My guest today is Lara Adler, Environmental Toxins Expert and Certified Holistic Health Coach. Today we’ll be talking about the popularity of toxics in the news and online, the difference between sensationalism and truth, and facts vs editorial opinions from writers who don’t understand the subject. Lara trains and educates practitioners within the health and wellness community to better understand the links between environmental toxins and their impact on disease states—from weight gain and diabetes, to thyroid disease and developmental disorders—so they can better support their clients. Lara is deeply committed to peeling back the curtain and opening up the conversation about environmental toxins to people in a way that’s informative, accessible, actionable and totally free from overwhelm. She takes a practical, real-world approach to minimizing toxic exposure to safeguard our health. www.laraadler.com

 

 

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Are Toxic Dangers Internet Hype or a Genuine Health Crisis

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Lara Adler

Date of Broadcast: May 14, 2015

DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic work and live toxic free. It is Thursday, May 14th, 2015. Beautiful day here in Clearwater, Florida. And today, we’re going to be talking about something a little different than we usually talk about.

This show started with an e–mail that I got because I’m on my guest list. And she was talking about her views about – well, maybe you’ve seen around in social media in the last few weeks or month or so, there has been a lot of criticism of an activist known as The Food Babe and the people who are criticizing her are criticizing her about sensationalism and does she know anything about science and things like that.

My guest wrote a very interesting commentary about that so much so that I asked her to be on the show so that we could talk about this. And she got so many comments from writing this e–mail and sending it to her list that she ended up giving a class about this very subject.

My guest today is Lara Adler. She’s an environmental toxins expert and certified holistic health coach. And I’m very happy that we’re going to be talking about this.

Hi, Lara.

LARA ADLER: Hi, Debra. Thanks for having me back on. I’m excited to talk about this stuff with you.

DEBRA: Yes. I should say that Laura has been on before. We talked about obesogens. And she gives classes and trainings and things for heath coaches. So she’s not working with consumers directly. She’s working with coaches who are then working with clients. And I’m very happy to see what she’s teaching coaches to do with their clients because we certainly need more professionals who are aware of what the toxic chemicals are and how they affect their bodies.

So instead of me giving the story, Lara, why don’t you tell the story of what you said?

LARA ADLER: Sure. And it’s funny because the e–mail that I wrote was one of those ones where I just said – I think I wrote it in about five or six minutes. I was just a little fired up about it. And so, I don’t actually remember all of what it said.

But basically, like you said, there’s all of these buzz going around about Food Babe at the moment. She’s actually not the only person who’s in the spotlight in this realms. Dr. Oz is also in the spotlight for making sensational outrageous comments. And he’s actually somebody who is very heavily credentialed.

And so there’s just a lot of – I don’t think swearing is allowed here. I’m not sure, I don’t know. But Gawker, the online magazine, Gawker, published an article, the subject of which or the title of which is Food Blogger Food Babe is Full of S–H–I–T.

And I thought that was pretty hard and unkind. I don’t imagine you or I would appreciate anything written about us with that subject line. It’s really unnecessary. But it just got me looking at what are the criticisms that are being made about her and her [inaudible 00:04:24].

For your listeners who maybe don’t know who she is. She’s a food activist who really looks at chemicals and ingredients that are in foods that shouldn’t be there. Her primary goal is actually transparency and truth in labeling.

There’s a lot about her approach that I don’t like, but I don’t want to throw out the baby with the bath water. And so this is why I felt like a bigger conversation should be had here about this.

But essentially, I feel that in many cases, the very sensational approach that she takes – she certainly has been guilty of making blanket statements and a lot of inaccurate statements like, “All chemicals are bad.” We can talk about whether or not that’s true if we want. What I found is that sensational approach tends to turn a lot of people off and it just leaves a really bad taste in their mouth. And then anybody else who attempts to have, whether it’s a measured fact–based conversation about it, it’s automatically going to be associated with that sensational fear–mongery kind of vibe and they’re just going to get dismissed.

So it does make it harder for those people who are trying to have the conversation in a very serious and measured tone. It makes it harder for us to be able to do that when they’re going to go, “Oh, you’re kind of like Food Babe, right?”

DEBRA: Yes. I think that it is unfortunate, but this is the way the world is today. What is happening is that there is media and newspapers (especially newspapers, the history of newspapers is that they sell from sensationalism) and so if one wants to be in the media, if one wants to get attention, one needs to be sensational in order to get that attention. I could send out something that says something in a very measured tone and everybody yawns.

And people are sending out scientific information all the time that doesn’t reported in the news. But then Food Babe comes along and she does something sensational and she’s a “babe,” not a scientist. And there are other sensational people on the internet who I won’t name particularly because we’re talking about Food Babe here, but it’s the same approach. They are wanting to make this sensational point. I think they get attention and I think that Food Babe has done a lot to make people aware that there are things in our food that shouldn’t be there. But she’s gotten that attention and the information isn’t always correct. And that’s what I find with the people who take a sensational approach, the information isn’t always correct.

And on other sites (not Food Babe’s, but on other sites), I see sensational things and they give sources and the sources aren’t even correct. I go and click through on their sources and they’re not even correct. The information just isn’t there.

And so I think that in a world where it’s so critical for us to be having this information and having people understand the truth about toxic chemicals that it’s really a disservice for people to sensationally put out wrong information.

LARA ADLER: Yes, and you know what? I think it’s interesting – and I spoke about this in the class that I taught the other day. I said this in the intro. I was so fired about this that I decided to teach a class, my audience about it. What I think is that for better and worse, so there are certainly are benefits to this. And the benefit is people are talking about it for better or for worse. We’re talking about it. This is us having a conversation because of something that she did. And that’s for sure has a tremendous amount of benefits. It plants the seed of thought in people’s minds and that allows for us to just springboard into conversations, which is great.

But like I said, the downside is a lot of people are turned off by that and they’re going to jump on any opportunity that they can to attack somebody like her. And the reality is, this has been going on for centuries. This is not a new tactic to discredit people. In the class that I was talking at the other day, I was talking about Rachel McCarson. The mother of the environmental movement was attacked. Her sanity was attacked, and she was attacked because her credentials – her research was attacked because her attackers said she couldn’t possibly understand the complex science around pesticides because she was a woman.

