My guest today is Liz Harriman, Deputy Director of the Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI) at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. We’ll be talking about what businesses, community organizations and government agencies are doing to reduce the use of toxic chemicals to protect public health and the environment. As Deputy Director of the Toxics Use Reduction Institute, Liz Harriman is responsible for managing the operations and technical functions of the Institute, as well as working with the other TURA agencies to set direction for the program. In her 20+ years working at the Institute, she has provided technical research and support services to Massachusetts companies with the goal of identifying safer alternatives to toxic chemicals used in manufacturing and products. Recent technical work includes prioritization and hazard evaluation of chemicals, chemical alternatives assessment, and flame retardants. Ms. Harriman is a registered Professional Engineer and holds Bachelors and Masters degrees from Cornell University in Civil Engineering and a Master’s degree in Hazardous Materials Management from Tufts University. www.turi.org
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
How Organizations are Reducing Toxic Chemicals to Protect Public Health
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Liz Harriman
Date of Broadcast: March 24, 2014
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world. Today is Monday, March 24th 2014. And I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. and we’re going to be talking about how organizations are reducing toxic chemicals to protect public health.
It’s not just us consumers who are concerned with that, but there are businesses and organizations and all kinds of groups who are looking for ways to reduce our toxic chemical exposure, and then it gets passed on to you.
But before I introduce my guests, I just want to say that, over the weekend, I actually received some e-mails from some listeners. And I just wanted to say that I would love to hear from all of you. Anybody who wants to write to me, just please go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and at the bottom of the page, there’s a form where you can send me an e-mail, and I would love to hear from you.
I’d love to hear how you like the show, what you like, what your favorite show is, guests that you’d like to have on, anything that you want to tell me about the show to make it better or just say thank you, say hello, whatever you’d like.
Please feel free to just write to me. I would love to hear from you. It’s ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. You can just go there and say whatever you want to say. There’s a form at the bottom of the page.
So, my guest today is Liz Harriman. She’s the deputy director of the Toxics Use Reduction Institute at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. And what she does is that she helps businesses and organizations, community organizations, and government agencies, to reduce the use of toxic chemicals, so that they can protect public health and the environment.
Hi Liz! Thanks for being with us.
Respondent: Hello! Thank you for inviting me.
DEBRA: So first, tell us what is the Toxics Use Reduction Institute. What do you do?
Liz Harriman: So, the institute is part of the Massachusetts Toxic Use Reduction Program. And that is a program that was passed into law in 1989. It requires manufacturers to submit to the state annually how much they’re using in toxic chemicals, and also mandates that they do a planning process every other year on the chemicals that they use.
The law doesn’t make companies do anything in terms of changing their practices. But it does ask them to evaluate the chemicals they use and figure out why they’re using them, how much they’re using, and whether there are safer alternatives or ways they can reduce their use.
And when companies do that process of evaluation, then they normally will find good opportunities and find that those will save them money. And so they’ll go ahead and implement them. It’s all really voluntary in terms of what they end up doing, but they’re required to go through that on a bi-annual planning process.
So, our program has been around for more than 20 years. And companies have been going through this process and have made a lot of progress. The first decade, they reduced their use by about 33% and their releases to the environment by 85% and about 50% in waste reduction.
And then, the second decade, you would think, “Okay, they’ve gotten all the low-hanging fruit. Maybe there really isn’t anything more to do.” But as it happens, there is still more to do. They find more opportunities continually, so that the second decade, they’re still reducing use by 22%, waste by 33% and emissions to the environment by an additional 65%.
There’s been huge progress over the last 20 years in Massachusetts and, to a good extent, in many other states as well. Most states don’t track their chemical use. They just track their emissions and waste reduction via a federal program. But in Massachusetts, [00:04:08] requires them to also track their use and allows that information to be out in the public.
So, truly, involvement in the program [00:04:17] responsible for our education and training and research and laboratory testing and doing a number of different things with industry sectors and communities and others, producing a lot of information products [00:04:31] to help the companies and the community groups, the municipalities and everyone figure out what good options they might have to reduce the [00:04:40] toxic chemicals in the Commonwealth.
Interviewer: Wow! Wow. What a great program! What a great program! How many other states are doing this?
Respondent: There are a number of states that have some part of this criminal law. But there is no other state that has the same thing [00:05:05].
