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Meet a Toxicologist
Yes, there is a field called “toxicology” and it’s all about determining what’s toxic and what’s not. Toxicologist Steven G. Gilbert, PhD, DABT, a regular guest who is helping us understand the toxicity of common chemicals we may be frequently exposed to. Dr. Gilbert is Director and Founder of the Institute of Neurotoxicology and author of A Small Dose of Toxicology- The Health Effects of Common Chemicals.He received his Ph.D. in Toxicology in 1986 from the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, is a Diplomat of American Board of Toxicology, and an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, University of Washington. His research has focused on neurobehavioral effects of low-level exposure to lead and mercury on the developing nervous system. Dr. Gilbert has an extensive website about toxicology called Toxipedia, which includes a suite of sites that put scientific information in the context of history, society, and culture. www.toxipedia.org
LISTEN TO OTHER SHOWS WITH STEVEN G. GILBERT, PhD, DABT
- Toxics in the Air We Breathe—Indoors and Outdoors—and How it Affects Our Health
- Toxic Solvents and Vapors
- How Pesticides Can Harm Your Health
- Why Do People Doubt the Science Behind Toxics?
- There is No Safe Level for Lead Exposure
- Fewer Chemicals Make Healthier Babies
- Why We Shouldn’t Have Nuclear Power Plants
- How Mercury Affects Your Health
- Nanoparticles
- Persistant Bioaccumulative Toxicants
- How Endocrine Disruptors Disrupt Our Endocrine Systems
- The Dangers of Exposure to Radiation and How to Protect Yourself
- Toxics Throughout History—Exposure to Toxic Substances is Not New
- The Ethics of Toxics
- How to Determine Your Risk of Harm From an Exposure to a Toxic Chemical
- The Basic Principles of Toxicology
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Meet a Toxicologist
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Steven G. Gilbert, PhD, DABT
Date of Broadcast: August 22, 2013
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world. And we need to have all kinds of information because there are toxic chemicals all around us in the consumer products that we use every day. Just walking out our front doors, there are toxic chemicals falling from the sky, and pesticides on lawns, and car exhausts. And all around us, there are toxic chemicals.
But we can be free of the negative health effects of all these toxic chemicals by learning how to minimize our exposure to them, and remove them from our bodies.
Today is Thursday, August 22, 2013. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. And it’s cloudy, maybe there might be thunderstorms, so if you lose me, that’s why, but I’ll be right back.
Today, we’re going to be talking with Dr. Steven Gilbert, PhD, DABT. He’s a toxicologist, the director and founder of the Institute of Neurotoxicology and author of the book, A Small Dose of Toxicology: The Health Effects of Common Chemicals.
He received his PhD in toxicology in 1986 from the University of Rochester New York, and he’s a diplomat of the American Board of Toxicology and an affiliate professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences in the University of Washington.
So he has a lot of experience with toxic chemicals. And 1986, that was about when I started getting interested in toxic chemicals.
Thanks for joining us today, Dr. Gilbert.
STEVEN GILBERT: You’re very welcome. It’s nice to be here.
DEBRA: Thank you. So tell us, how did you get interested in toxic chemicals, of all things?
STEVEN GILBERT: It came out a little bit sideways. My background is actually in electrical engineering. And I did a lot of computer work after I’ve graduated. And a lot of that was related to testing and designing products for testing on toxic chemicals.
But I came into it that way. And I got very interested in the effects of chemicals particularly in the developing nervous system and how to prevent chemicals such as lead and mercury from affecting developing nervous systems.
I went back to school about six years after I graduated to get my PhD and really devoted myself to trying to lessen the effects of chemicals on the developing nervous system.
DEBRA: That’s a very good thing to do. We share that interest in preventing the effects of toxic chemicals.
STEVEN GILBERT: We really focus on prevention than treatment. It’s great, but we really need to focus on prevention.
DEBRA: I totally agree. So what does a toxicologist do?
STEVEN GILBERT: That’s a really good question. Toxicologists do a range of things. And one reason I like about the field of toxicology is you can do it for testing chemicals, you can do regulatory work on policy development, determining what chemical levels might be safe in the environment or in the food supply or in the water supply. So, there’s a range of jobs in the state and federal area.
There are also pharmaceutical companies. They employ a lot of toxicologists for developing new drugs and testing the health and safety of the new drugs. Pesticide manufacturers, so the agriculture industry, employ toxicologists.
So, there’s really a wide range. I don’t do any research anymore, only in the academic environment of course. A lot of toxicologists is working in the academic environment, looking at the health effects of chemicals.
I don’t do any research anymore. My focus is really on how we talk about toxicology, how we inform people.
So, my view is we know how to do more and more about less and less. We’re really good at doing research. What we don’t do such a good job of connecting the dots and really getting information out there to people so we can make better decisions about our health.
DEBRA: I actually agree with that. And that’s part of why I inform the public about toxicology information. It’s because I don’t think that the field is informing the public enough. I would agree with you on that.
STEVEN GILBERT: I really appreciate what you’re trying to do here because I think it is really important to talk about these issues and get more information out there. We know a lot of stuff. We just don’t use it well.
DEBRA: Yes, I agree. And that’s one of the reasons why I asked you to be on the show, and I’m so glad that you’re here. And I hope you’ll come again, and maybe again, and again and again because I only know as much as I can learn as a consumer, and somebody that didn’t even take chemistry in school. But I just sat down when I got to a point in my life where I needed to understand toxic chemicals because they we remaking me sick.
I just sat down with a chemistry dictionary, and I looked up formaldehyde. And then it said this is how formaldehyde is made or something. And then I went and looked up the other chemicals that went into it.
And that’s how I learned about chemistry, it was just reading a chemistry dictionary. But you’re so trained in this field that all of us who are listening, and everybody in the world need to be hearing from people like you, to educate us because we all, in the world that we’re living in today, we all need to be toxicologists. We all need to be understanding the chemicals around us, and knowing how to protect ourselves from them.
STEVEN GILBERT: I think that’s really true because we do need to know the basics. And that’s why I wrote my book, A Small Dose of Toxicology, as an introductory book on toxicology and the health effects of the common chemicals that we’re all exposed to.
I think it’s very important to learn at least the principles of that because a lot of decisions are made around toxic chemicals.
DEBRA: They are. And I haven’t read all of your book, but I’ve been reading it in small doses. And I really love the approach that you have. I love that you’re tying everything that you’re saying to daily life, and I love that you’re saying things in a simple way, and then also providing more resources.
I see a lot of similarities between what I’m doing and what you’re doing, especially look at A Small Dose of Toxicology. Some of the principles that you covered were the same things that I felt I needed to cover in my book, so that people could have a basic understanding. But of course, you’re writing about it from your knowledge as a trained toxicologist where I’m just writing about it as somebody who reads about it, but hasn’t been trained.
STEVEN GILBERT: Yes, that’s a very important perspective because we all are affected by toxic chemicals. I think that perspective is really important.
But just to quickly mention, the Small Dose is free. It’s a free e-book. So it can be downloaded off the web for free.
DEBRA: Yes, and I would suggest that everybody go and download it because it really is—even if you only read part of it, the parts of it that explain the basics of toxicology are really, really excellent. And these are things that every single person needs to know on the planet. You need to know this like you need to know the alphabet or how to add and subtract.
It’s just basics of life in the way the world is today.
And in fact, let’s just talk more about—right now, let’s talk more about what’s on your website. It’s Toxipedia.org. And that’s where you can go to find the book. T-O-X-I-P-E-D-I-A dot org.
And why don’t you tell us about different kinds of resources you have there? The thing that’s important to say about this, why this is different from other websites about toxic chemicals is that you really explore the world of toxicology in the context of history, society and culture.
And so one of the things that you can find out on this website, for example, is the whole history of toxicology going back to ancient times. Toxic chemicals didn’t just appear in the 1940s when they started making pesticides. Toxic chemicals exist, and
Dr. Gilbert really put the whole field together in a way that is very fascinating.
So, tell us more about what they can find on your website.
STEVEN GILBERT: Thank you, Debra. I think the history, putting the science in the context of history, society and culture, is very important. We just can’t throw a lot of facts out there. And there’s a lot of [heartfelt] issues around toxicology that I think need to be explored. And we have a lot of lessons learned if we look historically.
So, I try to put the chemicals and the other information in that context, in the context of history and society, so we know where we’re coming from and know how to avoid some of these mistakes.
One of the things we did was to make an interactive poster called Milestone to Toxicology. So the milestone poster is a colorful poster. It has little squares on it. You can explore the squares. You open it up. It’s a PDF file. You can click on one of those squares and get more information.
That poster has now been translated into over 10 languages. So it’s in Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, French, Italian, Turkish, Arabic. It’s a very fun poster, fun information.
So, one thing we tried to do is make toxicological information fun. We also have a big education section. And that explores Small Dose. And there’s material for a 1- and 2-day toxicology courses. Each chapter of the Small Dose book comes with a PowerPoint presentation that you can download to help teaching the material.
We have sections on ethics. I think ethics and values, how to make decisions, is really important.
We also support a number of other websites. We just have a pretty wide range, one of the most—
DEBRA: I need to interrupt you for a minute because we do need to go to our station break. And then we’ll be right back, and we can continue.
I’m talking with Dr. Steven Gilbert, toxicologist, author of A Small Dose of Toxicology. 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 Dr. Steven Gilbert who is a toxicologist and author of A Small Dose of Toxicology. And he’s got a great website, Toxipedia.org, T-O-X-I-P-E-D-I-A dot-org.
And before I interrupted him, Dr. Gilbert was telling us about what’s on his website. So why don’t you go on and finish what you want to say about that?
STEVEN GILBERT: I was just talking about the different sections we have. We have a lot of material there. It’s a free Wiki-based site. We’re always looking for contributions.
For example, on the front page, I was just mentioning the ethics where we talk about environmental justice issues and the decision-making process. We have a section on the precautionary principle. And hopefully, we’ll get into that a little bit more later.
We also have a section called the Toxicology History room which has a number of posters or contributors from people around the world. You can actually request the Toxicology History posters to be at your facility.
We have a section called Lessons Learned where we have different essays explore past issues around toxicology. We have a Day-to-Day Issues Around Toxicology. I tweet about this every day. I put up an issue or a historical fact that occurred on toxicology.
So, we try to make toxicology interesting. We support a number of other sites like the World Library of Toxicology. ASmallDoseOf.org supports the A Small Dose of Toxicology book.
We have new a website coming up—it’s just getting going—called Women in Peace. And we have a site called Washington Nuclear Museum and Education that we support that focuses on Hanford and toxicology issues around Hanford, the most contaminated site in the Northern Hemisphere. It was used to create plutonium for World War II.
And we also have a site called Integrative Pest Management, IPMopedia, that looks at Integrative Pest Management issues.
So, we cover a wide range of areas. And you can search Toxipedia. I hope you enjoy exploring it.
DEBRA: I’ve been enjoying exploring it very much. And I’m sure I haven’t seen all of it yet. There’s a lot there. And it’s all presented in an interesting and simple way. So very well done.
STEVEN GILBERT: Thank you.
DEBRA: I also wanted to say that it was interesting to me when I started reading A Small Dose of Toxicology—one thing I want to make sure that everybody sees is, and I always have trouble finding it, is that you have a page where you talk about different toxic chemicals and give background on that, such as you do in A Small Dose of Toxicology has a small list. But you have more on your website.
And I always have difficulty finding it. But it’s there. So people should search for it.
What I wanted to say about the chemicals that are in A Small Dose of Toxicology is that I had to smile when I read this because the number one toxic chemical that you list, not that you were rating them, as being the most important, but the first one that you chose to address was alcohol—alcoholic beverages.
And in my book, Toxic-Free, that was number two. And then the second toxic chemical—and the reason I wanted to mention this is because people usually think of toxic chemicals as being something like formaldehyde or benzene or something like that. But in your book, A Small Dose of Toxicology, the first one you address is alcoholic beverages, and the second one you address is caffeine like in coffee and chocolate, and all those other caffeine-laden foods.
And number three is nicotine.
In my book, Toxic-Free, the number one that I discussed first was cigarettes, nicotine and cigarettes.
So we have a very similar approach as to what we started our books with.
STEVEN GILBERT: Very good.
DEBRA: A lot of similarity. And then we go off in different directions. But the fact that we both started with the basics of toxicology and the same toxic chemicals, that was pretty interesting.
STEVEN GILBERT: That’s very good. I think that’s very important because those are chemicals we’re all commonly exposed to. We need to understand the potential health effects of those chemicals.
DEBRA: We do. And I think that if somebody is drinking a lot of alcoholic beverages, if they’re drinking a lot of coffee, there’s the caffeine, and there’s the pesticide, and all the pollution in the water and everything, or if they’re smoking a lot of cigarettes, if they’re doing any of those three things, in my opinion, I think that those are going to make them sick. And you could eliminate some other toxic chemical down the line like formaldehyde on bed sheets or something, but it’s not going to help to do that if you’re doing these big things—those big three things. Good. I’m glad we agree.
STEVEN GILBERT: Yes, we totally agree on that.
DEBRA: So could you tell us about individual sensitivities and how people react or are poisoned in different ways?
STEVEN GILBERT: I think a really important issue is individual sensitivity. I think, as we understand the genome better and sciences progress, that’s become more and more important, understanding who is most sensitive to chemicals.
For example, pesticides are a good example of that where some people are more sensitive to pesticides because they don’t metabolize them as well. So you get what’s called the healthy worker effect.
So workers that work in pesticide fields tend to metabolize pesticides faster and deal with them. People that are slow metabolizers don’t work well in pesticide fields and tend to drop out of the industry. You’ve got people that are more resilient to pesticides.
There are many chemicals that are like that. Lead, for example, the more we’ve learned about lead, the more we found that people are more sensitive to lead at a very young age. The developing nervous systems is exclusively sensitive.