This is not new information. And what’s interesting to me – and this is where I really got rubbed the wrong way where it’s not about Food Babe, but it’s about, like you said, the sort of climate that we’re having this conversation in, is that even people that are heavily credentialed and have dedicated their lives to doing academic scientific research are also attacked in these ways. You have Tyrone Hayes. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Tyrone Hayes and his research, but he is the research scientist who’s been studying the effects of the herbicide, Atrazine, on the sexual development of frogs and the potential effects on women health. Sygenta, the company that manufactures that pesticide went to extraordinarily length to attack him and his credibility including taking out an ad. When you google Tyrone Hayes’ name, the first thing that comes up is an ad that was paid for – a Google keyword ad, excuse me, that was paid for by Sygenta that says Tyrone Hayes is not credible.

And so it doesn’t matter whether she’s a scientist or not, people are getting attacked to having this conversation which is just an interesting point.

DEBRA: That is interesting in and of itself. We need to go to break but when we come back, we’ll talk about this more. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Lara Adler, and we’re talking about Are Toxic Dangers Internet Hype or a Genuine Health Crisis?

We’ll be right back.

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Lara Adler. She’s an environmental toxins expert and certified holistic health coach. Her website is LaraAdler.com. And we’re talking about sensationalism and truth in talking about toxics in the media.

Lara, in the first segment, you mentioned something that is often said which is there are no safe chemicals.

LARA ADLER: To the blanket statement that all chemicals are bad.

DEBRA: Right. So let’s discuss that.

LARA ADLER: So that’s a really fascinating point of conversation. We can’t make that statement. That is an impossible statement to make for a number of reasons. The first of which is we just don’t have a lot of data around the chemicals that are in commerce. There’s just no safety testing data because our federal policies doesn’t require that chemicals get tested prior to coming to market. So we can’t make a blanket definitive statement to say that, “God! If we don’t actually know anything about them…” And so that’s just a pretty obvious way to kind of counter that all chemicals are bad.

The reality is that we are chemicals. Everything is chemical. Our skins are chemical, our organs are chemicals, our hormones that fuel our functions, body functions, it’s all chemical.

Chemical, as a word, is neutral. It doesn’t have a good or bad connotation but at least within the realm of the Food Babe conversation, she has a tendency to just kind of lump it into that category that if it’s a chemical that it’s bad. If it’s got a long name and you can’t pronounce it, it must be bad for you.

DEBRA: That’s just not a true statement.

LARA ADLER: No, it’s not.

DEBRA: I’ve been studying toxic chemicals for more than 30 years and reading scientific data and looking at individual industrial chemicals. And even within the set of industrial chemicals made from petroleum, even not all of those are toxic. But people take words like chemicals, they take words like plastic, they think every single plastic is bad. And that’s not true. There are some plastics that are absolutely safe to use.

But people don’t know this information. They haven’t studied the subject and they pick up on some term like plastics are chemical and then it’s all bad.

LARA ADLER: Right. And again, I think it’s smarter to be able to have a measured conversation. People, for sure, are going to take you more seriously when you can actually say, “You know what? Those ones work fine. There is no data that shows that there’s any harm there, but these are the ones that you want to watch out for.” Rather than just saying, “Oh, my God! We have to live in a bubble.” My joke around that is if people say, “I’m going to live in a plastic bubble,” then I always say, “Well, what kind of plastic?”

DEBRA: Well, what kind of plastic, yes.

LARA ADLER: What kind of plastic is your bubble made out of because that makes a big difference. That I think is joke that very few people outside this world that we live in would laugh at, but there you have it.

And then to the other side of that whole “all chemicals are bad” thing is what happens on the other side of the argument? And this is where it makes me a little crazy. I always read the comments section of any news article that’s posted because that gives me a lot of insight into how regular people are thinking and responding to whatever is happening. I sometimes focus more on the comments section than the actual article itself. And what always happens when somebody is like, “Oh, you think all chemicals are bad? What about di–hydrogen monoxide? That’s a chemical. That’s bad for you.”

Well, dihydrogen monoxide is the chemical name for water. I’ve seen it hundreds of times where somebody who is trying to make it big will use that as an opportunity to say, “Oh, you don’t like chemicals? You better stay away from dihydrogen monoxide.”

And there’s a spoof website which is pretty funny that I stumbled across that talks about the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide, that the inhalation of it can kill you with drowning. And it’s just making fun of this whole conversation. And I don’t think that’s a helpful climate to have this conversation at.

DEBRA: I totally agree. Another thing that I just want to mention about toxic chemicals with regard to this is that even if you have a chemical that is known to be toxic, let’s say, dioxine, just to be extreme, where that’s just known to be so toxic, but whether it’s toxic to an individual or not – well, dioxine is probably toxic to everybody. But let’s say something is not quite so toxic. There are many chemicals that have some toxicity to them but whether or not an individual actually is poisoned by them, it depends on how much they’re exposed to, how often they’re exposed to it, the condition of the individual’s body, et cetera. And there’s a list of about seven or eight factors that go into whether or not you’re going to be poisoned by it. And that is completely separate from the inherent toxicity of the chemical itself.

And so it’s really, really difficult to ascertain – this is why this is such a confusing subject, is that it’s difficult to ascertain even if something is toxic, is the individual person going to be harmed by it?

And so if we can’t determine that, how are we going to – what’s the best route? So for me, I think that the best thing to do is the precautionary principle, which is to say, if there’s a question about it, don’t use it. You may not be harmed by it but if there’s a question about it, if it can be identified by science that there is a harmful component to it, then I stay away from that.

And then when you get to something like lead, for example, where it’s known that there is no safe level, that’s been established that there is no safe level, and then the government sets a safe level that is not even correct, what we should be doing is cooperating. We should be cooperating to get the correct information out in the world instead of making it more confusing.

LARA ADLER: I think the other thing about the effects of some of these chemicals because this is where a lot of people, again, people who are trying to discredit some others – I hear the break music coming in. Do we need to break?

DEBRA: We need to break, yes. You got that right. It’s the break music. So we’ll go to break and then we’ll continue when we come back.

You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Lara Adler. She’s an environmental toxins expert and certified holistic health coach. Her website is LaraAdler.com 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 Lara Adler. She’s an environmental toxics expert and certified holistic health coach. Her website is LaraAdler.com.

Okay, Lara, go ahead and continue.

LARA ADLER: So I think the point that’s important to make with a lot of these chemicals is that – and this is something that I see also both in articles and in the comment section of articles is that if these chemicals are so bad, why are more people in the hospital with x and y adverse reaction?

DEBRA: Good question.

LARA ADLER: And I think what people don’t understand is the latency period for the effects from these exposures can be 20 or 30 years. It can be extraordinarily subtle. A hormonal imbalance, for example, due to an excessive endocrine disruptor that are messing with the thermostat of your hormone isn’t something that you end up in an emergency room with. It’s something that makes you feel low level crappy for years and years that your doctors just dismiss because it’s not an acute symptom.

