Transcription of Elisa Boxer for the show Pure and Simple #61
Dr. Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour & Podcast show number 61, Pure and Simple, airing for the first time on November 11th 2012 on WLOB and WPEI Radio, Portland, Maine.
Today’s guests include Children’s Health Advocate Elisa Boxer; Steve Taylor, the program manager for the Environmental Health Strategy Center in Portland; and Dr. Doug Dransfield, board member of the Maine Chapter of Physicians for Social responsibility.
Environmental health has been one of my interests as a physician for many years. After being a family medicine resident, I went to the University of Massachusetts and studied Preventive Medicine and got a Master’s in Public Health. Part of public health is the health of the environment and we talked a lot about clean air, clean water and having a clean and healthy place to grow up.
Things have evolved and changed. We have seen people become more and more aware of things like bisphenol A and plastics, lead in our groundwater and on the paint on our houses. I think they’re still far to go, but I’m glad that people are paying attention now and I want people to be able to pay attention without feeling scared. There are substances in the environment and substances that do impact our health, but on the other hand people are working on the problem. There are ways that you can get involved yourself, so we hope you’ll take a moment to listen to Elisa, Steve and Dr. Doug Dransfield, as they talk about this pure and simple idea and give us very specific ways that we can make sure that our environ is as healthy and safe for our growing children and ourselves as possible.
The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour & Podcast is pleased to be sponsored by the University of New England. As part of our collaboration, we offer a segment we call Wellness Innovations. This week’s wellness innovation comes from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
The environment plays a role in 85% of all diseases. New science is showing that the effects of exposure to chemicals at low doses and in combination can have an impact on human growth and development. Some chemicals, pollutants, foods and other behavioral changes that may have minimal adverse effects on adults may impact the developing fetus and have a long-lasting effect on a child’s health even into adulthood.
Results from studies conducted at the Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Center in Cincinnati have added to widespread concern that girls are increasingly entering puberty at an earlier age. These investigators have found the positive association between the early onset of puberty and increased risk of developing breast cancer.
For information on this innovation, visit d, o, c, t, o, r, lisa dot org. For information on the University of New England, visit une.edu.
Dr. Lisa: The title of today’s Dr. Lisa Radio Hour & Podcast is Pure and Simple. It’s an interesting title because it puts out that there’s a notion that we even know what pure and simple is these days. There’s a lot of stuff going on about the environment and health and how these interact and what we’re supposed to do about it.
We brought in two people who can may be clarify this and also share some of their own stories and tell us why they think this is an important topic. We have sitting across the microphone from me today, Elisa Boxer, who is an Emmy-winning journalist, and I’m so impressed with that, and a nationally recognized environmental health advocate and also Steven Taylor, who is a program manager for the Environmental Health Strategy Center here in Portland.
Thank you for coming in and talking with us.
Elisa: Thank you, so glad to be here, Lisa.
Steve: Yeah, thanks for having us.
Dr. Lisa: It is interesting because, Elisa, I had heard your story and I heard about your son and I heard about what it gone on in your life and then I said, “Would you like to come on the show and talk about this because it wouldn’t be on your own personal life to a bigger thing,” and you said, “I would but I have this other guy and he needs to come in to because he’s really working on this subject,” so you come very highly recommended.
Steve: I guess that’s good.
Elisa: It’s very good.
Dr. Lisa: Let’s start with the story. Why are you, yourself as a mother, as a person who has dealt with some very personal things, interested in this?
Elisa: Almost 10 years ago, we moved into a brand new house; we had just built it. My son and I, he was just born at the time and we got very, very sick. I couldn’t breathe. I could barely move. He developed head-to-toe eczema very, very quickly. Long story short, it turns out we had been reacting to the chemicals in all the new building materials, so from formaldehyde finishes, the new paint, new carpet. People generally think, “Oh, that’s just the new smell,” but what the new smell really is very, very toxic chemicals seep out of products.
As journalist, I started looking into why I got so sick, how not to get sicker and how to get healthier. I found out that there were really, really toxic chemicals in these products scientifically linked to all sorts of diseases from allergies, asthma, eczema to cancer, all different types of cancers. These are the products that people use to build their homes. These are the products that are on store shelves. You can go buy these things and it’s perfectly legal to do so and yet they can be very, very biologically harmful.
Dr. Lisa: Steven, your background is, you told me on the phone, you lived in New Orleans. I think there was some term you gave to all of rivers and the factories.
