My guest today is Mona Weiss, a naturalist and actress who co-founded Eco Nuts in 2009 with her fiancée, Pirates of the Carribbean actor Scott Shields, to bring eco-friendly laundry and cleaning products to the marketplace in compostable or recyclable packaging. We’ll be talking about how to recognize toxic and natural ingredients on product labels and how natural products can improve health conditions. Having suffered from a “normal detergent” allergy all her life, as well as a sensitivity to dyes and fragrances, Mona is extremely discerning when it comes to products that come in contact with her skin. Mona discovered she had sensitivities to toxins on new year’s eve right before she turned 16 and was home alone. The idea to start Eco Nuts came about 10 years later. In addition, Mona loves to study our natural world. She’s studied salamanders, marine and freshwater ecology, discovered new species of micro spiders in the Costa Rican rain forest, and worked with leopards, lions, and bears. econuts.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Soap Nuts: The All Natural Solution for Laundry
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Mona Weiss
Date of Broadcast: September 17, 2013
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And this is Toxic Free Talk Radio. Today is—what is today? It’s Tuesday, September 17th 2013. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. The sun is shining, so we’ll have no thunderstorms today.
And I may have a slight technical problem with my computer which is happening intermittently. Yesterday, it was fine for the whole show. So I’m crossing my fingers that it will be fine today.
And we do this show because there are toxic chemicals all around in all kinds of consumer products, in the air that we breathe, in the water we drink, just everywhere. But there are many, many products that do not contain toxic chemicals. There are ways to get toxic chemicals out of our bodies. And being free of these toxic exposures is what this show is all about.
Today, we’re going to talk about laundry and one of my favorite laundry products, soap nuts.
My guest today is Mona Weiss. She’s a naturalist and actress and co-founder of EcoNuts.
Hi Mona!
MONA WEISS: Hello!
DEBRA: How are you today?
MONA WEISS: Oh, I’m doing great. The sun isn’t even shining here, and I’m in California.
DEBRA: Oh, no! Well, I’m sure it’ll be shining soon.
So, tell us first, what led you to be interested in toxic chemicals and in starting your company, EcoNuts.
MONA WEISS: Absolutely! It kind of started when I was about 16 years old. I was home alone. It was New Year’s Eve and my parents were at a party. I am up late beating Legend of Zelda on Nintendo. Up until that time, I was getting hives and rashes and stuff like that. But I never really paid attention to it. And that night, I had a really bad reaction. I’m home alone, and I was just covered in these red welts. My mom wasn’t at home. I didn’t really know what to do.
Long story short, we figured out that I’m allergic to food dye which was really weird. My original clue that night was that I’ve eaten rainbow sprinkle cookie and a raspberry Snapple. I had to go to the doctor and all that stuff.
So, we figured this out. And I had to suddenly look at everything I’m eating and cut out these food dyes (which are in everything, it’s unavoidable).
And around that time, I’m also diagnosed with ADD. And I was thinking, “God! This is really bad.”
Fast forward to years later, after I graduated college, I met Scott, my fiancée, and we started EcoNuts together.
And at the time he’s dating, he’s like, “You don’t have ADD. I think you’re just eating the wrong foods.”
So, I started buying organic foods and I got off the medication. And sure enough, I don’t have ADD. And all I needed was just healthy, organic food.
And then, there was one missing piece of the puzzle which was that I was still getting rashes. I could just eat fruits and vegetables, I’m still getting rashes. Well, it doesn’t have food dye in it, so what’s going on?
So, the mystery of that was solved when Scott’s uncle mentioned that there are these berries in the Himalayas that make soap. Maybe I should try using these for my laundry. That might help my problem.
I thought he was completely crazy. I’m using the detergent the doctor told me to use. So the doctor’s right… maybe?
DEBRA: Right, right. Maybe…
MONA WEISS: But anyway, we got these berries. And I’m like freaking out. I didn’t want to put them in my washing machine, but I did.
I washed my clothes. And holy cow! They worked not only to clean my clothes, but all of my eczema and allergies and rashes, they went away as soon as I started wearing the clothes that I had washed with these berries.
There was no real company kind of selling these, a real product. I was thinking, “You know what? I’m sure I’m not the only one with this problem.”
But these worked great. You’re not putting any chemicals down the drain. It’s environmentally conscious. So we decided to start a company and bring this product to mainstream.
DEBRA: I think what you’ve done—it’s not that soap nuts didn’t exist before because I’ve been using them for about four or five years…
MONA WEISS: Oh, yeah.