And so in many cases, the implications of exposures are really subtle and that’s hard to tease out. And they may not actually show themselves for 20 or 30 years.

And so when people throw around the word toxic, people are automatically assuming that there is going to be an immediate and adverse reaction like skin rash or something like that. In some cases that might be true but in other cases, you might never know and it’s just a matter of, “Oh, my child is having behavioral problems in school or is having a hard time learning.” There might be an IQ reduction issues.

That’s not a symptom that you notice. That’s just something that develops. Does that make sense?

DEBRA: I know what I’m about to say you know but I will say this for the benefit of the listeners. There are actually two kinds of chemicals. There are acute exposures and chronic exposures. And the acute reactions that’s why we have poison control centers. And that’s what people usually think of as a poisoning, is when you drink a cleaning product that’s under the sink. That’s why it says keep away from children or keep out of reach of children. And that the child starts choking and turning blue, and that’s what people think is toxic or poisonous.

And then there’s a whole other class of chemicals where the response is chronic, which means that it’s building up in your body day in and day out. And that you’re being exposed to it over and over again. And your body, it actually starts accumulating in your body. And this is what’s called body burden. And you can accumulate and accumulate and accumulate these chemicals for years, and then all of a sudden, you get to that right amount that is poisonous to your body. And it’s been accumulating and then your body gets sick and you get cancer, you get heart disease or you get impotence or whatever is your symptom. And it’s because of this build–up of these chemicals that don’t show themselves immediately.

And so after all these years of study, the only thing that I can say is that because we now know – and it’s Centers for Disease Control that came up with this word, body burden, I’m not making this up. This is science. And the Centers for Disease Control actually measures the blood of Americans to find out how much of these chemicals are building up in your body. They have tests. You can just go to your website and see how much toxic chemicals we’re all carrying around in our bodies.

LARA ADLER: I think the most recent report which actually has updates, it’s called the National Report on Exposures to Environmental Chemicals. And then the fourth report came out in 2009 and they just did an update earlier this year. They measured something 265 chemicals in people tested. They didn’t test for every chemical so there’s likely many, many more. But those are the ones that [cross–talking 00:31:00]

DEBRA: There are many, many more. I mean nobody can say.

DEBRA: Lara, can you hear me?

LARA ADLER: Yes, I can.

DEBRA: Can anybody hear me? Bret, can you hear me? Lara, are you there?

LARA ADLER: Yes, I can hear you.

DEBRA: Okay, good. So let’s go on. So I was saying about how there are measurable results that the CDC is measuring the blood. There are toxic chemicals, chemicals known to be toxic by scientific study in the blood of everybody in America and probably in the world unless you have done something to lower or remove those toxic chemicals. Just walking around, living your normal life, using normal toxic consumer products, everybody has this. And sooner or later, you’re going to get sick. The question is not if, the question is when.

These are toxic chemicals we’re all being exposed to unless we’re doing something to not be exposed to them.

And this is the state of the world today. And this is why I do what I do. This is why Lara does what she does because we have looked at the science. We know that these toxic chemicals exist, we know the health effects that happen from them, and we know that there are solutions.

LARA ADLER: Absolutely. And I think that’s the point. Food Babe, for sure, has a role in this conversation. Again, for better and for worse, and we don’t always have the opportunity to cherry pick who are allies are. I know that some people have distanced themselves from her because of all of this controversy and whatnot. And some of the people that are attacking her, and this is something that I’ve taught about in my class, some of the people that are attacking her are also making blanket statements that are not factual. And that’s happening on the other side of it which just makes me crazy because I’m like, “Well, you’re just doing what she’s doing. You know that, right?”

And so an example of that is the entire [inaudible 00:35:27] toxicology field of research is based on the assumption that all chemicals are everything is harmful just depends on the dose that’s given. And that the larger the dose, the more effect it’s going to have. And the smaller the dose, the smaller effect it’s going to have. At a certain point, if the dose is low enough, it’s not going to have any effects on you. And this known as the “dose makes the poison.” And it’s called out in just about every single article that’s attacking Food Babe and people like her.

And the truth is that that is an absolute statement, but not always true. There is a whole area of research that’s looking at chemicals that don’t follow that assumption.

DEBRA: That’s right.

LARA ADLER: Again, it’s an assumption. It’s not fact. And they are looking at very low dose exposures, far below what traditional toxicology studies test for and that they have a very dramatic impact at very low levels.

So when I see a critical article coming out, criticizing Food Babe but not knowing her science that’s making statements like, “Duh, the dose makes the poison.” I want to go, “Gee, you’re just as dumb as she is.”

DEBRA: This is the problem that I’m seeing exactly. Not that I know everything but I have been studying this for more than 30 years. And there are so many people who are writing today, especially in the mainstream media, where the reporters, they don’t have background information. I can tell from things that you say that you do have background information and that you are studying. And if a reporter assigned to write an article about the latest toxic chemical and they don’t know anything about toxicology, they’re not going to put it in the right context.

And unfortunately, a lot of what I read – and then there’s a lot of people who pick up and blog about things and they don’t know anything about either, and I’m not saying that’s true for everyone. I’m just saying that there’s a lot of that out there. And I read these things and I do, “This just isn’t right.” And I know that because of my background.

And there are some people that also have background and that are doing a really great job. But the general public has hard time knowing the difference because they don’t have any background either.

LARA ADLER: Right. It’s a challenge to try to sort that out. And it’s a task that most people just don’t want to take on. And what happens is, like you were saying, that sometimes the balanced, measured approach versus [inaudible 00:38:20] approach doesn’t land for most people. It’s not something that they’re going to enjoy reading about. And so we have to – and I hate using the term ‘dumbed down’, but we have to translate sometimes these really complicated subjects into easy to understand language.

And in some cases, it does require us to make a couple of leaps – not sensationalize. I mean, that certainly is one way. But I think sometimes we have to take a couple of leaps just to make it easier to read so that we don’t have to give so much background information because then we’ll lose our audience.

DEBRA: That’s right. One of the things that I do when I’m writing, I come across a lot of scientific studies. And so often, I will find out about them from an article in Environmental Health News or something like that where there’s an article written that simplifies the study. And so then when I put it in my blog, then I simplify it even further and just give the basic idea of what the study is about and what the result is, relevant to a consumer. And then I say, “Here’s a simple article. You can read about it. And here’s the actual study.”

