Water | Swimming Pools
Oral Irrigator
Question from Star
Hi Debra, Do you know where one can purchase an oral irrigator made of non or low toxic plastic [w/no bpa’s etc.] The one from ‘waterpic’ leaves a bitter taste to the water.
Thanks!
Debra’s Answer
I have a Hydrofloss which is made with ABS plastic. It’s very hard plastic and I have not noticed any outgassing or leaching into the water. It was recommended by my biological dentist and my chiropractor.
Be sure to get extra tips. The tips get clogged after a few months and need to be replaced.
Carbon-free Water Filter?
Question from Star
I seem to react badly to carbon, but am also allergic to something (possibly pesticides) in my tap water (Berkeley, CA) so I want to buy a counter-top or portable filter without carbon. Any ideas?
Thanks!
Debra’s Answer
There are no water filter that remove the pollutants that carbon removes without carbon.
However, there are different types of carbon and various degrees of purity. Many filters are made with carbon from China that might contain contaminants.
The Pure Effect water filters I recommend contain “allergy-free” carbon that is certified by NSF. The entire unit is made in the USA.
I would suggest that you try this filter and see if you tolerate it. I’ve been told by the company that my customers have reported that they are happy with the unit as am I.
Lose Weight With Garcinia Combogia
Question from Cool girl
I read about losing weight in 28 days with Garcinia Combogia. I also read in the link that Racheal Ray tried this on her own. How reliable is this product? Is it safe to take? I’m trying to lose 25 pounds. Any suggestion in this regard would really help. I have read lot of your Q&A and I’m one of your website followers. http://www.amazon.com/Garcinia-Cambogia-Pure-Extract-Suppressant/dp/B00CDWF5A8/ref=sr_1_7?s=hpc&ie=UTF8&qid=1374909243&sr=1-7&keywords=garcinia+cambogia+extract
Debra’s Answer
Sorry, I can’t recommend that. It sounds like another marketing scheme.
The healthiest way to lose weight is to eat vegetables and protein, drink plenty of water, and exercise moderately. Let your body lose weight gradually. These quick weight loss plans are a stress on your body and also quickly release into your body a flood of toxic chemicals stored in your fat.
Show #100 – How To Earn Money Selling Toxic-Free Products & Services
It’s my hundredth show, so I’m going to celebrate with a special topic: how to make money selling toxic-free products and services. We’ll explore all kinds of businesses to get involved in and three specific business models:
- affiliate programs (www.pureeffectfilters.com)
- local businesses (www.itsournature.com)
- multi-level marketing (debralynndadd.mytouchstoneessentials.com)
Make it your business to help others live toxic-free. I’ve got three guests who are doing it and making good income. One of my suggestions is an excellent product that is widely needed, and you can get in for zero money down. Tune in and explore the possibilities.
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Show #100 – How to Earn Money Selling Toxic-Free Products & Services
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Igor Milevskiy, Linda Taylor & Barbara Gitomer
Date of Broadcast: September 06, 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 because, yes, it is a toxic world, but we can be free of the harmful effects of all those toxic chemicals out there by controlling the amount of toxic chemicals that we have in our homes, reduce it drastically—and that is totally possible. And we can also remove toxic chemicals from our bodies that are causing all kinds of illnesses.
In fact, the toxic chemicals that we may already have in our bodies can cause any illness and symptom in every body system.
So, this is one of the reasons why we need to be paying attention to this. You can do all kinds of things to heal your body. And if there’s still toxic chemicals in your body, then you’ll still get sick. And I want you to be well, and happy, and healthy, and productive, and have the life that you want to have without being sick.
Today is my 100th show. And I’m so pleased with this. I’m so pleased that I’ve had all these wonderful guests on. I’m so pleased that all of you have been continuing to listen and actually increasing in numbers. And 100 shows, that’s a lot of shows, Monday through Friday, every day.
So we’re having a special subject today. And we’re having three guests. What we’re going to talk about is how you can make money selling toxic-free products. And by you participating in the commerce of toxic-free products, that gets more people using them, but you also end up making money, so that you can buy—sometimes toxic-free products cost a little more. Often they don’t; they even cost less.
But I want you to be happy, healthy and prosperous, and be able to pay for whatever it is that you need to pay for in your life.
And one way you can do that—we’ve been in a down economy, and if you’re looking for some extra money, or if you need a job, you can create your own job, your own work, your own income by selling toxic-free products.
I’m going to talk today about three different ways that you can do that, three modes of commerce. And the first one we’re going to talk about is affiliate programs.
Now, what an affiliate program is where you promote a product on your website, if you have one. But you don’t need a website to be an affiliate. They want you to have a website, but that’s not the only way that you can promote. If you find a product that you’d like to sell, you can sell it, and then place the orders through your website. But that doesn’t mean you can’t tell your friends and your family, or go to a farmers market or whatever it is. It’s just that the affiliate program gives you a percentage of the sale that you’ve made on behalf of the company.
And my first guest is Igor. And I have forgotten his last name, and I don’t have it written down here. What is your last name, Igor?
IGOR MILEVSKIY: Milevskiy, but that’s okay.
DEBRA: I always call him Igor.
IGOR MILEVSKIY: That’s good enough.
DEBRA: Can you back up from your microphone or your telephone a little bit because you’re getting a lot of static.
IGOR MILEVSKIY: Sure. Is that better?
DEBRA: That’s a lot better.
Now, Igor is the founder of Pure Effect Advanced Filtration. And he sells a water filter, which if you’ve been listening to this show, you hear the ad on this show every day. It’s the water filter that I use personally in my own home. I’ve been using it since January, and I’m extremely happy with it.
A lot of my listeners and readers have purchased these filters, and I’ve gotten a lot of e-mails back from people telling me how happy they are with them.
And so you can become an affiliate of Pure Effect Advanced Filtration.
Igor, why don’t you tell us about your filters, a little bit about the filters, and tell us about your program?
IGOR MILEVSKIY: Sure! I just want to say, by the way, congratulations on the 100th show. You’ve done a great job. And I’m happy to hear that you’re growing strong. Thank you for having me on.
Basically, our affiliate program is meant to really help people take off without any investment. The product we have is very unique. And it’s very necessary in these polluted times where water quality is getting worse and there are more chemicals in the environment. We have one of the most advanced water filters, that I’m aware of, on the market currently.
The reason for that is because we have a radiation removal technology, which helps with nuclear issues, when you have leaking power plants. We have fluoride removal technology, which is all natural. It’s not aluminum-based; other companies use aluminum. It also addresses other chemicals and contaminants.
The affiliates have an opportunity to offer this product to their friends, their contacts, and whoever they’d like without any investment. We already have a preset banners and special links that they can use. It’s as simple as filling out a form, and logging into your backend panel that we give you access to. And you get a special link, and whoever you send this link to, they click on it, they go to our site, they buy a product.
Our system automatically tracks everything, and it pays 15% per filter for the drinking water, and 8% for the whole house systems, which are much larger units.
As you are aware, it’s a good side business. It’s something a person can really make an extra income with because people needs—
DEBRA: It is.
IGOR MILEVSKIY: You’re not selling something people don’t need. It’s something people are excited about when they see this product.
DEBRA: They are. Let me just give a couple of ideas of things that I haven’t actually done, but were ideas that I thought of since I’m an affiliate of yours. One is that, especially in communities where there is fluoride in the water, you can do things like put together a flyer about the dangers of fluoride, and just start educating your community.
You can go out and speak at all the service clubs and the PTA, and all those things, and you can just put together your 18-minute speech, have some flyers to hand out that has your link on it.
And people will want to buy these filters because they’re reasonably priced. The one I have was only $319. This is an unexpected price for the amount of filtration that you get. It’s a very efficient filter for a very low price.
IGOR MILEVSKIY: Professional quality unit. It’s not made in China. It’s very high quality. I’m actually thinking the price may be too low, but I’m keeping it that way for now. I think it’s going well, but we’re trying to keep it affordable.
DEBRA: Yes, it is an affordable filter that does the job of what people need because people are drinking polluted water. And when you start educating people around you about this, they’re going to want to buy this filter.
Another thought that I had was to have a business where not only do you sell the filters, but you actually go and sell them, and get paid for installation as well.
Those are two ways that you could really market this product that aren’t even online. And I know that some of my customers have been so happy with their units that they want to tell their friends.
And in fact, my first customer told a friend, and her friend bought it, and she said, “Oh, my god. Tell us what people can do if they are affiliates about the sub-affiliate program.”
IGOR MILEVSKIY: That’s another way to make money. That’s another feature within our affiliate program that if you sign up—if you become an affiliate and you sign up your friend as a sub-affiliate, you’re going to get 5% of their sales into your affiliate program. So they sell something, you’ll also get the trickledown effect which is automatically tracked by that tracking system I mentioned before where you get your own unique link.
So it’s pretty automated, and it’s a pretty advanced system, so I think that if somebody’s interested, we can speak more with them about it, or they could sign up and I can explain more.
DEBRA: I want to tell people that if you want to sign up for the affiliate program, please sign up as an affiliate program under me. You don’t have to buy a certain amount of water filters every month. You don’t have to invest any more. There’s no minimum purchase. You just sign up.
And if you want to sign up as a sub-affiliate under me, so that I get a little commission that helps to pay the cost of putting on this radio show, and having my website and all those things, then they’ll be a place on the application that asks you for, what is it called, the parent I.D. or something like that.
IGOR MILEVSKIY: Referral or parent affiliate, yes.
DEBRA: And my number is Debra, D-E-B-R-A, 8008.
Thank you so much for being with us, Igor. If you want to look into this, you go to PureEffectFilters.com, or you can call Igor at 1-888-891-4821. And we’ll be back after this with the next idea on how you can have a business selling toxic-free products.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And in our next segment, we’re going to be talking about how you can have a local business, selling toxic-free products. And my guest for this segment is Linda Taylor. She’s the founder and owner of a business called It’s Our Nature.
Hi, Linda.
LINDA TAYLOR: Hi, Debra.
DEBRA: Thanks for being with me here.
LINDA TAYLOR: My pleasure. Thank you for having me on your show.
DEBRA: So Linda’s website is ItsOurNature.com, no apostrophe in. It’s just I-T-S Our Nature dot-com. And I want to mention that if you are interested in any of this information, and you missed the URL, or you missed the phone number or whatever, you can always go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and listen to this show again because every show is archived.
So, the way I met Linda is because Linda, she doesn’t have a brick and mortar business, but what she does is that she goes to fresh markets, she goes to festivals, she goes to the farmers market. She even sets up her business inside existing businesses like my local natural food store.
And so, I see her all over the community. And that’s how she makes her money—selling toxic-free products.
So Linda, tell us how you got started in this.
LINDA TAYLOR: Well, In 1995, I left corporate career, and I wanted to blend wellness of the earth with our own wellness. And in 1996, on Earth Day, I began with the concept of guiding nature excursions. I called it moving in the rhythm of nature with women and girls.
DEBRA: I love that.
LINDA TAYLOR: It was focused on women and girls. We did gentle kayak paddles and walks, and full moon Tai chi, experiences on the beach. It was really to connect us with nature. And because I had been in a manufacturing sales perspective in my other career, I did have an eye for quality products, and I was also, in my own personal resolution, getting more and more concerned about the chemicals that were entering into every aspect of our life.
And it just so happened that as I was beginning to explore the idea of organic cotton, and what that even meant. I was approached by a woman who had started a company called Organic Threads, and she was sourcing out chemical-free—that means cotton that is grown without chemicals, and she was also finding colored cotton that’s [faux] fiber cotton that’s grown brown and green. And she was creating socks that were manufactured in the United States.
Well, that caught my interests because we were doing a lot of walking, and obviously, it’s important to have proper support when you are walking in different areas. So I began to distribute these socks. I called it socks that would hug our feet, as we were in nature.
And then from there, because so many were concerned, rightfully so, about the hot summer sun, and the hot sun year round here in Florida, and I didn’t want people not to enjoy nature for that reason, I discovered another product which was palm frond sunhats that were made responsibly with sustainable fiber, and gave us a UPF rating of 50, and did not have any chemical content to do so.
It was natural.
DEBRA: And I should add that Linda’s business is here in Florida where I live, and we desperately need to protect ourselves from the sun.
So this is a very bio-regional and local needed product.
LINDA TAYLOR: Yes, for sure. So I began cross-marketing, the folks that were interested in the guided experiences, and were learning to love nature even more, and care about themselves were very interested in these starting out two products.
And then it just evolved from there to more and more products. In the beginning, they were hard to find because I had a criteria that it would be chemical-free fiber. It also needed to be an eco-dye, a, dye that did not use heavy metals or toxins that would harm us, even if it was put on organic fiber. And then I also became very diligent about looking for fair labor, labor that was not exploited to make the products.
And that’s when another evolution of It’s Our Nature was healthy wear for people who care. And that became almost more of a direction after about eight, nine years of my company, when as you explained, more and more market availabilities were coming about.
That was the growth of the farmers markets and the festivals.
And so because I wanted to operate my business in line with my beliefs and the idea that I had of values, of slow impact, and leaving no trace and that kind of element. So distribute these products through the farmers market was just a wonderful little avenue.
DEBRA: And I see this growing movement in farmers markets, and at least here where we are in Florida. When we go to the farmers markets, there are a lot of people who are selling craft products or moringa trees, or all kinds of things that are suitable to us locally, not just produce that comes out of a field from the farmers.