DEBRA: But what you’ve done is you’ve made it into a mainstream brand. You’ve made it available, and you’ve made it attractive. You’ve done a really good job of putting a whole story together and having a great website and making it something that just an average consumer could use.
You’ve put some other products together with it, and you’ve just done a great job, Mona. I’m really, really happy with your website.
MONA WEISS: Oh, great!
DEBRA: You’ve done a good job. And I’ve looked at many, many websites over the years.
MONA WEISS: Oh, great.
DEBRA: So, I love your story because it really illustrates how, once again, somebody had a health problem. We hear this story every day on this show. Once again, somebody else had a health problem, and they discovered it was some toxic chemical that was causing the health problem. They stopped using the toxic chemical—in this case, detergent and all the associated other things like perfume and everything that is in the detergent—and your health problem went away.
How many health problems are there in the world? One of the ones that I like to talk about all the time is how many millions of people have insomnia and they’re taking sleeping pills every night for the insomnia when they could just change their sheets and not have formaldehyde resin on their bedsheets, and then they wouldn’t have insomnia.
That’s what happened to me. That’s part of my story. I changed my sheets. And you changed your detergent. And now, we’re both without our symptoms!
I just have to keep saying this over and over because I want everybody who’s listening to understand that if you’re sick, if you’re having a symptom, look around and see what you’re being exposed to and start eliminating the toxic chemicals and see if those symptoms will go away.
So, tell us what soap nuts are.
MONA WEISS: Okay! So, they’re these little berries. They grow on a tree in the Himalayas. I mean, there are 20 different species. They grow all over the world. But the best ones for laundry happened to grow in the Himalayas.
And they make soap.
They make soap when they come into contact with water. The tree makes the soap to taste bad to insects. So it’s sort of trying to protect this inner seed.
So, what we do is we remove the inner seed because it doesn’t really do anything. And then, you take these little—they’re a hard shell. The common name is nuts, but it’s actually a berry. So it’s safe if you have nut allergies.
You can put it in this little big (which we give you). It’s just to keep track of it, so there are not berries floating around in your machine. Stick it in your washing machine, and then it will make soap. And wash your clothes!
It’s sort of complicated description for something that’s very, very simple.
DEBRA: It is very simple. When I started washing with them, somebody told me—I don’t even remember how I found out about it. Somebody told me, and I got some soap nuts. And they’re kind of sticky. The ones I have are kind of sticky. You put them in the little bag, and then you toss them in the washer, and you think, “How is this going to work?”
But I had an experience in the past. I grew up in California, in Northern California. And there, we had something called soap plant. It’s an Indian use of a plant. In grade school, I learned how to recognize it. They would take us on a hike, and we would go and pick up the soap plant. You pull it out of the ground, and the root is soapy. You put water on it, and you can wash your hands with it. And I thought that was a cool thing when I was a child. So, I thought, “Well, this makes sense to me, soap nuts.”
And the first time I washed my clothes with it, they came out so soft and so clean that I was hooked. It’s such an easy thing! You can use them over and over and over. You put them in the little bag (you put like three or four in the little bag), and you just keep using them until they kind of melt away. And then you put three or four more in the little bag. It’s just kind of an amazing product.
We need to take a break, Mona. So we’ll continue on with your story after the break.
MONA WEISS: Awesome!
DEBRA: This is Debra Lynn Dadd. And you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Mona Weiss from EcoNuts. We’re talking about soap nuts and other natural cleaners and other natural laundry tips. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Mona Weiss, co-founder of EcoNuts where they sell soap nuts for your laundry.
Mona, I know that you’re not the only one who sell soap nuts. But there’s something different about yours from the other ones. Tell us about that.
MONA WEISS: Well, we try to treat it like a normal product that people would buy. I mean, it’s a little bit of a hard stretch to ask people to use berries in their washing machine. It can freak people out.
So, what we tried to do is to make it as accessible for people to use as possible, make it easy to use, and present it in an attractive package that people want.
And we have other products too. We’ve got a liquid detergent which is an extract from these soap nuts. So if you like the idea, but you’d rather use a liquid detergent, we’ve got that for you.
DEBRA: Good! I know before, we had to make it ourselves.
MONA WEISS: Yeah! You can still make it yourself. It just depends how adventurous you want to be.
DEBRA: You also have a powder that you’ve made it from it?
