are selling products, who are reporting on products, or investigating products.
This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. And I’m Debra Lynn Dadd.
Soap Nuts: The All Natural Solution for Laundry
My guest today is Mona Weiss, a naturalist and actress who co-founded Eco Nuts in 2009 with her fiancée, Pirates of the Carribbean actor Scott Shields, to bring eco-friendly laundry and cleaning products to the marketplace in compostable or recyclable packaging. We’ll be talking about how to recognize toxic and natural ingredients on product labels and how natural products can improve health conditions. Having suffered from a “normal detergent” allergy all her life, as well as a sensitivity to dyes and fragrances, Mona is extremely discerning when it comes to products that come in contact with her skin. Mona discovered she had sensitivities to toxins on new year’s eve right before she turned 16 and was home alone. The idea to start Eco Nuts came about 10 years later. In addition, Mona loves to study our natural world. She’s studied salamanders, marine and freshwater ecology, discovered new species of micro spiders in the Costa Rican rain forest, and worked with leopards, lions, and bears. econuts.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Soap Nuts: The All Natural Solution for Laundry
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Mona Weiss
Date of Broadcast: September 17, 2013
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And this is Toxic Free Talk Radio. Today is—what is today? It’s Tuesday, September 17th 2013. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. The sun is shining, so we’ll have no thunderstorms today.
And I may have a slight technical problem with my computer which is happening intermittently. Yesterday, it was fine for the whole show. So I’m crossing my fingers that it will be fine today.
And we do this show because there are toxic chemicals all around in all kinds of consumer products, in the air that we breathe, in the water we drink, just everywhere. But there are many, many products that do not contain toxic chemicals. There are ways to get toxic chemicals out of our bodies. And being free of these toxic exposures is what this show is all about.
Today, we’re going to talk about laundry and one of my favorite laundry products, soap nuts.
My guest today is Mona Weiss. She’s a naturalist and actress and co-founder of EcoNuts.
Hi Mona!
MONA WEISS: Hello!
DEBRA: How are you today?
MONA WEISS: Oh, I’m doing great. The sun isn’t even shining here, and I’m in California.
DEBRA: Oh, no! Well, I’m sure it’ll be shining soon.
So, tell us first, what led you to be interested in toxic chemicals and in starting your company, EcoNuts.
MONA WEISS: Absolutely! It kind of started when I was about 16 years old. I was home alone. It was New Year’s Eve and my parents were at a party. I am up late beating Legend of Zelda on Nintendo. Up until that time, I was getting hives and rashes and stuff like that. But I never really paid attention to it. And that night, I had a really bad reaction. I’m home alone, and I was just covered in these red welts. My mom wasn’t at home. I didn’t really know what to do.
Long story short, we figured out that I’m allergic to food dye which was really weird. My original clue that night was that I’ve eaten rainbow sprinkle cookie and a raspberry Snapple. I had to go to the doctor and all that stuff.
So, we figured this out. And I had to suddenly look at everything I’m eating and cut out these food dyes (which are in everything, it’s unavoidable).
And around that time, I’m also diagnosed with ADD. And I was thinking, “God! This is really bad.”
Fast forward to years later, after I graduated college, I met Scott, my fiancée, and we started EcoNuts together.
And at the time he’s dating, he’s like, “You don’t have ADD. I think you’re just eating the wrong foods.”
So, I started buying organic foods and I got off the medication. And sure enough, I don’t have ADD. And all I needed was just healthy, organic food.
And then, there was one missing piece of the puzzle which was that I was still getting rashes. I could just eat fruits and vegetables, I’m still getting rashes. Well, it doesn’t have food dye in it, so what’s going on?
So, the mystery of that was solved when Scott’s uncle mentioned that there are these berries in the Himalayas that make soap. Maybe I should try using these for my laundry. That might help my problem.
I thought he was completely crazy. I’m using the detergent the doctor told me to use. So the doctor’s right… maybe?
DEBRA: Right, right. Maybe…
MONA WEISS: But anyway, we got these berries. And I’m like freaking out. I didn’t want to put them in my washing machine, but I did.
I washed my clothes. And holy cow! They worked not only to clean my clothes, but all of my eczema and allergies and rashes, they went away as soon as I started wearing the clothes that I had washed with these berries.
There was no real company kind of selling these, a real product. I was thinking, “You know what? I’m sure I’m not the only one with this problem.”
But these worked great. You’re not putting any chemicals down the drain. It’s environmentally conscious. So we decided to start a company and bring this product to mainstream.
DEBRA: I think what you’ve done—it’s not that soap nuts didn’t exist before because I’ve been using them for about four or five years…
MONA WEISS: Oh, yeah.
DEBRA: But what you’ve done is you’ve made it into a mainstream brand. You’ve made it available, and you’ve made it attractive. You’ve done a really good job of putting a whole story together and having a great website and making it something that just an average consumer could use.
You’ve put some other products together with it, and you’ve just done a great job, Mona. I’m really, really happy with your website.
MONA WEISS: Oh, great!
DEBRA: You’ve done a good job. And I’ve looked at many, many websites over the years.
MONA WEISS: Oh, great.
DEBRA: So, I love your story because it really illustrates how, once again, somebody had a health problem. We hear this story every day on this show. Once again, somebody else had a health problem, and they discovered it was some toxic chemical that was causing the health problem. They stopped using the toxic chemical—in this case, detergent and all the associated other things like perfume and everything that is in the detergent—and your health problem went away.
How many health problems are there in the world? One of the ones that I like to talk about all the time is how many millions of people have insomnia and they’re taking sleeping pills every night for the insomnia when they could just change their sheets and not have formaldehyde resin on their bedsheets, and then they wouldn’t have insomnia.
That’s what happened to me. That’s part of my story. I changed my sheets. And you changed your detergent. And now, we’re both without our symptoms!
I just have to keep saying this over and over because I want everybody who’s listening to understand that if you’re sick, if you’re having a symptom, look around and see what you’re being exposed to and start eliminating the toxic chemicals and see if those symptoms will go away.
So, tell us what soap nuts are.
MONA WEISS: Okay! So, they’re these little berries. They grow on a tree in the Himalayas. I mean, there are 20 different species. They grow all over the world. But the best ones for laundry happened to grow in the Himalayas.
And they make soap.
They make soap when they come into contact with water. The tree makes the soap to taste bad to insects. So it’s sort of trying to protect this inner seed.
So, what we do is we remove the inner seed because it doesn’t really do anything. And then, you take these little—they’re a hard shell. The common name is nuts, but it’s actually a berry. So it’s safe if you have nut allergies.
You can put it in this little big (which we give you). It’s just to keep track of it, so there are not berries floating around in your machine. Stick it in your washing machine, and then it will make soap. And wash your clothes!
It’s sort of complicated description for something that’s very, very simple.
DEBRA: It is very simple. When I started washing with them, somebody told me—I don’t even remember how I found out about it. Somebody told me, and I got some soap nuts. And they’re kind of sticky. The ones I have are kind of sticky. You put them in the little bag, and then you toss them in the washer, and you think, “How is this going to work?”