And so I think that there are a lot of opportunities to reach people. Obviously, you continue to do this as a business, so I’m assuming that you’re making money doing it.
And I just think that there’s a lot of opportunity for a lot of people in their own communities to reach people with toxic-free products where they can actually—you know, we’ve got customers walking by all day long. And they want to stop and talk and learn about the products, and that’s a good way to sell them instead of just having them sit on a shelf somewhere.
Our break is coming up. Thank you so much for joining me today, Linda. And I’m sure I’ll see at a farmers market.
LINDA TAYLOR: I look forward to that. Thank you.
DEBRA: Her website is ItsOurNature.com. And we need to take a little break here. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and today, we’re talking about how you can make money selling toxic-free products. We’ll be back. Don’t go away.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and today is my 100th show. I’m just so pleased of all the guests that have been on, and all the listeners that we’ve had. And if you want to listen to any of those past shows, you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, where they are all archived. And today’s show will also be archived. If you hear any information you want to hear again because you didn’t get catch it, the URL or the phone number or whatever, please just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and you can listen to the show again.
Our next segment, we’re going to talk about MLM, and I know that that’s a bad word for some people. The person that we’re going to be talking to is my upline, Barbara Gitomer. And I have to tell you that I always—I just decided I was not going to be involved in MLM at all many years ago. I didn’t even want to hear about it, but I changed my mind when I came upon a product that I believe in, not just 100% but 1000% and that is Pure Body Liquid Zeolite.
And I just think this is a product that everybody should take in the world, and everybody should take it every day for the rest of their lives is my opinion, and that’s what I’m doing because it removes the toxic chemicals from your body—heavy metals, toxic chemicals, radiation, so that it doesn’t accumulate.
It removes the accumulation, but also, as you continue to take it, it removes the toxic chemicals from your body before they start building up. And in today’s world, it’s just something that we all need.
I had to get over my idea of what MLM was, and I did. And I have to say that not all MLM companies are alike, that some of the things you’ve heard about MLM are probably true about some companies, but not this one.
And so I invited Barbara to come here today to tell us more about the products, but also about the business because if you want to make some money, this is a way to do it. Not that I’m making a million dollars a month, I’m not, because I’m not actually doing the things that you need to do to set up a downline and all these things. I’m just selling the products.
But Barbara is going to tell you how you can make an income that you can live on by selling just top quality toxic-free products.
Hi, Barbara.
BARBARA GITOMER: Hi, Debra. Congratulations on your 100th show.
DEBRA: Thank you. I’m so excited.
BARBARA GITOMER: You should be.
DEBRA: So Barbara, first, why don’t you start off by telling us your story briefly of how you got into MLM, and then we’ll talk about what an multilevel marketing company is, and why Touchstone Essentials is such a fabulous example of that.
BARBARA GITOMER: Okay, I’d love to do that. Thank you. I was right with you. I was certainly not looking at MLMs. It was not on my radar. I did not have any intention of doing anything like that. And many people who are in the industry did at one time have no intention of ever doing it.
My husband and I, years ago, had an entertainment and event planning business in Suburban Philadelphia. We were very successful. It was a very lucrative company. We did really well. Of course, Mark was out a lot—weekends, late nights. He was really on the road a lot. I was working the office.
But it was a fun industry to be in, the event planning industry. And we had the house we wanted, the cars we wanted, the vacations we wanted. We had a son in private college. We had another one in high school. Things were going really well until one night, when Mark was coming home from an event, a drunk driver speeding through a red light crashed into his car, and our lives changed in an instant.
He was diagnosed with what’s called a traumatic brain injury. It was a closed head injury. He looked fine except for this huge lump in the back of his head. But it really affected a lot of things. It affected his memory. It affected a lot of functions. It affected a lot of perceptions, multitasking.
He just wasn’t able to function. We ultimately lost that business.
A lot of people talk about plan B’s. You hear about plan B so much, it gets to be a cliché. But we were really needing a plan B at this point, and we hadn’t ever thought about that because we were doing really well.
But we had a very dear friend who introduced us to some products because she thought they would help Mark in his recovery. Mark had decided he wasn’t going to be go the drug or surgery route. It was going to be all natural.
And this dear friend introduced us to some products that really did help, but the products were distributed through a network marketing company. And then she introduced us to the whole concept of the business, and seriously, I would like to say it really saved our lives. I don’t know what we would have done at that point. We lost our business. We had lots of bills to pay.
We were both in that industry—we were both working the business. It’s not like I had another job outside somewhere where I was bringing an income in.
So being able to find this industry of MLM really was a lifesaver for us.
DEBRA: So now, tell us, and I’m glad that you found it because you’re a great upline for me.
BARBARA GITOMER: Thank you.
DEBRA: So tell us what are the benefits of an MLM? I know one of the things that really impressed when I heard a presentation was that because it’s a direct distribution, a company can make the products and get them straight to the consumer without having them sit on shelves for months and months and months.
And because the marketing is direct—the marketing is about one person talking to another person, or going to a website, or something like that. And so you can get more information to a person. It’s not like if you go into a store, a product on the shelf, it’s just all you have is the label. But there are all these interesting products that aren’t sold in stores, that are available through
MLM that are life-changing products. So tell us.
BARBARA GITOMER: There are so many things to talk about with what you’ve just said. So first of all, talking about getting it to a store shelf—when you think about what’s involved in getting it to a store shelf, there are so many middle men. There’s the person who’s designing it, there’s the manufacturer, then there’s shipping to somewhere shipping—there’s just lots and lots of middle men. It’s not, as you said, direct.
Well, when you have to pay all of those middle men, then the profits are going to so many different places, whereas in this industry, when you have direct marketing, then so much of that profit can go to research and development.
I think, generally, not always, but when it’s an MLM, generally, you’re going to have a real quality product because they’re able to put so much money into research and development.
DEBRA: I need to interrupt you for a minute because we need to go to the break. But we’ll be back again with Barbara after the break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and today is my 100th show, and we’re talking about how you can make money selling toxic-free products. Stay right there because we’ll be back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and today is my 100th show. We’re talking about how you can make money selling toxic-free products. And by doing that, you’ll also create a toxic-free life for yourself, and for the world.
In this segment, we’re continuing to talk with Barbara Gitomer, who is my upline at Touchstone Essentials, a multilevel marketing company. And I said that I was not interested in MLM, but I was interested in the product.
And this is a product that you hear me talk about all the time, Pure Body Liquid Zeolite. They also have whole food supplements that I take. If you want more information about this, you can just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and you’ll see over in the right-hand column, there’s a little button that says “zeolite” and another one with a broccoli. The zeolite one has a magnet on it. It’s not hard to find these, and just click on that, and that will take you to my website where you can find out more information.
I wanted to make sure that we are actually approaching the end of the show. I want to make sure that we explain how an MLM works, which is different from the other kinds of models that we’ve been talking about earlier in the show.
You do have to make an investment in order to be able to collect your commissions. And you do have to make a minimum purchase each month but in this particular company, the minimum purchase is the purchase that I would make any way, taking the products. There’s nothing—I don’t have to have any inventory, or anything like that. I don’t have to be calling up my friends every day.
None of that sort of thing.
And so what I find is that having the ability to make money through this MLM program, it pays for the supplements and the zeolite that I would want to take anyway. I’m getting my zeolite for free. And anybody can do this.
Anybody can do this. It’s not limited to age, or where you live, or even skill. Anybody can do this.
Barbara, do you want to talk more about the program?
BARBARA GITOMER: I just wanted to say also, just like what you do, some people would think of you as a writer, or a talk show host, but I think of you more as a teacher. And I think about that in MLM. That’s what we’re doing. We’re actually teaching. We’re teaching people about how they can live healthier, more productive lives.
When you talk about bugging your friends, that kind of thing, it’s really all in the attitude. It’s in what you believe in.
So if you are listener to Debra Lynn Dadd, then you probably agree that toxins are really poisons. We’re poisoning our bodies, and there’s something very simple we can do about it, and it’s wonderful to be able to make a living doing it.
So it’s really just teaching people about how they can be healthier, how they can actually control what’s going on in their life.
And what’s good about that word control is you can also control how you’re living, as far as when you’re working, and where you’re working, with whom you’re working, which you can’t do in Corporate America.
You get hired wherever you get a job, and then you just have to convince people of whatever that company is selling. But here, you get to choose what you want to do, and you get to choose what company you want to affiliate with.
So if it’s a company that you truly believe in the products, and truly believe in the founder and the integrity of the company, and if you see that it is attracting people that are like-minded and high quality people, then you can feel comfortable about making that investment. But as you said, with that investment, it’s really money I’d be using anyway. I’m not spending money. I’m not putting money up. I am getting top quality products that I would want to use anyway, and then sharing it with other people.
There are many, many ways to share it. One of the ways is the way you do it, Debra, through your newsletter. You have a following which is really good, but there are so many ways to just talk to people, e-mail people, do internet blasts, just going to health fairs, and meeting people there.
In any walk of life, you can talk about this because it’s a good thing to talk about—staying healthy and being healthy, and how can you improve your life, and how can you control how you’re going to be spending your time rather than someone else telling you, you’ll be here between 8 and 5, Monday through Friday. You can control when you’re going to work, and how much you’re going to work.
DEBRA: And how much money you’re going to make. This is one of the things that this is why I’m self-employed, why I’m not working for a corporation is because I decided a long time ago that if I went to a 9 to 5 job, I would only get the amount of money that my employer wanted me to make. And being self-employed, I have multiple streams of income, and I can make more or less money, depending on what I put into it, how many phone calls am I making, how many e-mails am I sending out, all those kinds of things—how many website visitors, how much my communicating on the radio.
All these things are my decision, and it results in more or less money. And I see people in this particular company making a lot of money, and the stats are just going up. Didn’t we just have our best month ever?
BARBARA GITOMER: Yes, we did. Each month, it’s increasing. And that’s because you have people who are talking about this to other people, and then those people are talking about it to other people, and then those people are talking about it to other people.
So it just grows exponentially. And the more you put into it, as you said, the more you put into it, the more you can make.
DEBRA: That’s right. I see really high quality people. There was a conference in April, and when I went to the conference, and this company is only, since February of last year, a year and a half, and I went to the first conference when it first started, and of course, it was just very new then. But this year, oh, my god, there are people who are interested in making money, that are choosing to do this and build their downline, and get the word out, and all this because the products are so good, and then can see that they can really make money doing this, and that the company is going to be there. And it’s high integrity.
Some of the best people that I’ve ever met, I’ve met in this company. And I’m really not trying to push MLM on anyone by saying this. I’m just trying to say that if you want to make money, that you should take another look at this, if you think that MLM is something that is not workable because it really is, and it really depends on the people who are involved, and it depends on the product. It depends on how the system, how the program is set up.
Barbara, can you just talk a little bit about the compensation program or things that you might tell somebody if they’re evaluating an MLM because I know this isn’t the first one that you’ve been in.
BARBARA GITOMER: That’s true. Well, one of the things I just want to point out with what you were saying is that making money is a wonderful thing, but what we love about this is that every time we make money, it’s because we’ve helped somebody. If it was all about the money, then it wouldn’t do it for us. It really has to come from the heart.
DEBRA: I totally agree. I’m not doing it because I was looking for MLM. I’m doing it because I found a product that I think is something that can help everybody with the problem that I’m working to solve.
BARBARA GITOMER: So when you’re looking for an MLM, then you want to look for just that. We don’t resonate with people who just brag about checks. We resonate with people who are passionate about changing people’s lives. That’s one of the things you want to look at.
You want to look at the founder. You want to look at how are they paying.
When it comes to compensation plans, there are all different kinds, but we feel that if you give lots of value to the people that you’re dealing with, then the check is going to take care of itself. So you just have to keep giving value to people.
If you want me to cover a little bit—i mean, basically, you are paid—
DEBRA: Actually, we only have a couple of minutes left now. I just wanted to make sure that people know that there’s just a lot more information. I’ve interviewed the founder and CEO of Touchstone Essentials, Eddie Stone, several times, and you can just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and type in “Touchstone Essentials,” and you’ll get all his interviews, and you can hear him, and why he founded the company and what he’s about, and the integrity with which these products are made.
So Barbara, I just want to make sure I got that in. But is there any final thing that you want to say?
BARBARA GITOMER: One of the things that I did not cover when you’re choosing one is you want to be sure that you can be passionate about the product. And you want to be sure that you’re paid based on the movement of that product, and not on the act of signing up.
We’re a product passionate company, and when you feel that product passion, and you talk to other people about it, then they want to share it with others as well. And it’s that constant sharing that’s going to create checks.
DEBRA: Yes, I would agree. I would agree. So thank you so much for being with us, Barbara. And I’m sure I’ll talk to you soon.
BARBARA GITOMER: I’m sure. Thanks for having me also.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. So that was my little summary for today of how you can make money selling toxic-free products. You can go to DebrasList.com, or you could just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and across the top, there’s a menu, and if you click on “shop,” it will take you to Debra’s List, and there are hundreds of websites that are selling toxic-free products.
And if you want to get some ideas of what kinds of things are available, you might want to open some kind of shop, or go to farmers markets like Linda does, or whatever, just start thinking about how can you put together something so that the way that you make money also does good to help people.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio.