Steve: I grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana which is at the bottom end of the Mississippi River. The stretch of the river between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is known as Cancer Alley, because it’s basically wall-to-wall oil refineries and chemical plants. Over the years, those facilities have released all kinds of toxins into the environment that has harmed people and wildlife.
The other side of Louisiana is a beautiful place. The state motto is Sportsman’s Paradise, so grew up in a place that has this incredible history of love for nature and the outdoors and love for life, and at the same time had these incredibly toxic industries releasing deadly chemicals into the environment.
I’ve worked really all of my adult life to help people get involved in decisions and processes where they can actually speak and think and act to have control over their own lives in their own communities. As a parent of a 3-1/2-year-old son, I’ve had to face these issues very directly and personal in the same way that Elisa has and many other parents have that suddenly you’re responsible for these 8 or 9-pound life.
Knowing even as much as I know about the danger of chemicals in everyday products, it’s still incredibly difficult for parents to get the information we need to protect our children and that’s what my work in the Environmental Health Strategy Center’s work is really about.
Dr. Lisa: It’s interesting because you talked about Louisiana, the Sportsman’s Paradise, and also you talked about the river and we know that there’s a connection. There has always been a connection between Louisiana and Maine; historically, there was a connection. It sounds like environmentally even though they’re away of the other and they’re sort of the heat belt, I would say, we’ve got very similar natural environment in some ways.
Steve: Yeah, absolutely. They’re both states with incredible natural beauty, histories of outdoor activity, hunting, fishing, hiking and so both states where people really value the natural environment and the natural beauty in their states.
Dr. Lisa: Has that made it easier for you in your quest to make a pure and simple environment up here in Maine?
Steve: It’s interesting that nationally there’s incredible popular support for getting dangerous chemicals out of everyday consumer and household products. In fact, even in Maine, government requirements to replace the most dangerous chemicals have 80% to 90% popular support, 70% of registered Republicans, a majority of Tea Party Republicans support, government mandates to get rid of dangerous chemicals when safer alternatives are in fact available.
The problem in Maine and in the rest of the country is not a lack of support for those policies. The problem is the resistance of the chemical industry to policies that will protect our health.
Elisa: Clearly a very, very powerful lobby of the chemical industry. It’s right, there is so much support. So many Maine moms and dads really obviously care about their kids. They want to do the best they can. They want to get toxins out of the environment, but the chemical industry is very deep-pocketed such a powerful lobby and really does its best to cover up the truth and uses some really intense scare tactics.
A lot of parents if they haven’t done their own research buy into that, so that’s our job to raise awareness and let people know, especially when it comes to kids. It’s just so insidious, lavender-scented baby products or baby fresh scent, anything that’s marketed. This will make your baby smell like a baby, but just like the new car smell or the new house smell, the new baby smell is very, very toxic. There are phthalates in there if there’s a fragrance and that means that it has been scientifically linked to some really, really serious diseases.
Also things like air fresheners, so not just kids but anything with an artificial fragrance. People think they’re doing the right thing by putting a colored gel pack in their bathroom, but what they’re really doing is increasing their family’s susceptibility to all kinds of diseases. It’s really about raising awareness and beating the chemical industry and exposing the truth that they’re trying to cover up.
Dr. Lisa: Isn’t there something called body burden that assumes that you’re going to be impacted by things in a variety of different ways, whether it’s the smells in your baby shampoo or whether it’s the thing that you plug into your wall? Can you talk to us a little bit about that?
Elisa: We can only handle so much. Our bodies are definitely not than you know this as a doctor. Our bodies just aren’t designed to detox at the level that we’re being exposed to all of this artificial stuff. Steve can talk about, there was the body burden test, do you want to talk about that because that’s fascinating?
Steve: Sure. One core problem is that most people assume that synthetic chemicals used in everyday products, like carpets and car seats and computers and couches, stay in those products, but we now know; scientists know that they don’t. We know that we’re all walking around in what’s essentially a giant chemistry experiment and our bodies absorb the synthetic chemicals that are released into cars and houses and schools. We breathe them in. They’re drugged through our skin. We take them in with food or drink. We may observe them when we put shampoo or conditioner or lotion on ourselves.
So through scientific research over the past decade, the federal government and universities and private organizations have actually tested people, blood and hair and urine and nails.
Dr. Lisa: Breast milk, I think.