But I had an experience in the past. I grew up in California, in Northern California. And there, we had something called soap plant. It’s an Indian use of a plant. In grade school, I learned how to recognize it. They would take us on a hike, and we would go and pick up the soap plant. You pull it out of the ground, and the root is soapy. You put water on it, and you can wash your hands with it. And I thought that was a cool thing when I was a child. So, I thought, “Well, this makes sense to me, soap nuts.”
And the first time I washed my clothes with it, they came out so soft and so clean that I was hooked. It’s such an easy thing! You can use them over and over and over. You put them in the little bag (you put like three or four in the little bag), and you just keep using them until they kind of melt away. And then you put three or four more in the little bag. It’s just kind of an amazing product.
We need to take a break, Mona. So we’ll continue on with your story after the break.
MONA WEISS: Awesome!
DEBRA: This is Debra Lynn Dadd. And you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Mona Weiss from EcoNuts. We’re talking about soap nuts and other natural cleaners and other natural laundry tips. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Mona Weiss, co-founder of EcoNuts where they sell soap nuts for your laundry.
Mona, I know that you’re not the only one who sell soap nuts. But there’s something different about yours from the other ones. Tell us about that.
MONA WEISS: Well, we try to treat it like a normal product that people would buy. I mean, it’s a little bit of a hard stretch to ask people to use berries in their washing machine. It can freak people out.
So, what we tried to do is to make it as accessible for people to use as possible, make it easy to use, and present it in an attractive package that people want.
And we have other products too. We’ve got a liquid detergent which is an extract from these soap nuts. So if you like the idea, but you’d rather use a liquid detergent, we’ve got that for you.
DEBRA: Good! I know before, we had to make it ourselves.
MONA WEISS: Yeah! You can still make it yourself. It just depends how adventurous you want to be.
DEBRA: You also have a powder that you’ve made it from it?
MONA WEISS: Yeah, we’ve got a cleaning powder. And we’ve got surface cleaners as well—certified organic cleaners for your house. I mean, everything comes in aluminum—the liquids all do—and not plastic which is very easy for people to recycle.
And we use concentrated formulas, so it’s easier in terms of shipping. My grandma loves it because she doesn’t have to lift anything heavy at all.
So, we try to make that a very consumer-friendly item.
DEBRA: Yours are certified organic. Are all soap nuts certified organic?
MONA WEISS: No. Well, it depends if the company goes and gets the certification. They, for the most part, grow wild organically. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that the company—and part of the organic process is you have to get certified at every single level. So you have to be certified where it grows, and then where it’s handled. And everyone that touches them needs to get certified and make sure that it does not come into contact with chemicals for the entire journey of the product.
DEBRA: That’s really good to know. I think most people don’t think about it. I think that they think that a certified organic means that it’s grown organically, but not that it’s certified all the way down the track there. So that’s good.
And you also sterilize your soap nuts.
MONA WEISS: Yeah! Yeah.
DEBRA: Tell us about that.
MONA WEISS: We came up with this process. We lab tested these early on just because handling these were making us a little—like we’re getting sick once in a while. So we decided to send these off to a lab and get them tested and there were some germs on these. It just made me feel, “You know what? Not only me and my employees are handling these, but for the consumers, we should really develop some kind of process to kind of clean these and make it just safe for people to use.” I mean, a lot of our customers have compromised immune systems and various problems. I didn’t want to be responsible for getting anybody sick.
So, we came up with a process that is totally chemical-free. It’s very safe. And that process is also part of our organic certification. So while it’s a trade secret, we do have everything inspected by Oregon Tilth who certifies us to make sure that they’re cool with the process and everything like that.
DEBRA: That’s very good. I’m glad that you’re doing that. I haven’t even thought about it, but it is an organic product—organic in the sense that it’s a plan, it’s not something that came out of a factory. It’s something that’s coming out of the Earth. And of course, it could have germs on it like anything else that grows and is being handled through all that line. So I’m really glad that you did that.
So, good job again! I’m just so impressed with what you did.
MONA WEISS: Yeah. I mean, this is something that gets handled a lot down the line. I don’t know if people are washing their hands are not. But when it gets to us, we want to make sure that we put out the best possible product for our customers.
DEBRA: I appreciate that. So how does it compare using soap nuts to using a detergent in terms of cost, for example.
MONA WEISS: Oh! Well, our product costs about a third of the cost of regular detergent. It really is a big cost savings. You don’t expect that with organic product at all, that they would be cheaper because, a lot of times, they’re more expensive.
But this particular product, we’re able to come in way cheaper. Plus, you’re reusing this product. You can reuse these soap nuts up to 10 times. So it’s really a great cost-savings for anyone.
DEBRA: Well, how do you know when you’ve used up your soap nuts?
MONA WEISS: We’ve got a little chart and video on our website. But basically, there’s a bunch of different ways to tell. They’re going to get paper thin and just start to fall apart. And there’s going to be a point where there’s just no more soap. At any point in time, you can stick them in a jar of water and shake it, and you’re going to see soap bubbles until the soap is gone which is really cool.
DEBRA: I’m actually looking on your website right now as we’re talking. And you do have a page that says ‘how to tell when your EcoNuts are used up’. And down at the bottom, you have all these pictures after so many washes.
And down at the bottom, it just looks like the little skins, the skins of a net, instead of the whole nut.
And in the picture, it actually kind of looks like a hazelnut. By the time we get down to the bottom, it just looks like hazelnut skins. And that’s when I stop using them myself. You can just take them and throw them out in the garden and they’ll just biodegrade.
One of the things that I think is so cool about soap nuts is that there’s absolutely no processing to them. There’s no factories. It just comes off the tree and they go down the line and get packaged and sterilized and stuff. But then there’s no taking it apart and making it into 17 different ingredients or whatever.
There are no ingredients. It’s just a berry off a tree. And that’s what you’re washing your clothes with. And at the end, when it’s done, you just put it out in the yard.
I can’t think of a more sustainable thing.
MONA WEISS: Oh, it’s totally awesome!
DEBRA: I mean, talk about a natural product. This is a natural laundry product. This is a natural laundry product.
I’m just so thrilled about them.
We need to take another break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. We were talking with my guest, Mona Weiss from EcoNuts. And we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Mona Weiss, co-founder of EcoNuts. And we’re talking about all-natural laundry, EcoNuts, being soap nuts that just go from the three, they’re sterilized, they’re certified organic, then they go in your laundry and it’s the most natural way I know of that you can wash your clothes.
Mona, I keep looking at your site. And I keep reading more and more. Listeners, Mona has a great blog that she keeps writing about different natural laundry tips. And one really caught my eye. This is on the page about diapers. You’re writing about why it’s such a good idea.
I want to ask you a question. But first, for all the moms out there, tell us why it’s a good idea to use soap nuts to wash diapers.
MONA WEISS: Well, if you’re washing clothe diapers, you’re doing a lot of laundry. So it just comes down to not putting a heavy amount of chemicals or anything—not only against your child’s skin, but back into the environment via the water […]
Your baby has very sensitive skin. So to use a product that doesn’t have any kind of man-made chemicals in it or whatsoever, there’s nothing better to use.
DEBRA: I totally agree.
Okay, now here’s what caught my eye. Down on the page, it says, “How to wash your cloth diapers with EcoNuts?”
And before you start, you recommend doing a strip. And that is to wash your washing machine with EcoNuts without any clothing or diapers or anything in it. Just wash the washing machine.
