My guest is Peggy Cahill, who became ill after being exposed to isocyanate chemicals from the offgassing of ordinary spray foam insulation. She will tell us how this affected her health as well as her efforts to educate, create awareness and advocate at the state and local level. Peggy’ s professional experience has spanned over 30 years working as an advocate at the state and local level for underserved groups, including children and adults with developmental and physical disabilities, inner city children at risk and adolescents with mental health challenges. She holds a Master of Education degree and is presently working as a program development consultant and freelance writer, creating art and culture programs for those living with Alzheimer’s disease and their care partners.
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
What Can Happen When Toxic Chemicals Are Not Regulated and What Can We Do As Citizens to Get the Regulations We Should Have
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Peggy Cahill
Date of Broadcast: July 23, 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. Even though there are toxic chemicals all around us, in the consumer products we use, in the air, and soil, and water, in the environment, it seems like sometimes that there are toxic chemicals everywhere.
And there are. But there are also many products and places that don’t have toxic chemicals, and there are also many ways that we can remove toxic chemicals from our own homes, from our own bodies, and have a relatively toxic-free life, in fact, toxic-free enough to make a huge difference in our health, our happiness, our well-being, our productivity, and having the things that we want in life.
Today is Tuesday, July 23, 2013, and I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. And if I sound a little different today, it’s because I’m having technical problems with my computer. And so I’m calling in this show on the regular telephone, instead of my high-tech, state-of-the-art audio equipment, but it will get fixed fairly soon.
And today, we’re going to be talking about what happens when toxic chemicals are not regulated, as many of them aren’t, and people like you and me get exposed to them, and how they affect our health, and what we could do about them, so that at the regulatory level, things get changed.
But first, I want to just tell you about what’s happening in my life this week.
Oh, my god. A lot of chaos is occurring, lest you think everything is always smooth with me. It’s typical. When you decide that you’re going to make a big change as I’m going through, making some big personal changes in my life. What happened is that there’s all this confusion, and there’s all this stuff going on. Actually, it’s all moving in the right direction. But it looks pretty chaotic, and sometimes things don’t work properly, like my computer, or people don’t show up, or whatever, and you go, “Oh, my god. Is this ever going to be over?”
I know that I’m moving towards a beter place in my life, and that things are going to be more organized, and I’m going to get more work done, and all the things I want to do. And it’s just a little crazy right now.
It’s that way with toxic chemicals too, because for a long time, everything seems very peaceful when we were just sitting there, not knowing what was going on with toxic chemicals. The commercials used to say when I was a kid that we’re living through chemistry, that as long as we didn’t know anything, it all seems rather peaceful about toxic chemicals. We’re just going through our lives being poisoned. And then we started finding out that there were toxic chemicals.
And now, there’s a lot of confusion, there’s a lot of people protesting, and we’re thinking about what to do differently. Some people think we should do this, and other people think we should do that. And things need to change. There needs to be a change.
So things can seem crazy, but just like I’m going to get through what’s going on in my life and come out the other end, so are we as a nation, as a world, we’re all going to come through this toxic chemical thing, and there is going to be a world at the other end of it where we get to have a wonderful toxic-free world to live in, because there’s so many of us that are creating it day by day.
So my guest today is Peggy Cahill. She became ill after being exposed to some chemicals that were off-gassing from ordinary spray foam insulation.
Now, many, many people have this very same spray pump insulation in their homes. And she’s going to tell us how it affected her health, and what she’s doing to educate people, and create awareness and advocate at the state and local level, so that there can be regulations that protect people from this kind of thing.
And just as a coincidence really, this week, I received an e-mail from somebody, a question from my Green Living Q&A Blog.
And she said, “We insulated our attic with sprays from insulation last year.” And she gave me the brand name and says, “Well, it doesn’t have a fishy smell, but I’ve read about it on the internet, it has an odor, a sort of a sweet smell. We only smell it if we go in the attic, when we come home after a few days of the house being locked up and warm. I want to have an air quality test then. Any suggestions on what to have tested?”
Now, this is interesting because I think that there are probably many, many, many more people who are being affected by the chemicals that are off gassing from spray foam insulation and don’t even know it. We’re going to talk about those kinds of things today.
Hi, Peggy. Thanks for being with me on Toxic Free Talk Radio.
PEGGY CAHILL: Hi, Debra. How are you? It’s good to be here. Thanks for having me.
