Question from S. P.

I own a small janitorial company. My mother and my wife both experience symptoms of chemical sensitivity and over the past year I have been converting to all green products. I enjoyed your book on the non-toxic home and office. I liked the fact that instead of dwelling on negatives until the end of the book, you offer solutions right away to each issue.

In my business I have to strip and wax large floor areas, I have found some “green” products for this but many still contain up to 6% VOCs. Do you know of any truly natural alternatives for this?

Here are a couple of the companies I have found so far:

If you would like more info on the company I am working on please visit our site: All Green Cleaning.

Debra’s Answer

I took a look at the products you mentioned.

Coastwide Labs has a Sustainable Earth® Wax Stripper #83 that lists some hazardous ingredients on the MSDS, but then says that skin irritation is the only health hazard, which is minor. This product looks relatively safe for a wax stripper, but, as you say, has limited availability.

National Chemical Labs makes some interesting statements about how they are envrionmentally-friendly–fortunately they also give the Material Safety Data Sheets right on line for all of their products. They have a number of floor stripper products. All the MSDSs I looked at for them contained hazardous ingredients. Some of their other products, however, contain no hazardous ingredients. So it’s a matter of checking all the MSDSs to find the products with no hazardous ingredients.

There’s a company called Safe Source that makes a commercial-strength VOC-free floor finish and stripper. There are no MSDSs on the site, but it states, “The developer submitted its formulas to the relevant federal agencies, which determined on the basis of independent chemical evaluations that their cleaning products are not hazardous and therefore do not require [hazardous] labeling.” The site says the stripper is designed to work with their VOC-free finish. Contact them to see if it can be used with other waxes. You may need to use a more toxic stripper to remove existing wax, then you can use this finish and stripper.

You might also take a look at Green Seal Environmental Standard for Floor Care Products. Though there are no products listed, they do give guidelines for floor care products and a list of ingredients they do not approve, which would be easy to identify if they appeared on an MSDS.

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Question from R. G.

I was wondering if you know of a safe nontoxic garden hose, one that doesn’t leach any toxic chemicals or plasticizers into the water?

Debra’s Answer

All garden hoses are made from either polyvinyl chloride “PVC” or “vinyl”, rubber, or a combination of the two.

Vinyl hoses are the least expensive but also the most toxic, both in use and in manufacture. A number of environmental groups have called even for the banning of PVC because of the environmental effects of its manufacture. And PVC can leach vinyl chloride, which is carcinogenic. How much vinyl chloride ends up in the water as it is rushing through a hose? I don’t know. Probably more leaches into the water sitting in the hose in the hot sun. For that reason, it’s probably a good idea to empty the hose after you turn off the faucet.

As far as I can tell, rubber garden hoses are made from natural rubber, the milky latex of the Hevea tree more about obtaining latex from the tree Though it starts out from a renewable plant resource, by the time it is processed it is anything but natural.

Many chemicals are added to natural latex to improve performance, making natural rubber latex suitable for use in the manufacture of rubber products. Chief among them are chemical accelerators used to speed up the manufacturing process, vulcanizing agents, reinforcing agents, filler, pigments, blowing agents and more some exact chemical names In terms of toxicity, the most dangerous health effect I found was skin allergy.

Whether or not the chemicals in natural rubber hoses leach into the product water and what their toxicity may be, I don’t know. Though rubber hose is heavier and more bulky, it is your best buy for durability. Sears says their Craftsman Rubber Hose is the last garden hose you will ever need to buy. Rubber hose is also more pliable and coils more easily in cold weather than vinyl hose.

Rubber hoses are easily available. In addition to Sears, both Lowe’s and The Home Depot carry rubber garden hoses, and most good nurseries will as well. Rubber hoses say “rubber” on the label. If no material is specified, it’s probably vinyl.

Updated 2019: If you are still using a garden hose that may be made with PVC or have lead-containing metal fittings, check out this study by healthystuff.org. It’s a bit out of date but it still provides great guidance. Debra’s List recommends Water Right hoses and Terrain Heritage hoses.

Question from L. S.

I would like to share an update on dealing with the annual ant visitation which seems to coincide with the winter rainy season.