And that really interested me because you say that the EcoNuts will remove, it will loosen and remove the detergent residues on the fragrances and anything that happens to be in the fiber or in the washing machine.
And this is of interest to me because I just bought a new washing machine. And to save money, I bought a washing machine that had been returned, but in good condition. There wasn’t anything wrong with the washing machine. It just had been purchased and returned.
They obviously had used it because when I got it home, I noticed it smelled much more perfumy than it did when it was in the store. I mean, I guess it was hard to tell with all those other smells in the store […]
But when I got at home, I said, “You know what? I can’t put my clothes on this washer because I didn’t want them to get contaminated with perfume.”
So now, I’ve been wondering what to do. I’m going to just use my soap nuts and run a wash through with just the soap nuts and get that perfume smell out.
MONA WEISS: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a great idea. Regular chemical detergent will leave this residue in your machine. It builds up over time. And then, of course, we recommend that when you’re washing diapers, diapers are so absorbent that they’ll just reabsorb all of the stuff as it’s getting removed from your machine.
DEBRA: You know, this is just so interesting to me, that a natural substance would release all these chemicals from the washer and from the clothes. If you’ve been washing your clothes in detergents the first time, you wash them in EcoNuts, all that stuff is going to come out, and it won’t be putting those chemicals next to your skin anymore. This is so marvelous. So, so good!
MONA WEISS: It’s really cool. It’s really, really cool.
DEBRA: There are so many good things about this.
Okay, so you’ve got some other products here. I want you to tell us about your wool dryer balls.
MONA WEISS: Alright! This is a really cool product. It’s a new product that we brought in recently. And I love, love, love these. They’re solid wool balls. And they’re pretty heavy. You stick four of them in your dryer, and they tumble with your clothes. They help to soften clothes.
I mean, the soap nuts, they soften clothes. But this will also help soften your clothes. But it also reduces the amount of time it takes to dry. And it does this because it helps to circulate hot air in the dryer, and it gets in between your clothes or sheets or whatever you’re washing to let hot air get in between. And it really does work.
DEBRA: I’ve heard that. I haven’t actually used them because when I first found out about them, they were plastic—not yours, but what was being advertised, it’s plastic. And they’re PVC plastic. And PVC is one of the most toxic plastics on earth. Green Peace has for many years had a campaign to just eliminate PVC entirely.
And another thing about plastic is when you expose it to heat, it releases plastic fumes.
MONA WEISS: Yes, exactly!
DEBRA: And so here, they were taking these PVC dryer balls and putting them in a hot environment and then rolling them all around with your clothes—not a good idea.
MONA WEISS: Yeah!
DEBRA: So, I love this idea of the wool dryer balls. It’s just perfect. It’s a perfect compliment to your soap nuts.
Again, it’s a completely natural product where all you’re doing is just shearing the wool off the sheep, and this minimal processing into this little ball, and then you use it.
And again, when it’s done, however long it lasts—years?
MONA WEISS: Yeah, it lasts a really long time.
DEBRA: Yeah, these aren’t going to melt like your soap nuts.
MONA WEISS: No!
DEBRA: But when you’re done with them, they just go back into the garden and just biodegrade. And we don’t have to do any tests on these chemicals because there are no chemicals or anything! It’s just perfectly natural, perfectly safe. All products should be like this.
MONA WEISS: Wow! Wow.
DEBRA: I just get really excited with this.
Okay, let’s see, what else do you have?
The way I found Mona’s site was that I was searching for natural disinfectants in order to wash clothes. I had a client who actually had staph infection. She needed to sterilize all of her sheets and her clothes and everything.
And I thought, “Well, what can you use to sterilize in the laundry.” And Mona has written an entire blog post on how to sterilize your laundry naturally. So, tell us about that.
MONA WEISS: Sure! This is sort of a big topic especially among people with cloth diapers. But also, if you get sick, you worry about how to sterilize your laundry and make it safe again.
So, what I’ve put together is really just a reference guide. There’s a lot of different ways that you can kill germs in your laundry…
DEBRA: Wait, wait. I have to interrupt you, I’m sorry, because we have to go break. After the break, you can tell us about what some of those are.
MONA WEISS: Oh, sure!
DEBRA: This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest is Mona Weiss from EcoNuts. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Mona Weiss, co-founder of EcoNuts. And her website is EcoNuts.com—obviously, a very good name. It’s EcoNuts.com.
And before the break, we were talking about how you can sterilize, sanitize your laundry. And Mona, you were going to give us some tips.
MONA WEISS: Yeah, absolutely. Now, I don’t really like to recommend one way over another just because it’s really up to you what you feel would be the right way for you. But one way that I think a lot of people overlook is using the sun. And the sun is great because it’s free! And it uses…
DEBRA: Yes, and natural.
MONA WEISS: It’s free, it’s natural. There’s no chemical. It’s ultraviolet light. And all you have to do is put your clothes out in the sun. And the ultraviolet radiation and infrared light is going to help to kill all kinds of nasties on your clothes which is really cool!
DEBRA: Excellent!
MONA WEISS: Yeah, it’s excellent. And people don’t even think about it. But it’s one of the reasons…
DEBRA: You know, we live in an industrial culture which is always looking to have you buy something to solve every problem. If you’re sick, we’ve been trained to think we need to go to the doctor and we need to take a pill rather than saying, “We’re sick, what’s going on in our environment that’s making us sick? Or how could we eat something different or be out in the sun?” or whatever.
And so part of the orientation away from toxic chemicals is to start looking to nature and to see what nature has to offer.
I once took a class, a hike out in nature with an herbalist. And she said, “Every problem in nature, there’s a solution right next to it.” So if you have poison oak, you know that there’s a plant growing right next to it that’s going to be the antidote to poison oak. Isn’t that cool? I love that.
MONA WEISS: It’s totally awesome!
DEBRA: It’s all around us. Nature has all the solution all around us. I love that!
So, if you don’t have any sun or if you can’t put your clothes out in the sun, what’s the consumer thing you can do?
MONA WEISS: Lemon juice is a really great disinfectant. It changes the pH of the water in your washing machine.
Basically, it makes it more acidic. And a lot of different microbes can’t survive in an acid environment. So that’s one thing straight from nature. You don’t have to do anything.
DEBRA: Right! And you probably already have a lemon in your kitchen.
Mona has a whole post on her blog about how to do this. So if this is something that you need to do, go look it up on her site, on EcoNuts.com, and she’s got a lot more tips.
Let’s talk about static cling. I know you have another blog post about static cling. And the first thing that I want to say—I read your whole post during the break. The first thing I want to say about static cling is that I learned a long, long time ago that static cling only happens with synthetic fabrics. Those of us who only have 100% natural fibers have no static clings.
MONA WEISS: It’s true. Well, some people can find that if they’re washing say wool or cotton in the same load, they might get a little bit. But it’s far less. I mean, it builds up with synthetic fabrics far more than anything.
DEBRA: I never have static cling when I’m wearing my cotton clothes. I mostly have cotton clothes. What I’m washing in the washer is cotton and linen. I have very few wool clothes living in Florida.
MONA WEISS: Alright!