And that way, it gives it different levels. And I think that’s really what is needed because it would be extremely difficult for a consumer to read the original study and translate that into an action they can take today. And there’s no reason why each one of us needs to go through that process. And so I think that it’s valuable for me to do that and it’s valuable for you to do that, and people who do that. I think it’s valuable for Food Babe to say, “Look, here’s this food additive and you shouldn’t eat it. And here’s another thing that you can eat. And here’s a recipe.”

All of that is really valuable.

LARA ADLER: And it’s interesting. The e–mail that I sent out that just shared some of my thoughts. Ninety percent of the responses that I’ve got or 99% of the responses that I’ve got from people were, “You know what? I’m so glad that you said that. I feel that for us that are out there trying to educate people, her approach really is a disservice. It makes it harder for us to be able to have this conversation with people.”

I also got a couple of people who messaged me some pretty nasty e–mails saying, “You shouldn’t hate on her. I can’t believe you.” I said, “Okay. That’s going to happen. And I’m not here, and nor is Food Babe, to please anyone.”

And she did a really interesting interview with Sean Croxton a couple of months ago where they talked about her being attacked. And she was like, “Well, I never anticipated in my life being in this position, but the reality is people need to know about this stuff.” And a lot of the people that are attacking her are on the industry side of the conversation. And that’s always going to be the case.

When Dr. Oz made his statement on his TV show about the people that were petitioning to get him removed from the head of either Columbia or wherever it was that he’s teaching, he did a little expose on some of those people and their ties to industry and GMO and Monsanto and that whole thing.

It’s a little bit part of what we signed up for, unfortunately, when we stepped into this realm. And I think that it is what it is. I think that they’ve handled it fairly well. And at the end of the day, I feel really bad for her because no human being wants to be in that situation where you thought millions of people calling you names and saying that you’re stupid and all of that. I don’t think she’s stupid. She doesn’t have a science degree or chemistry degree or toxicology degree but you know what? Neither do I.

DEBRA: And neither do I.

LARA ADLER: I completely self–taught in this area. And I think that what she has to share is totally valid. What I think she could benefit from or that her audience could benefit from is a slight shift in approach even if it’s just like you said – I mean, I notice that she does have a staff of scientist and advisers that review her material before she releases it to make sure that there are no inaccuracies, but I don’t know if they’re doing a very good job because making statements like “all chemicals are bad” and those kinds of things aren’t helping her cause or ours.

DEBRA: One of the statements that you put in your e–mail was that she says things like there is just no acceptable level of any chemical to ingest ever.

Well, that’s just not a true statement.

LARA ADLER: That’s not a true statement. And that’s [inaudible 00:43:43] of other examples of things that she said that aren’t true. But at the end of the day, I’m not infallible, you’re not infallible. We’re human beings. We make mistakes. We say wrong things. The hope is that we’ll correct them because we’re in a position where we’re speaking to a large amount of people, that puts us at a certain level of responsibility that we have. But at the end of the day, we all make mistakes. It’s just how we respond to them that I think makes the big difference.

DEBRA: I would love it for her to be a little more educated and know what are the messages, what are the truthful message to put out and use those messages instead.

LARA ADLER: Yes, agreed. But like I said, it is elevating this conversation. You and I are talking about this. If that was her goal is to get people talking about it, then I understand that ‘by any means necessary’ approach.

If this is what I meant – I mean, I don’t really want to throw away the baby with the bath water because there is some benefit in having this conversation. I just don’t like the aftertaste that it leaves for a lot of people. And I just wish that we could move to a – like I said, a more measured version of this conversation.

“Look, here are the things that are bad and that we need to look out for. Here’s how they’re bad. They may not be bad for everyone. Here are the populations that they’re going to be the worst for. Those populations, please listen up, here’s what you want to do. Everybody else? Here’s what you should.

And here are the things that we don’t need to worry about because we don’t want to be crazy people out in the world wearing face masks and gloves and not going in our cars because our dashboards are releasing toxic chemicals. We want to be able to have a normal life.”

DEBRA: That’s exactly right. And we can. You and I know we can. And it isn’t even about avoiding every single toxic danger but about knowing where they are and what they are and being able to choose wisely.

We only have a few minutes left of this show. The title of this show is, Are Toxic Dangers Internet Hype, or a Genuine Health Crisis, named after your class. And so I just want to make sure that we just talk about for a few minutes.

LARA ADLER: Yes, sure. Meaning the class that I teach?

DEBRA: No, meaning, are toxic dangers internet hype, or are they a genuine health crisis?

LARA ADLER: I actually thinking that they’re a little bit of both. You know what? What I said in my class was that it certainly feels like hype because of the climate of the conversation but unfortunately, the bulk of it is not. It is a genuine health crisis. You wouldn’t be doing this, have done all of this research in course of 30 years, if it wasn’t a legitimate issue. There wouldn’t be thousands of scientists all over the world researching the low dose exposures to endocrine disrupting chemicals and the implications if it wasn’t a real, genuine health crisis. The CDC wouldn’t be monitoring the levels of chemicals in people’s bodies if it wasn’t a genuine health crisis.

So hands down, yes, it’s a big issue. It’s a big issue when we see the disease rate skyrocketing, when we see things like autism and learning disability and behavioral problems in children, cancers and leukemia in children, this is not okay. And these diseases and conditions are increasing at levels that scientists are saying cannot at all be associated with genetics. But there’s something environmental going on.

And so I would say absolutely hands down, it’s something that we all need to be aware of and that it is a genuine threat to our health. And our survival as a species, and not to get sensational about it, but that’s honestly what’s happening.

DEBRA: That’s not sensational. That’s the truth.

LARA ADLER: When our fertility rates are dropping, wouldn’t that impact the species?

DEBRA: It certainly does. It certainly does. When we look at – the world is so different, I’m going to be 60 years old in June. And I know I don’t look it or sound it but I’ve been doing this work since I was 24. And I got sick from toxic chemical exposure in my early 20s. And how different people’s health is from when I was a child to nowadays, you can just look and see in that short period of time that people are getting major illnesses at earlier and earlier ages. And children having illnesses that they never had before.

We can see it with our own eyes if you have that spectrum of viewpoint. And it has to be due to something and then you can go and look at all these studies of these chemicals that we’re using, and you can go look and find out where those chemicals in consumer products. And you see the association. You just see the association if you’re looking. It’s there.

I think there is internet hype about it but it is a genuine health crisis.

LARA ADLER: Yes, for sure.