Steve: In breast milk exactly and found out that we’re all walking around with several dozen or several hundred synthetic chemicals in our bodies. In fact, newborn babies, when they come out of the womb in this country already have a couple of hundreds synthetic chemicals in their newborn bodies that they have absorbed from their mother.
We know that we’re all walking around with synthetic chemicals in our bodies. What we don’t yet know is which of those chemicals are safe, which might be a little bit harmful and which are highly toxic. We know some of the ones that are highly toxic, but we still have a huge data gap. We don’t know whether the vast majority of the 80,000 chemicals used in commerce are safe or not. Even worse, even after we know that a chemical is harmful, it’s virtually impossible for the government to get it off the market.
Dr. Lisa: Are chemical companies actually required to test whether chemicals are harmful, whether they cause cancer or whether they cause other diseases?
Steve: They’re not. The companies that manufacture synthetic chemicals are not required to test them for health and safety before they’re released into the marketplace, and so that’s a large part of the problem.
Dr. Lisa: One thing that I struggle with and I have three kids myself and I’m a physician; I’ve been a physician long time now, is that we still need chemicals. We still have mosquito-borne diseases. We still have other diseases. We don’t really have a good natural protection against and that challenges me because I’d like to do what’s right. I like my life to be pure and simple, but I also know that we can’t tell people in Sub-Saharan Africa to just use mosquito nets because that’s not going to be enough.
Elisa: Exactly. That’s part of the chemical industries argument as well. You can’t live in a bubble. What are you going to do, protect yourself from everything? You might as well do nothing as the followup to that. I always tell parents since we can’t do everything, since there’s so much that we can’t protect our kids from, protect our families from, we do what we can. If you can avoid certain chemicals that are scientifically linked to, say, cancer or hyperactivity in children, a lot of them are, then you’ve done a great thing for your kids, for your family.
It’s really do what you can. Be aware. Don’t expect to change everything immediately, but just your little corner of the world is really, really important to make changes there.
Steve: I think the reality is that, as you said, chemistry and chemicals are really important. The reality is we don’t have a chemistry problem. We have a public policy problem. Chemical engineers are really smart people. Engineers in general are really smart people. Somebody told a bunch of engineers, “you have to go create a heat-shielding tile that’s as thin as a piece of paper that can fly into space and back on the space shuttle.” They did it.
Chemical designers and chemical engineers are really smart people. The problem is nobody has ever told them that designing chemicals that are nontoxic is a critical part of the design criteria that’s absolutely possible. There’s an emerging field called Green Chemistry, which is based on designing chemicals and products using principles, like zero toxicity, zero waste, molecular conservation and that field is really beginning to emerge and grow in this country.
The problem is not that all chemicals are bad by any means. A lot of chemicals are benign. They’re not harmful. A lot of chemicals degrade quickly in the environment. On the other hand, some chemicals last for hundreds for years in the environment and are highly toxic to people and somewhere in the middle. The problem is that chemical companies are not required to design safe chemicals. They’re not required to test the chemicals they designed for health and safety. As we find out which ones are toxic, when universities or other scientist researched them. There’s no way for the government to actually force those dangerous chemicals off the market.
Chemistry, chemical design, chemical innovation is brilliant. It’s wonderfully important. We need to supplement that with better public policies that actually help us make sure we’re designing and using chemicals that are actually safe.
Elisa: Helping people realize that, you hear a lot about BPA. Helping people realize that the chemicals that are in their food containers may actually end up in their food. A lot of these chemicals, like BPA, was synthesized in the 1930s as an estrogen replacement, so obviously very, very potent hormone disruptor. They scrapped it because it was so strong and then now we have it in bottles and food containers, but people never realize that this estrogen replacement is this fake hormone would end up in their food and that’s why it remains on a great job at banning BPA from baby bottles and sippy cups and we’re trying to take it one step further and there’s federal reform based on that.
I think it’s important for people to be aware that these chemicals are actually getting into their food. They’re not staying where they might have been intended to stay.
Dr. Lisa: Let’s back up for people who are listening who aren’t familiar with BPA. Can you give me a little background information on what the chemical is and what it usually is found in?
Steve: Sure. As Elisa said, BPA was originally synthesized or invented at the very end of the 19th century. It was developed in the ’30s potentially as an estrogen replacement and then really started to be marketed for uses and additive in plastics starting in the ’50s. It’s a chemical called bisphenol A or BPA and it’s become one of the highest produced, most widely used chemicals in the world. The building block of a type of plastic called polycarbonate plastic that until recently most reusable water bottles, like Nalgene bottles, baby bottles, sippy cups, a lot of toys were made out of.