Toxic Free Cleaning Basics
I met my guest Annie B. Bond many years ago when her publisher asked me to write the forward to her first book Clean and Green. We’ll be talking about how to clean your home with natural substances you probably have in your kitchen, plus a few more that are easy to find and inexpensive. We’ve both been cleaning toxic-free for years, so we have a lot of experience and knowledge between us. Annie is the best-selling author of five books, including Better Basics for the Home (Three Rivers Press, 1999), Home Enlightenment (Rodale Books, 2008), and most recently True Food (National Geographic, 2010), and winner of Gourmand Awards Best Health and Nutrition Cookbook in the World. She was named “the foremost expert on green living” by “Body & Soul” magazine (February, 2009). Currently Annie is the Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief of The Wellness Wire and leads the selection of toxic-free products for A True Find. www.anniebbond.com
LISTEN TO OTHER SHOWS WITH ANNIE B. BOND
- Toxics Then and Now: Debra Celebrates Thirty Years in Print
- Eight Steps to Improving Your Food Choices
- Toxic Free Valentines
- Great Toxic-Free Holiday Gifts
- Cleaning for Your Holiday Party – Before and After
- Natural Solutions for Bugs
- Healthy Halloween
- Tips for a Toxic Free Home
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Toxic Free Cleaning Basics
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Annie B. Bond
Date of Broadcast: September 05, 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 need to be doing this show and you all need to be listening because there are toxic chemicals out there. They’re all around us.
They’re in consumer products. They’re even in our bodies. And many people, including myself, were born with toxic chemicals in our bodies because they’ve been ubiquitous in the world since the mid-1940s. So, a lot of people are being affected by toxic chemicals and not even knowing it. And that’s why I do this show, so that you can learn where there are toxic chemicals, what they’re doing to you and your loved ones, and what you can do to be free of their harmful effects. That’s the whole idea of being toxic-free, is to be free from the harmful effects of toxic chemicals.
Today we’re going to be talking about cleaning, cleaning products and cleaning products that you can make right in your own home. And cleaning products are actually one of the first things that I recommend to people that you start with in your home.
It’s just like a basic, basic, basic thing because cleaning products are so toxic.
The labeling of cleaning products is governed by the Consumer Product Safety Commission under something called the Hazardous Substances Labeling Law. And you may have seen on the backs of cleaning products that they have certain words like “toxic,” “highly toxic,” “extremely dangerous,” “poison,” “warning,” “caution,” skull and crossbones. And all of these are words that are required by law to put on these products because they’re so toxic.
And we’ll talk about that a little bit more what those words mean and what kind of toxic chemicals are in cleaning products.
We’ll talk about that today.
My guest today is Annie B. Bond. And I met her many years ago when her publisher asked me to write a foreword to her first book, Clean & Green. Now, Clean & Green, I still have my copy of Clean & Green sitting right here on my desk. And it’s the one that Annie herself gave to me all those years ago with her autograph on it. And I still use this book. This is one of the books that I think that—you know there are other green cleaning books that have been written since. But I think it was the first.
And it’s still, I would say, one of those classic books that everybody needs to have on their shelves.
She’s also written a book called Better Basics for the Home which has a lot. It’s kind of an updated version. It has a lot of cleaning formulas in it. Where I have spent the bulk of my time looking at what are less toxic products people can buy, Annie has spent her time researching and writing about what are the ways that you can do things at home to make things yourself.
Hi Annie! Thanks for being with me today.
ANNIE B. BOND: Thanks, Debra. I’m delighted to be here as always. It’s a pleasure to be on your show. Thank you.
DEBRA: Yes, you’re welcome. Annie’s been here several other times. And so, after you listen to our show live here today, you could go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, you could just enter “Annie Bond” in the search box, and her other shows will come up because all the shows that we do here are recorded and archived. So, even if you want to listen to today’s show again, if you heard something interesting, and you want to go back and listen to it again, all you have to do is just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, look up the show and you can listen to the archives.
So, how is it in upstate New York today?
ANNIE B. BOND: Lovely, just beautiful! It has a touch of fall in the air, but it’s nice, dry, cool, and lovely day. Thank you.
DEBRA: Well, I think there’s a touch of fall here too even though we don’t have leaves falling like you do and it’s doesn’t get as cold here in Florida. There’s something about the angle of the sun. When it gets to September, it’s not so overhead and hot as it is in the middle of summer. And that’s kind of how I tell that autumn’s approaching here.
ANNIE B. BOND: Well, the angle of the sun makes a big difference . In February here, I always know there’s a shift because, suddenly, the sun is low, it shines on the windows more. It’s just these little subtle things that tell us where we are and what we’re doing…
DEBRA: …and what time it is.
ANNIE B. BOND: Yes.
DEBRA: Yeah, yeah.
So, tell us a little bit—I know that you’ve told us your story before on other shows. But let’s just start with how did you get to be interested in this subject, just a little brief synopsis. And why did you pick cleaning to be the first subject that you research and write about?
ANNIE B. BOND: Well, especially because if there is anybody that hates to clean, it’s me. So the irony of my writing a book on cleaning has never escaped people that know me.
Well, I thought I wanted to sort of comment and jump off on something you said about your research of products and I tended to research the formulas. And I think I’m happy to say that my books are probably a little obsolete by now because of the fact that there’s now a green product on the market for just about anything you want to do, a healthy non-toxic product for just about anything whereas back when I wrote Clean & Green in 1988 and ’89, for example, that just wasn’t the case.
And so, if you wanted to peel wax off the floor or something like that, you just have to dig into the formulas because there just wasn’t to learn about what to do. I just wasn’t finding enough products to cover everything. And so that was I think part of where I went in.
And I say my books are obsolete, but a lot of us love the sort of DIY, the whole do-it-yourself. And that’s the basic kind of feeling. And there’s a beautiful simplicity to, I think, just having a few ingredients in your kitchen to clean with. So, that certainly tapped into a genuine interest of mine.
But I, like you, came into this field unexpectedly. I was working at a restaurant that had a gas leak. And it sent 80 people to the hospital in 1980. I was waitressing, and so I was breathing in the fumes very deeply. And at that moment, I got what I have been told was permanent central nervous system damage.
And then, our apartment building was exterminated with a pesticide that’s been taken off the market because it’s so neurotoxic.
And so, that one-two punch to my body put me in the hospital for three months. I was extremely sick.
And I’m ever grateful to a sister of mine who just could not believe what had happened to me. I was fine, and then I wasn’t fine just on a dime. And she found one of the first environmental medicine doctors in the world at that time. This is by then 1980.
And so thank goodness for that or I would’ve frankly been in and out of state mental hospitals my whole life because I have various central nervous system kind of reactions. I am forever grateful.
And I spent the next eight years learning how to live in our society without chemicals. You just don’t know how many there are until you try to live without them. And I moved 10 times in four years and on and on. You think you’re fine, and then somebody half a mile away start spraying their trees for something, pesticide, and you happen to have your windows open and it all blows in. It took a long time for me.
But once I found a place to live that is a sanctuary in that way for pesticide drift, especially for me (it’s what I’m most sensitive to), I have lived a normal life for 25 years, whereas when I was really sick, I couldn’t even go through New York City without an industrial gas mask. But learning how to live without chemicals has completely transformed it so I can lead a normal life.
And as long as I come home to a healthy homes, then I can be exposed to things. And so, that’s what I love to tell people that aren’t even close to being as sick as I was. Just make your home a sanctuary because then it’ll help you recoup and recover regardless of what you sort of stumbled into out there.
DEBRA: And I’m so glad that you mentioned all that and told that part of your story. Toxic chemicals can do bad things to your body. It happened to you, and it happened to me. But both of us are examples of people who have recovered and can go out and travel and eat in restaurants and go to the movie and do all those things that people do that. But because we come back home to our non-toxic homes, then our bodies have the opportunity to recover from that exposure.
What happens for most people is they go out into the world, and they have no place to come home to that’s safe. And that’s why they end up with all these body burden.
We need to take a break, but we’ll be back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Annie B. Bond, author of Clean & Green and Better Basics for the Home. We’ll be back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Talk Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Annie B. Bond, author of Clean & Green and Better Basics for the Home. Annie, before we start talking about what are some things that people can do at home to make their own cleaning products, let’s just talk about the cleaning products we don’t want them to use, the stuff that’s in the supermarket.
I used to tell people that they could just go to a natural food store and buy anything, but that’s not necessarily the case anymore. I like making my own myself, and I do.
When I first was dealing with this many, many years ago, as you said, Annie, there was not many commercial products to choose from. And so I just started making my own. And I just continued to do that because it’s so easy. And that’s what I became accustomed to. But I do try a lot of the new products and see.
So, let’s talk about first the warning labels that are on the products. Do you want to make a comment about that?
ANNIE B. BOND: Yeah, I would love to! I’m glad you brought that up. It’s one of the things I often give people as a wonderful starting point because it’s a little overwhelming to get started.
DEBRA: Yeah.
ANNIE B. BOND: And so, I just sort of call them “signal words.” And they’re on the bottles, as you mentioned. And so what I suggest is you go to your cleaning cupboard, wherever that may be, if you have one or wherever you keep your cleaning products. And you go through the products, and you remove everything that has a signal word that’s stronger than “caution.”
And call your community recycling center, see when they have a toxic waste pick-up.
I know a lot of people recommend you use something up, but I don’t with toxic products.
DEBRA: I agree. I don’t recommend that either, yeah.
ANNIE B. BOND: So, that gives you a good starting point. At that point, you’ve removed solvents that are neurotoxic, a lot of pesticides, things like that, petroleum distillates that are flammable and neurotoxic and problematic in your house.
So, that leaves us in a range of products with a caution. I’m not suggesting that they’re all safe, because they’re not, but at least you’ve eliminated some of the real dangers. But detergents have cautions on them—and as well they should because a lot of children end up in poison control centers because they’ve drunk some detergent or something like that.
And you know, detergents aren’t natural materials. They’re not found in nature. In our society, it makes sense that we use a lot of detergents because, for a lot of myriad reasons (which we could talk about)— I use them myself because I have hard water.
And if I didn’t, I’d end up with a lot of soap scum and things like that. But they’re not 100% safe. But wouldn’t you agree that just clearing everything out that’s more dangerous than a “caution” is a good starting point.
DEBRA: I think that that’s an excellent starting point. And the thing is that if you see one of those warning labels on the product, then that is at least—there are so many products out there that should have warning labels that don’t. But in the area of cleaning products and pesticides, they have these warning labels on them. So if you see a warning label, don’t use the product.
Now, I agree with you, Annie, about the caution labels. And there’s one in particular, one instance I want to make sure that everybody understands. One of the things that they put warning labels on is for an inhalant dust hazard. And so something could have a warning label on it for that and have no toxic chemicals at all, that it’s just a dust hazard. And one of the examples is like polishing Bon Ami polishing cleanser, one of my favorite least toxic things that I’ve been recommending for years. In fact, at the time period, when Annie and I met, Bon Ami was one of the only cleaning products I can tell people to use.
ANNIE B. BOND: I remember, yes.
DEBRA: Yeah! And I remember, the very first book that I ever wrote, it was called A Consumer Guide for the Chemically Sensitive. I self-published it. This is way back in 1982. And all throughout the book, I kept saying, “Use baking soda for this. Use baking soda for that.” And a friend of mine looked at it and said, “The title of this book should be Use Baking Soda for Everything.”
But the point I’m wanting to make here is that there may be a warning label like on Bon Ami where it says “caution” because of the dust hazard, but there’s nothing in it that you need to be cautious about except breathing the dust as a particle.
So, if you see a caution, just take a look and see is the caution there because it’s a powder or is it there because there’s a slightly toxic chemical in it. And that’s just something to distinguish.
ANNIE B. BOND: Yeah, I would agree. And another product that I love—I was just trying to find my box, but I don’t want to be wandering around the house while I’m on the radio. So I won’t delve into that—is washing soda.
It’s actually very alkaline. And people get alarmed because the recommendation on the box is to wear gloves when you use it.
And it’s only because it’s very alkaline. It doesn’t really burn your hands badly—I mean, not even badly, it doesn’t burn your hands. But it’s sort of like being extra careful as to use.
I would think there’s probably a caution on that box as well because it’s so alkaline. But because it’s so alkaline, that’s also what makes it wonderful. That’s the product I found to peel the wax off the floors, for example.
So, in my research in the ‘80s, we moved into—one of our moving 10 sometimes before here—an apartment that had a wax, a scented wax, on the kitchen floor. And I just absolutely had to get it off. I ended up using a washing soda paste, very damp.
And it just peeled the wax right open. It was fantastic! That became my solvent alternative.
But it’s sort of like a slight slippery slope because you end up wanting to work gloves or being told to wear gloves. But there are no toxic fumes. But any time I want a solvent […], that’s what I use because it works so well.
DEBRA: I didn’t know that it acted as a solvent. But you probably said that in one of your books and I just forgot.
ANNIE B. BOND: Yeah, that’s exactly right. However, you have to be careful. If you use too much, of course it will peel paint off the wall. You could dilute it like a quarter of a tub to a gallon of water, you don’t have to worry about that kind of thing. But it’s amazing for like cleaning soot or heavy-duty engine oil spill or things like that.
The heavy duty cleaning, that’s when I use washing soda. And I just love it for those.