So, taking into account age, the health effects of chemicals is really, really important. The developing nervous system is explicitly sensitive to pesticides, lead, mercury. And we’ve learned that over the last 20 years just how sensitive that is.
And metabolism is very important, how well you metabolize a compound. And your genetics is very important […]
So, there are a lot of issues. Always remember that kids are not little adults because they eat more, breathe more, and drink more than adults do per body weight. So there’s sensitivity like that. And kids have that hand-to-mouth behavior. So there are a lot of interesting issues you need to take into account when looking at toxic effects of the chemical.
DEBRA: So that was one of the things that was of interest to me as I was studying and learning these things too because you think that, like you read in a book this chemical is toxic or that chemical is toxic, but then how is it toxic to you? And that’s a whole different question.
After we take our commercial break here, I want to ask you this question about how is it determined that a chemical is toxic because there’s so much variation in how our bodies receive the toxicity and what our bodies to with these toxic chemicals, how we can figure out what’s really toxic. And there are so many variations about that.
So we’re going to address that after this commercial break. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. I’m talking to Steven Gilbert. He’s a toxicologist, Dr. Steven Gilbert, author of A Small Dose of Toxicology. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Dr. Steven Gilbert, PhD, DABT. He’s the author of A Small Dose of Toxicology and the publisher of a huge and wonderful website on toxicology called Toxipedia.org, T-O-X-I-P-E-D-I-A dot org.
Before the break, I asked a question, and I want to repeat the question because I really have two questions, and they’re related to each other. I think what I asked you before the break was to tell us about the individual differences that we have in our bodies that would make a chemical more or less toxic to us. But there’s another question too.
You probably need to answer these one at a time, but I want to ask them both at once.
There’s a lot of controversy about whether or not a chemical is toxic. And so I’m looking at a lot of industrial things that are happening like manufacturers, and regulations, which I think we’re going to talk about later if we have some time. But people are saying toxic chemicals need to be regulated or we should be labeling things in certain ways.
But then there’s a question about what are the toxic chemicals that need to be regulated and is the chemical toxic.
Those are the two things I’d like us to talk about next. Big questions.
STEVEN GILBERT: Yes, those are huge questions. One quick example on different sensitivities is with caffeine. Caffeine is a stimulant. And some people can drink caffeine at dinner time, and not have any problems with going to sleep. Other people like myself will only drink caffeine in the afternoon or 2 o’clock at the latest because it does affect our sleep.
So, we respond and react to chemicals very differently. And that’s just a simple example. Some people get a headache when they stop drinking caffeine. And that’s another example of individual sensitivity. It varies widely with our genetics the effects of different chemicals.
DEBRA: Yes, it does.
STEVEN GILBERT: Now, to the other question of determining toxicity, we know how to do that in a lot of cases. For example, the Food and Drug Administration requires that new drugs go under extensive testing to show health effects and also efficacies (so does it do what it says it’s supposed to do). So new drugs that come out in the market have gone through extensive animals and human testing before they’re allowed to be marketed. And this came from historical issues—for example, thalidomide, it caused birth defects when thalidomide was consumed through organogenesis by the pregnant women.
So, we have a strong history of a very precautionary approach with putting new drugs on the market.
Unfortunately, we don’t have that with new chemicals going in the market.
DEBRA: Wait, wait! I want to ask you a question about drugs. So all these drugs are tested, but what are they tested for in order to be able to be allowed on the market. If anybody watches television at all, you can’t watch television without seeing these advertisements for all these drugs, and then they say in a very nice voice while children are playing in the meadow and the butterflies are flying and music in the background, “And this drug will cause blindness and death and liver problems. And be precautionary.” But these drugs are on the market with all these side effects.
STEVEN GILBERT: And actually, that’s good to know about that. And that’s what a lot of the testing of these compounds try to determine—what are the potential side effects.
And what they try to do with the drugs is have the exposure to the drug low enough so you don’t encounter the side effects.
And that’s part of the trick, knowing at what level a drug becomes toxic and the benefits are outweighed by the hazards of that drug.
And the new drugs, they try to determine what might be the potential hazards of those chemicals through animal testing and also through a lot of experience with human testing. And they’re required by law to read them off. If we had the same thing happen with industrial chemicals we’re exposed to, we’d have a much better idea of chemicals in our products.
DEBRA: Oh, wouldn’t that be great? That would be so great.
STEVEN GILBERT: There’s no law that requires what fragrances are put in dryer towels and things like that. We don’t know a lot of chemicals we’re exposed to. But we’re not required to list them.
So that’s the problem. We don’t have the same precautionary approach putting new chemicals on the market. Most people on this call will be excreting bisphenol-A in their urine. And I’ll bet nobody gave permission to be exposed to bisphenol-A.
DEBRA: Let’s use bisphenol-A as the example for this question because you can read things and books like Our Stolen Future that talk about the health effects of bisphenol-A. And then you can read all kinds of other things that say, “This government agency and this doctor say it doesn’t hurt us.”
I was reading something this morning that just came out last week. There was a new study that showed that not only is there lead in lipstick. This was an article in the New York Times. I don’t know if you saw this.
STEVEN GILBERT: I saw that.
DEBRA: In that article in the New York Times, which I’m going to be putting up on my website this afternoon, in that article, they talked about how there’s all now these eight heavy metals that they found in lipstick. But just in terms of lead in lipstick, the amount that they found was one part per millionth, but the FDA limit for lead in candy is one-tenth of that, 0.1 part per millionth.
And the CDC says there’s no safe level for lead.
So how are we supposed to know, as consumers, what is okay for us to be exposed to?
STEVEN GILBERT: You know, that is really tough. You just pointed out a great example of the contradiction of regulatory fields where lipsticks should be regulated like candy, at least, because you lick the lipstick off your lips. You’re being exposed to them younger and younger. Using lipstick, you’re exposed to lead which is a known hazard. And there is no safe level to lead exposure. So to have this standard is silly.
DEBRA: I think it’s silly too. It’s just more and more, as I study everything about life, I see that there are basic things that need o be understood. And yet, we have people running the world who don’t understand basic things.
And toxicology is one of those basic things. It should be taught in every school, that the things that we’re talking about here, everybody needs to know. And if people who are making regulations don’t know these things, we’re not going to get them on the labels.
There’s so much I could say. There’s probably so much you could say.
STEVEN GILBERT: It is really difficult because the regulatory system sometimes gets disconnected from the health issues and trying to prevent disease. Lipstick is a great example. Mercury in fish is another one. Bisphenol-A is another one.
A recent book just came out on bisphenol-A called Is It Safe? It gives all the history of the BPA, and the struggle to define the safety of chemicals by Sarah Vogel. And that gives a really great background on the controversy around BPA and the vested interest that often promote these products.
Lead, for example, has been promoted for decades in lead-based paint. It was added to gasoline. It took a lot of work to get lead out of gasoline. And it’s even more work to ban lead-based paint.
And if you look at what they did in Europe, they banned lead-based paint in Europe in the 1920s when the League of Nations said they recognized they can be hazardous to the developing nervous system. We didn’t do that in the United States because there’s vested interest in putting lead in paint because they’re making a lot of money from the mining and use of lead.
DEBRA: And I have to interrupt you again or else the commercial is going to interrupt you. I’m here with Dr. Steven Gilbert. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio, 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 Dr. Steven Gilbert. He’s a toxicologist and author of A Small Dose of Toxicology. And he has a very extensive, easy-to-read, informative website called Toxipedia.org. It’s T-O-X-I-P-E-D-I-A dot org.
Dr. Gilbert, I know that you want to talk about managing chemical exposures at the state and national level. So since we’re now in our last segment, let’s talk about that.
STEVEN GILBERT: Thank you. So I just want to mention that the federal agencies, the FDA and the EPA, work very hard trying to protect public health. And they attach safety factors to different drugs or chemicals that are on the environment. Those safety factors are meant to protect people that are potentially vulnerable.
The problem is that there are vested interests that push back on this really hard. BPA is a great example where the chemical industry is a billion-dollar a year product. And it’s in all kinds of products that we touch—even our cash register receipts. It’s all over the place, even liner cans and things like that.
So, trying to get trials on chemicals is very difficult. And they just limited it in baby bottles. It was not used in baby bottles. But that mostly came about because the States passed laws banning BPA from baby bottles and Nalgene drinking bottles for water.
So, it’s really a combination of trying to get the federal people to be more proactive on protecting human health.
And when we look on internationally, it’s been a big issue. We are trying to replace TSCA, the Toxic Substance Control Act. It was passed in 1976. And that’s not going well. It’s still bottled up in Congress. We’ve been trying for almost a decade. It’s the oldest law, environmental chemical law, that hasn’t been modified since the TSCA of ’76.
And Europe has moved ahead with a program called REACH—Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals—trying to provide more transparency and more data on these chemicals. TSCA doesn’t require the companies to produce a lot of data and health effects of chemicals, unlike the FDA, which it does require drugs to have all these chemical, all these data, to back up the potential side effects or point out potential hazards of a drug. We do not have that for standard chemicals.
In addition, we don’t have a good law to give us transparency, so we know what’s in the products that we’re using—which I think we have a right to know.
DEBRA: We do have a right to know. I just want to back up what you’re saying here and really emphasize it because in order for us to make a decision about our exposure to toxic chemicals. We need to know what’s in the product, what toxic chemicals are in the product, and we need to know what are the health effects of those toxic chemicals.
And unless we have both of those pieces of information, we can’t make a decision.
STEVEN GILBERT: I think that’s really important point. We have a right of information. We have a right to an environment that we can reach or maintain our full potential, particularly for children. We expose children to PCB’s and lead and alcohol and mercury. They rob them of their potential. And it robs adults of their potential. They get older and age.
So we have a right to a healthy and safe environment. And that’s not being honored by our regulatory structure right now.
DEBRA: Well, we have an alienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And the first one is life, and toxic chemicals take life away to some degree.
STEVEN GILBERT: They do, they do. They have a lot of long-term effects. Lead, you damage the developing nervous system with lead. It’s a lifetime effect. They lower their IQ, increase the probability of attention deficit disorders. It’s really tragic. And we’ve made this mistake again and again.
You look internationally in Nigeria, 400 kids died from lead exposure because of gold mining. The same thing in the Amazon over mercury exposure. We know better. We know what not to be doing.
DEBRA: Well, we know better. And also, I think that within each one of us, we have consciences. We know that we should be doing the right thing. And it’s the right thing to continue to allow this to happen, or is it the right thing to do what we need to do to clean it up.
This whole thing about toxic chemicals in industry is less than 200 years old. And granted that there are toxic things you’ll find on Dr. Gilbert’s website, the toxic exposures go way back into ancient times. But this whole thing would be constantly bombarded by toxic chemicals, toxic chemicals, toxic chemicals, 24 hours a day, and everything that we do is less than 200 years old, and the results of our industrial culture.
STEVEN GILBERT: I think it’s good to read on that. I’d really recommend it, Doubt is Our Product by David Michaels. He goes into the history of tobacco industry and how the tobacco industry for years said that their product was not toxic. And that industry has manufactured uncertainty around toxicology data.
So, it’s a very important book, Doubt is Our Product by David Michaels. It delves in the history and how industry has responded to regulatory process.
DEBRA: Thank you. So we only have a few minutes left. Let’s talk about the precautionary principle. Tell us what that is. That’s one of my favorite things.
STEVEN GILBERT: Yes, I love the precautionary principle.
So, the precautionary principle is really an approach to decision-making. It really says that you put the burden of responsibility on the proponents of an activity. The proponents of an activity should show that the chemical is safe, efficacious and not cause hazards.
And it also has a component of education, to hand people a transparent process and educating people about it.
So, an example is the Food and Drug Administration does take a precautionary approach putting drugs on the market. We don’t have that same approach with putting industrial chemicals. So the burden of proof, the burden or responsibility is put on the proponents of an activity.
I spent years doing research on lead and mercury funded by [tax-free] dollars while industry spent all their time arguing that lead was safe and was no problem. Instead of having the burden or responsibility if they’re putting it out in the environment, they should be funding the research to demonstrate safety.
So, the precautionary approach really shifts that around and says “the proponents of an activity have to invest, have to provide the data that show its product is safe.” I think that’s the base of the precautionary principle. And it really says that uncertainty should not be a reason for not taking action.
So, even if there’s some uncertainty about the potential health effects, we take action on the preponderance of data and not demand proof. And that’s what hung up the tobacco industry to make decisions, this industry. How do you prove tobacco products cause cancer?
And for years, we went round and round that circle. But the preponderance of evidence was that tobacco products do indeed cause cancer and nicotine was addictive. It was finally proven. But we have to jump through a lot of hoops to do that. We spent millions of dollars while industry makes a lot of profit from these products and not taking on the responsibility of health and safety to the general population.
DEBRA: So I’ve been working in this field for 30 years not as a toxicologist but as a consumer advocate. And so I’ve been in the position of making decisions and giving advice about helping consumers find products that are less toxic. And so in order to do that, I need to be able to make a decision about what I think is toxic, and what I don’t think is toxic.
And the way I’ve done that is to read as much as I can about what scientists have to say about these chemicals, but also to see what my own body is doing when it comes in contact with these chemicals. And I do listen to anecdotal evidence.
And I was writing about how toxic carpets were long before there were any measurements of toxic chemicals coming off of carpets because I could see people getting sick from them.
And so my viewpoint about this is that if I can observe a negative health effect or if there’s any question about it, I’ll go on the side of precaution. I know the more experience I have, the more I’ve been—now, I’m wanting to really be able to differentiate between what is a chemical that some people might have some individual response to versus something like DDT, for example, or lead, where really, it’s going to be dangerous to anybody.
And even if somebody isn’t visibly showing a poisoning response, that eventually, enough will build up into their body, where it’s going to cause a health effect.
And if I suspect that that was going on by what I’ve read or what I’ve observed, then I’ll say, “We should just stay away from this because I found that there are less toxic ways to do almost anything.”