There are some other states that require companies that use certain types of chemicals to do a pollution prevention planning process (which is similar to the Toxic Use Reduction Process) and there are some states that collect some information on you. But no one else has it kind of wrapped up in the same package [00:05:25].
The other thing about the law in Massachusetts is that companies have to pay a fee when they file that annual report. And so those fees go to support the implementation agencies. So that’s TURI here at UMass Lowell. And there’s also an Office of Technical Assistance which provides direct, on-site, confidential assistance to companies.
And that’s at our Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. And then, there’s a part of our Department of Environmental Protection that does the regulatory work.
So, the [00:05:55] return services back to all those companies that paid the fees. That has kept the program very vital and engaged, when in some states, these similar programs have sort of languished because of lack of funding at the state.
DEBRA: Yeah. Wow! Well, it sounds like that you’ve got it all figured out in Massachusetts to actually be doing this—and are doing it successfully. That’s very impressive. I would like all the states to do that.
How did you get interested in working in the field of toxic chemicals, you personally? I see on your bio that you are a professional engineer. I don’t know all the different jobs one might have in this field. So what does a professional engineer do? How did you get interested in working in this field?
Liz Harriman: I guess like many people today, I’ve had more than one career. So I started out as a structural engineer. I was a civil engineer in college. I did structural engineering which is about designing buildings and bridges and things like that for about 10 years. It was fun. And I really enjoyed it. But I felt like I was taking down trees and putting up buildings, and perhaps not leaving the mark I wanted to leave on the planet.
So, I went back to school at Tufts University. I’ve gone to Cornell is an undergrad. I went back to Tuft in a program on Hazardous Materials Management. I learned all about hazardous chemicals and what could be done to prevent their use.
And after that, I came to work here at the very new (at that point) Toxics Use Reduction Institute. And I have been here ever since. It’s very, very rewarding work, which is why I’m still here.
DEBRA: I find it very rewarding too. I feel that if there is one thing that causes the most harm in the world, it’s toxic chemical exposure. And every time I do something to help there be less of that in the world, I know that I’m making the world a better place. I can imagine how rewarding it might be for you and everybody there.
Wow! There’s so much to talk about. I’ve been looking at your website, and there’s so much here. So I’m trying to figure out where to start.
Well, first, let me just tell everybody that you can go to their website. It’s TURI.org. Why don’t you give us just a little tour of what people will find on the website because there’s so much information.
Liz Harriman: Sure! We recently re-did the website a little bit. So hopefully, it’ll be easy for your listeners to navigate.
If they go to at the top tab that says ‘Our Work’, then it has different sections on the different things that TURI is responsible for under the law (i.e. training).
And it has a section on grants. We provide grants to companies, to academic researchers to come up with new innovative solutions for things that companies don’t already have safer alternatives for.
And we have a section on business, which you’ll find information on different industry sectors and things that are going on with them;
Toxic chemical sections where there are some basic information about the chemicals that are regulated under the TURI Act, and also, what things our Science Advisory Board might be looking at, what’s on the list that our Science Advisory Board believes are more hazardous or less hazardous things on the list;
There’s a section on Green Cleaning which has information about our Surface Cleaning Lab where they do both parts cleaning for industry (like solvent degreasing), and also research safer methods for janitorial cleaning.
DEBRA: Liz, we need to go to break. But we’ll talk more about this when we come back.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Liz Harriman, deputy director of the Toxics Use Reduction Institute. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: I want to start with telling our listeners where to go. They definitely want to see this in the future or whenever they listening because I think a lot of people are listening online. At TURI.org, it’s under [00:10:28] tab, and I chose ‘Toxic Chemicals.’
Now, one of the thing that I would say from my viewpoint of [00:10:38] is there’s a basic process that one might go through to lessen the amount of toxic chemicals that they use. And that’s the same whether they’re an individual listening to this for an organization. And it’s basically to identify some toxic chemicals that are toxic [00:11:04] have less exposure.
And then—hold on just second. I shouldn’t have [00:11:15]. Just say something for a second.
Liz Harriman: You’re sounding a little bit garbled.
DEBRA: Okay, is that better?
Liz Harriman: That’s much better.
DEBRA: Okay! There’s something wrong with my mic. And every once in a while, I have to just unplug it and plug it back in. So now, we’re back.
Liz Harriman: That’s wonderful! It’s very clear now.