DEBRA: Well, Lara, thank you so much. We have less than a minute left of the show so I just want to thank you so much for speaking out about this so that we could have this show today. And I think that it’s really important for there to be a lot more education so that the general public understands and can tell the different so that everybody knows what’s going on. I think that you’re doing a great job educating your segment of the population of your coaches so that they can go out and be helping more people. So thank you so much for being on the show.

LARA ADLER: Thanks for having me back.

DEBRA: You’re welcome. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well.

Today my guest is David Abbot, author of Healing Your Family With Practical Household Toxicology. We’ll be talking about his first-hand experience identifying toxic chemicals in homes, his observations of how these toxics affected the health of the home’s inhabitants, and ways everyone can reduce toxic exposures at home. David became aware he was sensitive to chemicals in the early 1980’s, but in retrospect he realized he had been chemically sensitive since he was a child. Like everyone born in the 1950’s, he had been exposed to DDT and many other highly toxic chemicals. A retired general contractor, David got formal training in a household toxicology program in the early 1980’s. The teachers included a PhD in toxicology, a mycologist for a public health department, a medical doctor who was board certified in environmental medicine and had a masters in public health, a chemist, an engineer, and various EPA experts. He also recieved informal training from a microbiologist, a few chemists, a nuclear inspector at the Bremerton Naval Shipyard, and an electrical engineer. He studied household and industrial vacuum and air cleaning technology at the engineering library, as well as buying many vacuum cleaners and air cleaners and using them and taking them apart, so he could understand how they worked and how many of them are improperly designed, do not really work right, and expose people to toxins and allergens. He then volunteered for about three years, going to the houses of people whose health conditions did not respond to medical treatment. In every case he found chemical toxins and/or biological allergens that are known to cause those medical conditions. You may email David at David healthy.environment@frontier.com for information on how to order his book.

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Tales from Toxic Homes – A Household Toxicologist Shares His Experience

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: David Abbott

Date of Broadcast: May 07, 2015

DEBRA: Hi, Debra Lynn Dadd, and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic free. It is Thursday, May 7th, 2015. It’s a beautiful day here in Clearwater, Florida. The sun is shining, no rain, no breeze, just a beautiful sunshine. We’ve got a lot of sunshine here.

So what we’re going to be talking about today is household toxics, which we talk about every day, but from a little different perspective. My guest today is a household toxicologist. He’s written a book and he has many years of experience. He was actually trained as a household toxicologist and he’ll be telling us about that, how he got trained. But he also has worked on many houses in many places in many ways to reduce toxic chemical exposures. So he has a tremendous amount of experience.

He realized that after working for many years as a household toxicology consultant, he started getting the symptoms from exposure to toxic chemicals that were in his clients’ homes. He realized that if his clients had had some written instructions and guidelines, that 95% of them could have solved their own household toxicology problems without him even going to their house. So he wrote this book.

So he’s got a lot to tell us about toxic chemicals in homes, how people react to them, and what you can do to fix them. His name is David Abbott, and he’s the author of Healing Your Family with Practical Household Toxicology.

Hi, David.

DAVID ABBOTT: Hi, Debra.

DEBRA: How are you doing today?

DAVID ABBOTT: I’m doing well. And you?

DEBRA: Good. Very good. I’m very interested in having you tell your story about how you got interested in this and in particular, household toxicologist, I’ve actually never heard that term before. Is there a whole field of household toxicology that I’m just not aware of?

DAVID ABBOTT: Well, actually, I may have coined that phrase.

DEBRA: And it’s a very good one.

DAVID ABBOTT: There are not very many people who do this although in China, they have started training people to do it.

DEBRA: Wow.

DAVID ABBOTT: The government actually does that.

DEBRA: There’s a whole field of [inaudible 00:03:32] biology, which I think may be slightly different from what you do because I think that you focus on the toxic chemicals and [inaudible 00:03:40] biology includes all kinds of things, electromagnetic fields, molds and all these other things. They include toxic chemicals, but they aren’t as trained as I think you are or as trained as – I mean, I’m not trained by somebody. I’m trained by 30 years of my own research. So I think that most people don’t have that.

So tell us how you got interested in this on the first place.

DAVID ABBOTT: Well, actually, before I do that, I think very highly [inaudible 00:04:13] biology. It’s total common sense and very practical.

DEBRA: Yes, it does.

DAVID ABBOTT: And it works. Around 1973, I started noticing that I was chemically sensitive. I started putting two and two together, “When I used this product, I start to feel this way. When I use that product, I get sleepy or confused,” and that sort of thing. And I found that if I didn’t use those chemicals, I felt better.

So I started studying the toxins in building materials and building practices because I was a general contractor. I spent most of my time building houses and repairing or remodeling or maintaining them. And I started reading all of the fine print on the labels of the materials that I use, and the MSDS sheets, the Material Safety Data Sheets.

I spent a lot of time at the University of Washington Engineering and Medical Libraries, studying indoor air quality, air flow in and around houses, the Ashray textbooks, and that sort of thing. I studied with a guy who has a Ph.D. in Toxicology from the University of Washington, [inaudible 00:05:36] to work for the Seattle Health Department and some chemists and biochemists, a physicist, electrical and biochemical engineers, medical doctors who specialize in environmental medicine and EPA department experts.

DEBRA: Yes, so you have lot of training. And you mentioned to me that there was a Household Toxicology Program in the 1980s that you were a part of. Do you know anything about how that came together? It sounded from your description there was actually a program or people were being trained to learn what you know.

DAVID ABBOTT: Yes, it was. And technically, I’m not supposed to mention it to you because they said they didn’t want anyone to use the training from that program to make money or to engage in other activities besides their program.

DEBRA: Okay. Is that program still existing because I’ve never heard of a program like that?

DAVID ABBOTT: Well, as far as I know, it is. I haven’t talked to them in some time. And I actually broke off with them because they were being funded by two groups that were using the program to collect data about homeowners’ use of toxic chemicals for their own studies. And so it turned out that that was actually the main goal of the program rather than teaching the program participants how to protect themselves from the exposures while they were doing the consultations.

DEBRA: Did you find that once you were trained – you had mentioned, I think, in your e-mail to me about your book that after you started doing these consultations that you became more chemically sensitive? Did you find doing the work actually affected your health?

DAVID ABBOTT: Yes, I did, very much so. Typically, when people have health issues that don’t respond to conventional or alternative medical treatment, they are being exposed to chemical toxins or sometimes mold and pollen and animal dander and that kind of thing in their own house. And sometimes their use of insecticides was so excessive as to be really frightening. Insecticides are usually neurotoxins and insects and human beings have brains and nervous systems that operate through the exact same basic biochemical mechanisms.