STEVEN GILBERT: Yes, I think that’s a great example. If you take a precautionary approach based on your own observations or your own individual sensitivity, and looking for alternatives—that’s one of the points of the precautionary principle, Pick a lesser hazard.
Using flame retardants is a good example. Cotton and wool are naturally flame retardant. But if you use these synthetic fibers, they have flame retardants in them. And we just don’t need to go there. We don’t need to be doing that.
DEBRA: Yeah, we can stop because there’s an alternative.
STEVEN GILBERT: There are good alternatives. And we also need to know more about our products. That’s really the case. We should not have to worry about lead in jewelry, or lead in candy, which are obviously not the way to do it. We are still bombarded by products that have lead-based paint on them—lead in candy and…
DEBRA: And we do, and it’s not on the label. And I think if we could just get this stuff on the label or even if it’s not on the label, if you could go online and look up a product and see “even though it’s not required by law, this is what’s in it,” the whole economy would shift because people would be looking for products that didn’t have toxic chemicals in them.
STEVEN GILBERT: Yes, knowing what products have phthalates, and the cosmetics that have phthalates or that carry fragrances, or nail polish, we should know what’s in these products, what we’re being exposed to, and how much we’re being exposed to.
People that work in nail salons get differentially exposed to these products as well as in day-to-day use of these products. There’s just no reason not to know what’s in these products.
DEBRA: And we were coming up on the end of the show now. So thank you so much, Dr. Gilbert, for being on the show.
STEVEN GILBERT: You’re very welcome. I enjoyed it.
DEBRA: And I would love to have you on again. We’ll talk soon.
STEVEN GILBERT: Thank you very much.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd.
Is This Futon Less Toxic Than My Sofa?
Question from Erin
Hi Debra, We have two young children and I’m worried about their toxic exposure.
My husband has finally agreed to ditch our conventional sofa set — as long as I don’t spend money replacing it.
We also have a 2-year old all-cotton futon (non organic, treated with boric acid) with an untreated hardwood frame that could replace one of the sofas.
I think pesticides do break down over time—does boric acid also?
Even though I know it is not a perfect solution, this seems to be a *less* toxic option, but I wanted your opinion first. Thanks for all you do!
Debra’s Answer
Yes, this futon and frame is less toxic than your conventional sofa set. Well done on your progress!
What Makes a Rug Pad Mold/Mildew/Moth Resistant?
Question from Greenmom
Hi Debra, Do felt/jute pads for area rugs have fungicide or pesticide? They claim to be Mold/mildew/moth resistant and I’m wondering whats used to achieve that?
Specifically, I’m looking at this: www.rugpadcorner.com/shop/ultra-premium/
Thank you for all the help, you are a great resource!
Debra’s Answer
Well, I called the company (you can call them too) and was told there are “no chemicals, glues, or adhesives” in any of their products. They only use recycled or natural materials.
They may be making the claim to be mold/mildew/moth resistant because of the natural latex rubber. I specifically asked if there were pesticides or fungicides and they said that the manufacturer says there are none.
This pad might smell like latex, but otherwise, this site looks like a good find!
Household Hazardous Waste—What to Do With the Toxics You Want to Trash
My guest today is Victoria Hodge, President of the North American Hazardous Materials Management Association (NAHMMA), a professional organization dedicated to pollution prevention and reducing the hazardous constituents entering municipal waste streams from households, small businesses and other entities that are not included in other toxics disposal regulations. She is also the Municipal Sales Manager for the Central Region for Otto Environmental Systems, where she works with the field sales team to build municipal business in both products and services. Among other activities in the field of solid waste and recycling Victoria set up a pharmeceutical collection site that received regional, state, and national awards as a result of its success. We’ll be talking aabout which items in your home are considered hazardous waste and how to legally dispose of them. www.nahmma.org
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Household Hazardous Waste—What to Do with the Toxics You Want to Trash
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Victoria Hodge
Date of Broadcast: August 21, 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. There are toxic chemicals all around us, in consumer products that we use, in the environment. They’re just all over the place—even in our bodies. But there are things that we can do to make less toxic choices, to remove toxic chemicals from our homes, from our bodies, from our workplaces.
And today, what we’re going to talk about is what to do with all those toxic chemicals that you might be removing from your home. When you decide to go toxic-free at home, or toxic-free in your workplace, what do you do with all those toxic chemicals? It’s actually illegal to put them in your trash.
And today, we’re going to be talking with Victoria L. Hodge who is the president of the North American Hazardous Materials Management Association. Hi, Victoria.
VICTORIA HODGE: Hi, Debra. How are you today?
DEBRA: I’m good. How are you?
VICTORIA HODGE: I’m doing well.
DEBRA: I forgot to say that today is August 20, 2013. And I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. And where are you, Victoria?
VICTORIA HODGE: I’m in the beautiful Denton, Texas, just north of the Dallas Forth Worth Metroplex.
DEBRA: I’ve been to Texas. It’s a beautiful place.
VICTORIA HODGE: Yes, it can be, absolutely.
DEBRA: Victoria, you have a long list of credentials in working in solid waste. What made you interested in working in this area?
VICTORIA HODGE: Well, I started off working for the City of Denton in quite a few years ago. I was working with the Solid Waste Department. And they decided they wanted to start a Household Hazardous Waste Program, and I thought that would be a great opportunity for me to make a difference in my community and in the environment. So, I decided to take on the challenge and do it.
DEBRA: Can you tell us something about the history of Household Hazardous Waste? I know that, when I was born, there was no such thing. And actually, 30 years ago, when I started writing about toxic chemicals in consumer products, there was no Household Hazardous Waste Program.
The first one I ever heard of—and I don’t remember the date—it was a collection day that you couldn’t go take it in at any time, and we had to save up our pesticides and our paint cans and everything. And then once a month, there’s something. There’s a collection day, and we’d have to go take things to the collection day.
Tell us about the whole idea of Household Hazardous Waste, why it’s important, and how we came to have Household Hazardous Waste Collection.
VICTORIA HODGE: It’s funny that you say that you remember being able to go once a month to drop off items because I know a community still today that don’t have drop-off collections at all. And the ones that do sometimes only have them once a year.
And we’re lucky that some communities are able to incorporate an ongoing facility or ongoing collection. Each community is different when it comes to that.
DEBRA: Where I live right now in Florida, I can just take those in at any time. It’s five days a week, they’re open. Anyone can take in their household hazardous waste collection. I actually thought it was that way all across the country.
VICTORIA HODGE: Unfortunately, it’s not. And you’re very lucky because the State of Florida is one of the leading states that is pushing everyone onwards of getting everyone else involved and onboard. And you mentioned earlier that I’m the president of the North American Hazardous Materials Management Association, which we lovingly call it NAHMMA, so I’ll call it NAHMMA from here on out.
The State of Florida, their chapter is the strongest chapter in our organization.
DEBRA: Yay, Florida.
VICTORIA HODGE: Yes, exactly.
DEBRA: So what’s the difference between when somebody throws a household hazardous waste in the garbage can, just the regular trash, versus taking it to Household Hazardous Waste Collection? And I was assuming because it’s illegal where I’ve lived to put household hazardous waste in the trash, that it was that way everywhere. Is that the case?
VICTORIA HODGE: It is not the case. Since it is a consumer amount—let’s say, you buy a bottle of cleaner as an individual, it may have the same chemicals, and it does. It has the same chemicals that a corporation when they buy or make big, huge, large amounts of it. They’re just regulated, where they have to dispose of it in a certain way.
We, as consumers, when we buy that cleaner in our little bottle from a grocery store or a home improvement store, there’s no regulation on how to dispose of it, so we are able to throw it legally into the landfill, into our trash, which eventually would probably go to a landfill in those communities.
Obviously, we know that that’s not the best solution. And fortunately, many communities do have Household Hazardous Waste Collections, or ongoing facilities where people can drop it off.
DEBRA: What if somebody lives in a community where they don’t have that?
VICTORIA HODGE: One of the things that I’d like to recommend is if you have a chemical, if you have a product that you have used and either you don’t like it, or you’ve used all that you need of that, see if any of your neighbors or friends need it before you try to dispose of it. That way, you’re not throwing it out into the environment, or into the landfill. It might be someone else’s favorite product. Just because you didn’t like it or needed it anymore, it might be something that they would normally go to the store and buy.
And so that way, it’s being completely used. And the person that you’re giving it to has, fortunately, saved some money.
DEBRA: Well, what is a household hazardous waste site look like? How is it different from a landfill? When I take things to the collection, where does it go?
VICTORIA HODGE: The household hazardous waste collection site, it’s usually the chemicals, the items, are separated by their class of chemical, and it’s either recycled or disposed of properly, either into a hazardous waste landfill that’s a landfill that is certified for hazardous waste, or it is incinerated.
So it can be either recycled, obviously, reused is the best thing, recycled, and then unfortunately, either incinerated for destruction, or the worst that would happen, I would think, would be having to landfill it into a hazardous waste landfill.
DEBRA: And what does a hazardous waste landfill look like? Is it lined in some particular way?
VICTORIA HODGE: Correct. There is a specific type of landfill. We have many different types of landfill, and I’m not the expert in that. That’s a whole other topic for someone. But there are different types of landfills. There’s the landfill that—the municipal landfills which is where our everyday trash goes into, and then there are hazardous material landfills, and those are specially regulated, specially lined, very impermeable surfaces, so that that material that is in there will not go into, and has no chance of going into the ground water.
DEBRA: That’s great. So basically, what we’re trying to do is keep the toxic chemicals out of the ground water. That’s the whole point.
VICTORIA HODGE: That’s the whole point.
DEBRA: So I’ve seen instructions sometimes where it says, don’t put it in the trash, pour it down the sink. Is that a good idea?
VICTORIA HODGE: Well, it depends on the chemical itself, and the type of product that it is. Some items can go into the drain.
It’s better to pour it down your sink because once it gets to the waste water treatment plant, it could be treated. You would rather it go into that versus going into the storm drain.
We’d like to keep it out of all of it.
DEBRA: Well, we’re coming up on a break now. We’re talking with Victoria L. Hodge, and she’s the president of the North American Hazardous Materials Management Association. And when we come back, we’ll talk more about household hazardous waste, so that you can know what to do with the toxic chemicals that you want to trash.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. 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 Victoria L. Hodge, president of the North American Hazardous Materials Management Association. And we’re talking about household hazardous waste.
And I was actually surprised to learn at the beginning of the show that not every community has a household hazardous waste collection like I do here in Florida. And so when we’re talking about, as you all know, who have been listening to this show for days and days and weeks and months, and have read my books, that my whole message is about us not being exposed to toxic chemicals in our homes. And well, the Household Hazardous Waste Programs exist to keep the toxic chemicals out of the ground water, and to preserve our environment.
We need to, each of us, be interested in these programs because when we decide to remove toxic chemicals from our homes because we don’t want to use them anymore, we need to make sure that we do that in a responsible way that doesn’t hurt other parts of the environment and other species.
So we’re going to be talking about what should be taken to household hazardous waste. But before we do that I want to make sure that all of you listening, if you don’t already know where your local household hazardous waste is, I want to just give you some tips on how to find one.
Now, you may or may not have one, and you may need to go to another nearby community in order to find yours. But the first thing—I wrote about household hazardous waste in my book, Toxic-Free, and it starts on page 33. And I have some instructions that I’m about to tell you on page 35. And then on page 36 and 37, it has an extensive list of things that are considered to be household hazardous waste, which we’re going to discuss.
So the first thing you need to do is find your local household hazardous waste collection facility. And I found mine by typing in the name of my county and household hazardous waste into a search engine online. And I don’t have any household hazardous waste to dispose of, so I don’t actually use it. But I just wanted to see if my community had a household hazardous waste program, and how easy it was to find.
And so if you don’t get a result, a search engine result for typing in the name of your county and household hazardous waste, I would call whoever it is that picks up your garbage, and ask them, tell them that you’re interested in disposing of your household hazardous wastes properly and where is the closest household hazardous waste collection.
And if you don’t have one in your community, you might consider making a little noise about getting one.
Victoria, if somebody doesn’t have a household hazardous waste program in their community, what are some tips about what they could do to get one?
VICTORIA HODGE: I think you’re on the right track of making some noise with your city county leaders, and letting them know that this is something that you’re wanting because I would guarantee that almost all the programs that have started have come about because their citizens or residents saw a need, and they inquired about it.
Just asking about it, and the more that the city leaders hear, the county leaders hear, that their residents and constituents want something like this, the more likely you are to get what you want.
DEBRA: I agree with that. Often, it’s a grassroots thing. All these good things happen because grassroots, people say, “Let’s have this important thing.”
It doesn’t usually come from the government. I’m not wanting to sound like I’m putting down the government. But this is a government that is by the people and for the people here in America, and we have a right to speak up and say what it is we want.
I’m recommending household hazardous waste because I want you to take all your toxic chemicals out of your home, and dispose of them safely.
But it’s even more important to have household hazardous waste for people who are still using household chemicals that are toxic because they’re going to continue to use them, and continue to put them into the environment where it hurts everybody.
Another thing else I found out about toxic household hazardous waste is that every community has a different list of what they accept and what they don’t accept. And so you really need to find your local facility, and then find out what they’ll accept.
Has that been your experience, Victoria?
VICTORIA HODGE: Absolutely. Every program is going to be different. The list of things that one community will accept and you might live in one community for a long time, and you’re used to taking certain things to it, and then you move to a new community, and you find out that they’re not accepting those same things.
So yes, each program is different, so you definitely need to do a little bit of research, and do your homework before you either drive to that facility, or call to have them pick up your items.
DEBRA: And another thing that I want to mention about household hazardous waste is that there really are two kinds of chemicals that we’re discussing on this show. One is called acute, which is something that if you were to drink the chemical, or even spill it on your skin or something, something like most cleaning products or pesticides, products with warning labels on them, if they’re really toxic, that they will damage you just when you drink them. And you want to keep them out of reach of children.