DEBRA: Well, we need to take another break. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Annie B. Bond, author of Clean & Green and Better Basics for the Home. And we’ll be right back. Don’t go away!
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Annie B. Bond, author of Clean & Green and Better Basics for the Home.
I want to tell you that on Clean & Green, there’s a subtitle that says 485 Ways to Clean, Polish, Disinfect, Deodorize, Launder, Remove Stains, Even Wax Your Car without Harming Yourself or the Environment.” And Better Basics for the Home says “868 Practical Formulas, All-Purpose Household Cleaners, Body Creams and Lotions, Laundry Products, Simple Solutions for Less Toxic Living.”
So, either of these books, both of these books, they’re a tremendous treasure chest of information on how you can go about these simple tasks of daily life in a way that is not toxic. And a lot of these formulas, you can make just with things that you already have in your kitchen. And so it’s worth checking this out. Everybody should have both of these books. That’s my recommendation.
ANNIE B. BOND: Thank you. And I just loved writing them too. Of all the work I’ve done in years, I think that was right up. The Better Basics, both books, are right up there. It’s some of my favorite things I ever did. I love those formulas and testing every single one. I had a checkered kitchen floor once. And each check had a different cleaning system on it. Anyway…
DEBRA: Well, Annie, I don’t think they’re obsolete. I think that this is the way. I really think that we should be moving back towards taking responsibility ourselves to make the things that we have because, more and more, the toxic chemicals are hidden in places that we don’t even know about. They’re not on the labels.
In fact, cleaning products as a class of products, are not required by law to list their ingredients on the label. And that’s the reason why they have these signal words of “caution” and…
ANNIE B. BOND: Yeah! It’s just absolutely horrifying! That’s horrifying. It is really horrifying.
And there’s another aspect of this which I think is really an important one. And that is the price of it.
I was on a radio show in 1993 or something called Smart Money. And they asked me before I came on to compare the price of my formulas to going through the supermarket and find the equivalent products. And so, I religiously, very carefully, did analyze this ounce by ounce comparatively.
And so, the price for about a time for buying just the basics for cleaning the house in the supermarket was $63. And from my ounce to ounce, including a very expensive essential oil, which was tea tree oil—which at the time I think was $8 a bottle or something—it was $11. So, the contrast in the price of it is dramatic in its own right. So that’s really nice.
And then, I think that we just can’t get across enough how the simplicity of it is just such a lovely way to have be part of your life.
DEBRA: Yes, I totally agree. Well, tell us what are the basic things that you use to clean your house. And then, I’ll tell you mine.
ANNIE B. BOND: Yeah, I think that there’s a really important—I mean, I have a story. Right now, right here, my daughter just moved into a new apartment. It’s new to her, an apartment, with a couple friends. And they ended up getting a couch. They’re recently out of college. And so, there have been a couch that they have that was in somebody’s basement, and they sold it out.
And they put it in their living room. And of course, it does reeked of mold and mildew.
I could tell the story of my suggestions to her which will give you the basics in a way. But also, something awful has been spilled on something. So, the first thing I suggested that she do is she can take out her bottle of tea tree oil, which I know she had, and put a teaspoon of tea tree oil to a cup of water and spray the entire couch because it’s a broad spectrum fungicide and the smell will lift in a few days and so will the mildew. And in fact, that really, really helped enormously.
But then she had some stains on some carpets and some funny smells. And it was hard to know what was what. And so I want to talk a little bit about baking soda and vinegar because a lot of people mix the two, and there’s sort of a bubbling. And it’s important to realize that when you get that bubbling, you’re actually neutralizing the power of the other.
So, just going with straight vinegar, it’s really good to have an acidic cleanser. And that kills a lot of bacteria, mold, germs and things like that. It’s wonderful for that.
The alkaline with the baking soda has a whole other smell/odor neutralization. And also, alkaline minerals tend to go through gunk and eat it up and dissolve it and make it easier to clean. So that’s why baking soda is great for cleaning the bottom of the oven, for example, if you make it wet enough and you use enough of it.
So, we didn’t know if some of the odors were alkaline or if they were acidic or whatever. But you would alternate baking soda or vinegar.
So, she started them by sprinkling baking soda to neutralize odors that were more acidic based actually. And then, she would clean that up and then vacuum really well. And then, she would spray with vinegar.
For example, who knew, I found, over the years, I’m very sensitive to perfume. And vinegar is the best way for me to get rid of a perfume smell.
DEBRA: Oh, I’m so glad you said that because this is one of my top questions on my blog: “How do I get perfume out of whatever?”
ANNIE B. BOND: And I have an infrared sauna in my house because I have a terrible case of Lyme disease. And that’s back when they treated it with high heat. And after going to my doctor’s office in my bathing suit in the middle of January, I’m just like, “I can’t do this anymore.”
Actually, I was in the sauna, in this high heat, and we had a fire alarm. And I had to go on the parking lot right in my bikini… in January… and I’m near upstate New York. So that was that for doing that.
Anyway, somebody came to my house, used my sauna, and they had tons of perfume on them. I could not get the smell out. I tried everything! And then, I had sprayed the whole thing with vinegar. And within an hour or two, the smell is gone.
DEBRA: Excellent! Excellent, excellent.
ANNIE B. BOND: Yeah, that was a great, great find. But that’s why Debra and I, to the audience here, are great resources because we’ve spent years struggling with these odors and things.
DEBRA: Yes, exactly!
ANNIE B. BOND: And it’s not always easy, learning how to peel wax off of the floor or get perfume out of the sauna, who knows?
But at any rate, I love vinegar now. If you have germs you’re worried about, you could spray straight vinegar on a bathroom door knob. I mean, there are things that work really well for that.
My favorite recipe of all…
DEBRA: Wait! Before you tell us that, we need to take a break, so I don’t want you to get started with the recipe. But we’ll cover it after we come back.
ANNIE B. BOND: Okay!
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest is Annie B. Bond, author of Clean & Green and Better Basics for the Home. 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 my very dear and very long time friend, Annie B. Bond. And we’re talking about how we clean our houses with just the basic, fundamental thing.
Annie and I have both been through our own trials with being exposed to toxic chemicals. And we’ve both recovered and live normal lives. So we have a lot of experience with this.
Okay, Annie, this is…
ANNIE B. BOND: Thanks, Debra. I appreciate it.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. This is our last segment. So let’s get down to just the nitty-gritty of let’s both talk about the basics of what we do to clean our houses. So how do you scour your sink?
ANNIE B. BOND: Okay! So, I was going to start with my favorite bath tub cleaner, but let me just move to the sink. I mean, my bath tub cleaner, I would use for the sink too. But this is what I love to whiten my sink. It’s sort of a newer discovery, but it’s sodium bicarbonate. And Eco [Verb], for example, has a box for their laundry. Whitener, it’s a combination with hydrogen peroxide. And it is an incredible whitener. So, I’ll fill the sinks with water, and I’ll add a quarter of a cup or so of sodium bicarbonate and let it sit there for a while, an hour or two, and it just sparkles.
But if you can’t find it, or that’s a little too complicated, the best scrub that I know of is you pour about a half a cup of baking soda into a bowl, and you squirt in enough of a green dish detergent, that liquid dish detergent, into the bowl and stir it—or an all-purpose cleaner or soap, liquid soap, would be fine. And you’d stir into a texture like frosting. And then, you scoop it on a sponge, and you scrub with that.
And the thing I love about this is that it rinses incredibly well. So, for someone who grew up back in the days when the scouring powders is used for clean the bath tubs, and you end up sitting in the grit because you could never really rinse it well enough, this is a fabulous product because it just rinses beautifully. It cleans well.
I have people writing me from all over the world about this formulas as being the best ever. And people have tried to monetize it and put it in packages and everything. But it’s very simple and it’s the easiest thing. And so I never don’t have that around.
Also, as a heads-up about that, it works really well too for cleaning stainless steel appliances. You just have to rinse it.
And if you can’t get all of the residue off for stainless steel, you just spray it with a little bit of vinegar and that will neutralize the baking soda actually. And you wipe it all off in the end. So, that’s a wonderful product.
And then, for cleaning the windows, for example, a lot of people went the wrong way in the early ‘90s thinking—because a lot of editors would say on radio, “Just clean your windows with vinegar, and that’s all you need.” And then, a lot of people abandoned non-toxic cleaning because they did that and they got streaks. And the reason, most simply, is because the residual wax and the cleaning in their window cleaner that they’ve been using for so many years have to be taken off first. After that, the vinegar alone would have been perfect. But they need to add a little dab of detergent in liquid or soap into the water and vinegar spray for the windows, and then they’ll be fine from then on with just vinegar. But that’s a good thing.
DEBRA: I use vinegar to clean my windows, but I dilute it half and half with water. And I use a soft cotton cloth, like a cotton rag, to clean the windows because it’s better than paper towels.
ANNIE B. BOND: Oh, absolutely! Yeah, no, that’s lovely. And you wouldn’t have had the residue problem. So many people have the residue problem where they just need to start the first time with a little bit of soap or detergent in that.
Washing soda is available in the laundry section of the supermarket. If you like sort of an all-purpose spray cleaner, if you put about a half a teaspoon of washing soda to about a cup of really hot water in a spray bottle and then a few squirts of liquid soap or detergent and shake it up. That’s a great all purpose cleaner. The washing soda will take away some of the heavier dirt and stains. And I think it’s a great product.
You could try up to a teaspoon of washing soda. But the problem is that it will clog the sprayer. So you just need to not add too much.
What else? What would be another basic thing?
DEBRA: Laundry.
ANNIE B. BOND: Laundry. Well, one thing to never do is to use the commercial dryer sheets or use any detergent that has a scent in it. The chemicals in those products are absolutely sort of mind-boggling. I did a whole research once on dryer sheets, and I couldn’t believe how many people have become seriously ill from asthma especially from using a lot of dryer sheets. The chemicals in them are really striking.
And so, I recommend, if you want to soften your clothes, that kind of thing, you could add a half a cup of vinegar in your rinse water. But the key is really to go unscented everything to start with.
DEBRA: Absolutely! In fact, we were talking before about taking everything out of your house with a warning label on it. I strongly suggest that you take everything out of your house that’s scented as well unless it has a natural essential.
ANNIE B. BOND: Absolutely! I mean, my daughter and I, I rented a small cabin for us, a cottage, at Cape Cod this summer. We walked in and we both almost keeled over because of the smell just from the laundry room.
I boxed everything up and put it out in another shed. And it took about a day for the fumes to go. But I don’t know how people live with those. It was so powerful. Yesterday, I had a repairman come to my house, and he just reeked of perfume. And I realized that what it was was the scent from the detergent on this clothes. He wasn’t wearing any scent, but he smelled like a girl because it was the detergent.
ANNIE B. BOND: Yeah! It was the detergent. Absolutely! It’s unbelievably strong. And so, I whole-heartedly agree. But many chemically sensitive people can tolerate—many if not most maybe—many of the pure essential oils. And so I don’t hesitate to use those if needed for certain types of things because they are very antibacterial and antifungal and antiseptic.
And if you want a scent, I can put a few drops of lavender essential oil in a cotton cloth and put it in a dryer sometimes if I want to sort of freshen up the smell of it. But there are many things you can do without having to resort to synthetic chemicals.
DEBRA: That’s right! And in the beginning when I first started learning about all of this, I thought, “Oh, scent is scent.” But it isn’t. What we’re talking about as being harmful is the synthetic fragrances that are made from petroleum, from crude oil. And they’re very, very different from the natural fragrances that are made by plants.
ANNIE B. BOND: And your body knows it.
DEBRA: Yeah, your body does know it. Some people can’t tolerate any of them if your body has been damaged by the synthetic ones. Some people can’t tolerate the essential ones. But when I found out that I do fine with essential oils, it was just so wonderful to have those real fragrances as opposed to the artificial ones.
Did you know that we can actually thank Coco Chanel for artificial fragrances?
ANNIE B. BOND: Oh, really?
DEBRA: Yes, because it was just at the time in history when they started discovering that—I mean, scientists were playing around in the lab. And before Coco Chanel, all fragrances were essential oils. But what happened was that women would put it on, and by the end of the evening, they couldn’t smell it anymore, or the men that they wanted to impress couldn’t smell it anymore. And then, Coco Chanel happened to be in a laboratory, and she saw this synthetic fragrance. She smelled it and realized that it lasted . And she said to the chemist, “Please make me…”
And what she wanted was a fragrance that was not like anything in nature. She wanted something totally abstract. And so, that’s how we got the first perfume, Chanel no. 5 was the formula #5 in the laboratory. That’s why it’s called Chanel no. 5.
ANNIE B. BOND: Wow!
DEBRA: And from there, artificial scents started going throughout the industrial world.
ANNIE B. BOND: Wow! What year was that? Do you have any idea?
DEBRA: 18-something I think or early 1900s. I don’t remember.
ANNIE B. BOND: Yes, incredible.
DEBRA: Yeah, this is how these things happen.
Anyway, we’ve got just about a minute left. Is there anything, any final words, you’d like to leave us with?
ANNIE B. BOND: Yeah, I would say just to do it. It’s just amazing. Some people do it all at once. Some people do it step by step, But the baby sleeps better. The house smells better. Everybody’s more relaxed. It just makes a huge difference. So it’s more of a sanctuary at home. And it’s a wonderful thing to do.