DEBRA: And when I do wash my wool clothes, I just wash them by hand. And so the only thing I’m mixing is cotton and linen. And I never have static cling. I never have static cling when I’m wearing clothes. So that’s a good way to get rid of all the dryer sheets or fabric softeners or all those things. Just don’t have synthetic clothes.
So, give us your tips. For people who are wearing synthetic clothes and washing synthetic clothes, what’s something that you can do for static cling?
MONA WEISS: Well, in the same vein of what you’re talking about, just separating your fabrics. If you wash all your synthetic [separate] from the others, that’s going to cut down the static. Static will build up if there are two very different fabrics rubbing up against each other.
Another one is to stop your dryer when stuff is just dry. Static builds up in a very dry environment. So if there’s still moisture in the air in your washing machine, then static won’t build up.
DEBRA: Hmmm…
MONA WEISS: It’s very cool!
Well, there are two other ways.
DEBRA: I just want to say something before you go on. It’s also a good idea to remove your clothing from the dryer immediately when the dryer buzzes and says that it’s done. Wrinkles come from clothing sitting on the dryer on top of each other all crunched up. And if you take out the clothes, right when it’s done, and hang them up or fold them up or whatever, you don’t have to iron them.
MONA WEISS: Oh, yeah. Bonus!
DEBRA: Ironing is about my favorite thing. And I wear practically all cotton which needs to be iron. So I do very well with taking those clothes out of the dryer immediately.
Okay, go on with more tips.
MONA WEISS: Okay, you can throw a bulb of aluminum foil into your dryer. It’ll discharge the static.
DEBRA: That’s a lot better than using dryer sheets.
MONA WEISS: Yeah, you don’t have to use dryer sheets. You can do it for free or for pennies.
And this is probably the most effective way that I have heard in terms of feedback from other people. If you put a safety pin on two different fabrics—so say you’re washing cotton and polyester together, you’d put safety pin on a polyester garment and a safety pin on your cotton garment—it’ll discharge the static in your dryer.
DEBRA: I’ve never tried that, but it sounds like that it would work. It sounds like that there’s some science behind that.
MONA WEISS: Yeah, the metal will—without getting technical into the science-y stuff, it’s the same reason why you get a little zap if you’re walking around in socks on the floor and then you touch the doorknob. It’s the same principle. The door knob is your safety pin.
DEBRA: Wow! Interesting…
MONA WEISS: And the metal inside of the dryer, if you’re touching the metal to the metal, it’ll kind of take that charge away.
DEBRA: Wow!
MONA WEISS: It’s crazy! It really works.
DEBRA: Sometimes, it’s just the simplest things that are the solution. That’s so great.
So, we’re coming to the end of our show now. We only have three minutes left. So is there anything that you want to talk about that we haven’t talked about?
MONA WEISS: Well, just in general, I think that some people get really overwhelmed if they look at possible toxins in your homes. I think that’s easy if people just sort of change one thing at a time.
DEBRA: I agree.
MONA WEISS: Every time I go to the grocery store, I try to buy this one new healthy food item that I’ve never tried before.
DEBRA: Good for you!
MONA WEISS: And I think the same thing can be said about any product that you want to change out or do something healthier about it. It’s just making these small changes that in the long run make a really big change.
DEBRA: I completely agree with that. And in fact, for many, many years, I have always said that the first thing I think people should change is their cleaning products because cleaning products are governed by the Hazardous Substances Act. They’re not required by law to list the toxic chemicals or any of their ingredients, so you really don’t know what’s in them. And they’re some of the most toxic products in your home.
Even detergent, I don’t remember the exact statistic, but it’s either number one or two most common product that causes children’s poisoning at home. Kids, they’re attracted to the smell and the color, and they just drink it or put the powder in their mouth, and they need to be rushed to the emergency room—so especially if you have children in your house.
I mean, I think if they put a soap nut in their mouth…
MONA WEISS: It tastes like soap.
DEBRA: I mean, they’re probably not going to want to chew it or swallow it, but it’s a lot safer than detergent—just a lot safer than detergent.
We talk a lot on the show about chemicals at cause health effects over time. We might not see the negative effects right away. But detergent is one of those things that’s called an acute poison. You could take your child to the emergency room if they get […] It’s one of those things that says, “Keep out of reach of children,” and yet we think of detergent as being just a common household product. And we really need to be watching out for that.
So Mona, you’ve given us all a very good, safe, effective, extraordinary solution to that toxic chemical. And I really encourage everyone who’s still using detergent to try this product because it works so well.
Well, thank you for being with us today.
MONA WEISS: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
DEBRA: And again, the website is EcoNuts.com. That’s EcoNuts.com. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. If you want to know more about the show, you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. I list, on the page, all the guests for the week, so you can look ahead. And I also list all the guests that have been on in the past. And there’s a link to the recording in the Archive.
So, thank you for joining me today. Toxic Free Talk Radio, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd.
Do In-House Saunas Cause Mold?
Question from Abner
I’ve seen a few sources–including a fine book written by Holmes (the contractor & house inspector guy)–that advise against installing saunas in houses because they can cause trouble (e.g., mold) by introducing too much moisture into the house. In that regard, another source lumped saunas in the same category as indoor pools, indoor hot tubs, and steam showers. But surely saunas do not create nearly as much moisture as those other items do? Debra, do you think it safe to install a sauna in a house? Thank you.
Debra’s Answer
A sauna can contribute to mold growth in a home, particularly in a humid climate. If you do decide to use one I would make sure you find someone to install it who is very well informed about mold prevention.
How To Read Labels on Personal Care Products and Use Natural Products to Benefit Your Health
My guest is Donya Fahmy, CEO, Founder, and Formulator for Dropwise Essentials—a health and wellness company specializing in premium aromatherapy and natural solutions for personal care. She is the author of author of Aromatherapy and the Expectant Mom: A Woman’s Guide to the Best Essential Oils for a Holistic Pregnancy. We’ll be talking about how to recognize toxic and natural ingredients on product labels and how natural products can improve health conditions. Inspired by her avid interest in alternative medicine and her personal experience using essential oils and herbs to successfully treat what doctors and traditional medicine couldn’t, Donya created the formulations that make up the Dropwise product line as a practical way to share the simple yet amazing benefits of “flower power.” 
By incorporating synergistic blends into everyday personal care products, that make people feel and smell great, she helps consumers recognize plants as a safe, effective, and environmentally sound alternative to pharmaceuticals, Over-the-Counter (OTC) medications, and mass-produced and potentially toxic personal care products. www.debralynndadd.com/debras-list/dropwise-essentials
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
How To Read Labels on Personal Care Products & Use Natural Products to Benefit Your Health
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Donya Fahmy
Date of Broadcast: September 16, 2013
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world.
And we do need to learn how to thrive in a toxic world because there are many, many, many toxic chemicals. We live in an industrial society where most of what is created by it is toxic. And there’s a way of thinking that goes along with that. And we need to step out of that and see that there are other options, things that support health instead of destroying it.
And that’s what we talk about on this show. We talk about how to recognize what is being harmful to your health, what’s toxic, and how to become familiar with many of the other wonderful options there are that are life-supporting and enjoyable to participate in.