DEBRA: Thank you. So tell us what happened with you. You had some spray foam insulation, and then something happened.
PEGGY CAHILL: Back in 2010, I moved into a small cottage in Massachusetts where I lived that had been recently renovated, completely renovated, including winterization from the exterior walls, and spray foam insulation within the wall. It was a 1940 cottage. It hadn’t been inhabited in a long time. So I was the first occupant. I moved in and lived in that space for seven months.
Within about a month or two of moving in, I began having various kinds of symptoms that were unusual. I had always been healthy before moving into the cottage. I had acid reflux, and some episodes of even chest tightness, short of breath.
I went to the ER a few times. They couldn’t determine anything.
I went back into the cottage and continued to live there. I started having some food reactions that I never had before, first, to wheat, gluten, and then dairy. My immune system appeared to be now, later, I understand reacting to the chemicals that I was breathing in.
Eventually, I started having broader systemic inflammation, soreness in my hips and ribcage and pelvis. So I was in and out of the doctor’s office, and then being referred to a variety of specialists for this array of symptoms—which really no answers were found. It was very mystifying.
And no one was considering an environmental source, including myself actually, that could be at the root of the problem.
Five months into this cottage, I developed left upper quadrant pain, and it was eventually discovered that I now had inflammation of my pancreas, also known as pancreatitis, and again, for unknown reasons, and I had always been healthy, and had a healthy lifestyle.
Essentially, I spent the entire winter in this enclosed building, with no screens or windows, or ventilation system in this cottage.
By spring, which was a total of seven months now in the cottage, a rainy day came, followed by heat, where apparently, the walls of the cottage and exterior were saturated and then got hot. There was a noxious smell in the cottage for the first time.
Several people came into the cottage and noticed it and said, “Something’s very wrong here.”
And I realized then that I vacated immediately, and that it became clear to me that there was an environmental trigger to what was happening with my health.
We moved out.
I got pulmonary function test, and they determined I had reactive airways, which is a form of asthma. And the pulmonologist referred to it as isocyanate asthma, of which he has seen a number of cases, isocyanate as being one of the noxious ingredients in the materials of spray foam insulation.
So during my cottage days, I had three ER visits, 20 doctor visits, tests, x-rays, EKGs, CT scans, blood tests, and there were no real answers until eventually, the pancreatitis. And then when I moved out, after pursuing physicians that might have more knowledge, I got more answers, including the reactive airways in my lungs.
That is how that unfolded.
DEBRA: Yes. Unfortunately, your story is typical of many people who are exposed to toxic chemicals and don’t know that it’s toxic chemicals, and then continued to be exposed to them day in and day out for a period of months, until somebody figures out that, “Oh, this is something.”
I’ve actually never heard the phrase isocyanate asthma. So it’s interesting to me that you went to a doctor that identified it as such. And I’m very happy to hear that they’re putting isocyanate exposure together with asthma.
Just after the break, it’s coming right now, we’re going to talk about isocyanate, and about polyurethane, that is what is used to make spray foam insulation, and so that you can understand what the chemistry is, and what else, other ways that you can be exposed to, in addition to spray foam insulation.
I’m talking with my guest, Peggy Cahill. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and I’m here today with my guest, Peggy Cahill, and we’re talking about unregulated toxic chemicals that made people sick, unknowing that they’re even being exposed to them.
Before Peggy and I start to chat again, I want to just read some portions to you the person who wrote to me that I read their e-mail earlier, about the polyurethane foam insulation that was making them sick. She sent me a link to the product description sheet.
I’m not going to give the brand name here, but the first thing to know is that it has the word natural in it, it’s got a leaf on it right at the top. The first two things you see is the word natural, and then there’s a leaf. And then down at the bottom, it says, “superior green building performance.”
Now, those are the first things, three things, that you see. And it is legitimately is a green thing because it’s there to save energy. But green often, particularly in this case, has nothing to do with being non-toxic. It has to do with other totally legitimate environmental benefits.
So, it says then it’s a [unintelligible 11:28] product. It’s part of a two-component polyurethane foam insulation system, and that it needs to be applied. Wait, I need to find this place. It has to be applied by a certified applier, and that they have to wear approved chemical protection equipment, OSHA-approved respirators are required. They have to be trained.
If you inhale this when it’s being applied, you have to remove to fresh air, and seek medical attention.