DEBRA: It is, I agree. And I think that I just like to close with a point that you started off with about having your home be your toxic free sanctuary, knowing that there’s a place that you can go where, even though it might not be 100% toxic-free (because air is still coming in from the outside), but there’s so much that we can do in our homes that so significantly reduces the amount of toxic chemicals that our bodies are being exposed to that it can literally turn your life around.
Annie and I both had that experience of just working on the toxic exposure that we have in our homes and really doing nothing else because, at the time, there was nothing else to do. And just taking that one step has restored our health and allowed us to continue to have good health. Just taking that step has allowed us to no longer be suffering with the toxic exposures.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. And we’ll be back tomorrow.
Gluten-Free Skin Products
My guest today is Anthony Vargas, Founder and Owner of Tilth Beauty, and former Vice President of Research and Development for Elizabeth Arden. We’ll be talking about his natural-based, high-performance, gluten-free skincare line, where gluten is found in beauty products, how gluten in skin care products can affect our health, and who should be concerned about gluten exposure through the skin. Based on three decades of experience, research, and development, each Tilth Beauty product has been painstakingly crafted with a unique and potent blend of botanical and industry -proven ingredients without ANY potentially harmful elements commonly found in most skincare products: no parabens, phthalates, sulfates, petroleum-based products, silicones, synthetic fragrances or GMOs, animal/dairy-derived products, or artificial colors. www.debralynndadd.com/debras-list/tilth-beauty
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Gluten-Free Skin Products
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Anthony Vargas
Date of Broadcast: September 04, 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 this because it is a toxic world. There are toxic chemicals all around us in consumer products, in the air we breathe outside, in the water we drink. They’re just all over the place. But they’re not everywhere because there are many things that we can do to find products that don’t have toxic chemicals in them and things that we can do to remove toxic chemicals from our homes and our bodies and even things we can do to restore our health after our bodies have been damaged by toxic chemicals. And those are the things that we talk about on this show.
Today is Wednesday, September 4th 2013. And I’m here in Clearwater, Florida where the sun is shining. And today, we’re going to talk about beauty products—not just beauty products, skin care products, luxurious skincare products, anti-aging skin care products that are all natural, some organic, and also gluten-free. We’re going to be talking about why it’s important that everybody pay attention to gluten-free. I’m going to tell you my own personal story about that.
So, before we do that though, I want to talk a little bit about something I was thinking about this morning. And that is, yesterday, we were talking about learning to do new things. And I was telling you a story about how I now, because I don’t have my husband of 26 years to change a tire on my car, need to learn how to change a tire—and many other things around the house that he used to do for me. And I was likening that to having to learn about toxic chemicals.
But there’s another related thing. And that is knowledge. If we have knowledge about something, knowledge and skill, then we don’t have to be the victim of it. If we know where the toxic chemicals are in products, then we have a choice. If we don’t know, we have no choice. We’re just going to buy anything that gets advertised, anything we see on TV.
But if we have knowledge, if we know what toxic chemicals are, if we know what they can do to our bodies, if we know where to find them in products, and more importantly, even how to recognize a product that doesn’t have toxic chemicals, then we have a choice, then we have freedom to choose.
And that’s why we’re here doing this show. That’s why I’m here. I want you to have the same choices that I have and to be able to decide if I have toxic chemicals in my life or not. I want you to have that choice too.
So, today, my guest is Anthony Vargas. He’s the founder and owner of—well, he’s the founder and owner of a company. The brand is called Tilth Beauty. And he’s the former Vice President of Research and Development for Elizabeth Arden. So he’s been working in the business for 30 years. He knows all about what goes on in the cosmetics world. And we’re going to be talking about his new brand, Tilth Beauty and what’s special about it.
Anthony, thanks for being with me today.
ANTHONY VARGAS: Great, Debra! I’m glad to be here on your show today.
DEBRA: And thank you. I’m very happy that you’re here. So, former Vice President of Research and Development for Elizabeth Arden. How did you get from there to Tilth Beauty?
ANTHONY VARGAS: Well, that’s such a great question. And it was about two years ago that I decided to create my own line of products. And I had this vision where I created a line of products that didn’t have any of the questionable ingredients that you’re hearing about in the news everyday—things like the parabens, the pthalates, and sulfates, and synthetic fragrances, and even silicone these days. But also, what was important is gluten-free.
In the last, I would say seven years or so, we were getting more and more inquiries from actually people who had Celiac Disease. They would call us, and they would ask if we had any products that had gluten in them. And the first time we got the calls, we really didn’t have a list of gluten-free products. So we had to go back and look at all of our skincare products and determine if they had gluten in them or not and have a list of the ones that were gluten-free and the ones that had gluten in them. So, when they would call, then we could tell them.
But the calls started getting more and more and more. And then, also, there were a lot of other news stories that were coming out. You heard about the parabens being implicated in breast tumors. Sulfates, they could contain carcinogens within them.
And I looked around at a lot of the products, and I said, “You know, we have a lot of these ingredients within the products that are out there in the cosmetic industry.”
And the European Union is very tough. I think they’re tougher than the FDA is as far as stating which ingredients you can have and can’t have in your products. As a matter of fact, they have a list of over 400 materials that they banned from skin care products or any kind of topical products. And then, yet some of those materials are still here in products in the United States.
I looked around and I said, “You know, I need to develop my line of products without any of these materials so that a consumer doesn’t have to really scratch their when they’re buying my products.” And we go along. We actually put a little sticker on the product saying if it’s gluten-free or paraben-free and sulfate-free.
And yeah, that’s why I decided to do this, because I wanted to give the consumer a line that, basically, they didn’t have to question if they’re putting it on their skin or not.
Now, you have to go the other way too. We have a lot of naturally derived materials in our products. And what people have to also consciously know, if they’re allergic to any kind of a natural type product. You’ve got that lying there too.
And that’s why I decided to do this. We came out with a fairly extensive line of products last year.
It’s something that I think a lot of people are looking for now besides people with Celiac Disease looking for gluten-free products. There’s a lot of people that are looking for products that are paraben-free, sulfate-free.
I was in the supermarket the other day, and I was looking at a lot of the body wash products that are out there on the shelves. And I would say probably over 95% of them still had sulfates in them.
DEBRA: Yes! Yes, they do. They do.
ANTHONY VARGAS: It was very difficult to find one that didn’t.
DEBRA: Well, I think that you’re doing a really good job when you said that you wanted to create a product that consumers wouldn’t question, that they wouldn’t have to question because I know that a lot of consumers want to have those kinds of products exactly. There are so many toxic products on the market that people have to read the labels. And now that you’ve already done that work for them, and only included the safe ingredients, I think, is a really good service, especially since there are so many beauty products to choose from. It’s really good that that was your criteria.
ANTHONY VARGAS: Oh, it absolutely was. And the one thing that you had mention is that a lot of the consumers really don’t read the labels.
DEBRA: They really don’t. And even if they do read the labels, who knows what all those ingredients are. I know that when I started 30 years ago, I was running around with a chemical dictionary because I’d read a label, and I wouldn’t understand it at all.
ANTHONY VARGAS: Yeah, that’s very true.
DEBRA: And even today, I have to look them up.
ANTHONY VARGAS: The ingredients are put on the carton according to the chemical structure.
And there is this body over in Washington that oversees that. It’s what we call the INCI name, the International Nomenclature Ingredients Standards. And they determine what the name of your ingredient is going to be. And it gets this very long name.
You look at it and you’re going to yourself, “Oh, my God! Can I even pronounce that?”
But there’s an easy way to identify some of these materials. The parabens are labeled as parabens. You’ll see them labeled as like “methyl-paraben” or “propyl-paraben” or “ethyl paraben.”
Gluten, anything that has hydrolyzed wheat or triticum in the name or vulgari, you know it’s going to be a gluten product. However—and this is something that people really don’t understand—sometimes, like vitamin E, that could be derived from wheat. But that’s not gluten-free.
DEBRA: Aha! Well, we need to take a break. And we’re going to talk more about that when we come back.
This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Anthony Vargas, founder and owner of Tilth Beauty, a line of super skin care product that are gluten-free as well as natural and organic. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Anthony Vargas, founder and owner of Tilth Beauty.
And Anthony, before we go on, I’m sure many people don’t know what the word tilth means. And you talk about this on your website. I know you have a page where you explain what tilth is. So tell us what tilth is.
ANTHONY VARGAS: Oh, sure! A lot of people ask that question. And basically, what tilth means is the condition of the soil on how it holds on to moisture, nutrients, and oxygen—which is very related to the skin.
Your skin has to hold on to oxygen, moisture, and also nutrients. And that’s where the name tilth came from.
DEBRA: I love that. I think it’s a beautiful concept. And as soon as I read that on your site, since I did already understand what tilth was (knowing a lot about organic gardening), I hadn’t really thought about it in relationship to my skin, that my skin also needs to hold the moisture and nutrients as you’ve said.
And I have some samples of your products. And this morning, I was trying them out. And when I put—what did I put on—the moisturizing cream I think, I don’t remember what it’s called. It’s in a little jar. As soon as I put it on my skin, my skin just absorbed it like it was a sponge. It just went right in. And my skin feels a lot softer just immediately. And I didn’t realize how dry my skin was until I put your product on it.
ANTHONY VARGAS: Oh, yeah. One of the sayings that I try to stress to editors when I’m speaking to them, or even customers, they don’t realize how important the moisture content in your skin is. Sometimes, they ask me, “If I were to do some kind of routine to keep my skin nice and looking fresh, what would you suggest?” I say, “Make sure you use a moisturizer every day because moisture is key for your skin and is key for the processes for your skin to operate correctly.” Without that proper moisture balance, nothing is going to operate correctly. And it’s going to cause premature signs of aging.
DEBRA: Well, if we didn’t water our garden, the plants wouldn’t grow. So it just makes sense to me that we should be moisturizing our skin. And that was actually something I was never taught. But I got it! As soon as I put your product on my face, I got it!
ANTHONY VARGAS: So that’s a very good analogy. If you don’t water your plants… exactly!
DEBRA: So, I really want to talk more about how to recognize gluten because I think that people don’t know that. And I didn’t know that until I got your press release. But before we do that, I want to make sure that people really understand. I know that people were calling you with concerns about Celiac disease. But I want to talk about why everybody should be concerned about this. And I want to tell my story first, and then I want to hear your answer to that question.
My story is that I have eaten gluten off and on my whole adult life. Many, many years ago, I was told that I was allergic to wheat. I stopped eating wheat for a year. And I didn’t feel any different. And so I went back to eating wheat. And I really didn’t notice how wheat might be affecting me, or I didn’t think about the gluten aspect because there’s gluten in more things than wheat. A lot of different grains contain gluten.
And so, I thought I was doing well to eat rye bread, 100% rye bread, instead of eating gluten, instead of eating wheat.
So then, about two months ago, my current healthcare practitioner said, “I want you to just go on a gluten-free diet.” And the reason he wanted me to go on a gluten-free diet was because it’s starting to become known that gluten can affect your thyroid.
And I’ve been having problems with my thyroid for many, many years. I take a thyroid supplement. But in the last few years, my thyroid blood tests have been off. And various doctors have tried various things. And they just couldn’t get my blood test to show normal on the TSH test for thyroid.
And so, I went on this gluten-free diet. And to my surprise, after 30 days on the gluten-free diet, my blood tests for TSH went from 89—which is like very, very high—to 1.49 which is right in the middle of normal. And the only thing I changed was that I stopped eating gluten.
Now, this is not about Celiac disease. This is about gluten affecting all different areas in your body. And the thyroid is one of them. And the thyroid gland contributes to the whole health of your whole, entire body.
ANTHONY VARGAS: Oh, absolutely! It sure does.
DEBRA: It sure does. And so, if the small amount of wheat that I was eating, the small amount of gluten that I was eating, was affecting my thyroid gland that badly, I sure don’t want any gluten in my products that I’m going to put on my skin. It just makes sense to me for everybody.
I now consider gluten to be a toxic chemical because it affects your body like any other toxic chemical does.
ANTHONY VARGAS: Oh, absolutely! They’re going to be doing more and more research to see what else gluten affects in your body too.
DEBRA: I’m sure, I’m sure.
ANTHONY VARGAS: Oh, absolutely! And like you said, gluten, it’s in oats, it’s in rye, it’s in barley. It’s in all of that.
DEBRA: I just don’t eat any grains at all anymore.
ANTHONY VARGAS: Yeah!
DEBRA: And I feel so much better. I feel so much better because my thyroid gland is working.
ANTHONY VARGAS: Yeah! And it’s one of the things, when you look at the cosmetic products out there, of course, you can see some of them, like I mentioned before, you’ll see like hydrolyzed wheat protein. It’s in a lot of skin care products. It’s in a lot of shampoos because it’s used as a conditioner to help condition the hair and also, the skin.
And then, if you see anything that says like “hordeum vulgari,” stay away from that because that contains gluten too. It’s part of the barley; and then, also triticum.
Triticum is another name for the wheat itself. And if you see that on the label, you should avoid it.
Now, I have mentioned before we went off for the little intermission there that vitamin E can be derived from wheat, and there are some other materials within these products that are derived from wheat, you’ve got to be very careful.
DEBRA: I’m sorry I have to interrupt you again because we’ve got to take another break. But immediately, when we come back from this break, we are going to talk about exactly that (without me telling my story).