MONA WEISS: Yeah, we’ve got a cleaning powder. And we’ve got surface cleaners as well—certified organic cleaners for your house. I mean, everything comes in aluminum—the liquids all do—and not plastic which is very easy for people to recycle.
And we use concentrated formulas, so it’s easier in terms of shipping. My grandma loves it because she doesn’t have to lift anything heavy at all.
So, we try to make that a very consumer-friendly item.
DEBRA: Yours are certified organic. Are all soap nuts certified organic?
MONA WEISS: No. Well, it depends if the company goes and gets the certification. They, for the most part, grow wild organically. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that the company—and part of the organic process is you have to get certified at every single level. So you have to be certified where it grows, and then where it’s handled. And everyone that touches them needs to get certified and make sure that it does not come into contact with chemicals for the entire journey of the product.
DEBRA: That’s really good to know. I think most people don’t think about it. I think that they think that a certified organic means that it’s grown organically, but not that it’s certified all the way down the track there. So that’s good.
And you also sterilize your soap nuts.
MONA WEISS: Yeah! Yeah.
DEBRA: Tell us about that.
MONA WEISS: We came up with this process. We lab tested these early on just because handling these were making us a little—like we’re getting sick once in a while. So we decided to send these off to a lab and get them tested and there were some germs on these. It just made me feel, “You know what? Not only me and my employees are handling these, but for the consumers, we should really develop some kind of process to kind of clean these and make it just safe for people to use.” I mean, a lot of our customers have compromised immune systems and various problems. I didn’t want to be responsible for getting anybody sick.
So, we came up with a process that is totally chemical-free. It’s very safe. And that process is also part of our organic certification. So while it’s a trade secret, we do have everything inspected by Oregon Tilth who certifies us to make sure that they’re cool with the process and everything like that.
DEBRA: That’s very good. I’m glad that you’re doing that. I haven’t even thought about it, but it is an organic product—organic in the sense that it’s a plan, it’s not something that came out of a factory. It’s something that’s coming out of the Earth. And of course, it could have germs on it like anything else that grows and is being handled through all that line. So I’m really glad that you did that.
So, good job again! I’m just so impressed with what you did.
MONA WEISS: Yeah. I mean, this is something that gets handled a lot down the line. I don’t know if people are washing their hands are not. But when it gets to us, we want to make sure that we put out the best possible product for our customers.
DEBRA: I appreciate that. So how does it compare using soap nuts to using a detergent in terms of cost, for example.
MONA WEISS: Oh! Well, our product costs about a third of the cost of regular detergent. It really is a big cost savings. You don’t expect that with organic product at all, that they would be cheaper because, a lot of times, they’re more expensive.
But this particular product, we’re able to come in way cheaper. Plus, you’re reusing this product. You can reuse these soap nuts up to 10 times. So it’s really a great cost-savings for anyone.
DEBRA: Well, how do you know when you’ve used up your soap nuts?
MONA WEISS: We’ve got a little chart and video on our website. But basically, there’s a bunch of different ways to tell. They’re going to get paper thin and just start to fall apart. And there’s going to be a point where there’s just no more soap. At any point in time, you can stick them in a jar of water and shake it, and you’re going to see soap bubbles until the soap is gone which is really cool.
DEBRA: I’m actually looking on your website right now as we’re talking. And you do have a page that says ‘how to tell when your EcoNuts are used up’. And down at the bottom, you have all these pictures after so many washes.
And down at the bottom, it just looks like the little skins, the skins of a net, instead of the whole nut.
And in the picture, it actually kind of looks like a hazelnut. By the time we get down to the bottom, it just looks like hazelnut skins. And that’s when I stop using them myself. You can just take them and throw them out in the garden and they’ll just biodegrade.
One of the things that I think is so cool about soap nuts is that there’s absolutely no processing to them. There’s no factories. It just comes off the tree and they go down the line and get packaged and sterilized and stuff. But then there’s no taking it apart and making it into 17 different ingredients or whatever.
There are no ingredients. It’s just a berry off a tree. And that’s what you’re washing your clothes with. And at the end, when it’s done, you just put it out in the yard.
I can’t think of a more sustainable thing.
MONA WEISS: Oh, it’s totally awesome!
DEBRA: I mean, talk about a natural product. This is a natural laundry product. This is a natural laundry product.
I’m just so thrilled about them.