And so many insecticides that poison insects by attacking their brain and nervous system does the exact same thing to people. It’s frightening to use insecticides especially when we consider that most of the insects that we poison are not really dangerous to us.

DEBRA: That’s exactly right. That was something that I came to many, many years ago. I don’t remember the last time I used a pesticide because I’ve been doing this for so long. But I came to a point where I said, “Wait a minute. Do I really want to spray toxic chemicals in my house because I have flies?” I could put up screens. Are spiders so bad?

I think that we were trained to see insects as being pests that need to be eradicated by poisons just by watching television and general society. But when I started becoming more aware of nature myself, I started thinking, “Well, wait a minute. These insects, these are all part of the ecosystem. I just need to put up a barrier and say, ‘You stay out there and this is my house.’ I don’t need to spray them.”

DAVID ABBOTT: Yes. And you can get a spray bottle and fill it. What we have available here locally at the liquor stores is something called Diesel, which is not diesel oil or diesel fuel. It’s actually about 90% and under so pure grain alcohol. And so it’s the same type of alcohol that we drink in beer or whiskey or whatever.

But if you spray a fly or a bee or a wasp or a hornet with this stuff from one of those hand spray bottles, it just drops right out of the air. It’s much easier to deal with.

DEBRA: Much easier, much easier. And there are so many solutions. There are so many things that we can do instead of things that are toxic.

We need to go to break but when we come back, we’ll talk more. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. And my guest today is David Abbott. He’s the author of Healing Your Family with Practical Household Toxicology. And this is a brand new book. It’s just barely available. But if you would like a copy, you can e-mail David and just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. Look for the description of this show and you can get his e-mail address that way. We’ll be right back.

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is David Abbott. He’s the author of Healing Your Family with Practical Household Toxicology.

David, could you tell us some stories about toxic exposures you’ve seen in homes and how they were affecting people?

DAVID ABBOTT: Sure. There was a girl named Amy, whose mother called and asked if I could help her. She kept getting lung infections and she had memory loss that was making her college work difficult. And her doctor said, “I don’t know why you keep getting sick because you have a good attitude, you have a good diet, you do 45 minutes of aerobics every day. You seem to be doing everything right.”

And he had her on a bronchodilating inhaler. It’s steroid inhaler. And she had to take cycles of antibiotics. But the lung infections kept coming back.

And in inspecting her apartment, I found a leaking furnace gasket and a leaking can of insecticide. And when she fixed the furnace and got rid of the insecticide, the lung infections disappeared. She started getting better grades in school with less effort, and her doctor took her off all of the drugs.

This actually makes sense because the carbon monoxide leaking out of the furnace is something that’s known to cause memory loss and the insecticide can make people more vulnerable to lung infections. It weakens the immune system. And so a lot of times, when people aren’t responding to medical treatment, it’s because they’re being exposed to toxins.

DEBRA: And I think that that’s a very important sentence that you’ve just said. A lot of times when people aren’t responding t medical treatment, it’s because they’re being exposed to toxins. Because I’ve been saying for a long time that right now, today, people are being so exposed. Everybody is being exposed and all these illnesses that people are having. You can do all the medical treatment whether it’s standard medical treatment or alternative medical treatment, and if you are exposed to toxic chemicals, you’re still going to be sick. You still are going to be sick if you’re being exposed to toxic chemicals. And that’s just the fact of it today.

And so if anybody wants to be healthy, the first thing is to address your toxic exposures because everybody has them. And people say to me, “But I’m not sick.” Well, it’s only a matter of time. It really is only a matter of time because they’re there if they’re making your body sick. And that’s just the truth of the matter today.

DAVID ABBOTT: Yes. A lot of times what I run into is one of the people in the house will say, “I don’t know why you say you react to this chemical because I don’t react to it at all.” And their assumption is that everybody is going to react in precisely the same way to the same chemical. But truthfully, we each have a different balance of health in our liver, kidneys, lungs, brain, endocrine system, and all the rest. And so it isn’t really possibly to predict how a given person is going to react to a given toxin.

DEBRA: That’s right.

DAVID ABBOTT: In fact, a friend of mine who has a doctorate in chemistry from Berkeley told me that no government or research institute or private clinic or hospital or an industry has enough time and money and technical expertise to determine how a specific person will react to a specific combination of toxins. And this incredible complexity of the issue actually simplifies it because as you said, if we reduce our exposure to chemicals simply as a result, it can only help us.

DEBRA: I did a lot of research in the beginning when I first learned that my body was getting sick from toxic chemical exposure in my home which totally shocked me because at that time, I thought that the government was removing toxic chemicals from everything. But that’s not the case at all. And I did all this research because I was trying to say, “Okay, here’s my list of symptoms. I have headaches, I have insomnia, I have depression. And what are the products in my home that are causing those?”

And so, I could see that if I sprayed hairspray on then I would get a headache. As I did my research, I learned that formaldehyde on bedsheets causes insomnia. I had to put those pieces of data together to figure that out. But I found out in separate books and I put it all together and I went, “Oh, my permanent-pressed sheets have formaldehyde and formaldehyde causes insomnia.” And I changed my sheets and I could sleep. It just solved that just like that.

And on a larger scale, you can’t always make those associations that are that precise. And what I found was that if I were to just remove all the toxic chemicals I possibly could, then it would make my body healthier just in general. And I think that that’s what people need to do instead of saying, “Well, I have cancer,” or, “I’m impotent.” Sure there are causes of chemicals that relate to these things but say we removed all the carcinogens in your life but you still have all the neurotoxins.

DAVID ABBOTT: Yes. And another thing that we often run into is when people start hearing about all of these toxins, they say, “I don’t feel safe. I worry all the time. I don’t feel safe in my house. I don’t feel safe going out in public.”

The thing that we need to remember is that we just do what we can do at the time and take steps other than getting rid of toxins such as eating a good diet, having a good attitude, meditating ,doing yoga, Tai Chi Gong, this kind of thing. Even just going for a walk every day.

And these things can be really beneficial.

DEBRA: Yes, and there are all kinds of detoxing that I write about. There are so many things that we can do. Actually, I was just writing in my one my blogs, Toxic Free Body, I was writing about – you know that old song, Accentuate the Positive? I even put a video of that song in the blogpost because so many times we focus on what is the negative aspect of things. But there’s always something positive. There’s always a positive and there’s always a negative in any situation.