Unfortunately, although it was a helpful ingredient in making polycarbonate plastic, it turned out that it leaches out of those plastics into infant formula or milk in bottles and into water stored in plastic water bottles. It acts like estrogen in our bodies and as most women know very small amount of hormones, estrogen, testosterone, other hormones can cause very large changes in our bodies and so a very small amount or tiny amount, parts per billion of BPA can cause very large changes and health impacts in people’s bodies.
BPA is still very, very widely used in food packaging. In epoxy resin, that’s a coating on a lot of metal packaging so the underside of some baby food jar lids, the lining of most metal food cans and it leaches out of that lining into the food or beverage and then people eat it or drink it.
Dr. Lisa: I’m familiar with BPA as a physician, but I think a lot of may be physicians aren’t all completely familiar with this. I’m not sure everybody who is listening really understands if you exposed your children to hormones early on their life, what happens?
Elisa: These chemicals can really wreak hormonal havoc. Steve brought up a really important point. One of the chemical industry arguments is, “Oh, it’s just a small amount. It’s a minute amount and the dose makes the poison,” but as we know it only takes some minute amount, look at pharmaceuticals. It only takes a tiny amount to really cause some drastic hormonal changes.
I think there was just a study I read about yesterday showing that even boys are reaching puberty like six months to a year earlier. This stuff can get into the systems of these developing bodies, these little organs, and can really, really wreak hormonal havoc. It’s not just reaching puberty earlier, but it’s linked to cancers and reproductive problems and behavioral problems, just a lot of diseases are linked to this particular chemical and there are obviously so many more like it. Very, very important to be aware when it comes to our children of not overdosing them with this and other toxic chemicals.
Dr. Lisa: It really can impact their reproductive systems as they seek to have their own children, so we’re not talking about just the generation that we’re in. We’re talking about the next generation the, next generation and the next generation.
Steve: Exactly and some of the most cutting-edge scientific research is starting to show us that changes in a person’s body can actually cause changes, health impacts and harm in their children or their grandchildren. It’s this emerging science that’s called epigenetics. It’s not normally true that exposure at a young age to a chemical like BPA can cause obesity later in life, learning disabilities, breast cancer, other health problems, but some of these chemicals were exposed to can actually cause changes that persist for several generations.
Dr. Lisa: Is it also true that although we hold things like some of these chemicals in our bodies, we also release some of them out into let’s just call the waste stream? Isn’t it also true that we’re impacting our groundwater, our drinking water? Talk to me about that a little bit.
Steve: When a product, say a car seat, is manufactured and that product that car seat contains synthetic chemicals, like brominated flame retardants which are highly toxic, for example, or chemicals which are used in many plastics, those chemicals didn’t magically appear in the product. They have a lifecycle, so those chemicals were produced somewhere in a chemical manufacturing facility, that facility may expose its workers to those chemicals. The people who live nearby may be exposed to emissions.
The child and the family that buys and uses that car seat are going to be exposed to the chemicals, but that’s not the end of the story, that’s not the end of the lifecycle. When that car seat or that baby bottle or that food can is taken to a recycling facility or a landfill or a waste incinerator, the chemicals in it may be released into the environment. In fact, even during the life of the product and this is what we were saying earlier that a carpet or a car seat or a couch, the chemicals used in the product escape from it during its life and so they’re released into homes and eventually end up in groundwater, rivers and in wildlife. There have been studies in Maine that they found highly toxic chemicals in whales, in Peregrine falcons, in other wild life.
Dr. Lisa: I do want to bring it back around. We’re 40 years into the Clean Air and Clean Water Act. They’re both passed around at the same time that I was I guess born and we’ve done a lot of good stuff through legislation. People being advocates, such as yourselves, we have accomplished a lot. There is a lot that we have done on the national level. It doesn’t mean we should stop by any means.
What are some things that people as individuals can do? I think there is an overwhelmed sense. There is a fear sense and we are never going to get to the pure and simple ground bottom. There’s never going to be an actual answer, the right thing all the time.
Elisa: We’ll get to pure and simple enough.
Dr. Lisa: Exactly. How do we do this?
Elisa: My number one tip would be go fragrance free, whether it’s shampoo, soap, deodorant, body lotion. If it has an artificial fragrance that means that you’re exposing yourself to all kinds of diseases through these toxic chemicals. Even just buying the fragrance free version for yourself or for your child can really make a big difference.
