Toxic Free Talk Radio Archives
Dirty Garden Secrets Revealed: What They Don’t Want You to Know
My guest Jai McFall is the owner of Organic Living for All, my local organic nursery and garden center here in Florida. Jai grew up on an organic farm, where her family grew fruits, vegetables, meat, eggs, and other farm products. They baked all their own breads, pie’s cakes, and cookies. They canned fruits, vegetables, jams, jellies, and pickles. Jai is a Master Gardener in Michigan and Florida as well as an organic, edible landscape designer. She does everything from full service landscaping to providing healthy plants and soil amendments so customers become able to grow healthy, nutritious and nutrient-dense food in their own back yards. Under Jai’s direction, I have actually been able to grow tasty vegetables in soil that is basically beach sand. Weekends you’ll find her giving classes and tours at her garden center while serving the most delicious iced tea made with herbs from her garden, including naturally sweet stevia. We’ll be talking about why you should grow your own food as well as how. www.organiclivingforall.com
Organic Bodycare Products
My guest Janis Uquillas is the founder of JES Organics. She has been a registered nurse for almost 40 years. For the past 10 years has been passionate about researching alternative health treatments, alternative medical research, ingredients, toxicity, and chronic illness. She consults with people daily across the country by e-mail and phone about health conditions and helps them find solutions for chronic health conditions. She founded JES Organics in 2006 after becoming frustrated with finding quality, nontoxic, fragrance-free skin care products for herself. She offers a complete line of natural/organic skin, hair, body, cosmetics and home products. We’ll be talking about toxic ingredients in body care products, anti-aging skin care, and how she created her products. www.jescollection.com
Wood Finish Made With Whey Recycled From Cheesemaking
My guest Andrew Meyer is founder and president of Vermont Natural Coatings, manufacturer of patented PolyWhey® whey-based wood finishes. Developed in collaboration with the University of Vermont, PolyWhey has emerged as new wood coatings science, using whey protein to displace toxic ingredients common to traditional wood finishes. CNN Money named Vermont Natural Coatings one of two leaders in innovation and technology in Vermont; the other being IBM. Andrew is a partner in Vermont Soy, LLC and owner of the Hardwick Enterprise Group, LLC, which provides business resources to innovative value-added companies. He is a founding board member of the Center for an Agricultural Economy and serves as a trustee of Shelburne Farms. He is a partner in North Hardwick Dairy, a family organic dairy farm. Andrew served as Agriculture Legislative Assistant to U.S. Senator James Jeffords and operated a congressional legislative consulting firm in Washington, D.C. We’ll talk about toxic chemicals in wood finishes, how he makes wood finish with whey, about creating an innovative nontoxic product, and sustainable businesses in Vermont. www.debralynndadd.com/debras-list/vermont-natural-coatings
Finding the Hidden Toxics in Consumer Products
My guest is Jeff Gearhart, Research Director for HealthyStuff.org, a project of the Ecology Center that tests brand-name consumer products for the presence of a list of chemicals of concern. They then rate products as being of high, medium or low concern. Jeff has worked for over 20 years on a wide range of environmental issues including air quality, pollution prevention, life cycle assessment, consumer product testing, and green chemistry. During his sixteen years with the Ecology Center he has spearheaded numerous chemicals policy market campaigns, co-authored multiple peer-reviewed articles on toxics in consumer products, pioneered citizen science in the use of x-ray fluorescence technology for toxics testing in products, and developed the now internationally recognized HealthyStuff.org product chemistry disclosure project and its extensive website of robust advocacy resources and the product testing results of more than 100,000 products. We’ll discuss the project, what they do, their recent report on toxic chemicals in garden products, and specifically how their research can guide us when choosing gardening gloves and garden hoses. www.healthystuff.org
Cookware – What’s Toxic and What’s Not
My guest is Rich Bergstrom from Ceramcor, makers of Xtrema Ceramic Cookware, the cookware I use every day. For 23 years Rich worked for and represented Corning Glass Works, considered the finest ceramics company in the world—makers of Corning Ware cookware, Pyrex bakeware and Corelle dinnerware. It was during these years he worked wit many wonderful people who helped to shape and mold his love for the glass ceramics business. In October of 2004, three years after his tenure with Corning ended, Rich received an unsolicited e-mail from Asia asking if he would be interested in a new high temperature ceramic material that could go on top of the stove and under the broiler, a product that would surpass the cooking performance and benefits of the original Corning Ware (the original Corning Ware manufacturing facility in Martinsburg, WV was closed and dismantled in 2002. Corning Ware is still being marketed today by World Kitchen but the product is now being made of stoneware and not the patented Pyro-Ceram material that made Corning Ware so recognizable). That single e-mail became the catalyst for three additional years of research, testing and product development, which led to the introduction of Xtrema cookware In February of 2007. Their vision is to make Xtrema products the healthiest for you and our planet. We’ll talk about the toxic exposures in various types of cookware and what Ceramcor is doing to make the safest cookware. www.debralynndadd.com/debras-list/xtrema-cookware