ANTHONY VARGAS: Sure, okay.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. I’m here with Anthony Vargas, founder and owner of Tilth Beauty. And we’re talking about gluten-free skincare products. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Anthony Vargas, founder and owner of Tilth Beauty which is a high-performance, luxury anti-aging skincare line that is also gluten-free.
So, tell us now, Anthony, about those ingredients that are probably in everybody’s skincare products that are derived from wheat and have gluten in them but don’t say so in the name.
ANTHONY VARGAS: Correct! One of them is vitamin E. It’s very common in a lot of cosmetic products. You see it labeled as tocopherol. And that can come from wheat.
We make sure that we don’t use any form of tocopherol or vitamin E that’s derived from wheat. We get it from other sources that are not from wheat or barley or oats. So it’s going to be gluten-free.
And you know, something else that we do is we actually run a test on the whole product afterwards to make sure. Sometimes, you don’t get the full information from the maker or the manufacture of the raw material. You’ve got to be very careful about that too. You’ve got to scrutinize how they make these ingredients or where they are derived from.
And I think that if a consumer sees that a line says gluten-free, they can rest assure that they’re not going to have any gluten in those products. And I think that’s the only way. If you don’t see it says “gluten-free,” then it could be questionable. And what you need to do is you need to read that label.
DEBRA: Well, you know, it could be questionable in the sense that—I remember when I was researching lead-free lipsticks. I was calling around and I was saying, “Does your lipstick have lead in it? Does your lipstick have lead in it?”, most people didn’t know how to answer the question. They didn’t know that the iron oxide—it’s where the lead is, in the iron oxide. And of course, they had iron oxide. And they had never tested their lipsticks to find out if they were lead-free or not. And so they would just say, “Oh, no! There’s no lead in it. There’s no lead in it. There’s no lead in it.” And yet all these lipsticks where all these places I was calling all had lead in them.
And so, I think that if somebody is concerned about gluten-free, then they need to buy a product that is advertised as being gluten-free so that they know that the people behind making it have some idea what they’re talking about and had an intention to make it gluten-free instead of just asking a company if their product is gluten-free.
ANTHONY VARGAS: You know, Debra, there was actually a study that was done a couple of years ago. And it was presented at the American College of Gastroenterology’s annual scientific meeting, and the title of it was Information About Cosmetic Ingredients is Difficult to Obtain. The petition was for Celiac patients.
DEBRA: Wow!
ANTHONY VARGAS: So, somebody did go out and tried and figured this out. And you’re right, there’s a lot of companies that really sometimes don’t know or don’t give out the information. It’s getting a little bit better. And the reason why it’s getting a little bit better is because of the European Union. If you’re dealing or selling products over in Europe, you have to outline all of this.
You have to outline if there’s lead in your products. You have to outline if there’s gluten or anything like that.
And there’s even other materials, like nanomaterials—you know, if you’ve got nanomaterials in your products, you actually have to label your packaging that it contains that now.
DEBRA: Wow! They are so far ahead of us.
ANTHONY VARGAS: Yeah! So, the European Union is way ahead of the United States when it comes to issues like that.
DEBRA: Yeah, but they have been for a long time. I remember in 1990 when I was first writing—I specialize in writing about toxics now. I started 30 years ago writing about toxics. But there was a little time period in between where I was writing about all kinds of green issues. And in 1990, I went to a green products show in Germany because we didn’t have a green product show here. And when I walked in, tears came to my eyes because they had all these products that I had never heard of here.
And they were already there in Germany. And so, we have a ways to go to catch up with Europe.
But at the same time, I went to this green product show, I was walking down the street breathing cigarette smoke because they were all sitting in caffeine with cream all over it, smoking cigarettes.
ANTHONY VARGAS: Yes, the Europeans certainly do love their cigarettes.
DEBRA: You know, you go from one extreme to the other over there.
ANTHONY VARGAS: But really, seriously though, I think that the cosmetic manufacturers here in the United States really seriously need to look at keeping these materials out of their products now.
And silicone is another material that’s going to be coming up soon because there’s a problem with them. They’re inert so they don’t degrade. And they’re accumulating in the environment. And you look at your products, and I would say probably 80% to 90% of your products contain silicones.
DEBRA: Hmmm…
ANTHONY VARGAS: Yeah, but it’s an ingredient I think that the whole industry needs to start looking at.
A few years ago, Canada was looking at banning certain silicones. I was working over at my old job there at Arden, and I was like, “Oh, my God! If they did that, I would be in a lot of trouble.” But the industry and some other people had lobbied, and they didn’t pass the laws. But it’s something that’s still going to be coming down sooner or later.
And if the industry […] gave the same information to the consumer here in the United States as they’re giving to the people over in Europe, it would make it a lot easier for the consumer, but it’s got a ways to go. And that’s why we have our line. You don’t have to worry. We put that right on the label if it’s gluten-free or paraben-free or anything. I know the regulations. I know what materials shouldn’t be in products and which ones are questionable for future use. So I don’t put any of them in our products.
DEBRA: Was it difficult to do that?
ANTHONY VARGAS: We use a lot of naturally-derived materials in our products. And that’s going to be the way to go. We do use peptides within our products. But peptides, basically, they mimic the same peptides in your skin. They’re made from amino acids. And amino acids are the basic building blocks of all the proteins in your skin. So it’s not going to harm you. And that’s why…
DEBRA: So, when you were putting all these together, did you find it difficult to find ingredients? Once you made the decision, was it a big deal? Could every…
I mean, your products are beautiful. They look like any products that you would find in a department store. I mean, somebody who’s accustomed to buying those luxury line skincare products, they wouldn’t notice any difference. It’s not like something that’s not that fine, not what one might expect from a natural product. It’s not a granola product. It is beautiful, it works and all those things.
But couldn’t everybody, all the different brands, just formulate like you? Why do we need to have those toxic chemicals at all?
ANTHONY VARGAS: Well, here is the thing with that. A lot of those chemicals are basically inexpensive. And that’s why they use them because when you’re developing a product, you have a cost of goods target you have to meet. So it’s easy to use those chemicals because they’re inexpensive. Some of the more naturally-derived materials are more expensive. And that’s why.
DEBRA: Yes. And we need to take another break. We need to take another break. We’ll be right back.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And we’re talking about beauty products and cosmetics with
Anthony Vargas, founder and owner of Tilth Beauty. And that’s TilthBeauty.com.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And we’re here today with Anthony Vargas, founder and owner of Tilth Beauty. We’re talking about gluten-free natural skincare products and cosmetic products in general.
So, before we go on with Anthony, I just want to mention that tonight, 11:00, Eastern time, I’m going to be on with Jeff Renz.
He’s going to be interviewing me tonight. So tune in and we’ll see what he asks me. We’ll be on all for the whole hour from 11:00 to midnight tonight right here where you tune in for this show. You just tune in right at the same place. And you’ll hear Jeff Renz interviewing me.
So, Anthony, tell us about your products now. Just tell us the different types of products you have and how they work together and all their benefits.
ANTHONY VARGAS: Oh, sure! I have a line of 14 products. We have three cleansers, two toners. We had two treatment serums. We have two eye products, two moisture creams. We have an exfoliator. And we have a misting product. And we also have a body lotion.
Now, we start out with the cleansers because that’s what you would normally start out with. And we have three different types of cleansers. We have what we call a cream foaming cleanser because there are certain consumers that like that.
And this one is infused with natural extracts that contain a lot of antioxidants within them, so they can deposit that on the skin.
We have a gel cleanser because sometimes the consumers prefer that. And it’s sulfate-free. All these products are paraben-free, sulfate-free. It’s a great product infused with rose extract within it because Rose has a great propensity to help to regenerate the skin. And it has the rose kind of scent to it too.
And then, we have what we call our oily cleanser. And this one is for the consumer that looks for an oily type cleanser. And it helps to take off the makeup. And that one has the argan oil, the jojoba oil and also caprylic capric triglyceride in it. It’s a very nice organic cleanser.
And believe it or not, a lot of men like the cleanser. They use it for shaving. And it leaves their skin smooth and soft.
DEBRA: Hmmm… I do want to mention…
ANTHONY VARGAS: We had a lot of comments on it for men. As a matter of fact, some of the women who bought the product say that their husbands keep stealing it from them. So they have to keep buying it.
And then, we have two toners. Now we’re redefining how toners are because people believe toners are basically just to remove excess dirt. But we use our toners actually to help treat the skin too. We have a berry extract toner. And it contains three different berry extracts—blueberry, goji beans and cranberry. And they have tons of antioxidants, so they’re going to help protect the skin.
And then we have the Aloe Restoration toner. It’s got aloe and cactus extract. And they help to refortify the skin and the skin’s barrier. It’s great for older, mature skin.
Now, we have some treatment products. We have the A Flawless Serum. And this one contains a proven cosmoceutical ingredient, retinol. It’s a vitamin A. It’s something that your skin needs for its collagen-boosting properties and what-not. And it also helps to basically repair or help repair the signs of sun damage. And it also has Indian ginseng extract and myrtle leaf extract which actually increase the efficacy of the retinol—all in a very nice paraben-free base.
We have a serum for younger consumer which is what we call the Sea Origin Serum. And it has 11 marine extracts. There’s a lot of algae and what-not. I have a seaweed out there that have a lot of properties for protecting the skin, containing antioxidants. It’s a glycoprotein to help moisturize the skin. So it’s a great product for younger consumers to help protect their skin.
We follow that up with some moisturizers. We have what we call the Anti-Aging Firming Moisture Cream. It’s got a lot of natural oils in it. And it will help firm the skin.
DEBRA: I think that’s the one I have.
ANTHONY VARGAS: Yeah! It’s a naturally derived material. And it helps to enhance collagen and elastin production. And a lot of people like that particular product.
And for those who have very dry skin, but don’t need, let’s say, anti-aging benefits, we have the Intense Restoration Moisture Cream.
DEBRA: Actually, that’s the one I have. I was just looking at the box, the Intense Restoration.
ANTHONY VARGAS: Yeah, it’s great! It’s got…
DEBRA: That’s the one where I put it on and my skin just…
ANTHONY VARGAS: Yeah, they’re going to help to nourish the skin and repair any damage that’s done to your skin’s barrier.
It’s a great product and people really, really love it.
But we also have a body moisturizer. We have what we call the hydration body lotion. And that one’s also a chock full of natural ingredients, butters and oils, that help to again repair the skin’s barrier. And it’s a great product!
It’s not overly greasy. And a lot of people love what it does to their skin.
And then, we have this—well, it’s kind of a product that’s a little bit different. It’s our Refresh Peptide Mist. It’s a product that you would use during the day if you feel that your skin is a little irritated or a little dry. Just pull it out of your pocket book and spray it on your face. And it also helps to set back your make-up.
It’s funny because a couple people really, really loved it. And there was this actor who had asked us for it. He was getting married, and they wanted to put it in their gift bag, which is kind of cool.
And then, we have our Gentle Poppy Seed Exfoliator. It’s totally all-natural, organic ingredients within it. It’s got date seed, poppy seed in it. Great exfoliator! It’s not overly harsh, it’s very gentle on the skin. And it’s a kind of exfoliator where you can just use it on its own or, if you want, you can mix it with your favorite cleanser. So, you can use it two ways.
And that’s our line. It’s a great line. It’s 14 total.
I forgot about the two eye products. There’s the eye product, the serum, The Eye Wonder Serum. And that’s for the woman who has a lot of crow’s feet or what-not. And again, this one has encapsulated retinol in addition to a few peptides that help to alleviate the look of those wrinkles.
And we also have the Resurrect Eye Cream. And this is a great product. It’s more for the woman who has dryness around the eye area because it also helps moisturize. But it has four different peptides in it. It has a couple of peptides that help to alleviate the immediate look of those wrinkles; and then two other peptides which helps to introduce more collagen or boost up the collagen production in your skin and increase the firmness around the eye area, the skin in the eye area. It’s a great product. We’ve gotten rave reviews on it actually.
DEBRA: I really like these products on my skin.
ANTHONY VARGAS: Again, all questionable ingredients are out. There’s no parabens. It’s glutenf-free. No phthalates, no sulfates, no petroleum-based ingredients, no silicones. We keep out anything with EEA and TEA out of them. We don’t use any [unintelligible 34:32] or anything like that in there or any of these acrylic-type materials, thickeners and what-not, that they put in the products.
DEBRA: One thing I want to mention just because a lot of people are asking about fragrances is that I didn’t see any additional fragrance on the ingredients list, but that these do have a very slight fragrance just from the botanical ingredients which is fine with me personally. I mean, you don’t say anything on the label about if it’s fragrance-free or not fragrance-free. So how would you describe the fragrances level of your products?
ANTHONY VARGAS: Well, we don’t put any synthetic fragrances in all of our products. Any time that you smell any kind of a scent, it usually comes from the extracts themselves.
DEBRA: Yeah, that’s what it smelled like to me, yeah.
ANTHONY VARGAS: Yeah, we don’t like to put fragrances in. There’s a lot of problems with that. Fragrances have so many components to them.
DEBRA: Yes, we’ve talked about that on the show.
ANTHONY VARGAS: And there’s a list of about 24 ingredients that if they’re in your fragrance, you have to list it on your cosmetic ingredient list because they’re deemed to be known allergens.
So, any time that there’s a scent in our products, it comes from one of the extracts, not from a fragrance or anything like that.