Those are the kinds of things that are usually household hazardous wastes.
Then there’s another kind of chemical called cumulative. Cumulative, and what those do is you have to be exposed to them day in and day out over a period of time. And they build up in your body.
Those, most people don’t even recognize and don’t go to the household hazardous waste center.
So mostly, a good rule of thumb is to think that the poisons that you would call the poison center, poison control center for, those are also considered household hazardous waste.
It’s time for us to take another break, and then when we come back, we’ll talk about what are some things at your house that are household hazardous wastes.
I’m here with my guest, Victoria L. Hodge. She’s the president of the North Americans Hazardous Materials Management Association, and I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio, and we’re talking about household hazardous wastes.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and today, we’re talking about household hazardous waste with Victoria L. Hodge, president of the North American Hazardous Materials Management Association.
Victoria, let’s talk about what is hazardous waste around the house. I have a list here, and I’m sure you have your own list of what is included.
So why don’t you start? I think that I would start with the ones that are the most toxic.
VICTORIA HODGE: Well, you obviously have household cleaners, which sometimes people don’t think of them as being toxic because they think, “Oh, I’m using this is in my house. I can buy it off of the shelf at a store.”
So I would say household cleaners definitely are among the most toxic.
DEBRA: I would agree with you. They’re governed by the Hazardous Substances Act, and they have warning labels on them.
A number of years ago, when I wrote one of my books way back in the 90’s or 80’s, I decided that I was going to list all the household products in their order of how toxic they were.
And cleaning products turned out to be the first chapter. And if people want to just eliminate cleaning products all together, there are a lot of cleaning products that you can make yourself. Just gather everything up, and take it to the household hazardous waste, and just don’t use them anymore.
Or if, as Victoria said earlier, you know somebody who wants to use them, then you can give them to them. But I would say—I ask myself, this is an ethical question for me, do I want to give other people things that I know are toxic? And I decided just the other day that I was not going to sell my copper faucets for a kitchen sink, which I had taken out and replaced with new faucets because the old one had lead in it.
And I thought, this is a beautiful antique faucet, and I’m not going to sell it for its value as a faucet. I’m taking it down to the recycling place, and recycling it, and just having it taken out of the consumer stream because I don’t want people to be using a faucet with lead in it.
And I think that that’s probably the same thing with household hazardous waste. I think that I wouldn’t give it to somebody, but I feel too that if people want to use it, they’re going to use it whether I give it to them, or they go buy it.
VICTORIA HODGE: It’s a double-edged sword.
DEBRA: It’s dilemma. What is the right thing to do?
So you can go to any natural food store, and buy less toxic products. You can make your own. I just use things like Bon Ami, lemon juice, vinegar and baking soda to clean with, and none of those things have to go to the household hazardous waste.
What else besides cleaning products?
VICTORIA HODGE: Well, you also have lawn and garden, and you have the fertilizers, and herbicides, and pesticides, and poisons.
DEBRA: Don’t you think it’s funny that people are spraying herbicides and fungicides all over their gardens, and yet when they need to dispose with, it’s considered to be household hazardous waste?
VICTORIA HODGE: Yes. The stuff that you put on your lawn is the most direct avenue of affecting our ground water.
DEBRA: So people shouldn’t be using those at all?
VICTORIA HODGE: In my opinion, no.
DEBRA: In my opinion also. But if you have any left in a can, it should go to the household hazardous waste.
VICTORIA HODGE: Yes, absolutely.
DEBRA: Okay, what else?
VICTORIA HODGE: Paint and paint-related supplies, whenever you’re painting a wall, or even art supplies. Those can be hazardous and toxic at times, depending on what you happen to purchase.
DEBRA: Well, let me say something about that because there are different kinds of paint. Obviously, oil-based paint is the most toxic, and then the next toxic after that is latex paint.
And I just said, well, you’re spraying fungicides all over your garden, and that’s household hazardous waste. And you’re putting paint all over your walls, and that’s household hazardous waste.
But I wanted to say the difference. And to me, the difference is that if you have paint in a can, it has toxic solvents in it. And once you put it on your wall, those solves evaporate, and what’s left on the wall is actually not a toxic material. It’s a coating, but there are no solvents left.
And it’s the solvent part, the wet paint in the can, that is the household hazardous waste, not the paint on the wall.
VICTORIA HODGE: Correct.
DEBRA: And so if you’ve got leftover paint in a can, I know a lot of people, including myself, we keep those paint cans, so that we can do a touch-up on the wall, but if you have enough left that you feel—it’s still there and you painted the wall another color, and you don’t need to save it, and you want to dispose it, then it needs to not go into the garbage can. You need to take it to the household hazardous waste.
VICTORIA HODGE: Correct. And paint is one thing, especially latex paint. If you happen to not have a program that you can take it to for proper disposal, then there are several things that you can do. You can take an old board, and paint that several times, and you just leave it outside and keep letting it dry, and just keep painting it over and over. That way, you can use up the paint because like you said, once the paint dries, it’s no longer toxic.
Or if you have too much to do that, or if you don’t have time to do that, you can pour kitty litter in it, and just keep mixing that until it dries. And then once it’s dried in the can, at that point, you are able to put it into your trash.
DEBRA: I didn’t know about that one. When I was in California, where I used to live, and where I went to my first household hazardous waste collection, they used to have a paint recycling collection place. They probably still do. I don’t think we have one here in Florida where I live.
But you could actually go to the household hazardous waste place, and buy the can, like half a can of something, or they would also mix the colors together, and sometimes get some strange colors, but there are many times when the color doesn’t matter, you just need to protect the piece of wood, or that you’re just painting a room, that you can reuse somebody’s paint, or recycle it into another use.
So I think that part of disposing of household hazardous waste is to recycle it into something. And I know that in the larger scheme of things in the world that recycling toxic chemicals is one of the things, as you mentioned earlier, if they can be recycled instead of disposed of.
We need to take another break. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. And my guest today is Victoria L. Hodge. We’re talking about household hazardous waste. 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 Victoria L. Hodge from the North American Hazardous Materials Management Association. And we’re talking about keeping hazardous waste out of the environment and out of our homes.
Victoria, I just wanted to mention that several years ago, I lived in San Francisco for three months. And while I was there one of the things that was going on was that they were doing a big campaign about mercury-collecting from the fluorescent lamps, and collecting thermometers, and anything that had mercury in it because the fish in San Francisco Bay, tuna and swordfish, they had extremely high mercury levels in them. And so people were eating the fresh fish and crab and all those things. They were coming out of San Francisco Bay, and getting extremely high mercury levels up to three times the threshold for Federal Food Regulation to pull the seafood from the shelves.
And consumers just had no idea that was going on.
And so here was a real-life situation where you could actually see in—I’m smiling right now because once I wrote a note to one of my book editors where I used a phrase in my local forest, and she didn’t know what I was talking about because she lived in New York City, and she didn’t have any reality that there was such a thing as a forest where you live.
That’s what popped into my mind when I was about to say that people in San Francisco, and I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area and lived there all my life until I moved to Florida 12 years ago, but there’s a bay, and there’s fish there, and people eat their fish, and San Francisco is famous for their seafood.
And yet, the citizens of the surrounding area were not disposing of their mercury-containing products in household hazardous waste, and it has contaminated San Francisco Bay. And that’s something that local people are now aware of that there are toxic levels of mercury in San Francisco Bay.
This is why this is important because we talked about at the beginning that the point of household hazardous waste is about to keep the toxic chemicals out of groundwater, that where it comes back to the consumer is exactly this example from San Francisco Bay. The consumer throws those mercury-containing compact fluorescent lights, and the tube lights into the trash that goes into the landfill, it goes into the bay, and then you go have sushi, and you’re eating three times the acceptable level of mercury.
VICTORIA HODGE: That’s very unfortunate.
DEBRA: It is. But I think that that’s happening probably all over, and we don’t even know it.
VICTORIA HODGE: It’s highly possible, yes, it is. And speaking of the fluorescent bulbs, I think that one of the unfortunate things is that people don’t realize that you do have to take special care when you dispose of those. They don’t just go into your trash cans.
DEBRA: I know. And I think that a lot of people don’t know that. I actually witnessed an otherwise intelligent woman actually break a compact fluorescent bulb, and pick up the pieces and put it in the trash. And I said, “Excuse me, it’s got toxic mercury in it. You shouldn’t be doing that.”
And she said, “Oh, I don’t care.”
VICTORIA HODGE: Oh, my gosh.
DEBRA: And that was her attitude. And unfortunately, I think that a lot of people just feel that way, that they just put everything in the trash and aren’t aware of where the toxic things are, and that they should be sorted out, and that they should be taken.
I actually tell people not to use compact fluorescent bulbs because of the mercury and that they can use LEDs that have much less toxic material in them because there should be just a collection point for compact fluorescent bulbs.
I think it’s not getting enough education out into the community.
VICTORIA HODGE: I actually agree with you on that. One of the fortunate things is, at least here in the Texas area, there’s a couple of home improvement stores that are now accepting the bulbs. So definitely check with your neighborhood, your local hardware store, home improvement store, and see if they have those programs because there are national programs, national chains that are doing that now.
DEBRA: I don’t use them, so I don’t have any place to dispose of them. But I do know that environmentalists are particularly promoting these because they save energy, and they do. But they also produce toxic chemicals and toxic wastes, and it is household hazardous waste, and as we see, it’s polluted San Francisco Bay.
So that’s not good for our environment.
So tell us some other things that are considered household hazardous waste.
VICTORIA HODGE: There are certain kinds of batteries, definitely the rechargeable batteries need to be returned and recycled. Those are not good, and it should not go into your trash. It should not go to the landfills. The rechargeable batteries do need to be taken to a location that recycles rechargeable batteries.
DEBRA: And what else?
VICTORIA HODGE: Let’s see. We talked about art projects, certain paints and stuff like that. And I think that a lot of, especially children’s art project items are usually non-toxic, so that’s good. But on the adult side, if you have a hobby, or a craft that you do, make sure you’re taking care of your, like you said, of your health, and make sure that you’re using the least toxic item that you can when it comes to that.
DEBRA: One of the big things in terms of hobbies is the adhesive that many people use to put models together. That’s very toxic to breathe, and also is household hazardous waste.
One of the things I want to mention on my list is that I think that most women don’t recognize that some of the things that they’re putting on their bodies every day are considered household hazardous waste like cuticle remover, and hair-removing products, and permanent wave solution, hair straightening solution, and especially nail polish and nail polish remover.
And I think that a lot of women just use those products as if they’re water. You’re just putting on nail polish and indoors where there’s no ventilation, and they are extremely toxic to use. And nail polish remove is the same thing, that if you’re going to use those, go outside and use them, and don’t throw them in the trash. Make sure that you use it all up, so it doesn’t go—or take it to household hazardous waste.
It’s just so interesting to me that so much of what is commonly used is actually considered household hazardous waste.
Also, you particularly did a program about pharmaceutical collection. Can you tell us about why it’s important, what to do with pharmaceuticals because they are considered household hazardous waste.
VICTORIA HODGE: Yes, absolutely. And that is a whole other program that we should get into another time too. You should dedicate more time to that.
Yes, pharmaceuticals are definitely something. We’ve heard for years and years and years to flush it down your toilet if you don’t need it or want it. And that is the worst thing that you can do because our septic as well as our waste water treatment plants are not geared and tooled to get rid of all of the pharmaceuticals that can be in there. So definitely look for pharmaceutical collection programs. There are more and more permanent ones that are popping up all over the country. The DEA has had several collection days, usually in October, and in April, and those are nationwide programs.
So definitely go to the DEA website and see when their next program is.
DEBRA: And what does DEA stand for?
VICTORIA HODGE: Department of—you would ask me that.
DEBRA: I know. You’re used to calling it DEA but nobody knows what it is.
VICTORIA HODGE: I know. My apology. I don’t know off the top of my head. I apologize.
DEBRA: It’s okay. I’m going to look it up while you’re talking. Go ahead.
VICTORIA HODGE: Anyway, that would be a really good thing for people to realize that they do need to dispose of that. It’s Drug Enforcement Administration. Sorry about that.
And so yes, pharmaceuticals do need to be properly disposed of as well. And luckily, fortunately, the DEA is catching onto that and they’re encouraging law enforcement to have collection programs so that they can collect all pharmaceuticals, including controlled substances.
DEBRA: That’s excellent. And we will have you on again to talk about that. Maybe we could have you on in October when it’s time for the collection programs.
So we just have not even a minute left. Are there any final words you’d like to say?
VICTORIA HODGE: I would like to thank you for having me on, and letting me talk about household hazardous waste. If people have more questions, or would like more information, they can go to our website at NAHMMA. It’s NAHMMA.org, and they can find us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
DEBRA: And you can also go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and there’s a link right there. Just look for Victoria’s smiling face, and you can also—we will be posting this show, and you can listen to the archive show, or share it with your friends.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio.
VICTORIA HODGE: Thank you so much.
DEBRA: Thank you.
Benzene in Cranberry Juice
Question from Michele
I just came to realize that I have been giving my child cranberry juice and found out there is benzene in it.
Cranberries have natural benzoic acid and the company adds absorbic acid (vitamin c) and together they form benzene.
From the samples done that I found documented online the level of benzene is less than 2ppb which is less than the 5ppb allowed in drinking water.
However, I am concerned I could have given my child too much benzene since I have been using this juice for 2 years.
Did I raise my child’s risk for leukemia and is there any statistic that shows the risk? Thank you
Debra’s Answer
This is old news.
I’m looking at a news article from 2006 that says:
Here are the key things that made benzene form
If there is no sodium benzoate or potassium benzoate in your cranberry juice you have nothing to worry about. No benzene was formed.
And even if your cranberry juice did contain these benzoates, it would also need to have been exposed to light and heat. Chances are low that 100% of the cranberry juice contained benzene.