Steve: Even given the situation we lived in, where there’s a lot of unknowns, there were definitely important things that parents and individuals and consumers can do. Some of the top things are certainly try to avoid BPA in your food, buy local food or organic food when you can, avoid vinyl-PVC products which were some of the most highly toxic products. There are certainly are things that each of us and our families can do to avoid some of the worse chemicals.
We’re fortunate that we also live in a state here in Maine, where our state legislators and policymakers are very close to the ground. They’re very close to the public. They’re very responsive. If you talk to state legislators, you will hear over and over again that the one phone call, one letter, one email from one constituent makes a huge difference.
At the capital, they do hear virtually all day every day from paid lobbyist. They want to know what their constituents are thinking and so the two minutes or five minutes it takes to send an email or write a letter or make a phone call and talk to or leave a message for a state legislator in Maine makes a much, much bigger difference than most people think it does. In terms of changing policy and really fixing the system that’s probably the single most important thing people can do.
Dr. Lisa: Doctors are getting involved in this and other healthcare providers. We’re starting to understand if we didn’t already that this is important, so physicians for responsibility and other organizations. I think we were talking, Elisa, before in Maine Medical Association who we had on the show not too long ago and the Maine Academy of Pediatrics, I think they’ve all come out and start to understand this.
Elisa: That’s really, really important. I went into an allergist’s office a few years ago and there was a very, very strong chemical smell. I think they’d used carpet deodorizer. There are all these families sitting in the waiting room having allergy problems go figure it, so very, very important for the mainstream medical community to be aware of this so they can help their patients.
Dr. Lisa: For people who you’ve mentioned going fragrance free, you mentioned buying organic and local foods, there are two questions. First question is what about if you’re on a limited budget and you can’t go buy the more expensive new organic bedding of your room or something? What are some very simple things that people who want to be involved in doing this can do?
Elisa: I would say one of the most important things is buy used baby mattresses. Really, really toxic flame retardant is used in those and you can even smell it. If you take a brand new conventional baby mattress out of the pocket, it wreaks and those are the chemicals. If you buy one that is a few years old, then you’re not exposing your newborn to toxic chemicals. Definitely, second-hand shops are filled with some perfectly good baby products, children’s products where all the chemicals have already outgassed.
Dr. Lisa: I believe there are other resources that people who want to do more than going fragrance free, buying used can look into. There won’t be the sense of fear that there is the sense that you can do what you can do and it’s going to be pure and simple enough. Steve, what are some of your suggestions for finding these resources?
Steve: The best place for one-stop shopping is our website, which is www.preventharm.org, pretty easy to remember. We have links there to a variety of resources. We’ve actually been in the process of creating a whole new set of consumer education materials. We’re going to series the focus groups around the state this year and then make sure we’re clear on what parents want to need. Certainly, folks can come to our website and can find resources there and links to other resources as well.
Dr. Lisa: I’m glad to know that there is more and more mainstream scientific research that’s supporting all of the things we’ve talked about. I do think, say 10 years ago, if you were going through a chemical sensitivity the way that you described it, not only that people not know enough about it to be helpful from a diagnostic standpoint, say a physician, but there also is a little bit of a crazy factor. People thought that I was a wacko, yeah, now, not so much because everyone is talking about new building materials and safer products, but absolutely we have come so far in 10 years.
I do think that’s the message that I’d like to leave with that it’s all about awareness and not feeling fearful or overwhelmed but being aware, being mindful and doing what you can really to minimize your families, your own personal exposure to these things.
Elisa: Exactly.
Steve: Maine has done a tremendous amount in the past 10 years. Our state has adopted policies to get mercury, lead, brominated chemicals out of consumer products. We now have a comprehensive state law that’s started to work on chemicals like BPA and that has happened exactly because of work done by physicians and moms and dads.
Dr. Lisa: I would encourage all of our listeners to visit preventharm.org. Do you have a Facebook presence that we can send people to?
Steve: We do. If folks go to our website, they’ll see the little icon to click and they can join our page on Facebook as well.
Dr. Lisa: I’m so appreciative that you spent this time with me. We’ve been speaking with Elisa Boxer, an Emmy-winning journalist and mother and also nationally recognized environmental health advocate and also Steve Taylor, who is the program manager from the Environmental Health Strategy Center here in Portland. I appreciate your time and thank you for all the work you’re doing.
Elisa: Thank you so much.
Steve: Thank you.