As you discovered, they can be washed away with a sponge [I wrote this in Home Safe Home – DLD]. However, mine come back, and keep coming back until the rainy season ends.

As a now long time composter, my appreciation and even reverence for life forms has increased; I no longer wanted to kill these little fellows; they are just seeking to survive, and hungry, therefore, how could we both get our needs met?

The solution popped out at me. I set out a very small saucer with about a tablespoon of honey in it. Being hungry, that’s where they went, and that’s ONLY where they went. After a bit, I moved it from the counter top to a place not visible to unsympathetic guests. Voila! Happy ants; happy me.

A mildly amusing side note was, though they came in a steady stream, they hadn’t eaten it all by the time Spring arrived! How cool! All that happiness for us both created by a very small offering.

Yours in a chemical-free and love-filled life,

Debra’s Answer

What a lovely solution! Thanks for sharing it.

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Question from P.S

We’re installing a butcher block counter top in our kitchen. Do you know of a product we can apply to protect and condition the wood? We thought of mineral oil, but you recommend against that in your book Home Safe Home. What do you suggest?

Debra’s Answer

I’ve been using a product called B’s Oil Salad Bowl & Wood Preserver, made by Holland Bowl Mill. It says right on the label that it is made only from natural oils and beeswax. I even called the company, who assured me it was “all-natural”.

We’ve been using it on our wooden salad bowls and cutting boards since I found it in a fancy San Francisco cooking store years ago. Just recently, we used it to finish the wooden top on a kitchen island we built. It really protects the wood water beads right up and we felt good having the beeswax around our organic food. It has no odor, except for the slight sweetness of beeswax.

The Holland Bowl Mill website says it has received many letters from customers telling them B’s Oil is so gentle that they use it as their favorite hand cream moisturizer.

So I was surprised to find out that it is actually made from beeswax and mineral oil! I had a long phone conversation with the owner and made sure he understood that you cannot label a product containing mineral oil as natural. I see he has changed the description on his website after our conversation.

I set out to find a truly all-natural wood conditioner for my wooden salad bowls and cutting boards, and discovered some interesting things even many woodworkers don’t know.

It is important to apply some kind of protection to wood cutting boards and bowls before using them the first time, to prevent staining and absorption of food odors and bacteria, and to keep water from penetrating the wood, which results in warping and cracking.

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Question from S. T.

Why do you recommend silicone baking mats? Isn’t cooking parchment safer?

Debra’s Answer

Cooking parchment also called parchment paper, kitchen parchment, greaseproof paper and cooking paper is a sheet of paper impregnated with silicone, which makes the paper grease- and moisture-resistant as well as relatively heat-resistant. It is commonly used to eliminate the need to grease baking pans–allowing, for example, repeated batches of cookies to be baked without regreasing the pans–and it can also be folded to make moisture-proof packages in which foods can cooked or steamed.

Parchment is made with bleached white and unbleached brown paper. Since the bleached paper might contain toxic dioxin, it’s better to use the unbleached parchment paper if you use it.

Silicone baking sheets are a sheet of silicone that can be reused over and over again.

Silcone is safe to use for baking and cooking, whether impregnated in paper or in a sheet by itself. Silicones are made chemically by creating a “backbone” of silicon from common sand, the same stuff from which glass is made and oxygen molecules, a combination that does not occur in nature. Then various other synthetic molecules are added branching off of the main silicon-oxygen line to create hundreds of different silicones that range from liquids to rubbery solids. Though this is a completely manmade product, it is completely inert and will not transfer to foods (more at Q&A: Is silicone cookware safe?).

I use both silicone baking sheets and parchment paper. I use my silicone baking sheets to line pans whenever I bake something which might stick. They have saved much time, effort and water from clean-up, and are much safer overall than using baking pans with other non-stick surfaces. I use parchment paper now only when I want to specifically use the cooking technique of baking in parchment, as when I make a recipe such as Fruits Baked in Parchment, or as a substitute for waxed paper waxed paper is covered with paraffin, a petrochemical wax.