DEBRA: Good! We’re almost to the end of our time. Do you have any final words you’d like to give us?
ANTHONY VARGAS: Yeah! I think what the consumer needs to do, really, they need to educate themselves. And they really need to look at the ingredients of the products that they’re buying. Typically, I think a lot of the consumers just go by the marketing hype and buy the product. And then, they don’t look at the ingredients. You know, I’m horrified sometimes when I see these products all of a sudden selling like crazy, and then I look at the ingredients list. It’s like, “Oh, my God! Are they kidding me? There’s a lot of these questionable ingredients in this product.”
Consumers need to know what they’re buying. They really, really need to do that and educate themselves.
DEBRA: I agree. Thank you so much for being with us today. I learned a lot. And I like your products. Thank you for coming.
ANTHONY VARGAS: Great!
DEBRA: I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. You can see Anthony’s products at TilthBeauty.com. You can visit my website, ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. And listen to me tonight at 11:00 p.m., Eastern, with Jeff Renz. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio.
Odor on Leather Shoes
Question from Mary A.
Help! My husband stepped in gas while at the gas station…he was wearing rubber soled, leather shoes. How can we get rid of the horrible odor ??
Debra’s Answer
I would put them out in the sun for a few days, sole side up. If that doesn’t work, toss them.
Tilth Beauty
A natural-based, high-performance, anti-aging luxury skincare line that is also gluten-free. Based on three decades of experience, research, and development, each product has been painstakingly crafted with a unique and potent blend of botanical and industry -proven ingredients without ANY potentially harmful elements commonly found in most skincare products: no parabens, phthalates, sulfates, petroleum-based products, silicones, synthetic fragrances or GMOs, animal/dairy-derived products, or artificial colors. “Tilth is the name given to indicate the health of soil. Healthy soil (soil with good tilth) is seen to be oxidized with the ability to maintain good levels of moisture and vital nutrients. Tilth Beauty has taken this concept and adapted it using the latest skin care technology to produce the best anti-aging skin care products. “Here at Tilth Beauty, we’ve combined the readily available tools given to us by Mother Nature with cutting edge technology to forge luxurious, safe and highly effective skin care products without using any questionable ingredients.” Products have a slight fragrance from the botanical ingredients.
 |
Listen to my interview with Tilth Beauty Founder and Owner Anthony Vargas. |
Natural Art Supplies
My guest today is Leah Fanning Mebane, founder of Natural Earth Paints. We’ll be talking about some of the toxic exposures from art paints, and safer paints to use. Leah began using all natural earth paints about five years ago, after being an oil painter for more than eighteen years. She eliminated all solvents and toxins from her studio and then began collecting her own pigments from nature. This transition away from toxic, modern paints gave her the joy of doing no harm to the environment and the freedom to express her art and passion in partnership with the earth. Her constant allergies and headaches cleared up with the removal of solvents and toxins in the studio. She also developed a deeper connection with the natural world as she spent more time outside the studio directly connecting with the origins of her paints. In 2010 she launched the business, Natural Earth Paint, with her husband Drew and now creates and sells natural art supplies all over the world. Their products include Children’s Earth Paints, Natural Face Paints, Natural Egg Dye Kits for Easter, Earth Oil Paint Kits and also professional, non-toxic supplies for artists. See her beautiful earth paintings at www.FanningArt.com. www.NaturalEarthPaint.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Natural Art Supplies
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Leah Fanning Mebane
Date of Broadcast: September 03, 2013
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and this Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world. It really is necessary for us to talk about this because there are many toxic chemicals out in the world.
Yet, there are also many things that are not toxic and what this show is about is helping us identify what’s toxic so that we can avoid it, but also to identify what are the good safe things that we can use and do so that we can have good health and be happy and productive and help the lives that we want to live without being encumbered by the dangers of toxic chemicals. That’s why we’re here.
Today is Tuesday, September 2nd, 2013. We just had the Labor Day weekend. I hope you had a great weekend. I had a great weekend because I was redesigning my website. It’s not completely done, but a lot of the new designs are up. So if you want, go take a look at ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, I’m really happy with the way it looks and I’m excited to finish that project this afternoon.
I also wanted to tell you about something that I realized this weekend. Some of you who have been listening on a regular basis know that recently, my husband in 26 years and I are no longer together. We actually were divorced a couple of years ago, but we still were friends and housemates. I know that sounds strange. Anyway, he is now off living in California after he was in an accident where he broke his back.
So I’m on my own for the first time in 26 years and I’m just noticing how many things he used to do for me that I don’t know how to do.
One of them that came up for me this weekend was checking the air in my tires on my car. I think probably before I met him 26 years ago, I knew how to do that, but I haven’t done it in 26 years because he always did it for me. I’m wondering how many pounds of pressures is supposed to be in a tire? How do I use the tire gauge? And where do I go to put new air in my tire, more air in the tires?
I realized that if you’re going to go do something, if you’re going to move into a better life, like with toxics, if you are going to remove toxic chemicals in your life, there are just going to be things that you’re going to need to learn. You’re going to need new information, you’re going to need new skills. You’re not going to be doing things in the same way as you have been accustomed to doing them.
That’s another reason why I’m doing this show. It’s because I’ve been living without toxic chemicals for more than 30 years. I know something about those, but I realized that most people in the world don’t. They don’t have that kind of experience.
By listening to the show, by bringing my guest on, you can see what the possibilities are. But you are going to have to learn a new way of doing things and that’s going to require a little bit of trial and error and finding out where to go to buy these products, how to choose them, all those things. Just like I need to learn where to go put air in my tire, you’re going to need to learn where you can go to buy an organic cotton sheet or whatever it is that you wanting to buy.
All of that kind of information is on my website. It’s on the show. It’s on the website of other people. It really is all out there for you. It’s just you taking those steps to decide that you’re going to live in a toxic free way and learn how to do that. I’ll try to make it as easy and fun and interesting as possible. But it all comes down to you taking those steps.
And I do want to just encourage you by saying that every time, in the past 30 years that I have decided to give up something familiar and toxic for something unfamiliar and safer, I’ve always been happy with that choice. It’s always more pleasurable to use and more interesting and more beautiful and more compatible with me.
So take a chance. Do something different. Learn a new skill. Get familiar with something new. It’s going to be worth it, believe me.
So today, we’re going to talk about art. We’re going to talk about paint and about toxic chemicals in paint and about safe paints that you can use that are made from earth pigments and other natural ingredients.
My guest today is Leah Fanning Mebane. I want to make sure I said that right, Leah Fanning Mebane. She has a website called NaturalEarthPaint.com where she sells paints that she has developed made out of natural materials. She’s also an incredible artist and you can go to her artist website, which is FanningArt.com and see her gorgeous paintings. She was an oil painter for many years until she got sick. And then she developed some natural paints.
Leah, thanks for being with me today.
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Thank you so much for inviting me, Debra.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. So tell us your story instead of me telling your story.
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Oh, yes. I started out way back in art school back when I was first learning how to paint with oil paints for the first time. And my teachers there all pretty much taught all the standard way of teaching oil paint with all the toxins involved. And they were all really wonderful teachers, but they just all taught the same thing. So I just assumed that all of the toxins were just a necessary evil to painting really high quality art.
So I just accepted it back then. Even from the beginning in my studio, as soon as I started to paint, I would have really bad headaches and allergy reactions and sneezing. It’s pretty immediate right when I started.
But then after that, I moved to Boulder, Colorado and met my husband. We started getting into all natural earth-friendly everything and I became a fulltime artist. I just continued to use all of these super toxic supplies just because that was my art and I felt like I couldn’t sacrifice quality to make any changes. So I just continued suffering all of my crazy symptoms for quite a while.
And then we had a shift. We moved to Oregon and we got even more into just trying to have a zero footprint on the earth. we built a natural earth and home and we’re there for many years, off the grid, with composting toilets and stoves and just a very natural non-toxic lifestyle.
But I was still using all these toxic paints in my studio down the road, which is crazy. I just didn’t know of any alternatives at the time. I didn’t know that anything could be high quality and eco-friendly.
DEBRA: What kind of symptoms did you have?
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Mainly just really severe headaches and sneezing and fatigue and just various allergic reactions.
DEBRA: I think a lot of people are having those kinds of symptoms, but they don’t know that it’s toxic chemicals.
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Yeah, absolutely.
DEBRA: So tell us about when you got to a point where you have decided that was enough and you found the paints that you use now.
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Well, something happened, I guess it was five years ago, which completely was a huge catalyst to get me to make a huge change. I got pregnant for the first time with my baby. Literally, about a week later, I also got accepted for a really huge solo show, art exhibit, which would happen the week before my child was due, which meant that I would paint about 25 huge oil paintings throughout my entire pregnancy.
DEBRA: And before you tell us the rest of it, we need to take a short commercial break.
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Okay.
DEBRA: I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Leah Fanning Mebane. She does beautiful artwork. You should go to her website and see her paintings at FanningArt.com. And she’s going to be telling us more about the all-natural toxic free earth paints that she developed when we come back.
DEBRA: I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Leah Fanning Mebane. She’s an artist who has developed some totally toxic free natural earth paints and we’re going to learn more about them now.
So Leah, tell us about your inspiration. You had a big show, you needed to paint a lot of paintings and you were pregnant all at the same time. So then what happened next?
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Well, when that happened, it just launched me into figuring out how to get rid of all of my toxins immediately. I couldn’t wait at all anymore and I just did tons of research and experimentations. I just figured it out pretty quickly how to get rid of all the toxins in the oil painting process. So that was basically how the earth paint came about.
And then about a year after my son was born, I had that idea to make children’s paint too out of the natural earth pigments that I used in the oil paints. So that’s how that happened.
DEBRA: Tell us about some of the toxic chemicals that are in paints. I know that you’re a professional artist, so the paints you are using might be different from the paints that people are using at home. But what kind of toxic chemicals should people be concerned about in paints?
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: In typical oil paints, there are lots of different toxins. There are really bad heavy metal toxins like cadmium and cobalt. And then the pigments and oil paints are usually petroleum-based synthetic pigments and then there are usually some toxic preservatives too and also fillers. So there were lots of pretty nasty things in typical oil paints.
And then you also use turpentine and mineral spirits in oil painting to clean your brushes and thin your paint. Those have VOCs and they offgas. Actually, after you paint your paintings, they continue to offgass. Your paintings off-gas into your room.
DEBRA: I remember my grandmother, my mother’s mother was an oil painter and she was always painting. I remember that smell of the paint and the thinner and all that and the pictures continuing to have that smell. I used to spend my summers with her, so I was exposed to a lot of that day in and day out. As a child, she had me painting with those paints right next to her. So that’s I think an exposure that I had that I hadn’t really thought about before.
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Yeah. Yes. That’s amazing.
DEBRA: Mineral spirits, for people who don’t know exactly what that is, are a mixture of different solvents that are VOCs volatile organic chemicals. And so, they evaporate and volatilize into the air and then you breathe them and they go into your lungs. And immediately, they go into your blood stream.
They have a lot of different names for this, but the thing about it is that you never know exactly what’s in it or how toxic it might be because there’s no standard formula for making mineral spirits. They just take all the solvents that are around, whatever is cheapest and they throw them altogether. One batch of mineral spirit might be very different from another batch of mineral spirits. So you could be exposed to some very toxic things if you’re using mineral spirits for anything.
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Yes.
DEBRA: Are there toxic chemicals in paints that people might be buying at a hobby store, art supply store?
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Yes. Yeah, a more common paint actually is acrylic paint just for crafting. And that’s generally more eco-friendly since it’s water-based, but acrylic paint is basically just liquid plastics with petroleum-based pigments.
DEBRA: Acrylic is a plastic.
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Yeah. It’s just 100% petroleum. You can definitely smell it when you’re painting with it and it’s not great for water supply when you wash it down the drain.
Also, just regular children’s paints in any art supplies store have lots of toxins in them too, which is really shocking when I had my child and I did a little research. Even though most of them say “nontoxic” on the label or “certified nontoxic,” it really doesn’t mean much of anything.
There are very, very little regulations on ingredients in kids’ paints and they never list them on the package.
So lots of times, kids’ paints have heavy metals like cadmium. And the most common preservative in kids’ paints is formaldehyde (which is a carcinogen). There are lots of other petrochemicals and petroleum-based pigments. So all of that is in kids’ paints, which is very shocking and it’s something that every parent should know when they’re letting their kids paint.
DEBRA: Could you explain to us about the labels that are on paint that write the “AP nontoxic?” What does that actually mean?
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: It just basically means that they passed the US regulation standard for nontoxic, but there’s really not much required to pass that. You just send in your information about what’s in your paint and no one does any testing on it. So they just trust the people.
DEBRA: I didn’t know that. Because I’m not an artist and I am not using these paints all the time, I haven’t done as much research on art supplies as other things that I’ve researched that I’m using myself all the time. But I thought that the Arts and Crafts Materials Institute – is that what it’s called? I’m trying to remember the name.
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Sure!
DEBRA: They are the ones that run that program and I thought that they have toxicologists on their staff and that they were testing for those things.
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Oh, okay.
DEBRA: But I don’t know that for a fact. You probably know more about it than I do. Anyway, we need to take another break. When we come back, we’re going to learn all about Leah’s natural earth paints. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Leah Fanning Mebane. She’s an artist who developed a line of earth paints, eco-friendly and toxic free.