DEBRA: Okay, at least I know what the problem is.
So, the first thing is to identify some toxic chemicals that you might want to reduce the use of. And then, you need to find alternatives. So it’s basically those two steps.
You have—what I chose was ‘Toxic Chemicals’ and I’m looking at a page called ‘Chemical Lists’. I’d like you to talk to us about how one chooses, how one finds out what are the toxic chemicals that you would want to reduce in your life?
So, I understand that some of these chemicals—I guess all of these—have been determined by law in the state of Massachusetts for businesses. But tell us how they came to those decisions.
Liz Harriman: So, I won’t say that the chemical list is our pride and joy. It was established in 1989 when the law was first passed. And it consists primarily of chemicals that are from the Federal Toxics Release Inventory which was a list generated originally in 1987, and then updated a few times through the 1990s. But it has not been well-maintained since then.
We also include chemicals from the CERCLA list which is the Superfund list. And so that broadens it somewhat more than the Federal Toxics Relase Inventory. But the list really is in need of being updated for chemicals that are more widely-used now and chemicals that we now have more information about than we had back then.
DEBRA: I would agree with you. I mean, I’ve been looking at listed chemicals for more than 30 years. And when I go back and looked at the first time I wrote a book, I chose 40 chemicals. Forty, I have to laugh at that now. But they were the 40 chemicals that I could identify back in 1982 as being toxic chemicals in consumer products. I didn’t have any lists to go to then in 1982. I just needed to kind of look and dig and find and see where the toxic chemicals were, and I identified 40.
And as you’ve said, I’ve observed exactly the same thing, that we have more information now, and there are new chemicals that are being used, things that we didn’t even think about before.
And we also not only have more information, but we have more understanding. Thirty years ago, we didn’t know what an endocrine disruptor was. We didn’t even think about the endocrine system. When I started, the only thing I was looking at was, “Was it toxic to my immune system?” And now, a few years ago when I wrote my latest book, Toxic Free, I looked at everything again, and I realized that you can now associate toxic chemical exposure with every body system. It can affect every single body system all the way down to your DNA.
We didn’t know that 30 years ago.
Liz Harriman: Right! And what I will say about endocrine disruption is that we still don’t know a lot about it. It’s definitely an emerging science. It’s something that we know is a problem and we know exists. We know some substances that cause it. But the federal government and international agencies are still researching and debating about how best to identify and say, “This chemical causes endocrine disruption.” It’s definitely sort of a spectrum from weak to strong, and where you cut that off and say, “This one is an endocrine disruptor.” So it’s certainly still up for debate (which is one of the reasons why a lot of those substances aren’t on the lists yet).
DEBRA: I was just going to ask.
Liz Harriman: The other thing I would say is that [00:15:34] is really geared towards manufacturers and industry.
So there are many chemicals that are of concern in consumer products that might not be the biggest concern for our manufacturing base. So you’ll see a lot of chemicals in there that you would never find in a consumer product.
They’re intermediate or processing chemical.
DEBRA: Right! So, they are things used in the manufacture of consumer products, but they’re not necessarily chemicals that would be shown on the label because they’re not the end result. Is that correct?
Liz Harriman: Right. So, there are some other lists out there that are perhaps more up-to-date and not always regulatory. But there are things like the SIN List, the Substitute It Now list in Europe which has a lot more things geared towards consumer products and chemicals that are of concern to the public end consumers. California and Maine and Washington state have all developed lists of chemicals of concern in children’s products or in consumer product. And so those are things that are more relevant for that particular end point.
But they’re still having trouble with the fact that there’s an overwhelming number of chemicals that they could be working on.
DEBRA: I think that that is one of the challenges, just the sheer number of chemicals. And we’re going to talk about that when we come back from the break.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Liz Harriman from the Toxics Use Reduction Institute at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. We’re talking about toxic chemicals. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Liz Harriman. She’s the deputy director of the Toxics Use Reduction Institute at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Their website is TURI.org.
Okay, Liz, before the break, we were talking about the sheer number of toxic chemicals. And so, I don’t even know how many toxic chemical there are. Often, people will say there’s 80,000 toxic chemicals in use. I know that there’s the CAS site where you go and register your toxic chemical (or your chemical, whether it’s toxic or not). It has millions! The number is in the millions.
And so, how do you go from looking at this immensity of chemicals to choosing something that you can actually do in daily life?