So, today is Monday, September 16, 2013. The sun is shining, so we won’t have any problems with thunderstorms today. But I am having this little computer glitch going on. And if we run into it during the show, just hold on because I’ll be right back. I’ll do my best to not have it be a problem during the show.
I just wanted to mention too, something came up last week with one of my clients who wrote to me a question about choosing a safer product and wanted my opinion about which was the best. And then she said to me, “Well, I’m not going to be able to do anything about this” because she had to have this particular thing done to her house and that was the only way to do it.
And I wrote back to her because there are many things that we can do things about and there are many things that we can’t do things about. But the point is not to be 100% eliminating all the toxic chemicals that you might encounter. That’s actually not even necessary.
What is necessary is to eliminate as many toxic exposures as you can, a significant portion of your toxic exposures, so that your body has the opportunity to do its own regenerative processes and stay healthy. And it can tolerate a certain amount of toxic chemicals. But most people can’t tolerate the amount of toxic chemicals that they’re exposed to if they did nothing to control or eliminate them.
There are also many things that you can do to support your body in being able to be more tolerant of toxic chemicals and help your body process toxic chemicals out.
So, if you think you can’t do everything, that’s okay. It’s okay. Just do what you can do. Do the things that are most important to do. And then, don’t sweat it because you just want to just be gradually, at your own pace, moving into a life that has less toxic exposure to it.
Some people do it all at once like I did. But just every time you make a choice, if you can make a choice that’s less toxic, that actually helps. If you hear something on one of my radio shows that sounds interesting to you, pursue it. And one by one, you’ll make this transition from living in a toxic world to living at toxic-free life.
Today, we’re going to be talking about personal care products and about how natural products can benefit your health. You don’t have to be using toxic drugs. You don’t have to be using expensive medical interventions because your body can heal itself given the right things.
So, we’re going to be talking about some of that today, and also, how you can tell what is toxic and what’s not toxic when you’re choosing personal care products.
My guest today is Donya Fahmy. She’s the CEO, founder and formulator for Dropwise Essentials. And I see there’s a typo on my website where it says that she’s a chemist. That’s not correct. And we’re going to fix that. I’m going to e-mail, during the break, I’ll e-mail my assistant and she’ll fix that.
But Donya, she does know what she’s doing with aromatherapy. Dropwise Essentials is a health and wellness company specializing in premium aromatherapy and natural solutions for personal care.
Welcome, Donya.
DONYA FAHMY: Hi, Debra. Thanks for having me here.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. How are you this morning?
DONYA FAHMY: I’m good, thank you.
DEBRA: Good! So tell us how you got interested in all the natural things that you do.
DONYA FAHMY: I ended up starting Dropwise Essentials in much the same way that a lot of entrepreneurs do, which is they end up having a personal need in their life, and they can’t find a good solution for it, so then they decided they want to come up with the solution for it themselves.
So, my story began about almost 20 year ago—maybe a little bit more actually at this point, I’ve lost track. But I was having some recurring health challenges. And the worst of them, of course, for me, was these recurring bouts of eczema. And this went on for about seven years. So I’d get them usually once a year, sometimes twice a year. And to this day, I still don’t know exactly what cause them. I just know that when it happened, I would be absolutely miserable. Sometimes the itching was so intense, I’d scratch myself in my sleep until I bled.
And during that period, a seven-year period, I went to a parade of dermatologists and doctors, looking for answers and solutions, using traditional medicine—which is what I was raised with. But none of them were able to help me to get through the bottom of the problem to figure out what was causing it. And they all pretty much prescribed the same thing, the same medicines, and none of them really worked.
So, I began to worry that I was headed down a dangerous path of depending on harsh medicine—and in this particular case, it was cortisone—and not making any progress really towards identifying and eliminating the cause of the problem and healing, getting over it.
So I finally got really fed up and frustrated. I just hit a wall at one point. I was like, “This is not working for me. There’s just got to be another way.”
And at that point in time, I had a little bit of an epiphany. I was like, “I’m just going to take matters into my own hands here.”
And I can’t honestly say at that time that I really knew what I was doing, but I was determined to find a way.
And so, at that time, I’ve already been dabbling in aromatherapy just as a hobby for personal pleasure. I had acquired a small collection of essential oils and a variety of books on the subject. So I just delved in and started researching, which essential oils are good for the skin, as well as other types of oils, and which ones are good for reducing inflammation.
And I said, “What the hell?” I jumped in and made my own little blend. I diluted it in a base of certified organic jojoba oil. And some people don’t know what that is. Jojoba is spelled J-O-J-O-B-A. And the reason I did that is because when you’re working on essential oils, you should never just apply them straight to your skin. You always want to dilute them first. And jojoba is an excellent skin care oil. And it’s also very widely used in aromatherapy. So I read that in many of my books.
So, I took my blend, and I applied it topically all over several times a day for a couple of days. And I was just amazed at how quickly it got my itching and inflammation under control. And we’re talking a couple of days here after years and years of doing calamine lotion and hydrocortisone creams and all these things, over-the-counter and prescription things, and anti-histamines that didn’t work.
And so, for the first time—in retrospect, I can say this now—the first time, my skin and my body had a fighting chance to heal itself without all this interference from the prescription and all the over-the-counter medications.
And so, once that cleared up, I had one more recurring episode. And of course, instead of going to the doctor, I just pulled up my little blend, and applied it. And then this time, I added an herbal tincture for liver support because I read in a book about Chinese medicine that conditions of the skin are often tied to problems with your liver or your lungs. And I was convinced at that point I time that it was the liver.
And so, when that episode cleared up, I was completely free of eczema for seven years after that. I don’t know if there’s any significance to the numbers. I had this condition for seven years. It just dogged me without any resolution. And then, it completely disappeared for seven years after I adopted this new holistic approach to dealing with it. And that too is an epiphany for me.
So, I suddenly became extremely interested in herbs, in flowers, and plants as medicine. And I started my research on how I could use these ingredients to create every day products that would help other people achieve optimal health and wellness.
By the way, the blend I just described eventually became the first product in the Dropwise Essentials product line. It’s our certified organic body oil in a blend called Soothe.
DEBRA: We need to take a break, but we’re going to hear more about everything that you have to tell us when we come back from the break. And I also want to tell our listeners about an experience I had with clearing up eczema, so we’ll do that when we come back.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. And my guest today is Donya Fahmy. And she’s the CEO, founder and formulator for Dropwise Essentials. And that’s at Dropwise.com
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And I’m here today with my guest, Donya Fahmy.
She’s the CEO, founder and formulator for Dropwise Essentials. And she makes some wonderful aromatherapy products.
Before the break, I mentioned that I wanted to just tell my experience with eczema—and not with me personally. But many, many years ago—many years ago, like 30 years ago—I was very sensitive to chemicals. And I used to faint when I would take a shower from the chlorine fumes. It’s actually what’s coming out of your shower if you don’t have a shower filter—chloroform.
That stuff is very toxic, it’ll knock you out. They pour it on a cloth and put it over your nose. That’s in those old movies when they would do that and knock people out. And that’s what’s coming out of your shower. I would faint when I took a shower.
And so, my father decided that he would rig up a shower filter. This is before. Nobody had a shower filter at that time. And so he went down to the hardware store and got a carbon filter, and rigged it up. And it was very ugly because it was designed to go under the sink. But it did the job, and I didn’t faint. And there was no more chloroform coming through.