We need to take another break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. We were talking with my guest, Mona Weiss from EcoNuts. And we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Mona Weiss, co-founder of EcoNuts. And we’re talking about all-natural laundry, EcoNuts, being soap nuts that just go from the three, they’re sterilized, they’re certified organic, then they go in your laundry and it’s the most natural way I know of that you can wash your clothes.
Mona, I keep looking at your site. And I keep reading more and more. Listeners, Mona has a great blog that she keeps writing about different natural laundry tips. And one really caught my eye. This is on the page about diapers. You’re writing about why it’s such a good idea.
I want to ask you a question. But first, for all the moms out there, tell us why it’s a good idea to use soap nuts to wash diapers.
MONA WEISS: Well, if you’re washing clothe diapers, you’re doing a lot of laundry. So it just comes down to not putting a heavy amount of chemicals or anything—not only against your child’s skin, but back into the environment via the water […]
Your baby has very sensitive skin. So to use a product that doesn’t have any kind of man-made chemicals in it or whatsoever, there’s nothing better to use.
DEBRA: I totally agree.
Okay, now here’s what caught my eye. Down on the page, it says, “How to wash your cloth diapers with EcoNuts?”
And before you start, you recommend doing a strip. And that is to wash your washing machine with EcoNuts without any clothing or diapers or anything in it. Just wash the washing machine.
And that really interested me because you say that the EcoNuts will remove, it will loosen and remove the detergent residues on the fragrances and anything that happens to be in the fiber or in the washing machine.
And this is of interest to me because I just bought a new washing machine. And to save money, I bought a washing machine that had been returned, but in good condition. There wasn’t anything wrong with the washing machine. It just had been purchased and returned.
They obviously had used it because when I got it home, I noticed it smelled much more perfumy than it did when it was in the store. I mean, I guess it was hard to tell with all those other smells in the store […]
But when I got at home, I said, “You know what? I can’t put my clothes on this washer because I didn’t want them to get contaminated with perfume.”
So now, I’ve been wondering what to do. I’m going to just use my soap nuts and run a wash through with just the soap nuts and get that perfume smell out.
MONA WEISS: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a great idea. Regular chemical detergent will leave this residue in your machine. It builds up over time. And then, of course, we recommend that when you’re washing diapers, diapers are so absorbent that they’ll just reabsorb all of the stuff as it’s getting removed from your machine.
DEBRA: You know, this is just so interesting to me, that a natural substance would release all these chemicals from the washer and from the clothes. If you’ve been washing your clothes in detergents the first time, you wash them in EcoNuts, all that stuff is going to come out, and it won’t be putting those chemicals next to your skin anymore. This is so marvelous. So, so good!
MONA WEISS: It’s really cool. It’s really, really cool.
DEBRA: There are so many good things about this.
Okay, so you’ve got some other products here. I want you to tell us about your wool dryer balls.
MONA WEISS: Alright! This is a really cool product. It’s a new product that we brought in recently. And I love, love, love these. They’re solid wool balls. And they’re pretty heavy. You stick four of them in your dryer, and they tumble with your clothes. They help to soften clothes.
I mean, the soap nuts, they soften clothes. But this will also help soften your clothes. But it also reduces the amount of time it takes to dry. And it does this because it helps to circulate hot air in the dryer, and it gets in between your clothes or sheets or whatever you’re washing to let hot air get in between. And it really does work.
DEBRA: I’ve heard that. I haven’t actually used them because when I first found out about them, they were plastic—not yours, but what was being advertised, it’s plastic. And they’re PVC plastic. And PVC is one of the most toxic plastics on earth. Green Peace has for many years had a campaign to just eliminate PVC entirely.
And another thing about plastic is when you expose it to heat, it releases plastic fumes.
MONA WEISS: Yes, exactly!
DEBRA: And so here, they were taking these PVC dryer balls and putting them in a hot environment and then rolling them all around with your clothes—not a good idea.
MONA WEISS: Yeah!
DEBRA: So, I love this idea of the wool dryer balls. It’s just perfect. It’s a perfect compliment to your soap nuts.
Again, it’s a completely natural product where all you’re doing is just shearing the wool off the sheep, and this minimal processing into this little ball, and then you use it.
And again, when it’s done, however long it lasts—years?
MONA WEISS: Yeah, it lasts a really long time.
DEBRA: Yeah, these aren’t going to melt like your soap nuts.
MONA WEISS: No!
DEBRA: But when you’re done with them, they just go back into the garden and just biodegrade. And we don’t have to do any tests on these chemicals because there are no chemicals or anything! It’s just perfectly natural, perfectly safe. All products should be like this.