Liz Harriman: Yeah, there have been several efforts to try to distill down that volume of information. And there are something like 60,000 to 80,000 chemicals that may be currently in commerce. But they aren’t all toxic or there are certainly degrees of toxicity among them.
Again, some states like Maine and Washington have done a prioritization process of all the chemicals that they could identify with information—so does Canada. Maine came out with a list of 1400 chemicals of concern, and then narrowed that down further to—some of them, high concern for children. Washington did something kind of similar. So, there are ways to try to focus in.
And I wanted to add that for the existing list, particularly in the U.S., but the main categories of things that are missing, I think one of them are phthalates which are the softeners that are in plastics. There are many, many different ones, and there are only a few that are really part of our law and many other laws.
And so, in Massachusetts, we have our Science Advisory Board trying to look at that class of chemicals, things like flame retardants. There are very, very few flame retardants on the list, and there are many, many toxicity issues.
They are coming out with more and more slightly different chemicals all the time with flame retardants and those are not regulated well at all.
Anti-microbials is another class that is not very well-regulated. So there’s really a lot of work that needs to be done.
And again, programs like ours are trying to have our Science Advisory Board look at these things and try to figure out what should be in the list. But it’s a very slow process. It really needs to be done I think at the federal level.
And that just hasn’t been happening.
DEBRA: I agree with you. I’m really trying to look at the big picture and see what everybody is doing. I’ve obviously had a lot of guests on this show doing different aspects of it. But I mean, I started out 30 years ago saying, “Well, I’m just one consumer, and I don’t want to have toxic chemicals in my products. Where do I find out information?” and there was none. And so, I had to just figure out as best I could. I mean, I never even took chemistry in school.
Liz Harriman: I wouldn’t know that from reading your book.
DEBRA: Thank you. But I became interested in chemistry in my 20’s. I started becoming interested in this subject.
I taught myself chemistry by reading it.
Here’s how I actually started.
I bought a book I still have on my shelf called the Condensed Chemical Dictionary. I would just find a chemical, like say formaldehyde, I would look it up, and it would tell me, “Well, here’s some health effects. Here’s how formaldehyde is made.”
And then, I’d look up the next chemical. I was trying to understand the definition. I just look up chemical after chemical after chemical.
And now, I would say that working with this information every day for more than 30 years, I probably know more about chemicals and their health effects and what classification they are and all those things than most average consumers. But we really need to know this information.
But I still find that I’m having difficulty finding the authoritative place to go where I know that all this information has been looked at and there are some prioritization of chemicals and all these things. I’ve had to do that for myself in order for me to do my work and to live my life. But I don’t see that that’s been done on a a large scale.
Liz Harriman: Well, I think Canada did it a bit. The issue is whether you would agree with their criteria.
DEBRA: Right! That’s it.
Liz Harriman: Each one of these programs have certain criteria. Either they’re looking at children’s products or they’re more concerned with things that are persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic in the environment or whatever.
So, you can go through that list in a lot of different ways and come up with different answers.
DEBRA: Yeah.
Liz Harriman: One of the other things on our website, if you go to the Library tab, and then look at Subject Guide, we do have a site which would be good for you probably, Debra, but might overwhelm some of your listeners on environmental health and safety data resources.
And so if you’re looking for more information on a chemical, then that subject guide has a lot of great links and references on it.
DEBRA: Yeah, I also see on the library, you have a link called TURI Chemical Fact Sheets. I was starting to look at that. In fact, I’m going to click on one right now. These are pretty simple explanations for people who want to know just something simple about these chemicals. Here’s one on formaldehyde. Yeah, these are pretty simple.
I just really think that everybody needs to have this kind of information, so that we can make decisions. I mean, I know a lot of consumers, they’re asking me, “Is this chemical toxic? Is this chemical toxic?” And there are not really places that are well-publicized and easy for consumers to understand and things like that. So I think I need to do more work to provide that. It’s such a big job!
Liz Harriman: There’s also an effort by a group which developed something called SixClasses.org. There’s a series of short, 15-minute webinars that were done on six different classes of chemicals for which we have concern. And those are very accessible. They were designed by retailers and others.
DEBRA: I actually went to all of those original webinars. And they are very good summaries that anybody could understand. I really advise people—it’s SixClasses.org, right?