And there are more details on the material safety data sheet.
And if liquid is swollen, seek medical attention immediately.
Now, I know that there are some, and this is an important point, there are some materials like paint, for example, which is more toxic when you’re applying it, and then when it dries or cures, then it’s supposed to be less toxic. But in this particular case, with this spray polyurethane foam insulation, a lot of times, there are cases where it doesn’t quite cure. It’s like epoxy glue that comes in two parts, and you have to mix it, and then it makes a glue.
What polyurethane foam is, is a combination of isocyanate plus polyols. And polyols are the plastic part, and the isocyanate, I forgot my chemistry here—Peggy, do you want to tell us more about isocynate?
PEGGY CAHILL: What I learned is that the spray foam insulation contains insocyanate. It’s also referred to diisocyanate.
They’re the same thing. Ammonia byproducts, flame retardants and a reputable Boston physician told me also there are two proprietary chemicals that are not disclosed by the companies because they have a patent, but that those are very noxious.
She said the bad chemicals that they don’t even know what they are, this reputable Boston person. It’s a mixture of things.
It’s timely that this person has e-mailed you, and I’m really, really glad to hear that. I hope my conversation with you can be of use to this person in some way because this physician told, and I learned from many physicians, the material is often not mixed properly, it doesn’t cure properly, and is leaking and bubbling in the wall.
DEBRA: That’s exactly is. In this particular case for this particular product, it’s not like you put it on the wall, and then it dries like paint. There’s so much room for error because—
PEGGY CAHILL: There’s a lot of room for error.
DEBRA: —if you don’t mix it right, if you’re not trained right, if the […] applier is on drugs, or drunk, or didn’t study…
PEGGY CAHILL: …or otherwise, not well.
DEBRA: …or just not paying attention, or he’s having a fight with his wife, or whatever, you could easily end up with a chemical mixture in your walls that is not going to cure.
PEGGY CAHILL: There’s a great room for error. There’s no oversight. There’s no one monitoring. The cottage was granted an occupancy permit. The material was never checked because I learned that the building codes in Massachusetts were old and outdated, and didn’t have any real clear parameters about the checking of the material.
And just to mention, I was also told by a different physician, a very fantastic Harvard-educated physician at an occupational health clinic that even if the material works perfectly, and it is cured, it still creates stale, stagnant air the can pose a health risk without adequate air exchanges and air flow through the space.
So you absolutely are supposed to have mechanical ventilation and/or a system where there is adequate air flow.
Buildings are being made too tight, and it’s creating this poor air. And people don’t realize it. So it’s very worrisome [cross-talking 15:54].
DEBRA: I just want to say a little more about this because it used to be prior to about the 70’s. I started becoming interested in this subject because there’s my own illness at about the same time that houses and all buildings were being tightened for energy efficiency.
I remember when I was 16, and I got a car, I got a Firebird Formula 400 with a huge 400-cubic-inch engine, and I could outrace Corvettes in this car. I’m showing my racing side here. It’s all I wanted when I was 16 was a fast car.
And I got one. My father gave me one for my birthday, and taught me how to drive it.
But I had to sell my car a couple of years later because I couldn’t get a hundred-octane gas anymore. And I remember that that was the time when the energy crisis started because I couldn’t get gas for my car. And then that’s when they started tightening the buildings. And that’s when we started having indoor air quality problems.
And prior to that, I want to make sure people who are listening understand, prior to that, the houses and buildings were built what was referred to as leaky because there was air coming in the cracks. They were not filled up, the cracks and all of those things. And so there was actually ventilation going on even if all the doors and windows were closed.
We need to take a break, but we’ll be back with Peggy Cahill, and we’ll be talking more about isocynates, polyurethane foam insulation, and regulations. 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 we’re here today with Peggy Cahill. We’re talking about how she was affected by being exposed to ordinary polyurethane toxic foam insulation.
I can’t talk today.
Peggy, I want to go back to this e-mail that I received from my reader. She asked that she wanted to have an air quality test done, and what should she have tested. Now, I want everyone to know that if you want to get an air test, you do need to have some idea of what to test for. Otherwise, you could be testing from thousands of chemicals, and not get the one that’s actually causing the problem.
So if you think you’re having a problem with a particular thing, like this woman is asking about her polyurethane spray foam insulation, find out what the chemicals might and have them test for that.
So what do you think she should test for?