I started telling my friends about this. One of my friends had eczema very much all over her body and was putting cortisone on it—and that didn’t even help. About three days after showering with no chlorine or chloroform or any of that coming out of the shower water, she had absolutely no eczema.
And I mentioned this because, so many times, I see this over and over and over where there are all these consumer products that make you sick, and then our industrial system has a remedy for the illness that has been caused by the consumer product. For example, you wash your hair, and you strip out all the natural oils, and then you have to put conditioner on it. It just goes down the list. I could just give you many, many examples of this.
But it’s the same thing too. I don’t know what was causing your eczema, Donya. And I am very happy that your aromatherapy healed it up, but it would have been interesting to me to see if there was some consumer product irritating it. And I think that the aromatherapy did its job beautifully. That’s what I wanted to say.
DONYA FAHMY: That’s so interesting. I have not heard that about the filtering the shower. I mean, I know now that’s a really common thing. I’m sure back then, it was still a foreign concept.
DEBRA: It was! You wouldn’t have known that 20 years ago. The point here being is that there are many ways to clear up any health condition. And it can have many causes. And that was just another interesting one related to toxic exposure.
DONYA FAHMY: Absolutely! We’re not all one size fits all. We’re all unique individuals with our own unique genetic imprints and our different environmental situations. And I think one of the, I would say, “failings” of the western medical approach is it tries to be too cookie cutter and too one-size-fits-all in terms of the prescription and the chemicals that they recommend.
DEBRA: I totally agree with you.
DONYA FAHMY: And I think that may be part of the issue there too, is that when you don’t take into account those differences, then in many situations, it might work, and in other situations, it’s created more harm than doing good.
And unfortunately, that’s not something that we have enough knowledge about or control over. But I was just listening to you talk a little while ago, and you’re sort of echoing some of the things that are the philosophy behind what I adopted after this experience.
So, two things happened, which is, first, I became a fanatic label reader. I just became a fanatic, learning about what are all these ingredients in these products that I’m using, and what’s their purpose, and what’s their function. I became really aware suddenly of all chemicals and synthetic ingredients and everything in the marketplace and then all the products that I had been using up until that time. I couldn’t help but wonder if this played a role.
I don’t know if I’d go as far as to say that it actually caused it, but it certainly could have played a role in creating the problem.
And if not, it might have played a role in, otherwise, somehow interfering with my body’s own natural ability to resolve it and heal it.
DEBRA: Toxic chemicals can do all kinds of things to bodies.
So, I know you’ve done a lot of research about reading labels. So you wanted to tell us about some of the ingredients to watch out for when you’re reading labels.
DONYA FAHMY: Actually, what I’d like to do, if it’s okay with you, is to share some tips on understanding how to read a label because I think that’s—
DEBRA: Sure, yes.
DONYA FAHMY: Basically, what I wanted to say is when I myself started my own research, and I was reading labels—and it was not just personal care, it’s everything like food—I just was overwhelmed. There’s just tens of thousands of chemicals in these products. It’s really frightening the way they do it.
And it became like a fool’s errand to try to understand what all that was. So I needed to come up with my own system for filtering and understanding and simplifying so I could decide. I made a decision at that point. I’d set some ground rules for myself about what I was going to allow into my life going forward and what I was not. And I think of a wise way to do it.
The first thing I want to share is I have something that I call my 5-7 rule. And so, something important to know—if people don’t already know this—is that the FDA requires companies to list ingredients in their products in the descending order of prevalence, the concentration. And so, I always tell people, look at the first five to seven ingredients because, 9 out of 10 times, those are going to be most prevalent in the product.
And that’s where you want to start. You want to make sure that those first five to seven ingredients don’t have any really toxic or questionable ingredients in there.
So, for example, if you’re talking about moisturizers—lotions, creams. At the end of the day, the moisturizer is mostly just water and oil with some kind of agent to emulsify (because water and oil don’t mix, so it need something to help it stay together), and then a preservative to inhibit the growth of mold and bacteria because there’s water in the product.
So, when you’re looking at a lotion, for example, the first ingredient on that label should be water. Aqua-something is what they call it. And if it’s not, then I would just steer clear from that because some of these companies are making these products with all sorts of chemicals.
DEBRA: We want to hear more about this after the break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Donya Fahmy. She’s the CEO, founder and formulator of Dropwise Essentials. And she makes wonderful aromatherapy products. We’ll be back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Donya Fahmy, CEO, founder and formulator for Dropwise Essentials. They make aromatherapy products.
Before the break, we were talking about reading labels. Donya, what are the top five ingredients that you would recommend people never use?
DONYA FAHMY: My top five, without getting too much into it—because obviously, we don’t have a lot of time here today—sulfates are on the top of my list. And those are commonly found in liquid soap products, shampoos, body washes, and that sort of thing.
DEBRA: So, that would be like sodium lauryl sulfate?
DONYA FAHMY: Yes, absolutely. SLS is the most common one that people are familiar with. And there are variations on it like ammonium lauryl sulfate and ammonium laureth sulfate. These are cousins of the same ingredients.
Those are all synthetic. And they’re all very harsh. And they’re not just found in shampoos, by the way. They’re also found in toothpastes and mouthwashes. They’re extremely cheap, but they’re also quite harmful. So, that’s near the top of my list.
The next one, people have probably already heard this, which is parabens. Those are most commonly used as preservatives.
But the problems is they’re so widely used. But typically, there will in 2% or less concentration in any products, but they’re in almost every product. And so, the danger comes from the constant, repetitive exposure and cumulative. So, if you’re using these products, like several of them several times a day, and all of them are preserved with types of ingredient, that’s also definitely one I would eliminate as much as humanly possible.
And then, the third one I talk about that not too many people talk about is triclosan. It’s commonly found in antibacterial soaps and washes and the hand sanitizers. This is a derivative of Agent Orange. It’s highly, highly, highly toxic. Not only is not good for you, it’s also really bad for the environment. It gets washed down the drain into landfills and streams. And it’s leading to something called a phenomenon called super bugs which is new, more virulent bacterial strains that are becoming more highly resistant to antibiotics. So, those are three.
The other one that I dislike intensely is something called propylene glycol. And that is used in antifreeze actually. It’s one of the main ingredients in [unintelligible 20:16]. It’s used in products to help moderate them, so they don’t get widely altered in high or low temperature situations. That’s one of its functions. But that one too is one of the sneaky ones that is showing up.
And it shows up in food products too. If you eat packaged and processed food—and I highly recommend that you don’t. But if you do, sometimes, you’ll find that ingredient in there too.
DEBRA: I’ve seen it in food products. And I recommend that people just eliminate all packaged and processed food products, and just eat fresh food and learn how to cook—just like we should be putting fresh ingredients on our skin, real natural stuff.
DONYA FAHMY: Ideally, yes. And then the last of these, this is a nebulous one too, it’s called phthalates. I know it’s a tongue twister there. Phthalates are unidentified compounds that are normally found and put on the label as fragrance or parfum (which his the French term for perfume).
And the problem with that is that because they’re components of fragrance, and not the actual ingredient, there’s no regulation around that. The FDA doesn’t require companies that use those to disclose that.