Liz Harriman: Yeah.
DEBRA: You can just go there and see these six classes of chemicals. If concerned about triclosan, you can look at the anti-microbials; and fire retardants, there’s a whole one fire retardants. They just did a really good job putting those together.
It’s time for the next break. We’ll go to break now. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd.
And my guest today is Liz Harriman, deputy director at the Toxics Use Reduction Institute. And that’s at TURI.org. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Liz Harriman, deputy director of the Toxics Use Reduction Institute.
And Liz, tell us about your Cleaning Laboratory, what you do there.
Liz Harriman: Our Cleaning Laboratory tests safer cleaners for industry as well as for janitorial cleaning. So, we started out back in the early ‘90s when it was necessary for industries to replace CFP, an ozone-depleting chemical. That’s when we started looking for safer alternatives. And that’s primarily different methods of cleaning with water and detergent and using other mechanical methods to help accomplish that. So that’s all about industry parts cleaning.
It turns out that industry still needs help with that. There are billions of toxic solvents for a lot of cleaning. And so, we’re still at that trying to help companies.
And then, we also do testing on janitorial products. A lot of janitorial products will contain toxic chemicals. Some of the surfactants or the anti-microbial, et cetera, can be bad for you. It can be asthmagens or sensitizers for the folks who use them. And so we’ve been testing safer janitorial equipments and cleaners for quite a while. So, we test the efficacy of the safer cleaners.
DEBRA: And these are particularly cleaners that are used in businesses and industries.
Is there an organization for consumers that does what you do for business, but does it with consumer products?
Liz Harriman: I’m not sure. But we do it in some ways for consumers as well. We don’t have the website up yet, but we do have one that’s in the process which will look at what we call D.I.Y. cleaning products, do-it-yourself.
There are a lot of sites that give those recipes. But we have actually gone through the process of testing them and to see which ones were…
DEBRA: How great! That’s really needed, yeah.
Liz Harriman: Yeah. But if you go to our community website, under the ‘Our Work’, if you go to ‘Home & Community’, there’s a video there demonstrating for a headstart programs how to mix some of your own cleaner and to use those. And there’s also quite a bit of information from previous community projects on more home janitorial cleaning. So, those would be helpful to your listeners as well.
DEBRA: Yeah. I see over in the ‘Home & Community’ page over on the right-hand column, there are some do-it-yourself cleaning recipes. I’m going to just click on one. Here’s floor cleaners, and it gives you some ingredients and if it’s tested or not tested. And I can see that you’re going through this very systematically to come up with answers.
I’m looking at all this, and I’m thinking about how long you’ve been doing this and how long I’ve been doing this, and there’s so much work to do in order to make this transition from finding out what are the toxic chemicals to coming up with the solutions to educating people that they can do something else. It’s just a big job! It’s a big job.
But it needs to be done. It needs to be done. Wow! I just I admire all these things you’re doing.
Liz Harriman: Thank you. I was going to mention one that kind of crosses over the business and community line.
And that’s dry cleaning. So dry cleaning is traditionally done with perchlorethylene which is a carcinogen. And it’s still largely done with perchlorethylene. But it is possible to just use water and detergent and special equipment, and to not ever have to use toxic solvents.
So, we have been working very hard to help companies in Massachusetts, our dry cleaners, to switch to professional wet cleaning. We have eight that we have helped to fund. There’s a handful more that have done it on their own. And I encourage everyone to ask their dry cleaner what solvent they use, and then also to ask if they’ve considered doing everything in wet cleaning. A lot of dry cleaners will do many things in water. But if they don’t have the right equipment, it’s difficult to do dry clean-only fabric. But it is possible. It’s being done in California and Massachusetts. And there’s a handful of other places across the country. That’s a very important transition.
DEBRA: I think so too. I haven’t been on a dry cleaning establishment in at least 20 years. But I’ve been following what’s been going on with this transition and the things that are available. And the other day, I had a stain on my shirt that I couldn’t get out, and I didn’t want to throw it away. I went into my closest dry cleaner here in Florida, in Clearwater, Florida, and they were doing all these things. And they explained to me how green and non-toxic they were, and that they were doing wet cleaning and all these.
And I had no idea! They didn’t have a sign out in front that says, “You know, we’re a non-toxic cleaner. Come in!”
Liz Harriman: That’s true.