Life Without Plastic
My guest Jay Sinha is co-founder and co-owner (with Chantal Plamondon) of Life Without Plastic, a one-stop shop and information resource for high quality, ethically-sourced, Earth-friendly alternatives to plastic products for everyday life. They founded the business over seven years ago after some tough experiences with chemical sensitivities and following the birth of their son. They sought to avoid the toxicity and awful environmental footprint of plastics but had difficulty finding certain key housewares in a non-plastic form. So they set out to find and source them for others too. Jay has degrees in biochemistry, ecotoxicology and law, and prior to LWP explored jobs ranging from tree planter to environmental consultant to corporate lawyer (most who know him can’t quite believe this one – nor can he) to Parliamentary researcher and policy analyst. This was the most obvious route to becoming a passionate anti-plastic activist and ecopreneur. He loves to walk in the trees – he and Chantal and their son live among the trees in a small dynamic rural community. We’ll be talking about how Jay and his wife manage to live without plastic and some of the great plastic-free products they have on their website. www.debralynndadd.com/debras-list/life-without-plastic
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Life Without Plastic
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Jay Sinha
Date of Broadcast: August 20, 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 there are toxic chemicals out there. And the more we know about them, the more we can recognize them, and the more we know that there are safe alternatives, the more we can protect ourselves, our families, all our loved ones, our friends and the planet from the health effects, the emotional effects, the mental effects, the spiritual effects of these toxic chemicals.
And so what we talk about on this show is getting to know these toxic chemicals, so that we can eliminate them from our lives and make healthier choices.
Today, we’re going to talk about plastic. We’re going to talk about plastic and how it affects our health, but also how we can live lives without plastic.
But before we do, I just want to read you a quote. And I’ve mentioned before that, every morning, I send out quotes. You can go to my website, ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and sign up in the newsletter sign-up box, and then it will take you to a page where you can choose words of wisdom, and you’ll get a quote from me every morning, such as this one.
And this is from James Allen. Though you might not recognize the name, you will probably recognize the title of his most famous book, “As a Man Thinketh,” which has been this universally known ever since it was published in 1902. He was a British philosopher and writer. And many, many people have read this book. And he says:
“The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.”
And what we’re doing here, we’re talking about toxics, is that we are being the acorn, we are being the egg, we are being the seed of something to come. And as we make these choices, and create a non-toxic world together, a toxic-free world, then it comes into being. And that’s why this is so important.
My guest today is Jay Sinha. He’s the co-founder and co-owner with his wife, Chantal Plamondon, of Life Without Plastic, a one-stop shop and information resource for high quality, ethically-sourced, earth-friendly alternatives to plastic products for everyday life.
Thanks for joining me, Jay.
JAY SINHA: Well, thank you, Debra. It’s a real privilege and a pleasure to be here to chat with you.
DEBRA: Thank you. I’m so impressed with your website because not only are you selling things that aren’t plastic, but you’re also playing attention to the quality of those things, and choosing very high quality products—not things that are going to break or just junk, that you’re really looking at other aspects of it, as well as them not being plastic.
Tell me how you got interested in this subject.
JAY SINHA: Well, it goes back a ways. I’ve always been pretty environmentally-oriented. I mean even going back as far as when I was about 11 years old, I remember doing a project on acid rain, and I was really passionate about that.
But for us, it really began around 2002. We were living in a home that had some pretty serious mold issues. And I happened to be also working in a building that had mold issues. So both Chantal and I became quite sick.
We left. We were able to leave the sources of the problem, the mold. But we both became quite sick for about a year. And this caused us to become more sensitive to environmental irritants, things like perfume, cigarette smoke, and certainly molds and mildews.
So, we began looking for ways to remove toxins from our everyday life. In that same year as well, our son was born. So we certainly wanted to minimize his exposure to toxins.
And we read an article in Mothering Magazine during that period about plastic toxicity and the risks for children. And that was a bit of a light bulb flash for us and got us thinking about all the plastics around us—bottles, Tupperware containers, what we’re using.
So we began looking for a stainless steel water bottle. And this was 2002, 2003. There weren’t many out there at all. We had a really hard time finding one.
DEBRA: Not at the time, yes.
JAY SINHA: We did find one online, ordered it, tried it out and liked it. And we were also looking for glass baby bottles to store Chantal’s breast milk for when we’d be going out or traveling. And they were the norm back in the ’50s, ‘60s, even early ‘70s, but we couldn’t find them anywhere. So again, we did find one supplier eventually, and we contacted them. And they said, sure, you can buy some. But the minimum order is a thousand because they only did wholesale.
And so that got us thinking. We were both feeling rather disillusioned by our jobs at the time, looking for more meaning and more impact in our work and how we were spending our time.
And so that’s really how the company began, with stainless steel water bottles, glass baby bottles, and then some stainless steel food containers as well.
Chantal began at full time. She had taken time off when our son was born. And then a couple of years later, I also left my job and began working full time on the company. And just as it went on, we added more products and focused on things that were hard to find in a non-plastic form.
DEBRA: Yes, there are a lot of things that are hard to find.
So, what are some of the things that you think are most difficult? I know that I’ve been living without plastic for about 30 years, also, from my own chemical sensitivities many, many years ago. And I found that, once I understood plastic and what was going on with it, that I didn’t want to have it. I wanted to eliminate it as much as I could.
I think that it’s unrealistic to think that one could eliminate 100% of plastic—I know I haven’t been able to do it—and still live in a modern technological world. But I find that there are so many things that I can replace that I don’t have to use plastic for.
So give us some examples of some of the early things that you were wanting to replace after the bottles, and what was your success, or lack thereof, of finding those items.
JAY SINHA: Well, you’re absolutely right about the difficulty of removing everything. That’s quite overwhelming when you begin looking at it. So we began with the focus on food and drink, and trying to remove all plastic from coming into contact with what we would put into our bodies essentially.
So, there are the bottles I mentioned. But also, stainless steel food containers, we began using more of and just non-plastic dishes of any sort, we’d use glass, ceramic, wood. For storing food—for example, leftovers—we use stainless steel containers or glass containers which are relatively easy to find.
DEBRA: Yes, they are.
JAY SINHA: Some of them do have plastic lids, but you can certainly arrange it so the plastic doesn’t touch the food.
Another one was bags, for example. Reusable now are everywhere, but we began using just cotton bags, which were relatively easy to find as well.
Those were the main things. Utensils, as well, stainless steel utensils are everywhere. That’s one that didn’t require much effort for us.
DEBRA: I think for me, it was, first of all, just becoming aware of what was plastic in my environment because I think that a lot of people can’t recognize plastic. They just don’t know what to look for.
It really is amazing. I remember back 30 years ago, when I first started asking myself these questions, it wasn’t in my awareness. So people don’t walk around thinking this is cotton, this is plastic, this is wood. And it’s not an issue unless you’re trying to evaluate the safety of all those materials actually.
JAY SINHA: Absolutely! And there wasn’t an issue for us either. We were using plastic quite regularly until all this happened. It made us look at our whole lives. And then, when we began looking at the plastics around us, there were so much. Personal care products, shampoos, soaps, tended to come in plastic bottles. So we shifted more to bar soaps, those things, or bulk.
Buying in bulk is an amazing way to avoid plastic. You can bring your own containers now. Back then, it was very out of the ordinary. Now, it’s becoming a little more accepted and even more mainstream to bring your containers to a bulk store, have it weighed there beforehand, and then fill it with whatever you’re buying.
And there are more and more places that offer natural, non-toxic alternatives to preserve-laden personal care products. So that was another big one that we switched to.
DEBRA: We’ll talk more about this after the break. Especially after the break, we’re going to talk about the dangers of plastic.
Why would you want to stay away from plastic, in addition to the obvious environmental things that the toxicity and not biodegrading, but the human toxicity of plastic—why in our homes would we want do that.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and we’re here today with my guest, Jay Sinha of Life Without Plastic. And you can find Life Without Plastic at DebrasList.com, or you can go to his website directly at LifeWithoutPlastic.com.
DEBRA: This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And we’re here today with Jay Sinha from Life Without Plastic talking about how we can live without plastic.
Jay, I want to let you talk about why plastics are dangerous, and I know you have some stories of how people have been affected by that. But first, I want to say just as a background that there are many types of plastics, that they vary in toxicity, and that it’s difficult to identify some types of plastics, and that we should just be, in general, watching out for plastics that I don’t spend so much time saying is this a fiber, or what kind of plastic is it, or how can I identify it.
I just, across the board, eliminate as much plastic as possible.
JAY SINHA: I totally agree. And that’s very much the approach we take as well—a basic precautionary approach is just to avoid plastics.
Plastics are really a chemical soup. They are petroleum-based or natural gas or coal. So they’re coming from fossil fuels that they’re based. And I know you interviewed Beth Terry. And I heard you talking quite a bit about the environmental aspects there. It was a great interview, so I won’t talk too much about that. Those are very energy-intensive. An extraction process is used to just get the base material to make plastics. And all the waste [unintelligible 11:54].
But in terms of the health, you may have a base plastic polymer, but a lot of additives are added to the actual plastic to provide certain quality, such as softness, rigidity, durability. It could be things like actual softeners (which are usually phthalates), flame retardants. And as you say, the toxicity is going to vary from plastic to plastic.
I know you also interviewed Mike Schade about PVC. And that’s certainly, probably, the worst out there. It’s just phenomenal that it is still a consumer product. To give that example, PVC contains up to about 55% of plasticizing additives by weight.
DEBRA: And lead too! You can just touch it, and get lead in your body, just from touching PVC.
JAY SINHA: And it’s still being used to make things like toys.
These are obviously hugely disruptive to the body, and especially to developing system—so children, pregnant women.
But in terms of some of the effects on actual people, we’re in a unique situation this way because we often are contacted by people who share their experiences with us about their experiences with plastic. I really believe we’re just beginning to see the tip of the iceberg of effects of plastics on people.
What we’re finding are there are more and more people out there suffering from allergies to plastics with varying levels of severity.
To give you a few examples, it could be something as simple as someone getting a numbness in their mouth, or even a sore throat from drinking water that’s been in plastic. We’ve heard of that a number of times.
An interesting one, a pianist wrote to us, and he explained the importance of tactile memory in the fingers when playing the piano, especially for difficult pieces that require a lot of concentration.
DEBRA: Yes, I play the piano.
JAY SINHA: Do you? I do as well—not well, but…
But he found, interestingly, when he would be playing a piece, and he may stop to look something up on a keyboard, his plastic computer keyboard, the computer keyboard seemed to have a detrimental effect on his tactile memory. He described it almost as jamming his radars, as he put it. Once he touched the plastic keys, it seemed to erase his tactile memory and make it inaccessible for a while. So it would take him a while to get back into the piece more than if he had stopped and done something else as opposed to working on the computer and went back to playing the piece.
So, he was wondering if it could be a link from certain plastics contributing to something like ADD or general lack of concentration. Any idea?
DEBRA: One of the things that I found when I was writing my book, Toxic-Free, is that I looked up—I started researching so long ago. But I looked up, again, while I was writing the book, about the health effects of could we find toxic chemicals that contributed to health problems of all kinds. And what I actually found was that every single body system is affected by toxic chemicals.
You can actually look up online any body system and find toxic chemicals that contribute to damaging that body system—everything from our DNA to our skin, to nervous system, kidneys, liver, everything, everything, our brains.
And the nervous system is very, very sensitive to toxic chemicals. And any kind of neurological problem, where you’re having sensory touch in your fingers, that would be neurological. The communication between your fingers and your brain would be neurological, all these things.
So that, it seems very likely to me. And as a pianist who grew up playing on ivory keys on a real piano, it’s very different for me when I feel those plastic keys.
JAY SINHA: What you’ve just described, it’s exactly what some of the other anecdotes we’ve heard from people. There’s a lady who came to us looking for a non-plastic toothbrush. She’s highly allergic to plastics. And she said that the last toothbrush she tried had some plastic in it and caused her to go into anaphylactic shock and required an epi injection, a preservative-free one.
And after years of searching and consulting tons of doctors, she’s been able to diagnose her particular condition as a rare genetic disorder called mast cell activation disorder. But she found that the symptoms of that condition were highly exacerbated by exposure to plastics.
But probably the most shocking example we’ve heard—and that’s a very recent one. There’s a couple like this one we’ve heard. This one is from a woman named Veronica Miller who is in California. She would like to get her name out there to try and connect with other people who might be experiencing what she’s experiencing to help them and to get help herself.
For her, since 2008, she’s been suffering from an extremely severe and painful form of what she calls plastic poison. She’s seen tons of doctors over the past five years. And they have no idea how to explain her condition or even certainly not diagnose or treat even.
When she comes into contact with any type of plastic or a food or drink that’s been in a plastic container, her body reacts really swiftly and really violently. She’ll get a burning sensation on her lips, on her tongue or on her throat. If she touches plastic, her hands get red and sting. If she sits on a plastic chair, even with clothes on, it makes her itch and burn.
She’s had multiple surgeries. When you talked about the nervous system, she’s had multiple surgeries to repair severe nerve damage from what seems to be the plastic caused stress in her body. So she’s in a very difficult situation and is really looking to let people know what is happening, if possible, from exposure to plastic and looking for ways to get beyond that.
She has also provided her e-mail if anyone wants to contact her directly. And that is MyPlasticPoisonedLifeVM@cox.net. We can also put that on your blog.
DEBRA: We can put that on the Toxic Free Talk Radio blog. We need to take a break now. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. I’m here with Jay Sinha. We’re talking about Life Without Plastic.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Jay Sinha from Life Without Plastic.
Jay, is there anything else you want to say about Veronica?
JAY SINHA: Well, just that she’s very eager in connecting with other people who might be feeling what she’s feeling. So yes, I won’t go too much more into—her story goes on and on. There’s much, much more than what I mentioned as far as what she’s being through and the pain she suffers. But that gives you a taste of what her life is like on a day to day basis.
DEBRA: Certainly, I think that plastics can be associated with all kinds of things. I’m not a doctor, and I don’t know her at all.