MONA WEISS: Wow! Wow.
DEBRA: I just get really excited with this.
Okay, let’s see, what else do you have?
The way I found Mona’s site was that I was searching for natural disinfectants in order to wash clothes. I had a client who actually had staph infection. She needed to sterilize all of her sheets and her clothes and everything.
And I thought, “Well, what can you use to sterilize in the laundry.” And Mona has written an entire blog post on how to sterilize your laundry naturally. So, tell us about that.
MONA WEISS: Sure! This is sort of a big topic especially among people with cloth diapers. But also, if you get sick, you worry about how to sterilize your laundry and make it safe again.
So, what I’ve put together is really just a reference guide. There’s a lot of different ways that you can kill germs in your laundry…
DEBRA: Wait, wait. I have to interrupt you, I’m sorry, because we have to go break. After the break, you can tell us about what some of those are.
MONA WEISS: Oh, sure!
DEBRA: This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest is Mona Weiss from EcoNuts. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Mona Weiss, co-founder of EcoNuts. And her website is EcoNuts.com—obviously, a very good name. It’s EcoNuts.com.
And before the break, we were talking about how you can sterilize, sanitize your laundry. And Mona, you were going to give us some tips.
MONA WEISS: Yeah, absolutely. Now, I don’t really like to recommend one way over another just because it’s really up to you what you feel would be the right way for you. But one way that I think a lot of people overlook is using the sun. And the sun is great because it’s free! And it uses…
DEBRA: Yes, and natural.
MONA WEISS: It’s free, it’s natural. There’s no chemical. It’s ultraviolet light. And all you have to do is put your clothes out in the sun. And the ultraviolet radiation and infrared light is going to help to kill all kinds of nasties on your clothes which is really cool!
DEBRA: Excellent!
MONA WEISS: Yeah, it’s excellent. And people don’t even think about it. But it’s one of the reasons…
DEBRA: You know, we live in an industrial culture which is always looking to have you buy something to solve every problem. If you’re sick, we’ve been trained to think we need to go to the doctor and we need to take a pill rather than saying, “We’re sick, what’s going on in our environment that’s making us sick? Or how could we eat something different or be out in the sun?” or whatever.
And so part of the orientation away from toxic chemicals is to start looking to nature and to see what nature has to offer.
I once took a class, a hike out in nature with an herbalist. And she said, “Every problem in nature, there’s a solution right next to it.” So if you have poison oak, you know that there’s a plant growing right next to it that’s going to be the antidote to poison oak. Isn’t that cool? I love that.
MONA WEISS: It’s totally awesome!
DEBRA: It’s all around us. Nature has all the solution all around us. I love that!
So, if you don’t have any sun or if you can’t put your clothes out in the sun, what’s the consumer thing you can do?
MONA WEISS: Lemon juice is a really great disinfectant. It changes the pH of the water in your washing machine.
Basically, it makes it more acidic. And a lot of different microbes can’t survive in an acid environment. So that’s one thing straight from nature. You don’t have to do anything.
DEBRA: Right! And you probably already have a lemon in your kitchen.
Mona has a whole post on her blog about how to do this. So if this is something that you need to do, go look it up on her site, on EcoNuts.com, and she’s got a lot more tips.
Let’s talk about static cling. I know you have another blog post about static cling. And the first thing that I want to say—I read your whole post during the break. The first thing I want to say about static cling is that I learned a long, long time ago that static cling only happens with synthetic fabrics. Those of us who only have 100% natural fibers have no static clings.
MONA WEISS: It’s true. Well, some people can find that if they’re washing say wool or cotton in the same load, they might get a little bit. But it’s far less. I mean, it builds up with synthetic fabrics far more than anything.
DEBRA: I never have static cling when I’m wearing my cotton clothes. I mostly have cotton clothes. What I’m washing in the washer is cotton and linen. I have very few wool clothes living in Florida.
MONA WEISS: Alright!
DEBRA: And when I do wash my wool clothes, I just wash them by hand. And so the only thing I’m mixing is cotton and linen. And I never have static cling. I never have static cling when I’m wearing clothes. So that’s a good way to get rid of all the dryer sheets or fabric softeners or all those things. Just don’t have synthetic clothes.
So, give us your tips. For people who are wearing synthetic clothes and washing synthetic clothes, what’s something that you can do for static cling?