PEGGY CAHILL: Well, this is a little tricky because when I first moved out of the cottage, I made a lot of phone calls, including to the State Department of Public Health and asked about air testing. And I was told that the science wasn’t there yet, that there was no way to test the human body from the matabolites, or to test the air. And that the product is on the market without adequate information available about the health effects.
Later, I was told by an occupational health clinic physician that there is a way to test the material by going in, having one of only two reputable testers that she mentioned. She said there are a lot of people out there that don’t really know how to test well. But one of two would go in and drill into the wall and see if the material is actually leaking and bubbling because that is what she said is the best way to test.
Other than that—
DEBRA: But that doesn’t tell you what the chemicals are.
PEGGY CAHILL: No, it doesn’t.
DEBRA: I suppose testing for leaking and bubbling, you would then know that it’s not fully cured, and that the chemicals of some sort or another are being released. If you wanted to sue somebody, that would be the way to prove that.
PEGGY CAHILL: That would be one way to establish the clear evidence of what the problems causing a health risk—the materials are causing a health risk.
But I can’t adequately speak to what other testing because I’ve been told there really isn’t clear cut testing for the materials.
DEBRA: Your experience, that’s very valuable to even know that.
PEGGY CAHILL: I actually want to mention—I don’t want to fail to mention this. I called a company that produces spray foam insulation after I moved out, and said I was a homeowner wondering what I had to consider using the materials in a small space because it was all throughout the cottage, around the walls and in the roof line, et cetera.
But he’s a building technologist at the company who said to me, “Using the material all over the house is like putting a plastic bag over the house.” He said, “For health, you need to have fresh air and air exchanges, and you need to have mechanical ventilation to keep the air clean, or it will pose a health risk to the occupants.”
DEBRA: Oh, my god. They need to put that on the label and the product.
PEGGY CAHILL: I know, and I agree with you about green. It’s completely misleading because they say it’s conservationist, but as you said, when workers are covered from head to toe with masks and things to protect themselves, that’s a clear cut indication that the material is quite toxic.
There are some studies, some well-established facts, just to mention. the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has a study out that isocynates are irritating to the GI tract, respiratory tract and mucus membranes [inaudible 21:37] workers who’ve had severe asthma attacks. There’s a guide to chemical hazards that they’ve created, indicating spray foam insulation, which contains this [unintelligible 21:47] that causes adverse health effects to the respiratory system.
There’s a journal of occupational and environmental medicine of a study showing increased lung cancer risk among female workers in the polyurethane foam manufacturing industry. The EPA issued a call-to-action in April of 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency, citing potential health effects that might result from exposures to isocyanates.
I called the EPA after reading that. They said they had gotten a lot of calls after issuing that. I said, “What can be done?” And they said, “You can file a report on the Consumer Product Safety Commission,” of which I did. I would recommend anyone listening that they consider doing that. You can document what’s happened, and if they get enough published accounts of stories and adverse health effects from the product, they will take action.
So there are public reports there. You go to that website, Consumer Product Safety Commission, and you put it under “report an unsafe product” and you write down what’s happened, or urge others to do that.
The EPA itself, you can make a report. It’s a public report, but I’m not sure about the efficacy of that because they’re really not taking action at this point.
DEBRA: But even if they aren’t taking action, they are collecting the information. And at some point, it’s worth having your information on file [if we’re not ready to act on it now] or even better, that if they start getting hundreds of thousands of reports, that’s what makes them get their attention. And that’s why people should write.
PEGGY CAHILL: Exactly. Everyone has to become empowered to write, to document what’s happened.
I wrote a letter to both town and state, stating what happened. So I’ve met with the town that I lived, and the building inspector, the town administrator, of select men, and articulated the problem, and asked how it became occupancy-permitted this property, and learned that there were old codes, and asked them to write a letter to the state, which they did, to say change the code. You’ve got to be concerned. One of our citizens became ill from this material.
Then I went and followed up on that letter to the state, and testified to the Department of Public Safety in Massachusetts about exactly what had happened, and all the research I had learned, urging them to be aware and take to steps to provide better education and protection for consumers, for residents of the state.
So those are concrete stuffs—writing down what’s happened, documenting it, and we can create a body of evidence. And that’s what we have to do.
DEBRA: That is exactly what we have to do. I had to learn a lot about how chemicals got evaluated for being toxic, and when I started asking questions about consumer products that have toxic chemicals in them.