Before the break, we were talking about the little symbol on packages of art supplies, the AP and CL – I’m actually now looking at the website for this organization. It’s the Art and Creative Materials Institute. I think their little emblems used to say “Nontoxic” on them, but they don’t anymore. But they conform to a certain standard and I guess what I need to do is I need to find out what that standard is and I’ll talk to them and I will cover that on another show.
Let’s go back to what you’re doing, Leah. I wanted to ask you a question about your paints just from an artistic viewpoint. I know that for myself, sometimes I run into things like I’m pretty familiar with natural dyes because I used to know somebody who would dye fabric using only plant-based dyes. And I know that sometimes there are limitations on what you can do with the colors when you are taking the natural route whereas in the synthetic dyes and pigments and everything, in such an array of colors, you could have actually any color you want.
Do you find that you have any limitations as an artist by using the natural pigments? Are you able to mix up pretty much any color you want?
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: That’s a good question. The earth pigments definitely don’t come in every single color. It means that our paints are made with just pure natural earth and minerals. So you can’t get a very bright purple with natural earth I found and you can’t get bright cadmium reds or yellows with natural earth. But what are even good are the really beautiful radiant natural hues, which actually I think are even more beautiful than the really, really bright and more fluorescent colors and they probably – oh, go ahead.
DEBRA: Go ahead. No, go ahead. I don’t want to interrupt you.
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: I was going to say they come in surprisingly huge array of colors. In natural earth, you can get a really great red, orange, yellow, green, a very bright blue from minerals, brown, different browns of course, black or white. And we do have a violet, but it’s more of an earthy violet.
DEBRA: I’ve worked with milk paint. I’ve painted walls with milk paint. When I remodeled my bathroom, we used colored clay plaster. So when you’re working with those paints and plasters, it’s all earth pigments. So the only colors that you can use are the ones that are there, but I found that there was a tremendous variety and I had no disappointment in the colors at all or no feeling that there wasn’t enough choice. It was just really beautiful.
Could you tell me? I don’t have an idea of where these earth pigments come from. Can you tell me how they exist in the earth and how they are processed and things like that?
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Sure. Yes. They’re just natural clay and they’re colored with different natural iron oxides and minerals in the earth.
DEBRA: Do they occur in nature that way? Are they being mined from someplace?
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Yes. They’re dug straight from the ground. You can synthetically make iron oxide (basically rust), but these are just natural clays straight from the earth.
When I first started the business, I was actually collecting them myself and going out in the woods and digging them out and grinding and sifting and seething them into a very, very fine powder. So that’s basically the processing part. It’s just the grinding part into a very, very fine powder.
DEBRA: And then how does it turn into paint? You just mix something in it and it goes on. I’m not an artist. I don’t know how this works.
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Yes. It’s extremely easy to make paint. Anyone can do it. Basically just add pigments to a binder and there are many, many different types of binders. Throughout history, since the cavemen, people have used tree stuff or blood or milk or eggs.
There are lots of different things you can add. That’s basically the glue to mix in with the pigment and so that it will attach to the surface. The Egyptians and Etruscans and Medieval Monks all used natural earth pigments and binders.
DEBRA: Yes.
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Go ahead.
DEBRA: There’s a huge history of people using natural earth pigments for paints because I guess the first synthetic color wasn’t developed until the 1800s. So prior to that, any color that you see on a wall in the ancient building – and the artists like Leonardo da Vinci, they had to mix up their own paints. They couldn’t just go down to the art store and buy them in a tube.
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: That’s right. Yeah. It’s interesting.
DEBRA: All those paintings, all those pre-industrial paintings by those great masters were all from completely natural paints.
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: And you can see how long they have lasted.
DEBRA: Very long.
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Yeah.
DEBRA: Some of those paints are hundreds and hundreds of years old.
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Yeah. If you think of the cave paintings, they’re at least 40,000 years old. They’re natural earth pigments on those walls.
DEBRA: That’s incredible.
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Yes.
DEBRA: I’m looking at all your beautiful paintings on your website. Are all these recent natural paintings or some of them are synthetic paints from before?
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: You can tell on the colors if you go to my Abstracts page. There’s one section called Art from the Earth and they’re all paintings with the natural earth paints, natural earth oil paints. And those were all pretty much everything I painted in the last three years since I’ve been only recently using the natural paint. So the ones before that, you can see in my other paintings, they have a little bit more bright and young colors.
DEBRA: They’re a little bit more bright, but I just naturally gravitate towards the softer colors. I was just working on redesigning my website and I’m always picking the soft colors that look like these earth colors rather than the bright colors that look so synthetic.
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Yeah.
DEBRA: We will be back after this break. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. We’re here today with my guest, Leah Fanning Mebane and we’re talking about art and paints and toxic chemicals and how to not have toxic chemicals in your paint. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Leah Fanning Mebane. I’m so careful about pronouncing your name because I like it when people pronounce my name correctly.
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Yeah.
DEBRA: Leah Fanning Mebane. I’ll get it before the end of the show. I’ve just been enjoying looking through both of her websites during the break or during the breaks, I should say. That’s what I do during the break, I sit here and I look at people’s websites.
Let me give you the URLs. One is NaturalEarthPaint.com and her artist’s site is FanningArt.com. On NaturalEarthPaint.com, you can find her professional artist oil paints, which are simply earth pigments and walnut oil. And there’s also the children’s earth paint. And there’s also a face painting kit and there’s a book that she had painted all the pictures for. It is just a lovely, lovely site. If I felt that I had any aptitude for painting, anything, I would buy all these paintings and paint away because I just think that it looks like a wonderful thing to do. And especially if I had a child, I would get the children’s paints just right away and let them go for it.
When you put things on your skin, the toxic chemicals can be absorbed right through your skin. So if your children are finger painting, you don’t want to buy the toxic finger paint. You would want to buy something like this. Wouldn’t you agree?
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Absolutely, yes. Yeah. Our children’s paints are just simply natural earth and organic milk proteins. So it’s very pure and completely natural, only two ingredients.
DEBRA: It sounds like even if they accidentally put their fingers on their mouth, it wouldn’t harm them at all.
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Yes, not basically and it will probably taste very good.
DEBRA: Yeah. Do you find as an artist that you have a different experience working with natural materials than the synthetic materials? Does it feel different to you?
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: The natural paints or the natural pigments, the particles of the pigments are irregular sizes since they’re natural and the synthetic pigments are just very uniformed since they are made synthetically. So when light bounces through the pigment, it bounces off of all these irregular edges and makes the paint a lot more luminous and radiant. So that’s another good side of the earth pigment as opposed to synthetic.
DEBRA: I like that idea. I like that idea. You have an article on your website called Why is Earth Paint Sacred?. Can you tell us about that?
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Yeah. That was about the aboriginal cultures in Australia and how creating with natural earth was a very sacred process for them. And all of their ochre sites, they call them ochre natural earth sites where they would harvest the clay, were very sacred and private. It was the process of painting their bodies and spiritual rituals are very big for their culture. Most indigenous cultures all over the world use natural earth pigments and they use them in religion and spiritual reasons.
DEBRA: And a lot of tribal cultures did paint their bodies, painted their faces. So this whole modern idea of face painting isn’t such a strange thing.
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Yeah, absolutely. Ever since the cavemen, we’ve been painting our bodies with pigment and bear fat or oil or whatever [inaudible 00:43:39] that they wanted to use. And it wasn’t until very recent times that our face paints are now super toxic and filled with synthetics and toxins and heavy metals and lots of nasty things. So it’s been very crazy that you would create something to put on your skin that’s filled with toxins.
DEBRA: But there are many, many products that are exactly like that. Many beautiful lotions and shampoos and all those things are full of toxic chemicals. We put them on our bodies. They get absorbed through our skin immediately. You don’t want to put heavy metals on your children’s faces. It’s just not a good thing to do. So this is really great that you have an alternative for that.
So did I miss anything? Is there anything else that you want to talk about your work?
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: I don’t think so. And on our website, we have lots of different articles and resources and nature-based craft and art [inaudible 00:44:49] and natural paint recipes to make different types of paints with our pigments. So there are lots of stuff on the website if you want to check it out and see what’s there.
DEBRA: Yeah. So you sell the pigments separate and you also sell them made into paint, right?
LEAH FANNING MEBANE: Yes.
DEBRA: So people can make their own paints. Okay, good. That’s a good thing to know. Okay. I’m so glad that you came to talk to us today about this because it’s such an important subject and I think that art is an important thing for people to experience.
I know that even though I’m not a painter, I’m an artist in my writing and doing my graphic design for my website and as a writer and I’m also a musician. I know that art comes from within and it’s something that needs to be expressed. So it’s so good to have a way that we can be creating colorful art, visual art, painting, painting our bodies, painting paper, painting canvass, painting our walls, whatever and to do it in a way that connects us with the earth instead of doing in a way that’s toxic.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. You can go to my website and find out more about Toxic Free Talk Radio by going to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. And if you go to – particularly you want to go today because I just put up my new artistic expression of my new banner across the top. I haven’t redesigned the whole entire site, but I put up a new banner because I wanted to communicate more what the site is about in a way that it wasn’t before. I’m very excited – you can see my artistic expression – to be able to play with the colors and do all these things.
So when you go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, first of all, you will find the upcoming shows for the current week. And so today, we had Leah and tomorrow, we’re going to be talking about gluten-free skin products and on Thursday, my friend, Annie B. Bond, author of many books is going to be here. We are going to be talking about toxic free cleaning basics. We have both been doing this for a long time, so we both know a lot about how you can clean your house in very simple and natural ways without buying toxic cleaning products.
And on Friday of this week is show number 100. I can’t believe that the time has gone by so fast. I can’t believe that I have already done a hundred shows, but Friday will be show number 100 and I am working on planning something special to celebrate because 100 is a lot, doing this for five days a week. But I have to say that I really love doing these shows, that when it gets to be 11:45 and I know that I’m going to go on at 12:00, that’s the highlight of my day actually. I have a pretty wonderful life, but I just love talking about things that are better for life, things that are better for health and I love talking to people who are doing better things for our lives and for our planet.
So in addition to finding out who’s going to be on this week, I also have all the shows archived. You can listen to all 100 shows, except for show number one. It didn’t get recorded. But you go to the Archives and you can see all the other guests that have been on. You could listen to today’s show again if you want to. And you can listen to them 24 hours a day, seven days a week anywhere in the world on any device that picks up the internet and you can share them with your friends and you can download them, whatever it is that you want. Just listen and get the information because if you apply the information that is in these shows, you’ll have a less toxic life and will have a less toxic world.
Across the top of the page, right under my picture of me holding my book, Toxic Free, you‘ll see there’s a navigation bar where you can go to different parts of my website. If you can click on Shop, that will take you to Debra’s List and you will be able to find hundreds of links to all kinds of toxic free products. Some of the businesses that are listed there have been guests and many more will be guests in the future, but you’ll find almost anything that you need right there.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’ll be back tomorrow.
Tips for Safer Clothing from Washington Toxics Coalition
I’m passing this along to you from Washington Toxics Coalition…
Are you buying back-to-school clothing to replace the worn out and the outgrown? Under the Children’s Safe Products Act, toxic metals, phthalates and formaldehyde were reported to the Washington State Department of Ecology by makers and retailers of children’s clothing. While the presence of a chemical does not necessarily mean a product is harmful, read on to learn about the chemicals found in clothing and how to minimize exposure until we know more about the risks.
Where do chemicals on clothing come from? Some come from the dyes used to give our clothing color; others from the inks used for screen printing logos, sports designs and special characters from movies and TV. Chemicals may also originate in the processing of the yarn into clothing and the sizing used to finish a garment. Small metal parts or ornamentation on clothing often contain heavy metals.
What can you do?
- Opt for hand me downs or shop at second hand stores as repeated washings may reduce chemical load from the finishing process.
- Choose screen printing designs carefully to avoid those with a raised, plastic feel.
- Try to avoid clothing with metal parts or ornamentation especially if the metal part can fit into a young child’s mouth.
- Forego clothing with wrinkle free, anti-microbial and stain-resistant labeling.
- Always wash new garments several times before wearing to reduce manufacturing and shipping residuals.
- Patronize retailers and manufacturers that have made a commitment to reducing their chemical footprint. Search for this type of information at a company’s website.
What about organic clothing? The USDA Organic standards vouch for how the cotton plant was grown, but do not certify how the fiber was processed into clothing. Certification programs such as GOTS and OEKO-TEX® label garments made of textiles that were manufactured responsibly. The GOTS and OEKO-TEX® standards differ in which chemicals are restricted and the allowable limits for others, but both may indicate that a company is taking care of how its textile manufacturing impacts health and the environment. Certified clothing can be expensive, however, so prioritize garments that your child will spend many hours in such as pajamas.
Think about following the precautionary principle when it comes to nano-textiles, fabrics with nano-particles embedded to provide primarily stain-resistance or anti-bacterial properties. There is concern that nano-particles such as silver may detach from the textile and enter the body or be dispersed in the environment.
* * * *
And here’s some good news: Swedish clothing chain H&M will sell only organic cotton by 2020. I’m told they have lots of organic and 100% natural fiber clothing. http://about.hm.com/AboutSection/en/About/Sustainability/Commitments/Use-Resources-Responsibly/Raw-Materials/Cotton.html
It would be wonderful if other stores would follow suit.