MONA WEISS: Well, in the same vein of what you’re talking about, just separating your fabrics. If you wash all your synthetic [separate] from the others, that’s going to cut down the static. Static will build up if there are two very different fabrics rubbing up against each other.
Another one is to stop your dryer when stuff is just dry. Static builds up in a very dry environment. So if there’s still moisture in the air in your washing machine, then static won’t build up.
DEBRA: Hmmm…
MONA WEISS: It’s very cool!
Well, there are two other ways.
DEBRA: I just want to say something before you go on. It’s also a good idea to remove your clothing from the dryer immediately when the dryer buzzes and says that it’s done. Wrinkles come from clothing sitting on the dryer on top of each other all crunched up. And if you take out the clothes, right when it’s done, and hang them up or fold them up or whatever, you don’t have to iron them.
MONA WEISS: Oh, yeah. Bonus!
DEBRA: Ironing is about my favorite thing. And I wear practically all cotton which needs to be iron. So I do very well with taking those clothes out of the dryer immediately.
Okay, go on with more tips.
MONA WEISS: Okay, you can throw a bulb of aluminum foil into your dryer. It’ll discharge the static.
DEBRA: That’s a lot better than using dryer sheets.
MONA WEISS: Yeah, you don’t have to use dryer sheets. You can do it for free or for pennies.
And this is probably the most effective way that I have heard in terms of feedback from other people. If you put a safety pin on two different fabrics—so say you’re washing cotton and polyester together, you’d put safety pin on a polyester garment and a safety pin on your cotton garment—it’ll discharge the static in your dryer.
DEBRA: I’ve never tried that, but it sounds like that it would work. It sounds like that there’s some science behind that.
MONA WEISS: Yeah, the metal will—without getting technical into the science-y stuff, it’s the same reason why you get a little zap if you’re walking around in socks on the floor and then you touch the doorknob. It’s the same principle. The door knob is your safety pin.
DEBRA: Wow! Interesting…
MONA WEISS: And the metal inside of the dryer, if you’re touching the metal to the metal, it’ll kind of take that charge away.
DEBRA: Wow!
MONA WEISS: It’s crazy! It really works.
DEBRA: Sometimes, it’s just the simplest things that are the solution. That’s so great.
So, we’re coming to the end of our show now. We only have three minutes left. So is there anything that you want to talk about that we haven’t talked about?
MONA WEISS: Well, just in general, I think that some people get really overwhelmed if they look at possible toxins in your homes. I think that’s easy if people just sort of change one thing at a time.
DEBRA: I agree.
MONA WEISS: Every time I go to the grocery store, I try to buy this one new healthy food item that I’ve never tried before.
DEBRA: Good for you!
MONA WEISS: And I think the same thing can be said about any product that you want to change out or do something healthier about it. It’s just making these small changes that in the long run make a really big change.
DEBRA: I completely agree with that. And in fact, for many, many years, I have always said that the first thing I think people should change is their cleaning products because cleaning products are governed by the Hazardous Substances Act. They’re not required by law to list the toxic chemicals or any of their ingredients, so you really don’t know what’s in them. And they’re some of the most toxic products in your home.
Even detergent, I don’t remember the exact statistic, but it’s either number one or two most common product that causes children’s poisoning at home. Kids, they’re attracted to the smell and the color, and they just drink it or put the powder in their mouth, and they need to be rushed to the emergency room—so especially if you have children in your house.
I mean, I think if they put a soap nut in their mouth…
MONA WEISS: It tastes like soap.
DEBRA: I mean, they’re probably not going to want to chew it or swallow it, but it’s a lot safer than detergent—just a lot safer than detergent.
We talk a lot on the show about chemicals at cause health effects over time. We might not see the negative effects right away. But detergent is one of those things that’s called an acute poison. You could take your child to the emergency room if they get […] It’s one of those things that says, “Keep out of reach of children,” and yet we think of detergent as being just a common household product. And we really need to be watching out for that.
So Mona, you’ve given us all a very good, safe, effective, extraordinary solution to that toxic chemical. And I really encourage everyone who’s still using detergent to try this product because it works so well.
Well, thank you for being with us today.
MONA WEISS: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
DEBRA: And again, the website is EcoNuts.com. That’s EcoNuts.com. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. If you want to know more about the show, you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. I list, on the page, all the guests for the week, so you can look ahead. And I also list all the guests that have been on in the past. And there’s a link to the recording in the Archive.
So, thank you for joining me today. Toxic Free Talk Radio, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd.