And what gets respected is when there’s a scientific study. And years and years ago, when I started hearing about myself and other people going to doctors and saying, “Well, I was exposed to this and this is one of my health situations is.”
And for many people, doctors, scientists and regulators, they say, “Well, if there’s not a study where official scientific people did this study, then these problems are going to exist.”
It’s called anecdotal evidence. They discredit anecdotal evidence as if it didn’t happen.
But if you get 100,000, 500,000 people all writing the same letter that says, “I was exposed to x chemical, and y symptoms happened,” then that’s how studies can then be done, or doctors and scientists can look at them and say, “Wait a minute.
There was a half-a-million people who use this product and had a problem.”
And so it isn’t insignificant.
We have to take a break. But I’ll finish my sentence after the break.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. We’re talking with Peggy Cahill about regulations and toxic chemicals and polyurethane foam, and you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. We’ll be back in a minute.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Peggy Cahill, and we’re talking about toxic chemicals and regulations and polyurethane foam.
I just want to finish what I was about to say before the break about anecdotal evidence, and that is when I first started writing about toxic chemicals in consumer products, it was very clear to me that there were toxic chemicals in wall-to-wall carpets, synthetic wall-to-wall carpets. And the reason it was clear to me, and that I wrote about it, is because practically, everybody I met said these carpets are making me sick. And nobody was doing those studies, and nobody was talking about this, and I was the only one writing about it, until, I forgot the year, but the EPA installed in their building some synthetic carpet, and everybody got sick.
And suddenly, the EPA had a whole bunch of people having anecdotal evidence, and they started testing carpet samples, and they found that there were hundreds of toxic chemicals in them.
And that’s the value of anecdotal evidence.
And the other thing I want to make sure that I say is that polyurethane foam that we’ve just been talking about in the past almost an hour, is the same polyurethane foam in this insulation, it’s the same polyurethane foam as in your polyurethane foam mattress.
It’s the same. Those mattresses are made from polyols and isocyanates. And the difference between them—this is the only difference that I could find, is that when you spray it into the wall as a foam, you are on the spot, taking isycyanates and the polyols, and mixing them there. And then they make the foam the mattresses are made out of, they mix them in the factory, and then they actually are baked, like baking a cake.
PEGGY CAHILL: I didn’t realize that.
DEBRA: And so it cures it. And so when you search for information about the toxicity of polyurethane foam, you get piles and piles and piles of reports about the toxicity of polyurethane foam spray insulation, but very little about polyurethane foam used in a mattress or anything else made—seat cushions or whatever.
In those cases, the thing that is even more toxic is the fire retardant. And I’m imagining that there must be fire retardants in polyurethane spray foam as well because it’s extremely flammable. This polyurethane foam is referred to as solid gasoline, and it’s all flammable.
PEGGY CAHILL: There definitely are flame retardants and ammonia byproducts.
DEBRA: Yes. This is just not a good substance to be putting in your walls. It’s not all.
PEGGY CAHILL: It’s not a substance. It’s not a safe substance for children, for anyone, for adults, for elderly. It’s really unfortunate. But I commend you on the work you’re doing to bring information to the public, to try to just person-to-person get the news out, and help people become more aware because it’s really essential.
For me, it’s been a very lonely journey trying to find information out, dealing with sensitization, and dysautonomia, autonomic nervous system dysfunctions, as a result of this exposure, trying to learn about that, find physicians who support and help you, which you can find.
But it’s really important to find some way to educate and advocate, in whatever way you can, whatever pathway the person feels comfortable, and to just find something to become empowered somehow to take a step, even a single step. Even if it’s talking to friends and loved ones, making sure that they know.
DEBRA: I completely agree with you because the same has got me through when I became chemically injured so many years ago. The things that got me through it was, number one, just a huge desire to being well and not be a victim of it, but also, secondarily, I wanted to tell other people.
It was a puzzle for me. It was a mystery that I wanted to solve.
And it’s like, how come these consumer products that are being sold, I thought the government was regulating these things.
And it turns out that they aren’t.
And so how could there be toxic chemicals in them? What are those toxic chemicals?
And it was the burning desire to find out what were the toxic chemicals in the products, so that I could avoid them, so that I could find the safe products.
They’ve got me out of bed every morning instead of just lying there being sick.