And so, fragrances are these complex […] chemicals. And they often contain these phthalates. Phthalates are industrial chemicals that are used as plasticizers. That means they’re used to soften plastics. So you can just imagine if it can soften a plastic, what might it be doing inside your body, especially if it ends up getting lodged in your body, and it can’t work its way out. So, that is a big no-no on my list.
And of course, essential oils—being the aromatherapy lady, I’d say essential oils are far superior alternatives or substitutes to anything with that term fragrance.
So, be aware when you’re reading labels. If it says fragrance on it, question mark.
And it doesn’t necessarily mean that everything that’s made with fragrance has that in there. But there’s just really no way of knowing just by reading the label.
DEBRA: There’s no way of knowing. And if it says fragrance, you can be sure that it is synthetic fragrance, and it’s made with thousands of synthetic chemicals. But if it says essential oil as an ingredient, and that means it’s a natural essential oil, yes?
DONYA FAHMY: Yes. So, there’s a little bit of a twist there in that what happens is—you know, everything has a chemical structure to it, including plants and natural substances. And what happens with these synthetics is they’re designed to mimic these natural substances because they have different chemical structures. And it’s the difference on the structure of the chemical composition that wreaks havoc to their bodies.
Like likes likes. Nature understands nature which is why our bodies respond to essential oils and herbs and plants because they both exist in nature.
Chemicals now are different. So when they come into your body, they’re almost like foreign objects in there. Your body doesn’t really understand what they are or how to metabolize them.
And there’s even some thinking right now in the scientific community that there’s a link between these chemicals and obesity because what happens is your body starts to create fat and then envelopes these toxins with fat to protect you. That’s what’s protecting you from harm. So it envelopes the toxins with fat. And then they get locked up, and then you can’t burn the fat off.
A lot of these people who diet, but they never seem to get anywhere, it’s something to think about. There could be a link there.
And if they start to really focus on eliminating toxins from their life, they might have more success with that.
DEBRA: I totally, totally agree with that.
So, when we come back from the break, which is going to be pretty soon—not quite yet, but very soon—when we come back from the break, I want you to tell us about your products and aromatherapy and what you have to offer. Especially, you said to me that you’ve created these formulations to be a practical way to share this simple, yet amazing benefits of flower power in people’s everyday lives.
And so, there are things that you can do to support your health and support your body functioning the way it is supposed to function by using these simple elements from nature.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Donya Fahmy. She’s the CEO, founder and formulator for Dropwise Essentials. And we will be back in just a few minutes.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Donya Fahmy from Dropwise Essentials. Donya, tell us about your products.
DONYA FAHMY: So basically, from the very start when I was researching ingredients and trying to learn about them, I adopted a philosophy, so to speak, or a motto, which is if it’s not safe to put in your mouth, it’s not safe to put on your skin.
DEBRA: I agree.
DONYA FAHMY: Obviously, when you’re talking about personal care cosmetics, you can’t eat them, even ones that are made with natural ingredients. But you want to strive for a finish product that’s as close to something that you might be able to eat.
Of course, there are many companies out there, skin care companies, that make products with food and all that stuff. But with food, you need preservatives or it doesn’t have a very long shelf life or you need a refrigerator. So, I try to be as practical as possible.
I’ve researched ingredients. I wanted to find out which of these plant-based oils, nut oils, and coconut, things like that, that were hardy in and of themselves—that were hardy with a long shelf life. We could use a higher concentration of these oils that would minimize the need for additional preservatives and that sort of thing.
So, we use primarily certified organic and raw or very minimally processed plant-based ingredients. And of course, no synthetic or petroleum ingredients.
It makes sense if you think about it. It’s really a simple concept. If you use all plant-based and primarily organically farmed bio-based raw materials, that not only ensures the integrity and safety of products for everyday use, but it also supports and promotes sustainable farming and agricultural practices.
So, we are a green business, and that’s a really important part of what we do because, in turn, what that does is it reduces the overall amount of toxic pesticides that are used and it reduces the farming pollution. So, of course, organic farming is a whole big topic in and of itself, but it’s definitely connected to our philosophy of creating products.
The other piece is that a lot of aromatherapy products that are on the market, typically, they have what I call single note or double note, meaning one essential oil or primary essential oil—like lavender, of course, is really popular, or it might have a mint in it—or two oils, or maybe even three that go together. But they’re more designed for scent purposes, oils that go together that smell good as opposed to having some kind of synergistic or therapeutic application.
So, in my case, I really wanted to create synergistic blends. And so, that’s what ours are. Blends typically have anywhere from four to seven different essential oils, carefully selected to work together to create a synergy that’s uplifting and improve your mood and make you happy or a blend that will give you a little boost of energy, increase your circulation and help you get going, or one that calms and balances and grounds you when you’re feeling really anxious or stressed. So, that’s the approach.
And then, the thinking behind that is that, if you put these in everyday personal care products like lotions and body washes, et cetera, then you can just be using these products on a daily basis, and have the amazing benefits, the healing properties of the oil going to work for you.
So, if you lead a very stressful life now, for example, you can use one of our calming soothing blends like what I mentioned earlier. Use it in the shower in the morning, have a bottle of lotion in your purse or at your desk. And you just re-applying small amounts (because you really don’t need a lot, a little goes a long way), and you just inhale that and take that in. It just totally alters your mindset and how you’re feeling. And it calms your heart rate and your blood pressure. You can have these very subtle therapeutic effects.
Of course, we’re talking about personal care products. So we’re not using therapeutic concentrations at all because there are therapeutic concentrations in aromatherapy. But we, of course, don’t do that with our products because that would not be a wise choice. We need to make it in a way that’s usable for the widest possible audience.
DEBRA: I just like to point out something that I think some listeners might be confused about. You mentioned sodium lauryl sulfate earlier. And many, many, many years ago, one of the first things that I did like you is I just looked up all the ingredients.
I wanted to know what they were made from and I wanted to know which ones were toxic and which ones were made from petrochemicals.
And when I got to sodium lauryl sulfate, most of what I read was it’s made from coconut oil. And so I thought, “Oh, coconut oil, that’s fine. That’s not toxic. That’s not petrochemicals.” And a lot of websites now still will say, “Oh, we use sodium lauryl sulfate. It’s made from coconut oil.”
But what I learned was that it may start out as coconut oil, but it’s a processed, petrochemical, industrial—by the time they get done with it, it doesn’t resemble coconut oil at all. It’s just coconut oil just maybe the raw material, but then it’s mixed with other petroleum ingredients, and what I, at one point, decided to call a hybrid ingredient because it may start out natural, but it doesn’t end up being natural.
And I think that it’s really important to distinguish between those particularly in the natural products industry. They say, “Oh, it comes from coconut oil,” but that’s not the same as actual coconut oil that you use.
When you’re using an oil, you’re using a whole oil. It’s a whole food versus a fractionated food. You’re using these whole plant ingredients that come from nature. And that’s part of what makes it so wonderful.
I know you do a lot of education. So tell us about what you have to offer in that area.
DONYA FAHMY: I’ve been on a mission lately to educate and help pregnant women or women who are planning to become pregnant to adopt and get into this holistic lifestyle from early on and to protect themselves and their babies from these hidden health risks, from all these toxins.