DEBRA: So, I recommend to people that they check around in their community and find out who is doing the best dry cleaning if dry cleaning is something you need.
I actually went through a whole wardrobe transition. I now only have clothing that does not need dry cleaning. And that was a conscious decision that I made. Everything I wear is in the washing machine.
Liz Harriman: which is another great transition.
DEBRA: Yeah, yeah. So, there are all kinds of ways to reduce our exposure to toxic chemicals.
Liz Harriman: One of the other things I wanted to mention about that dry cleaning in particular is that one of the things that we worked very hard with business on is not making regrettable substitution.
So traditionally, someone would say, “Well, perchlorethylene is bad. You need to get rid of it,” and companies would then go to their vendors or just try to find another substitute, but not necessarily understand the hazards of the newer particular chemical that was on the market.
They would make a transition to the next chemical. And then, in a few years, you find out that that one’s also bad.
So, we do what’s called Alternative Assessment. We try to look carefully at the alternatives. Rather than just telling someone, “Don’t use this,” we try to say, “Oh, this one’s not good. These are your alternatives” and this is how they kind of stack up in terms of performance and cost and environmental health and safety attributes.
So, for example, there’s one of those on dry cleaning on our website. There’s a 4-page, short fact sheet. If you go to your dry cleaner, and they say that they’re using a particular alternative, BF2000 (which is a hydrocarbon or the GreenEarth), then you can go to that fact sheet that we’ve put out and try to see where some of the environmental health and safety concerns are.
DEBRA: This is so valuable because that the hardest part of that I think is not that consumers or organization or businesses don’t want to change; it’s understanding what to do, and then having to actually make the change.
There’s no point in everybody having to do the same research over and over and over, which is why I think what you’re doing is so valuable because not only is it helping in Massachusetts, but anybody and any state can go to your website and find out the information and do the same thing in terms of making those switches in their business. They could change their dry cleaning business by going to your website and finding out how to do it.
It’s not a matter of just walking around in the dark and not knowing what to do because people like you are doing that groundwork and putting it together in a way that’s understandable.
Wow! Wow. It’s just very, very good, what you’re doing. I know I’m saying that over and over, but I’m just so pleased and impressed that a state has put together this program, and that you’re doing this.
Liz Harriman: Another state, California, has been doing some interesting things. They’re trying to actually mandate alternatives assessments for certain consumer products because they have the Safer Consumer Products Law. I don’t know if you’ve had someone on your show to talk about that yet.
DEBRA: Not yet.
Liz Harriman: But they came out with their first draft list of three chemicals in certain uses that they will make companies do an alternatives assessment on and say, “Is there a safer alternative that you could use for that product?”
So, they’re methylene chloride (which has traditionally been found in paint strippers) and chlorinated tris (which is a flame retardant) and diisocyanate (which are what you make polyurethane out of). They’re particularly concerned with the diisocyanate in spray polyurethane foam where there had been lots and lots of problems with worker health and safety and homeowners having residual chemical effects from the spray polyurethane foam.
So, that should be really very interesting to see.
DEBRA: Yeah, to see what they come up with. I know that methylene chloride, there’s a lot of non-toxic ways to strip paint. That’s something that should be easy to replace. I mean, it might not be a chemical. It might be something else. You can use heat. Just heat up the paint and scrape it off. So that’s not a replacement chemical, but it’s a replacement method. And so, it might not help a business to replace, to be able to sell the same product in a less toxic form. But it helps the consumer have another way of doing it.
Liz Harriman: Right! And one of the particular problems with methylene chloride is in bath tub stripping. So, when someone gets their bath tub refinished, because methylene chloride is very volatile, it evaporates easily, but it heavier than air, it settles on the bottom of the tub. There had been many worker death from when you stick your head down in the tub and you’re overcome.
DEBRA: Wow! Wow. That’s so interesting.
Liz Harriman: Don’t do your own bath tub stripping.
DEBRA: No, no. I’ll just say—we’re coming to the end of the show. Oh, actually, I can’t say this because we only have 10 seconds left.
So, thank you so much for being with me.
Liz Harriman: You’re welcome.
DEBRA: This has been interesting. And the website is TURI.org. Go there and find out some information.
This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. You can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. And as I’ve said at the beginning of the show, go there and write me a note. This is Debra Lynn Dadd. We’ll be back tomorrow. Bye!