PEGGY CAHILL: To get you to wellness, you have to go…
DEBRA: Exactly! [inaudible 31:11]. I used to drive fast cars and I was a professional musician. And that’s what my life was like prior to being injured from my toxic chemical exposures. And I completely gave all that up and just said, “This is the most important thing that how can I, how can anyone else, function in life if you’ve been poisoned.” And I knew that I could get well.
PEGGY CAHILL: And we want to prevent this from happening to others.
DEBRA: That’s exactly right. That was exactly when I got it. I understood that I didn’t have to go through all that misery of having been poisoned. I was, “Oh, my god. I need to tell people because I know this, because I know that this is true from the bottom of my soul.” And I can see that that’s your viewpoint as well.
For me, I can see, and I’ve seen this in other people, that there’s this kind of anger like, “Why didn’t somebody tell me this?”
PEGGY CAHILL: That’s right. They’re absolutely justifiable anger and frustration, but you have to give yourself permission to feel that too, and then use it as a catalyst in some way to take a step, take a step in some direction, some kind of action, like we talked about, write a letter, tell your friends, write to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Call the EPA. Make a phone call. Bring the attention and the awareness to people because there is a lack of awareness.
I mentioned to you the on point piece by Tom Ashbrook, OnPoint, WBUR.org, he did just a recent piece on toxic chemicals in this country. And that’s really worthy of listening to. I’m recommending others to listen too. It’s just a general framework of understanding what’s really happening.
So getting informed, and determining some way to try to make the situation better.
DEBRA: I think it’s important to talk about how people are getting sick, but also what the safe alternatives are. And especially right now, the whole issue of regulation and disclosure is on the table for the United States of America, and manufacturers, because we have enough people now who are interested in saying we need to know. We have the right as consumers to know what is in our products, so that we can make decisions.
But I think the manufacturers know that if they were to actually put all the toxic chemicals on the label that are in the products, that nobody would buy them. And so there has to be a transition into safer products.
But at the same time, there needs to be a transition into disclosure, and actually saying this is what is in the product.
You mentioned before that a doctor told you that there were chemicals in the spray foam that nobody can find out what they are, and I started hearing that 30 years ago from Poison Control Center. Even the Poison Control Center is not told what these trade secret chemical ingredients are.
And by allowing those trade secrets, then we don’t get to find out what are the toxic chemicals that are harming our health.
And that’s a regulatory thing. There should be regulations, I believe, this is my opinion. I think that the labeling regulation should be across the board, the same for all products, and it should list every single ingredient.
It doesn’t have to list it in the amount, and anybody who has ever cooked anything knows that amount is critical if you want to duplicate something. So I think that you could tell everybody in the world that to bake a cake, you need to put in sugar and eggs and flour, but if you don’t tell them how much, they will never be able to make a cake.
So this whole thing about trade secrets, I think, is ridiculous.
PEGGY CAHILL: I agree with you. Transparency is really important. Disclosure of ingredients, transparency, people getting educated through an environmental working group, going to their databases of products they’ve studied, and learning what’s in the products for yourself, what you’re using, and what is better alternative, safer alternative.
DEBRA: But I think what would be even better would be to live in a world where we didn’t have to do that. Let’s report that.
And I think that that’s where regulation really comes in.
I know for myself—there are different people in the world, and I have different viewpoints. But I know for myself that I have an ethic, a personal ethic, of wanting to do the right thing. And for me, the right thing is doing something that supports life. And if am given a choice between doing something that creates life to be better, or something that harms life, I’m going to choose the thing that creates life to be better.
PEGGY CAHILL: A life-affirming thing, right.
DEBRA: A life-affirming thing. And I think that each of us have that within us, and that we just need to have—if the manufacturers would just say, “We’re going to choose the life-affirming things,” there would be no need for regulation. But since they’re not doing that, then as a nation, we should be stepping in and saying, “Please do the life-affirming thing. And if not, we’ll fine you.”
And that way, everybody gets to be safe.
PEGGY CAHILL: Let’s have a campaign—the life of farming campaign.
DEBRA: Yes.
PEGGY CAHILL: We’ll get you a solar-powered fast car, because you like fast cars, but it will be solar-powered, and you will wear this hat that says, “Debra’s Toxic-Free World,” or whatever.
DEBRA: Right. Thank you so much for being with me today, Peggy. We’re out of time.
PEGGY CAHILL: Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio. Find out more at ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com.