But it may be that what she’s experiencing has been caused by multiple different chemicals that put her body in this position where she’s so sensitive to plastics.
And certainly, if people continue to be exposed to toxic chemicals—I have many, many stories myself of people that I’ve talked to over the years where your body can just get worse and worse and worse to the point where you just have reactions to everything or end up with cancer, heart disease.
Virtually any illness can be associated with toxic chemical exposure. So anything we do to reduce our exposures to plastics have lessened that load on our bodies.
So tell us about some of the products that you have. What are your favorite products on your site?
JAY SINHA: I have a number. One is certainly the air tight containers. They’re a great replacement for Tupperware. We use them all the time for our son as well, for his lunch. They have clips in a silicone seal, so they are air tight and water tight.
I also love a lot of the brushes we have because brushes are something that’s perhaps not as obvious, but most people use a brush for cleaning dishes and there’s obviously the toothbrush.
We work with a wonderful German company. It’s an old family business that makes completely natural brushes from sustainably harvested primarily beech wood and then all kinds of different natural bristles. And brushes, anything you could imagine, for sweeping, for hair, for the kitchen, for toilet brushes with agave bristles.
DEBRA: I noticed that. In 1990, I went to Germany to earth-friendly—they have a word for it, I forgot what it was. But they had this awareness much earlier than we did here in America. And so I went to a trade show to see what all these green products were. And one of the things that I saw was whole exhibits with all these wooden brushes laid out. I had never seen anything like that before because there are so many plastic brushes here in America.
I’m looking on your page, your body care page, and you have wooden toothbrushes, which is something that I love. I want to ask you a question about these. Do these have natural bristles as well?
JAY SINHA: They do. The bristles, it’s good to explain those. The bristles are made out of pig hair. And this is an issue for some people. We looked into quite a bit of detail with the company. The bristles are sourced from a race of long-haired pigs which is only found in China.
The pigs from which they come are used in the meat industry. So they’re slaughtered just for the meat. And in the past, the hairs, which are used for these bristles, has simply been discarded.
So, this company was able to source these bristles in this way. And they’ve tried all kinds of bristles for toothbrushes. And they have found really that these are the only ones that, so far at least, work well as a toothbrush and maintain some stiffness while also being soft at the same time.
So they’re able to source these bristles—and obviously, completely cleaned and sterilized. But they do work well. It’s just it can be an issue, for example, for people who are vegan, definitely.
DEBRA: I was just looking at this because many, many years ago, one of the first things that I wanted was a plastic-free toothbrush when I was trying to eliminate plastic. And I looked all over, and I couldn’t find any in America. But I happened to go to England. This was in 1987.
I happened to go to England. And it’s very easy to get natural bristle, natural handle brushes there because it’s part of their tradition. And so, I bought an animal bristle toothbrush. And I actually liked it a lot. But I understand the vegan issue.
And then, there was a time period where there was a company that was making wood-handled brushes. I think there were natural bristles, but I don’t really know what they were.
And then recently, I just found in a local store some natural bristle. They’re made out of bamboo. The handle is bamboo. But they have nylon bristles. And I actually read a whole discussion online just the other day because of this debating natural bristles, natural animal bristles versus nylon bristles.
JAY SINHA: Well, Beth Terry has an excellent post on her blog all about that with a lot of the debate in there. It’s a good resource for that.
DEBRA: I will look on her blog about it. Good. So let’s go on. Next favorite product.
JAY SINHA: I really love our ice cube tray. That was a really fun product to create as well. It’s based on a model that my mother had from—this would go back to the ‘60s. It was originally made out of aluminum. Ours is made out of stainless steel.
It’s the old style where you have a lever that you pull that actually breaks the cubes.
DEBRA: I have one of those.
JAY SINHA: You do? Oh, good. And they work quite nicely. It breaks the cubes quite cleanly.
DEBRA: They do. That’s what I grew up with, those metal ones that you pull.
JAY SINHA: Yes. So we use that a lot. I really love the wooden comb.
DEBRA: I have one of those too.
JAY SINHA: One thing that we really love are some of our new school supplies and office supplies like the tapes, the paper tape, the cellulose tape. And we just got this amazing glue from Italy. It’s a non-toxic glue that smells like marzipan. It smells delicious, you just want to eat it. It’s certainly, completely non-toxic. It’s made from potato starch and almonds. And it works very well as well. So that’s another favorite.
Our glass containers are certainly [unintelligible 25:44] They have stainless steel lids. And that works well in the fridge. For example, with the stainless steel ones, we often write on them. But some people complain that they prefer to see what’s in the container. And in that sense, glass works better. Of course, it is more fragile, but the lids being stainless steel works well.
Our take-out stuff, we love our sporks. We carry them with us everywhere. It’s a little stainless steel spork, which is a spoon and a fork combined that folds. It has a foldable handle. And we carry them in our pocket, a purse, glove compartment. They’re just super handy for avoiding takeout utensils which are evil.
DEBRA: We need to take another break. But after we come back, I’m going to ask you what are you doing eating takeout anyway in those plastic containers.
This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And I’m here with Jay Sinha. He’s from Life Without Plastic.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Jay Sinha from Life Without Plastic. That’s LifeWithoutPlastic.com.
And Jay, I don’t mean to put you on the spot about eating out, but this is something that I was thinking about the other day. I was thinking about going out—and even to go to my natural food store when I’m out. It’s really hot here in Florida. And I do carry water with me. But sometimes, I want to stop and have a green tea or ice organic coffee or something like that.
And even if I go to my natural food store where they use filtered water and organic coffee and organic green tea, they still put it in a plastic cup. And I was thinking, “You know what? I just need to bring my water bottle, my glass water bottle, and say,
‘Here, put my ice coffee in this bottle.’”
JAY SINHA: Exactly. It’s becoming more and more of a norm. The more people that do it, the better because then the retailers get used to it, and it doesn’t become a chore.
But we are also great proponents of eating fresh and eating local as much as possible which definitely cuts down on the plastic waste.
DEBRA: On the plastics, that’s right.
I make 99% of the foods that I eat. I buy it just as raw ingredients, and I fix it myself. And I used to eat out a lot because I actually enjoy going to restaurants and trying food prepared by other people. It helps me learn and it gives me something different, and different taste experience.
But I had this experience that I said on another interview where I was buying a lot of ricotta cheese. I was living in San Francisco and buying a lot of ricotta cheese. And I just kept looking at all these plastic cartons piling up. And I decided, you know what, I’m going to buy organic milk in a glass bottle, and make my own ricotta cheese. And I did!
JAY SINHA: Good for you.
DEBRA: But it’s just a matter of being aware and this vigilance about recognizing where plastic is, and then being creative about coming up with a solution.
JAY SINHA: Yes, it takes a bit of time and a bit of planning.
DEBRA: And patience into yourself.
JAY SINHA: Absolutely, and changing our habits. But if you can begin to incorporate it into your routine—
A great thing to do—and we live in a small community—at the end of the harvest season when there’s all the amazing vegetables in July, August, September, is to do some canning, and preserve things for the winter. It’s really enforced, so the whole idea of canning—which was the norm.
DEBRA: It used to be the norm, yes.
JAY SINHA: And so that brings back—
DEBRA: And dehydrating. You can also dehydrate.
JAY SINHA: Absolutely!
DEBRA: I have a dehydrator. And I haven’t learned how to can yet. I haven’t learned the proper way to put things in a jar and seal it up, so that it doesn’t get any bacteria or things in it. But I do dehydrate. But even more importantly, I eat seasonally. I’m not trying to eat tomatoes in the middle of winter. But I think that canning is great.
There are so many things that can be done in terms of changing our lifestyle about this.
We’re almost to the end of the show. Is there anything that you want to make sure that you say? We’re not down to the last minute yet. We’ve got about five minutes.
JAY SINHA: One thing I really wanted to try and encourage people to do is to educate themselves. Get an idea of, if you have to have plastic in your life—which most of us do. As we said before, it’s almost impossible to eliminate it completely. And it does have its uses. There are uses for it which are important.
But to learn about the different plastics that are out there, especially if they’re coming into contact with your food and drink, things that are going into your body, and becoming you.
And there are tons of resources out there. We have lots of information in our site. Beth Terry’s blog and book are worlds of information. If you’re interested in the marine side of things, there’s Five Gyres and the Algalita Marine Research Foundation doing cutting-edge research on plastic pollution in marine environments.
The Plastic Pollution Coalition is galvanizing and organizing the whole anti-plastic movement. They have information.
The Breast Cancer Fund, Environmental Working Group, Environmental Defense—there’s no shortage of information. And from these sources, it’s somewhat organized and credible and peer-reviewed as well, in most cases.
And then, I would say, just spread the word. Tell your family, your friends, about the issue. And start taking small actions. Don’t try and do it all at once because you’ll be overwhelmed, but bits and pieces. Start with reusable bags, getting a stainless steel water bottle. They’re easy to find. If you don’t want to pay any money, use a mason jar. It’s much better than a plastic bottle.
And if you want to go a step further, start writing to companies that have tons of plastic, unnecessary plastic packaging, and ask them to change, or urge them to change.
There’s so much that we can do. We’re true believers in lots of small actions adding up to huge paradigmatic change.
DEBRA: I totally agree with that. That’s what it is. People do get overwhelmed, if you say, change everything at once. But people can change one thing. And that’s why I like to give suggestions about what’s the one thing that somebody can do, and then what’s the next one thing because I changed everything in my life one by one.
And as we’ve talked about in the quote, at the beginning of the show, you start with a seed, you start with an acorn, it becomes a tree. An egg becomes a bird.
There was one question that I actually wrote down that I didn’t end up asking you. We have a couple of minutes. You can answer this.
What about water proofing? This seems to be the one area where I haven’t been able to find an alternative to plastic, and whether it’s a water proof sheet on a mattress, or a plastic layer on a mattress, to keep it clean and dry, or raincoat, or all those times when you need to keep something dry.
Do you have any ideas about what to do with that?
JAY SINHA: That is a tough one. One thing that is starting to become I think more of the go-to fabric for that sort of use could be wool. It absorbs very well. It’s obviously not completely impermeable, but it may be a starting point.
I know it’s used a lot, for example, for diapering more and more. And it works beautifully.
In terms of something that is like a plastic, I don’t have anything specific to suggest right now. I know there are lots of bio-based plastics coming out, but that’s a bit of a murky area, we still feel. And we’re very cautious about getting into it because it’s not completely clear what all of the replacements are. And even the plant-based ones, they usually are mixed with other chemicals in order to achieve a real plastic-like quality.
DEBRA: Do you know anything about what those other chemicals are? I wanted to ask you about that too, about the bio-based plastics because, as I said in the beginning, there are so many different types of plastics. And at one point, I tried to divide them up between the petrochemical plastics, and the bio-based plastics. And you could have the same type of plastic.
I’m trying to figure out one off the top of my head, and I’m drawing a blank.
But the type of plastic could be made from a feed stock of petrochemicals, or it could be made from a feed stock of sugar cane, but it’s still the same type of plastic. And so something could be on a label with that name, and you don’t know where it’s come from.
JAY SINHA: Exactly. You especially have to be careful of the ones that are, what they call, oxo-degradable because they can contain, for example, heavy metals. And they’re often marketed more as biodegradable, and that they will break down completely. But they’re not breaking down into a non-plastic substance. It still can be a plastic.
Those are the ones I would especially watch out for, the oxo-degradable ones. I know some of them do contain heavy metals.
And some of the other additives can be added to the starches to weaken the plastic and cause it to break apart.
I don’t have specific names on the additives themselves, but they essentially allow the plastic to break apart faster, so that the plant-based part can be broken down by microorganisms. But you still have a plastic element there, so it’s not completely being broken down. It’s just in a smaller form, which can be taken up by smaller organisms, and still get in the food chain.
DEBRA: It’s still there. It’s broken down into particles. It’s not broken down into basic elements, basic molecules.
JAY SINHA: Exactly! Hydrogen and water.
DEBRA: Yes, exactly. Well, let’s end on a pleasant note. What positive thing can we say about living without plastic?
I like to say over and over again that I find that my life is much more pleasant and pleasurable living with the natural materials than living with toxic chemicals or plastics or anything. Do you find that’s true for you too?
JAY SINHA: Absolutely, absolutely. As I mentioned, we live in a rural environment. And we try to live simply. And that lends itself to more and more living without plastic.
And appreciating the simple things like eating local and eating fresh is a huge one. And it affects your whole life because, as you’re doing when you are creating food from scratch, it takes time, it takes planning, but it’s incredibly satisfying and so much healthier.
DEBRA: And it’s so much more delicious.
JAY SINHA: Pardon me?
DEBRA: It’s so much more delicious.
JAY SINHA: Absolutely! When you know where your food is coming from as well, that’s a huge element, which we find goes hand in hand with living without plastic. The farmers near where we live, we know them, and we know the food they’re growing.
And that’s another added element. We know the food is grown with love.
DEBRA: And I have to interrupt you now because we’ve come to the end of the show. Thank you so much for being with me.
I’ve been talking to Jay Sinha from Life Without Plastic, LifeWithoutPlastic.com. And this is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd.
Safe Backpacks and Lunchboxes
Question from Question from VA
Back to school time! My son needs a new backpack and lunch box. I know all the shiny, decorative ones are not very safe so my question is between Lands End, LLBean and Kids Travel Zone, which would you recommend most for both backpacks and lunchboxes.
Thanks for your website. Very informative!
Debra’s Answer
Well, let’s see…
Land’s End – nylon, polyester, water-repellent finish, EVA foam
LLBean – nylon
Kid’s Travel Zone – polyester
None of the above.