The advantage I see to using silicone baking sheets over parchment is that they can be reused up to 2000 times. Though the mats cost more than parchment paper, there is a great savings overall. A box of unbleached parchment paper costs $5 and a silicone baking sheet costs $20, but a box of unbleached parchment paper will cover only 32 baking sheets, and a silicone baking mat will cover 2000 baking sheets. It would cost $310 to buy enough parchment paper to replace one silicone baking mat.

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Question from B. C.

Thanks to all your tips, my wife is really feeling much better with her MCS. In fact, we’re now carefully considering putting a tile floor where the carpet used to be in the bathroom adjacent to her bedroom. Using your recommendations we have found safe tile adhesives and grout sealers but we can’t find anything about safe grouts.

Can you recommend any products for a chemically safe grout and are there any problems to watch out for in the cement board underlayment materials?

Debra’s Answer

Grouts can have additives that that can off-gas.  Safer brands include Mapei and Summitville-700.

The standard cement board underlayment is fine. Two brand names we have used are Hardibacker and Durock. There is also Wonderboard, which was the first product of this kind.

Question from R. W.

We want to replace carpeting in our daughter’s bedroom. She is chemically sensitive and so we were comparing prefinished wood flooring with laminate wood flooring. At our local Lowe’s store we saw Bruce wood floor and a Pergo laminate. Is the laminate more toxic than the wood ? We hope to use a kind that needs neither gluing or nailing. The laminate is thicker for about the same price. Would it be more toxic?

We have also found an engineered hardwood Bruce flooring that does not require nailing or gluing. Since it is engineered, does that present any outgassing problems? Also if it requires laying foam underneath, would that present a challenge to the chemically sensitive since it would be sealed under the flooring?

Debra’s Answer

I went down to my local Lowe’s and looked at all of these floorings.

First, let’s just clear up what all these different types of flooring are.

Solid wood flooring is one piece of wood top to bottom. Generally it is nailed to a wood subfloor. Most prefinished solid wood flooring I’ve seen has been nontoxic–the finish is applied at the factory and baked on.

Engineered flooring is made up of layers of wood stacked and glued under heat and pressure. It can be installed over most subfloors. The Bruce engineered flooring 6626 I examined at Lowe’s just smelled like wood to me. It did not seem especially toxic. Some engineered floors require plastic foam installed underneath. I wasn’t able to find out what type of plastic is used to make the foam underlayment. While it didn’t seem particularly toxic in the store, I’ve had experiences in the past where people purchased flooring thinking it was safe from a small sample, only to find that a roomful or a houseful was pretty toxic. As always, my best advice is to avoid plastics whenever possible, particularly when other safer products are available.

A floating floor is not attached to the floor, except around the edges. It does not require glue, however, glue is not a problem if you choose a nontoxic type, such as yellow woodworker’s glue.

Laminate flooring is made up of various layers of material laminated together. There’s a good illustration of what laminate flooring is made up of on the Armstrong website. Basically, laminate flooring is high-density fiberboard, covered by an “image layer” that makes it look like wood, topped with a protective layer of plastic. It is an inexpensive, easy-care alternative to wood and waxing that can be installed over any subfloor. It won’t last as long as wood we are still walking on the original oak floors installed in our home over 65 years ago and the finish feels like plastic. It’s basically a fake wood floor. The one MSDS sheet I looked at showed that brand of laminate flooring emitted formaldehyde fumes, so all in all, I don’t recommend laminate flooring. That said, a friend of mine recently installed a laminate floor all through her living room and it didn’t smell horrible.

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Question from J.G.

I’ve been looking for flannel sheets but noticed that many are imported. Not real clear on this issue, so do I need to be concerned about the type of dye that is used in any imported fabric? Which would mean only made in U.S. cotton or organic would be safe. Thanks for any info.

Debra’s Answer

I’ve been sleeping on flannel sheets for over twenty years and have never noticed an ill effect from the dyes.

If a dye is “colorfast” — that is, that it stays in the fabric without coming out during use or washing, it is staying within the fabric. If, for example, you wore a red shirt, and ended up with red armpits, some of the dye may be absorbed through your skin and into your bloodstream. I am not aware of any reason to be concerned about dyes that are colorfast.

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Question from J. S.

Can you direct me to nontoxic commercial cleaners?