And so the negative is that toxic chemicals are all around us and poisoning us. But the positive is, there’s a whole lot of other things that we can do that aren’t toxic and we can keep making those choices, keep accentuating the positive, keep doing the things that remove toxic chemicals from our body, take them out of our homes, help remove these toxics in our communities. There is so much we can do. There’s so much we can do.

DAVID ABBOTT: Definitely.

DEBRA: I think we’ve come up to the break. So this is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is David Abbott, author of Healing Your Family with Practical Household Toxicology. And you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and look for today’s show and it has his e-mail address where you can e-mail him and get information on how to order his book.

We’ll be right back.

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is David Abbott, and he is the author of a book called Healing Your Family with Practical Household Toxicology.

So David, let’s talk about some things that you have some solutions to these problems. You’ve looked at so many houses. What is the most common thing that you find and what do you tell people to do about it?

DAVID ABBOTT: Well, the most common thing I found that I think is the most dangerous is insecticide use. But there’s also a lot of just really simple stuff that actually doesn’t take any effort or any money to solve.

For instance, a woman told me that she always needed to use her asthma inhaler when she was cooking dinner. And so she had a gas stove. And I said, “You cook on the front burners, right?” And she said, “Yes.” And I said, “Okay, let’s turn on the front burner and take a smell of the air when that burner is on.”

And I showed her how to identify the smell of the combustion fumes from the gas flame. And then I said, “Now, you’ve got a vent soaked or a vent fan here above the stove. Let’s turn it on.” And she turned it on and I said, “Now, pretend that you’re stirring a pot on this front burner. In fact, let’s put a pot full of water there and stir the water with a spoon.”

And when she did that she could still smell the combustion fumes even though the vent fan was on. Because to be honest, there isn’t any vent fan that would remove the combustion fumes from the front burners when you’re stirring something on the stove.

So I showed her just to cook on the back burner and when she did that she didn’t need her asthma inhaler when she was cooking.

DEBRA: Well, now, that’s exactly the kind of quick and easy and practical thing that everybody should know and we don’t know. I’ve been studying this for more than 30 years and I didn’t know that.

DAVID ABBOTT: In fact, I didn’t know it until she asked me.

DEBRA: But then you figured it out because you had a background.

DAVID ABBOTT: And I was thinking about how can this happen? Why would she need her inhaler? Well, the only thing she is being exposed to here could be combustion fumes because that’s the only thing that changes when she turns on the stove. So yes, really simple.

DEBRA: But you figured out – here’s the thing that you figured out, I think, is – I would figure out that she was being exposed to combustion fumes. But it would never occur to me that how the hood vent is pulling up the fumes or not pulling up the fumes from the front burners versus the back burners. It just would never occur to me. But that opens the door. Just knowing that opens the door to people who are listening to us. It opens the door to being able to use a gas stove maybe for some people who can’t use them.

DAVID ABBOTT: Yes, I actually use an electric stove for that reason. But a lot of people assume that just because they have a vent fan that it works perfectly. That in all the years that I’ve done consultations, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one vent fan that was properly maintained. And when they’re not working right, they don’t work efficiently. And even when they are working as they were specifically designed to work, most of them actually still don’t get all of the fumes out.

And so I’d say, “You know, you got to figure ways around this sort of thing.” And a lot of times, even the building codes don’t really protect people against a lot of sources of toxins. As you pointed out in your books and on your show about toxins in building materials and they’re approved by the building departments. They’re fine with them.

DEBRA: We need building codes that protect us from toxics. I love that.

DAVID ABBOTT: Yes. We need new building codes.

DEBRA: Maybe I need to write my own building codes.

DAVID ABBOTT: That would be good. I think typically, the building codes are quite a few years behind common knowledge and they only catch up with common knowledge when enough people say, “Hey, come on. This doesn’t make sense.”

There is actually a building code here where I live where, before you put the drywall in your house, you had to put a solid layer of plastic sheeting all around the stud walls and then put the drywall on. And what was happening is the moisture from the air that people exhale and from showers and cooking and laundry was going through the drywall which it does. It goes through the paint and through the drywall, it would hit the plastic and condense there because the plastic was colder than the inside air. And then it would create mold. And so there were mold infestations in virtually all of the new houses in this area.

And the city got sued for it and then they changed the building code. These building codes, a lot of times, they’re not really efficient.

DEBRA: So I want to go back to insecticides for a second. So if insecticides are the most common, then obviously, you tell people to stop using them. But what about the insecticides that are already in the home?

DAVID ABBOTT: Yes, that’s really an issue. And a lot of parts of the south where they would take – I forgot the name of it, but it’s a really potent insecticide. And they would take 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 pounds of it and just put it on the building site in the center of the house on the dirt, and then build the house over it. And their logic was this will kill termites or fire ants or whatever other kinds of insects that might get into the house. But the problem is it hurts people too.

There’s got to be other ways to deal with this stuff.

One of my clients’ daughters had a brain seizure and the doctors at a major university hospital didn’t know why and they didn’t know whether she would have more. They prescribed a potent psychoactive drug that had very serious side effects. And when I inspected the house, I found four insecticides in the house. Three in the lawn care products that they stored in the attached garage and one, a leaking can of bee spray in the laundry room. And what people need to understand is that all of those spray cans of insecticides leak even when they’re brand new.

And in fact, you can walk down the aisle in any hardware stores and you can smell the insecticide in that aisle because the valves leak. They’re made out of very soft thermoplastic and they simply don’t work properly.

And so the girl, for her own reasons, she didn’t like the side effects. She refused to use the drug that they prescribed. Her parents got rid of the insecticides. And when the doctors read my written report, they said, “Yes, this is true. These four insecticides can cause brain seizures.”

And now eight years later, no seizures. She’s healthy and happy. She has good friends and getting good grades in school.

DEBRA: That’s so good. See, what a difference this makes.

You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is David Abbott. He’s the author of Healing Your Family with Practical Household Toxicology. And if you go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, look for his show and you can see his e-mail address where you can write to him for more information on how to order the book.

We’ll be right back.

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is David Abbott, author of Healing Your Family with Practical Household Toxicology.

David, I want to hear more about some of these easy fixes like you just told us about cooking on the back burners of your gas stove.

DAVID ABBOTT: Well, keeping the furnace well maintained is really vital because all the air in the house pretty except for in the closets and in some corners is cycled through the furnace, if you have a four-stair furnace. And most people use those blue or green-colored, really loose furnace filters. And what they don’t understand is that those filters are specifically designed to keep large clumps of dust out of the furnace blower motor. They’re not actually designed to keep dust out of the house. And there has been studies and virtually all samples of household dust in America had the heavy metal lead and the long-banned insecticides, DDT, and lots of other toxins in them because dust is like a sponge for toxins.