I would get a cotton canvas backpack
Creating a Fragrance-Free Life
My guest Alonna Shaw has been blogging about what she’s doing to remove toxic synthetic fragrance from her life (the link below has an index to all her posts on the subject). A writer and editor living in Northern California, Alonna utilizes her background in theater, film, television, and appreciation of nature in her work. Storytelling interests include transformative adventures, travel, biography, and social science fiction. The goal of her alter ego, Alecka Zamm, is “no more freakin’ fragrance.” Because of her sensitivity to fragrance, “Alonna’s world has narrowed to nature, away from anything that spews, reeks, or leaves scent trails. Where there is fabric softener, pesticides, plug-ins, scented shampoos, lotions, potions… she shouldn’t go. Alonna may miss a lot, but breathing means more to her than that once exciting city life, even suburban life. There are many doors in life and she’s still exploring what her fragrance-free door has to offer. Life smells much better without perfume.” www.alonnashaw.com/2013/08/my-interview-on-toxic-free-talk-radio.html
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Creating a Fragrance-Free Life
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Alonna Shaw
Date of Broadcast: August 19, 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 it is toxic out there. There are a lot of consumer products that contain toxic chemicals that we’re exposed to every time we use them. There are a lot of toxic chemicals just in the environment
When we walk out the door, people would have sprayed pesticides on their lawns and there’s car exhaust and people are, well, wearing perfume for one, which is the subject that we’re going to be talking about today.
But we don’t have to be exposed to all these toxic chemicals because we can recognize where they are. We can avoid them in many ways.
We can remove them from our bodies. We can remove them from our homes and our work places, and live healthy, happy productive lives, do whatever it is we want without being affected by toxic chemicals. It’s our choice. We do have choices that are toxic-free.
Today is Monday, August 19th, 2013. And as I just said, our subject today is how to be fragrance-free, Creating a Fragrance-free Life.
And I have been living without fragrance, without anything scented. No scented beauty products or cleaning products or anything for 30 years.
And the reason that I gave up fragrance many, many years ago was because I discovered that if I was exposed to something with a synthetic toxic fragrance—that means a perfume or a fragrance that’s made from petro chemicals. And I’m not talking about something like essential oils made from natural plants. I’m talking about synthetic, artificial fragrance, made in a lab, from petroleoum.
I noticed that when I was exposed to that kind of artificial, synthetic scent, that I would get a headache. And when I stopped, when I looked around and I said, “Well, there’s scent in this, and there’s scent in that. There was scent in my soap. There was scent in my hairspray. There was scent in my cleaning products,” I just went through my house and I removed everything that had any kind of scent—scent in my perfume of course—and I removed anything that had any kind of scent, and I stopped having headaches. And ever since then, I just have been scent-free.
Now, for many years, I have been using natural fragrances. But many people who find themselves sensitive to scent can’t use any kind of scent at all.
And so we are going to be talking and my guest today has created for herself a fragrance-free life because she has found that scents make her sick. And so we are going to talk about how she did that.
But first, I wanted to just read to you something from the CDC. You’ve probably heard that on the news. The CDC says—and that’s the Centers for Disease Control. It’s a US Federal Agency. What I’m reading to you is from my Green-living Q&A blog at GreenLivingQA.com. And it was from 2010, September 14th, 2010. I wrote that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC, has made a fragrance-free policy that applies to all of their offices nationwide.
They issued the policy “In order to protect and maintain safe indoor environmental quality.” And that day, I just said, “Hallelujah” because that means that the Centers for Disease Control—and this is the agency that is working with toxic chemicals and causes of disease, that’s trying to figure out what is making people sick, and that is a public health agency that is tying to keep us well in America—they determined that fragrance was an indoor-air quality issue. It so much causes illness that they made a policy not to allow fragrances in any of their offices nationwide.
You can go to this post and you can see everything that they banned from their offices that had fragrances. And this was to keep their workers healthy.
Now if you own a business, you might consider having a fragrance-free policy. If you work at a workplace, you might consider having a fragrance-free policy.
That’s just something to think about. It’s not somebody’s imagination. It’s not a particular sensitive group of people. Fragrances are toxic chemicals, period.
And now I’d like to welcome my guest, Alonna Shaw.
Hi, Alonna! How are you?
ALONNA SHAW: Good morning, Debra. I’m awake.
DEBRA: Good.
ALONNA SHAW: I was concerned that I might sleep through the call.
DEBRA: No, I don’t think you will. I’m in Florida in the East Coast…
ALONNA SHAW: No. No, I meant that I would oversleep.
DEBRA: Oh, yes. Alonna is in California so it’s nine o’clock there for her. It’s noon here for me. So anyway…
ALONNA SHAW: Yes, I’m a bit of a night owl.
DEBRA: Alonna has been talking about what she’s doing to remove synthetic fragrance from her life. And she’s a writer and editor. She lives in Northern California. And she utilizes her background in theater, film, television and appreciation of nature in her work.
So Alonna, tell us your story of how you became sensitive to chemicals. What has happened since?
ALONNA SHAW: It was quite a long journey and kind of a mystery for me. But I’m really glad that you mentioned the natural ones as well. That’s been part of my journey. I am sensitive to every scent—synthetic or natural.
DEBRA: Okay.
ALONNA SHAW: I’d say about 19 years ago, I started noticing that my deodorant and shampoos were very problematic for me. A lot of people would notice rashes. It’s so funny. Now, everything is so obvious to me now. People will say, I’ve got this rash on my neck. And I’m looking at their hair and smelling all of their hair products.
DEBRA: Uh-huh.
ALONNA SHAW: I don’t want to say anything because I don’t want to offend anybody. But it just would be so simple if they would switch their products, they wouldn’t have to go through that discomfort.
DEBRA: Yes.
ALONNA SHAW: And for most people, that’s all it is. It’s discomfort. But some of us that have MCS, Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, and other allergies and asthma and things like that, it’s a more serious issue to the point where I had to move out of the cities. I’ve lived in cities for most of my adult life. But I’ve always loved nature. And so it’s not such a bad trade-off.
So I now live in Northern California and I pursued nature, which is wonderful!
DEBRA: I did that as well. I moved from San Francisco. I moved out into the country. And now I live in suburbia in Florida. But it’s in a very natural suburbia. I’ve lived in Oak Forest and the breeze comes in off the Gulf of Mexico.
ALONNA SHAW: I love the gulf. I was there for a little while. I used to track the pollution drift, the EPA site. And I decided, “Oh, the Gulf Coast could be a good place to go.”
So, we went there. But then, I didn’t know about red tide.
DEBRA: Oh.
ALONNA SHAW: Yes. That was a bit of a shock. For people that don’t know, it’s basically—what is it, the plankton? I forgot now. It’s been a number of years. They die. I guess that’s part of the nitrite run off from all of the pollution from yards, things like that.
DEBRA: Yes.
ALONNA SHAW: And then all of the fish—it was horrible walking on the beach and seeing sea horses in person that they were no longer living.
DEBRA: What part of Florida were you in because I haven’t had that here? I have been here for 12 years.
ALONNA SHAW: I was south. I know where you are. I was north in Maples, South of Sarasota.
DEBRA: Okay. Yes. I’m a little bit north from there.
ALONNA SHAW: Yes. And I was right to the beach. And it was wonderful after being in LA. I thought I was in heaven. Every morning, I would get up—I did actually get up in the morning—and I would walk on the beach. It was my way of getting my lungs to work again because. It got so bad in LA. I basically was sitting in a chair. That’s how I spent my days. It was crazy because I was super athletic. I’m a world traveler and the pollution was so bad. And to me, fragrance is the same thing.
DEBRA: I agree with you. I agree with you. So we need to take a break.
ALONNA SHAW: Okay.
DEBRA: But after the break, we’ll continue to talk about how you created a fragrance-free life.
I‘m Debra Lynn Dadd, this is Toxic Free Talk Radio. And I’m here with my guest, Alonna Shaw. We’ll be back in a minute.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio, I‘m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Alonna Shaw.
We’re talking about Creating Fragrance-free Life. I’m looking on my website here, and I noticed that in my Green Living Q&A blog, I have over 60 questions that people have asked on subjects having to do with fragrance—everything from fragrance-free workplace policies to finding specific products that don’t have fragrance in them.
I also have on my website on DebrasList.com have many, many products that are specifically fragrance-free. So if you type in fragrance or fragrance-free or perfume in the search engine on my website, you’ll get a lot of information and a lot of alternative products.
You can just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and use that search engine box there to get all that information.
So Alonna, there’s a lot of toxic chemicals in these perfumes. Where should we start? I don’t even know where to start.
ALONNA SHAW: Yes. Well, the way that I actually figured some of my puzzle—my life and health puzzle out—was a chemical patch test at my allergy and asthma doctor.
DEBRA: And tell us what is a chemical patch test for people who don’t know.
ALONNA SHAW: Well, a lot of people go through allergy tests where they prick a whole bunch of little spots on your arm or on your back. And then they monitor it while you’re in the office. And whatever little bumps swells up the biggest, that’s what you’re sensitive to or allergic to.
And there were differences between sensitivities and allergies that adds another confusing aspect of this whole thing. But the end result is your life is still kind of turned upside down.
DEBRA: Yes.
ALONNA SHAW: So, this chemical patch test, if I remember, it’s kind of big maybe, six inches across, and 6-inch square size. And it’s the kind of thing you have to wear it for four days straight. You cannot shower. You can take bath, just you don’t get it wet.
I actually went into my doctor’s office in Beverly Hills and he put it on. And then I had a meeting. And I was still acting then. And it was an important meeting. I was really nervous. It was a big part night. I really wanted to get back to work.
I went to my agent’s office. And he was an agent at one of the big agencies. I go in there. And I’m all excited. I had this stupid patch on my back, but I’m going to keep going.
And I walked through his office. And in LA a lot of people do the kissy-kissy thing on the cheek. And he had on so much fragrance…
DEBRA: Yes.
ALONNA SHAW: And I’ve had long hair most of my life. And long hair is basically a giant sweeper. And fragrance sticks to things. It’s like a sticky follicle, molecules floating through the air. But it was actually on him and transferred directly to my hair.
My brain short-circuited. It’s kind of an autistic-like reaction where it’s like sensory overload. Your brain stops. The synaptic connections stop working. And of course, an allergic asthma. At that time, I didn’t know I had allergic asthma. We were still figuring it out.
So then I’m standing there disoriented. And he leads me into the meeting with the director. That was not a good moment.
Thankfully, I had an improv background and somehow my mind was coming back. But I really was not on my game.
And it was a turning point for me. I realized this was going to be next to impossible to continue as an actor.
I did struggle with it for years. I didn’t want to give up dream. I loved the craft. I don’t really like the business. But I loved the craft of acting. But that was my turning point.
That patch test, when it came back, I was basically allergic. The fragrance mix (which is what you were talking about), this toxic soup of mystery, elements that the government basically protects these special recipes…
DEBRA: Well, I actually have some information about that that I put on my blog, and so I want to tell people about it. If you go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and you type in the search box ingredients and fragrances, it will take you to a page about the International Fragrance Association.
ALONNA SHAW: Uh-huh.
DEBRA: And what they do is that they review all the ingredients and decide which ones are acceptable and which ones aren’t. And so they have a list of prohibited ingredients, a list of restricted ingredients. And you can also find out from them what specific chemicals are in the fragrance of a specific brand name product.
ALONNA SHAW: Really?
DEBRA: Now that’s not something that’s listed on the label, but you can go to them and find out.
The part that was appalling to me was that I looked at this list of acceptable fragrance ingredients and there were many that I recognized as toxic such as styrene (that thing styrene, that’s in styrofoam cups), ethylene glycol, phenol (which is extremely toxic), benzene (which is extremely toxic), xylene (which is an extremely toxic solvent), formaldehyde which causes cancer. And some of these chemicals are among the most toxic chemicals that exists and have long been on my list of things to avoid. And yet they think that they’re okay to use.
Now, later in the week—actually, on Thursday—we’re actually going to have a toxicologist on the show. And we’re going to learn more about how toxicology research gets done. I look at one list and another list. I have studies about things that are toxic and yet I see an association like this one saying, “It’s okay to use this in all products.”
So if you’re wearing perfume or any kind of scented product of any kind, these are the kinds of chemicals that are in there. And it’s just…
ALONNA SHAW: What people overlook most—I hate to jump in here, but…
DEBRA: Go ahead.
ALONNA SHAW: Well, laundry products.
DEBRA: Yes.
ALONNA SHAW: I did my most recent blog post on laundry products after an overload at the laundromat which I avoid like the plaque normally. People have no clue about their laundry, what it smells like. Because once they put it on, they don’t smell it anymore.
DEBRA: That’s right.
ALONNA SHAW: You get used to it.
DERBA: There’s something called ‘olfactory fatigue’ which means that you can breathe something once and you smell it.
And then you continue to breathe it and you smell it less and less and less. And I think this is why people wear so much perfume and after-shave because they can’t smell it anymore.
We’re going to take another break. And we’ll be back to talk more about living fragrance-free. I‘m Debra Lynn Dadd, this is Toxic Free Talk Radio.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio, I‘m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Alonna Shaw. And you can go to her blog, AlonnaShaw.com., and read about her adventures, finding fragrance-free products.
Alonna, you’ve written several blog posts on this. Let’s start with bath products. When you started looking for fragrance-free products many years ago, how do you go about that process?
ALONNA SHAW: I’m my own test subject and I spend a lot of money buying products and trying products. Anytime that they’re—
Oh, masking fragrances. That’s something that it kind of throws a loop into unscented, fragrance free, scent-free, no scent.
It’s a very confusing world out there. I don’t know. You might be better to clarify how a person really find something that is without scent. But there is this thing called masking fragrance in some products.
DEBRA: Tell us about that. Yes. Yes, there is.
ALONNA SHAW: I get a little confused. I think the marketplace is confused because people use the labels interchangeably.
But just like you read the ingredients on your food packages (which I’m hoping most people do that), you need to do that with your products for the bath as well.
DEBRA: Well, I think you actually need to do that for all products.
ALONNA SHAW: I agree.
DEBRA: For some reason now, it’s even worse that it’s been in the past where the manufacturers are adding scents to all kinds of things.