So, I do a free one-hour training. I’m doing one actually tomorrow night at 5:30 Pacific time, 8:30 eastern, where I go into more detail about these top 10 worst toxic ingredients and what are some of the other statistics and research studies showing about how these ingredients are harming us, why it’s important to be aware of this, why it’s important to eliminate them.
And then, I do a little bit about essential oils, especially essential oils during pregnancy. There’s a lot of confusion and misinformation about what’s safe to use during pregnancy and what isn’t. And so I try to help clear that up for people and bust some of those common myths.
And so, that’s called How to Look Your Best without Compromising Your Baby’s Health.
And I also teach a teleclass where I go into some of this information much, much deeper. So, the paid class is designed to teach people to become expert label readers and learn how to compare product labels and know which chemical and toxic or what’s potentially toxic and what’s natural; and then, within the natural products world, learning how to navigate that minefield.
There are so many choices and options there, it’s really hard for someone who doesn’t know how to distinguish, “Am I getting what I’m paying for? I’m paying more for a higher quality product, but am I getting my money’s worth?”
And so, I teach a little bit about how to understand whether you’re overpaying for something that you don’t need to be overpaying for.
It’s expensive. It’s important that we take care of ourselves, and we have to look at that as an investment in our long-term health. But you also want to know what you’re getting. And what I tell people, there are all these fields, but what do all these fields mean—organic, natural, made with organic […] And at the end of the day, what I have to say is, if you just become an educated consumer, and you understand how to read labels, you don’t have to rely on those fields to guide you. Your knowledge is what will help you distinguish between things that are absolutely no-no, “I’m not going to touch that,” to the things that are, “Oh, this is really good for me? I’m going to go here,” or everything in between, which is, “Well, this has some ingredients in it that I’m not crazy about, but I’m willing to make that compromise.”
You mentioned that at the top of the hour which you can’t necessarily eliminate everything. But know what’s your enemy, what’s your worst enemy and your worst offenders, and make sure you can eliminate those.
DEBRA: For example, I think it’s really important for people to eliminate triclosan—period. They should eliminate lead—period.
There are just some chemicals that should not be in products. They should not be on the planet. Nobody should be anywhere near them, especially pregnant women, especially women who want to get pregnant. And it’s just important that we know what those are.
And then, there’s another list after that that’s like if you can do something about it, then do something about it. But there are some things that’s just—triclosan, it’s just so toxic that we just need to do the best we can.
So, we’ve just got about a minute left. So are there any closing words you’d like to give?
DONYA FAHMY: Well, I’d like to share the URL for people who might like to jump onto the free call, which is happening tomorrow, as I mentioned. So you can go to www.AromatherapyforPregnancy.com/Preview, and you can register for the call.
And I encourage anyone who’s interested to do that because, even if you can’t make it to the call, you’ll be able to listen to a replay of it through the end of the week.
And if you already know you want to learn more, then you can actually go register for my class. We’re doing a $100 discount tuition. And that’s just www.AromaTherapyForPregnancy.com. It will take you to that page.
DEBRA: And your website at Dropwise is just Dropwise.com. I’m looking here at different things. I’m looking at your website right now. And you’ve got some tabs across the top—one is Bath & Body. And that’s where you go to find all the personal care products that you’ve been talking about.
But you also have natural remedy blends and various aromatherapy things, essential oils, and all the things that go with that.
And you have some items for using natural aromatherapy in the home and for travel.
And that’s all the time we have. Thank you so much for being here with me. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And this is Toxic Free Talk.
DONYA FAHMY: Thank you.
Dropwise Essentials
“A safer, greener, conscious alternative to the sterile world of commercial industrial-strength beauty products. Our products are free of synthetic and petroleum chemicals; made with certified organic ingredients; formulated with 100% pure essential oils; earth-friendly; and cruelty-free. They contain no parabens, no propylene glycol, no sodium laurel sulfate, no phthalates or synthetic fragrance, and no petroleum-based ingredients of any kind. We use ingredients like organic jojoba, organic virgin coconut, and organic macadamia nut oils, as well as organic aloe vera, organic cocoa butter, organic castor oil, organic beeswax, and certified organic herbs like calendula and chamomile, which are supportive of the skin. You can always count on us to provide full ingredient disclosure, clearly articulated explanations of the benefits of using our products, and the authentic use of aromatherapy in the products.”
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Listen to my interview with Dropwise Essentials CEO, Founder, and Formulator Donya Fahmy. |
Eco Nuts
Do your laundry with all-natural, unprocessed soap nuts. Yes, these are actual nuts, well, actually berries, from a tree that grows in the Himalayas. The berries naturally produce a soap called saponin, which works as a surfactant to lift stains from fabrics and keep dirt suspended in the water that is rinsed away. Unlike detergent, soap nuts leave no residue, so they are ideal for babies and people with sensitive skin. I’ve used them for years and they really do work—in fact, they are my favorite way to wash clothes. My clothes are very soft.”Eco Nuts are wild-harvested, meaning they are gathered from wild trees grown without any kind of chemicals, fertilizers, or pesticides. The saponin actually tastes bad to insects so no pesticides are needed, and the trees naturally love poor uncultivated soil. They are organically grown by mother earth and certified USDA Organic by Oregon Tilth. Our soap nuts are both de-seeded and sterilized – the only soap nuts on the market that are both!” This site also sells other organic cleaning and laundry products and they have a lot of natural laundry tips.
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Listen to my interview with Eco Nuts co-founder Mona Weiss. |
Teflon Coasting on Polo Shirts
Question from Helen
Our kids’ school uses uniform items from Lands’ End. Today I learned that the only polos they sell now have Teflon finishes. Can heavy, hot laundering remove the Teflon?
Debra’s Answer
I don’t know what to make of this.
The DuPont Teflon Fabric Protector website says that it repels water and protects the fabric from stains and soil. And then it says
Compliant with OekoTex Standard 100. That’s the standard to meet for absence of toxic chemicals in textiles.
They must have changed the formula for what they call Teflon.
I don’t think it’s removable. Not even with heavy, hot laundering.
I don’t know the whole formula but I was able to find an MSDS for a different textile protection application that says it’s a plastic with added fluoride. It also says the toxic exposure is limited to the product in manufacture and not in use.
Getting Mold Off Basement Walls
Question from sheila
what else can you use to get mold off basement walls other than bleach I really don’t like bleach.
thank you
sheila
Debra’s Answer
Try Twenty Mule Team Borax, which you can buy in the cleaning products section of any supermarket. That often works well on mold. But remember mold grows in dark and damp conditions. If those conditions remain, you will continue to have mold growing.
Miessence
Three simple wholefood supplements made from organic fruits and vegetables. 100% raw and vegan. In-Liven is a fermented probiotic superfood that re-colonises your gastrointestinal tract with the full spectrum of friendly Lactobacillus bacteria. Berry Radical is “a potent combination of nine of the world’s most effective antioxidant superfoods”, including certified organic antioxidant-rich raw cacao (chocolate), olive juice extract, coffee fruit extract, and other fruits and berries to support healthy immune function and protect cells. DeepGreen Alkalising Superfood balances your body pH with a super-concentrated source of alkalising, mineral-rich, green algae, grass juices and leafy greens.