And they make high efficiency furnace filters that really do a pretty darn good job of filtering out dust and pollen and mold spores, yeast spores, this kind of thing. But the key thing is not only to use these furnace filters, they have to be changed when they’re dirty. And so you buy two at the same time and you keep one in the plastic wrap and you check it every month or so until you’re familiar with how it’s going. And you compare the filter that’s in the furnace to the new one that’s in the wrap. And you can see the difference in the color between the new one and the one in the furnace. It’s time to change it.

DEBRA: Another thing I didn’t know. That’s a really good tip.

DAVID ABBOTT: And if you have asthma or any other respiratory or immune system disorder, when you change the furnace filter, you want to wear a good dust mask. And the kind of dust mask to wear is the same kind that most dentists and doctors use. It’s the accordion fold, very soft, almost cloth-like filter with the ear loops. And because those harder cone dust masks don’t really work. They led dust in around the corners, around the edges. So you simply put the used furnace filter into a garbage bag and put it in the trash and put in a new one.

But you don’t want to use the anti-microbial furnace filters because those contain chemicals that are registered with the EPA as insecticides. And insecticides are not safe for us.

DEBRA: We don’t want them blowing all through. What you don’t want to do is take insecticides and put them in our HPAC system and have them blow all around the house.

DAVID ABBOTT: Yes, that’s right. I found that a lot of people say, “I use so many toxic chemicals for so long that it wouldn’t make any difference if I stop now. So why bother being careful?”

DEBRA: Oh, good. Answer that question.

DAVID ABBOTT: That’s like saying, “I’ve hit my thumb with a hammer so many times that it wouldn’t make any difference if I stop. And in fact, I think I’ll hit my thumb with a hammer right now just to prove it.”

And no one would do that with a hammer. And yet so many people do it with toxic chemicals.

DEBRA: Why do you think that we still have so many toxic chemicals when there is so much evidence that they’re harmful?

DAVID ABBOTT: Part of the reason is that we are genetically hardwired to be afraid of flier, to be afraid of falling, to be afraid of abandonment, these kinds of really basic, visceral, emotional triggers. But toxic chemicals haven’t been around long enough for us to have a genetically hardwired fear or concern about them.

And so it’s basically information-based. And a lot of people don’t have the information. And then when you get into insecticides and some weed poisons and moss poisons and things, then there’s the neurotoxic effect to be dealt with because actually, I have seen people who I believe who were using insecticides to self-medicate in the same way that many people use alcohol or recreational drugs where they have these issues that are difficult for them to deal with and face. And they’re not sure what to do about them. And they found through experience that if they spray some bee poison or some ant poison or fly poison or whatever, that they feel better that those emotions disappear.

The reason they disappear or seem to disappear is because the insecticides attack the nervous system and prevent certain circuits in the brain from functioning properly.

It’s not the best way to deal with those issues.

DEBRA: No, it isn’t. I’ve heard that about painters in the past. The painters get addicted to the toxic chemicals in paint. And so they actually get withdrawals and things. And so they have to keep painting and then they just get sicker and sicker and sicker. Kind of like with any drug or cigarettes or anything like that. These are all related chemicals and that our bodies can get addicted to them.

I think that’s actually a thing that we should be considering more is how people are getting addicted to the toxic chemicals in their homes that all talked about much.

DAVID ABBOTT: And there’s a neurologist named Barry Sterman, S-T-E-R-M-A-N, and he found that when he – he was hired by NASA because the astronauts were getting exposed to rocket fuel, of course, when they were shooting up into the atmosphere. And the exposure to rocket fuel was causing epileptic seizures. And that’s the last thing you want an astronaut to be having.

And what Sterman found is that when he did neuro feedback on cats and then exposed them to that particular toxin, the cats didn’t react to the toxin. They had no apparent reaction whatsoever. And what he was training them to do was to exhibit strong SRM sensory motor brainwaves. And those are the brainwaves that a cat has when it’s sitting by a mouse hole and patiently waiting for the mouse to pop its head out. The cat’s totally relaxed but totally alert.

And that brainwave state helps people apparently to resist the effects of toxic chemicals. And I have found that to be true in my case. Although I certainly wouldn’t advise anyone to get neuro feedback and then say, “Now, I can use chemicals.”

DEBRA: No.

DAVID ABBOTT: But I would advise people who are having symptoms of chemical exposure to try neuro feedback and see if it can help them deal with the symptoms.

DEBRA: Well, I hear people saying, “I’m chemically sensitive.” Or that they’ve been poisoned by something and they say, “How can I be tolerant to be around these toxic chemicals?”

Now, I understand where they’re coming from because having been in that situation myself in the past. I understand that you want to just be able to be a normal environment and not react to it. But the thing that I think that most people aren’t realizing is that when they ask that question, they’re saying, “How can I be around poison and not have the normal reaction to it that would tell you that it’s toxic and you shouldn’t be around it?”

DAVID ABBOTT: Yes.

DEBRA: And I think that people are confused. There has been so much information about multiple chemical sensitivities and I did believe that there is such a thing as people being sensitive to a chemical. But if we think of it only as a sensitivity, we miss the whole picture that their poisons, and we’re all being poisoned. We’re all being poisoned.

DAVID ABBOTT: You are right. Yes. I have a friend that I’ve talked with a lot about this stuff. And he found for him the perfect solution. When I talk about this stuff, he says, “Oh, yes. You are chemically sensitive.”

And what I say is just what you said, “Now, wait a minute. These are actually poisonous chemicals. And even people who think that they’re not reacting almost undoubtedly are.”

I know a guy years ago when I was construction, he was 6’4″, built like a football linebacker, one of the most powerful people I’ve ever met in my life and just full of life. And he was exposing himself every day in his work to these toxic chemicals and one day, he visited me and he was skin and bones. And I say, “What’s going on?” And he said, “Well, I’ve got cancer.”

And a couple of months later, he was dead. And I found myself thinking, “That was a gamble that didn’t work.”

DEBRA: I don’t tell this story very often but when I was much younger and – actually, I’m not going to tell this story because we only have 30 seconds left. So thank you so much for being with us, David. And your book is very interesting. I’ve been reading bits and pieces of it. There’s a lot of information in there. Remember listeners, you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, get David’s e-mail address and find out how you can order his book.

This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be Well.

DAVID ABBOTT: Thank you, Debra.

DEBRA: Thank you, David.