And so what you want to look for on a label is certainly anything that says fragrance. That’s going to be a synthetic fragrance. Just leave anything that says fragrance on the shelf.
ALONNA SHAW: I agree.
DEBRA: It might also say ‘perfume’ and that also means that it’s synthetic.
If it has a fragrance and it’s a natural fragrance, it’ll say aromatherapy or it will say essential oil and those would be from natural sources.
ALONNA SHAW: I do have a question about that.
DEBRA: Yes.
ALONNA SHAW: For me, I can’t use those at all. But for the people that can use essential oils. But I’ve been reading lately that there are essential oils that are supposed to be organic but they are actually synthetically manufactured. So it’s a little tricky.
DEBRA: That’s not supposed to be that way.
ALONNA SHAW: Okay.
DEBRA: An essential oil has to be from a plant. But it is entirely possible that there are some people who are not following those rules. And so I don’t know if there’s actually a law that says, “This is what essential oils means,” but for many, many, many years, essential oil has meant a net from a natural source. And if it’s organic, it would say organic on it.
I think I should just interject right here that even though labels can be confusing and maybe misleading, there is an agency of the government. The Federal Trade Commission, the FTC, which has regulations that say, “What you say on a label has to be true.” And if it’s falsely misleading, the FTC will fine you or take your product off the market or something, that there’s supposed to be a code of honor of telling the truth.
And yet, many, many, many people don’t. I mean FTC is citing people all the time for making false and misleading claims.
ALONNA SHAW: Thank goodness they’re there for us.
DEBRA: Thank goodness they are there for us and thank goodness there are laws for those. But the problem is, as with many things, there are so many violations they can’t catch everyone.
ALONNA SHAW: Yes.
DEBRA: They just don’t have enough manpower.
ALONNA SHAW: And you know people starting little shops and maybe doing things wrong and not realizing it, it may not be malice. Who knows?
DEBRA: That’s true. An awful lot of people don’t know about toxics in ingredients. And they just think things that sound good. And they don’t understand it at all. So I would say…
ALONNA SHAW: Yes. Thanks to the marketing.
DEBRA: Yes. It’s just marketing. And I see this all over the web too. I’ll go to a website and they’ll be saying things, and I’ll go, “Wait a minute! I know that this is wrong.” But their marketing people don’t.
And so this is why we, as consumers, need to be so careful. And I would say that if you do want to use natural fragrances—not you, Alonna, but the listeners
ALONNA SHAW: I can’t use them.
Well, I take that back. My one natural fragrance is going out and getting fresh air, drinking that through my hair and on me and that is always the best scent ever.
DEBRA: I totally agree with that. I’m going to finish what I’m saying and then I want to say something about that. But if you do want to use natural essential oils, get them from a reputable organization. And if they are reputable, they’ll tell you all about where they got them from. And some of them grow their own herbs and plants and things.
And so just watch out. Here in Florida, we have something called The Dollar Store where everything’s a dollar. I would not like the scent when it’s…
ALONNA SHAW: Well, if it’s a dollar, and it’s an essential oil, it’s not real.
DEBRA: Who knows? Maybe from China or something. But there are a lot of good aromatherapy essential oil products…
ALONNA SHAW: Yes. And the people that make them are very proud. And they’re more than happy like you said to share every tiny, tiny detail. They’re very, very proud of their products, which is wonderful, to have pride in what people make.
DEBRA: Now getting back to fragrances and indoor air pollutants. I had a woman on last week or the week before from the American Lung Association. We were talking about the importance of lungs and the importance of breathing for good health, and that when we breathe indoor air pollutants (of which perfume and fragrance is one), then it actually damages our lungs.
And it makes it more difficult for us to breathe and that impacts our health.
And that’s in addition to whatever other health effects may happen from the toxic chemicals that are contained in those fragrances.
But you have exactly the right idea because going outdoors in a clean air place. Breathing that clean air is one of the most healing things anybody can do.
And I know that you live up in the Sierra Mountains near Lake Tahoe, right?
ALONNA SHAW: Yes. For now. I move a lot. I’m going to stay in Northern California I think for a while. It’s a wonderful area.
DEBRA: But the air there is really nice.
ALONNA SHAW: Mm-hmmm…
DEBRA: Yes.
ALONNA SHAW: The air is wonderful up here. Well, there are fires right now.
DEBRA: Yes.
ALONNA SHAW: That’s probably the easiest way for people that are not fragrant sensitive to understand fragrant sensitivity.
When there’s a cloud of smoke, everybody kind of gets that it’s hard to breathe. It gets on you. And it’s really unpleasant.
And for people that are fragrance sensitive, all of this fragrance trails that people—as you walk down the streets, if you have clothing washed in—I hear music.
DEBRA: Yes, well you can just finish your sentence.
ALONNA SHAW: So it’s just like the smoke. We can tell the fragrance just like regular people that are not MCS can have problems with smoke.
DEBRA: Yes. And we’ll be back after this. My name is Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. We’re talking about living a fragrance-free life with Alonna Shaw.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio, I‘m Debra Lynn Dadd. And today we’re talking about creating a toxic-free life with Alonna Shaw.
And Alonna, during the break—we didn’t end up talking about masking fragrance. And I just wanted to go back to that for a minute.
During the break, I looked that up online just to make sure that I got the definition of it right. And actually, what a masking fragrance is is a fragrance (which is a chemical fragrance) designed to block the odor of other chemicals in the product.
So it is considered to be a fragrance. It isn’t necessarily on the label. But if you go to the Material Safety Data Sheet (or MSDS for short), it says fragrance on the material’s safety data sheet.
And the point of an MSDS is to alert people to the toxic chemicals that are in a product. And if fragrance is listed, it’s a toxic chemical.
ALONNA SHAW: Those sheets that you mentioned, a lot of people (including myself) are intimated by them. But it’s something to get friendly with because there’s so much good information there once a person can really understand what’s being offered in the…
DEBRA: It really is something that I think that every single person—they should teach in school how to read these things. In fact, there should be a whole thing in school that teaches kids about toxic chemicals because we live in a toxic world and they should know how to read these things.
What you want to do is if you wanted to look for a particular product and find out if there’s any kind of fragrance in it, you would just go to your favorite search engine. You would type in the name of the product, XYZ Laundry Powder and then put the letters M-S-D-S after it. And then a site will come up where the manufacturer has put the material safety data sheet for that product.
You just click on it and you go look at it, and there’s a section that says hazardous ingredients. And they’re required by law to list these hazardous ingredients now. They don’t have to list all the ingredients that are hazardous. But there is a list of “hazardous ingredients” that are agreed upon hazardous ingredients that need to be listed on these sheets.
ALONNA SHAW: At least it’s a good lead. It’s something for us to work out of.
DEBRA: It’s a start.
ALONNA SHAW: Yes. For me, the ultimate test for me since I’m sensitive to so many things is that I really just have to try it.
Sometimes a product will work for a week, and then I develop an issue. It can be dermatitis, it can be breathing issues, just general unpleasantness, a whole host of issues. But I have to just trial and error. But it does help to have these labels.
DEBRA: That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right.
I do want to make sure that we just say, for the listening audience, that there’s a difference between something being toxic (like in a toxicology book) versus somebody having an individual reaction to it. And when you’re having your individual reaction—and we all can have our own individual reactions—that’s different from like doing a study and finding out all the rat’s died.
ALONNA SHAW: Yes.
DEBRA: And in my work, I have to not be looking at people’s individual reactions, but looking at what did the study say. And if I can identify from the studies something that’s toxic, then nobody should be using it.
And yes, Alonna and others have their own individual reactions to perfume and fragrance. And they need to test just like Alonna does. But I can’t stress this enough. Fragrance,artificial fragrance, synthetic fragrance is a toxic chemical. It’s on material safety data sheets. It has been declared by the Centers for Disease Control as an indoor air pollutant, as a toxic chemical.
And so it’s just something that if you want to remove one toxic chemical from you life, just go around your house and identify all the scented products that are in your home and get rid of them.
ALONNA SHAW: And If I could interject.
DEBRA: Please do.
ALONNA SHAW: Take a look at your pets, their reactions. They don’t have voices. But a friend of mine used that carpet spray stuff to make the carpet seem clean. And the cat would always run and hide behind the TV stand because that was the only place that that carpet stuff couldn’t be applied. And the cat would just stay here.
DEBRA: Yes.
ALONNA SHAW: The cat was very uncomfortable. Animals know what isn’t healthy.
DEBRA: They do.
ALONNA SHAW: And if we just watch some of our pets—I mean, don’t walk your dog when you’ve just applied pesticide.
Don’t spray that stuff on your carpet and then put your pet right on there. I wouldn’t use any of that on my carpeting anyway.
I wouldn’t have carpeting if i had the choice.
DEBRA: I haven’t had carpeting in 30 years, so I haven’t had any of that stuff in my house.
But also, just keep in mind—here’s another thing about pets and children—their bodies are so much smaller than our bodies are. Even the biggest dog is a lot smaller than an adult human body. And so they can’t tolerate the amount of things that we might be able to tolerate. So we do need to look at these things objectively, know where the toxic chemicals are and don’t use them in our homes.
Even if we’re not being affected by it, our children and our pets most likely are. They just don’t have the same immune systems and the same detox systems. And it’s just a sheer volume of more fragrance that their bodies just can’t handle.
ALONNA SHAW: So any way I could impress on people to be aware of marketing. Get what you need, but you don’t need all of the fragrances and everything. Even if you love fragrance and you have the most expensive bottle of fragrance in the world, realize you’re undermining that wonderful scent with all of these inexpensive, horrible scent that are permeating every other product you’re buying.
DEBRA: Yes. Yes.
ALONNA SHAW: Go unscented and then wear your nice, lightly applied high quality scent.
DEBRA: Yes. One thing that I often think about is that—I forgot what I was going to say.
ALONNA SHAW: I’ve got some things I want to say.
DEBRA: Go ahead. You talk.
ALONNA SHAW: You see, my solution is I walk around this world and I dodge these clouds of perfume. But there are a lot of people that are supportive. You can find work environments if you let people know that you’re sensitive.
After a car accident, I ended up going to work on “The Drew Carey show”. Even though I had starred in movies, I was background, extra. And as a background, I’d do small parts, just utility parts, stand-in for a year and a half (that was basically three different seasons).
Because the environment was supportive—Kathy Kinney is sensitive to scent. I don’t know to what degree. I never actually spoke with her about it because I was too shy. But the work environment was supportive. Nobody there wore strong fragrance or strongly-fragranced products.
So, find a place that’s healthy for you. Don’t try to make an unhealthy place work. Think about the long term. Do you want to have asthma? Do you want to have other issues by having long term exposure to these things?
When I share my story with somebody, if I’ll be standing in line at Starbucks or something, there’s fragrance, I’ll say something to the woman at the register, she’ll go, “Oh, me too…” or if I’m at another store and somebody walks by, somebody else will say, “Yes, me too. I have this problem, but I can’t get out of the store. I have to go outside and get fresh air when I can.”
Try to share with people. There are supportive people out there. Sometimes people aren’t so nice because they don’t understand. They get offended. But I’m not trying to attack somebody when I say I’m fragrant sensitive. I’m just letting htem know that…
DEBRA: No. I think that’s a really important point. If we keep continuing to be exposed to toxic chemicals on the job and say,
“Well I have to do this because I have to work and earn money, and all work places are like this,” I have found in my own life, I just decided that I needed to create my own work and my own money because I couldn’t go work in an office or a store or something like that. I didn’t want to be exposed to toxic chemicals. I was extremely sensitive at that time.
But I ended up empowering myself in creating my own work and helping others and making more money than I would have if I had worked for somebody else then.
For me, deciding to rid my life of toxic chemicals opened up a whole new world of being able to be in a safe place, but also having control over my life and being empowered to make my environment the way I wanted it to be instaed of just being a victim of somebody else’s environment. And everybody could do that.
ALONNA SHAW: Yes. It’s an excellent example of being brave and just walking through a new door that opens.
DEBRA: Yes.
ALONNA SHAW: We have been throughout life. That’s what life is. One door closes, another opens—that is life. And when a strange door opens and you don’t understand, do some research and go through it.
DEBRA: I completely agree with that. I just see in my life that life has been a constant new opportunity to open doors and open doors and that things get better and better and better. So just have that courage.
Alonna thanks so much for being with me today.
ALONNA SHAW: If I could mention something really quick. You should check out my blog site for MyDestination.com. It’s my solution to recharging my lungs.
DEBRA: Good. Alright! Thanks. We have to go. But thank you [inaudible 00:36:53]. We’ll be back tomorrow.
Lead Exposure from Antique China Cabinet
Question from Jenny, NS
My grandmother watches my two children and she has an old antique china cabinet in her dining/eating room. It is just there as decoration and no one uses it however it was probably a hundred or so years old and I am sure it is coated with lead paint. Do I need to be concerned with this around my children if they only eat in that room and don’t touch or play with the cabinet? It has a high sentimental value so i cant ask her to refinish or remove. Thank you
Debra’s Answer
No, you don’t need to be concerned if all they are doing is eating in the room and don’t touch it.
Lead is a particle, not a vapor. The danger comes through being absorbed through the skin or ingestion, such as children eating paint chips. Exposure could also come from inhaling dust that contains bits of lead paint, such as from sanding lead paint off of woodwork.
I think your kids are fine.
Farmhouse Sink Installation
Question from Bonnie Johnson
I have always loved farmhouse type sinks. I have an old home and wanted to get one put in when I do the new countertop. I am looking at granit or some sort of stone for that. My understanding from my contracter is that I would not be able to handle the seal etc used to install a farmhouse sink and there are questions about bacteria growth? Does anyone here have one and if so what did they use to have it installed. Debra what are your thoughts?
Debra’s Answer
I love them too and wanted to install one in my kitchen but it was beyond my budget.
Readers, has anyone installed one and can answer Bonnie’s questions?