Transforming Your Yard Into an Organic Edible Garden
My guest is Bridget Guzzi, owner of Gardens of California LLC in San Ramon, California, which offers products and services for the at-home organic edible garden movement. As a child, her community was graced with fresh home grown gardens. Some fondest memories include lunch in the pea and rhubarb gardens, washing berries for homemade jam and jelly, going to the open fields to collect hazelnuts and to the lakes for fresh fish. Bridget boasts front and backyard organic edible gardens that are visited almost daily by neighbors and friends where she continues to emphasize one at home garden at a time. Bridget also introduced a garden birthday party where children gather to plant edibles. Bridget’s garden apparel line offers elegant comfort with easy care properties. The fabrics used for her apparel include GOTS certified organic cottons from Harmony Susalla, Harmony Art Organic Design, and SPF 50+ fabric that is made rated and tested in the USA. Bridget will give us inspiration for growing our own food at home. www.gardensofcalifornia.com
Electrosensitivity and Smart Meters
My guest is André Fauteux, Editor and Publisher of La Maison du 21e siècle (21st-Century Housing) magazine, a Quebec-based, French trimestrial on healthy and sustainable housing which he founded in 1994. During the summer of 1988, Andre was a reporter for the Montreal Gazette daily. There he wrote about a little girl with leukemia whose parents were trying to raised $100,000 to pay for a bone marrow transplant in the US. Sadly, the effort failed and Danielle Hebert passed away. Moved by this, André began investigating the causes of leukemia and learned that pesticides and magnetic fields were suspected triggers. He has dedicated his career to seeking and communicating ways of preventing and fixing environmental diseases and disasters. In 1990-91, while writing for a housing weekly (Habitabec) and freelancing for a New Age magazine (Guide Ressources), he had the good fortune of discovering his mission by learning about Building Biology and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s Healthy Housing initiative. Andre will talk about electrosensitivity and why smart meters are making some people sick. http://maisonsaine.ca/electrosmog/
Body Friendly Natural Furniture
My guest is Patrick Clark from Carolina Morning. Patrick has been researching and writing about design, nutrition, deep ecology, sleep, metabolism, minimalism and somatics for over 20 years. His unconventional approach to increasing wellness and energy through an integrated system uses nature, metabolism, and consciousness as the starting point of design. Patrick got into his eclectic line of work from a personal desire to heal from illness. He ‘brought himself back from the dead’ after experiencing two decades of declining health and trying diets and modalities that failed miserably. He found that diet alone was not the answer. The answer came in multiple parts: environment, nutrition, sleep, and exercise. Now, after ten years of putting together a unique protocol based on cutting edge research, he has invented a line of revolutionary ‘body friendly’ furniture as well as highly effective, nutrient dense, anti-oxidant rich recipes and wellness formulas. Patrick has a certificate in Permaculture Design as well as Outdoor Leadership from the Wilderness Education Association. We’ll talk about Patrick’s cutting edge viewpoint for health and how he translated what he learned into products we use every day. www.paleoalltheway.com/wool-sleeping-bag
Organic Cotton: Behind the Scenes
My guest is Harmony Susalla, founder of Harmony Art Organic Design. Harmony has created designs and products for every retail level from Target and Walmart to Nordstrom and Williams-Sonoma and many points in between. Personal conviction and a desire to show the world that organic fabrics can be beautiful led Harmony, in 2005, to become the first textile company to offer only printed organic cotton fabrics and make them available by the yard for businesses and home sewers alike. Harmony Art’s stock fabrics feature organic cotton, wide-width, woven sateens and twills as well as knits. www.harmonayart.com
Finding Your Voice and Speaking Up About Toxics
Rick Furbush is the Region 8 Advisor for Toastmasters International, which includes all of the Southeast USA and the Carribean. He has acheived the highest honor Toastmasters bestows, the Distinguished Toastmasters Award. I have been a member of Toastmasters under his leadership since 2009. Since his motto has been “Find Your Voice – Make a Difference,” I invited him to come talk with us about how everyone can make a difference in the world to reduce toxic expsoures by improving their speaking and leadership skills. Toastmasters covers all communication skills, from interpersonal conversations to media training..we’ll give lots of examples of how you can communicate in various ways to make a difference about eliminating toxics. www.toastmasters.org
