B (4:17)

I love that. Opening the windows is underrated though, isn't it? I mean, we should all be opening our windows every day, shouldn't we?

A (4:23)

Oh, mine are never closed.

B (4:25)

Really? That's interesting. So, well, let's talk about indoor air quality then. What, what are VOCs or volatile organic compounds? And why should we care about those?

A (4:38)

It's almost anything volatile just means they evaporate. Organic in this context simply means a carbon containing molecule. It's not like your nice box of pesticide free veg. So it's simply any substance that evaporates and they're not all bad. For example, in a pine forest, that wonderful smell is the pine volatile organic chemicals that the trees give off. But in the home, we're talking about anything toxic, whether it's formaldehyde from your synthetic furniture, like MDF type, you know, these wood substitutes, or whether it's formaldehyde from your non iron shirts and your non crinkle shirts or any of the chemicals apart from the heavy metals. Almost every chemical we're going to talk about is volatile, otherwise you wouldn't be able to inhale it. And I would say in advance, don't feel you have to make all the changes at once. Take it slowly, take it at a reasonable pace and just know that every change you make, however small, is helping your health and your children's health. If you've got kids at home.

B (5:42)

It seems to me that a lot of us do home refurbishments, especially when we're younger as well. I think we're trying to climb the property ladder. We're all quite addicted to this idea of improving our environment, which is brilliant on one level, but of course, the actual building process, it seems to me, I mean, tell me if I'm wrong about this, but I would imagine that releases a lot of toxicity, just the act of building.

A (6:06)

It's true. I mean, a lot of toxic VOCs are released from the building materials, particularly the glues, the glues that's used to stick everything together, but they do evaporate and go away. It's even the same with paints. I mean, you can get organic paints, but even if you use conventional paint, so long as you are out of the way while it's happening, especially if you're chemically sensitive and you make sure it's done in the late spring or the summer, within a week, most of those smells have gone, right, they do evaporate. So I'm much more concerned about the things people use every day. So, for example, the cleaning chemicals in the cupboard under the kitchen sink, right? Most of those, if you look at the bottles, they've got the skull and crossbones on it means what it has always meant. This is a poison. Now, the manufacturer's put that on to warn people not to let their kids swig a bottle of bleach. And if you look up, which you can look up the data for each and every chemical, it's talking about acute poisoning, it's talking about what happens if you swallow it, which nobody's going to do. What I'm much more concerned about, what we're all suffering from in today's post industrialized world is chronic poisoning. That's very low levels, but every day the regular drip, drip, drip of tiny doses of toxins that, you know, we just can't, most of us can't process most of these. And it's not one individual chemical that's the worst problem, it's the cocktail effect, is the fact that we're exposed to all of them all the time and we spend 90% of our lives indoors. If you look at those cleaning chemicals, chuck them all out and replace them with hot water. A bit of really ecologically sound washing up liquid like Suma S u m a make one called eco leaf and, you know, hot water, washing up liquid and elbow grease. That means really scrubbing hard will deal with most things. Plus bicarbonate of soda. Yeah, just sodium bicarbonate. It's a very good cleaning agent. That's more or less all you need.

B (8:14)

You know you can use vinegar, can't you, Jenny?

A (8:17)

You can use vinegar, particularly for washing the windows. I don't do that because I don't like my house to smell like a chippy. But you can do it. You can do it. Absolutely. So then people, especially in the COVID episode, started spraying antibacterial sprays around their kitchen. And that stuff's toxic in itself, but it's also killing the good bugs that our immune systems need as their training ground. Especially the kids. When my kids would come in from playing in the garden when they were little, I did not make them wash their hands. If they'd been playing in the woods or the park, I did not make them wash their hands because those are good bacteria from the soil that we need. If they came in from being in the car or on the London tube, I would definitely make and wash their hands because that's petrochemical pollution. That's different, that's carcinogenic. Okay? So, yeah, alternative cleaning materials, cookware. What are you cooking in right now? The metal in any saucepan is going to get into the food if the food is acid, right? So I don't mind you boiling an egg in your aluminium saucepan or boiling some rice in an aluminium saucepan, but if you're cooking rhubarb in there, that's a bad idea. Rhubarb, tomatoes, lemons, fruit of any kind is acid and it will dissolve the aluminium into your food. So what about stainless steel? Stainless steel is okay for most people, but it is 14% nickel. So if you're dealing with nickel sensitivity, skin rash, if you're a woman with a history, family history of breast cancer, or if you're diabetic or pre diabetic, for all those people, nickel is a real hazard. And therefore I would apply to stainless steel saucepans the same rule I'd apply to aluminium, which is don't cook anything acid in it. By all means. You know, boil a potato or something on that, Jenny.

B (10:14)

I mean, what about non stick surfaces as well?

A (10:18)

Ah, yes, non stick is really important. Mostly the stuff that's been used to make non stick surfaces is lethal. It's perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals, the pfas. And if you listen to that name carefully, you can hear the word fluoride in it. And there is in those chemicals a bond between fluoride and carbon. It's a bond that doesn't exist in nature and it's almost unbreakable chemically. And this is why these are called the forever chemicals. And they are finally being phased out. They're in nonstick pans. They're also in waterproof clothing. Serious outdoor stuff that, you know, I've worn for going up mountains and they are in the water. In Cambridgeshire, I document this at the end of the book. And we need to avoid them. Absolutely. So if you have got waterproofs that have still got PFAS in, that's okay. But don't wear them next to your skin. I mean you wouldn't, would you? That would be really strange. But yeah, non stick surfaces are now available in safe ways. So there's something called green pans. And the green pans, they are expensive, but that's because part of their non stick surface is diamond. And you know if you cook up boiling hot temperatures in olive oil and you never stir, you're going to damage that surface. But I think we need to get back to stirring and then we don't need perfect non stickness.

B (11:43)

I've got some cast iron pans and I think they're really good. They take a little while to, you know, to get seasoned, don't they? But after the first few times they work really well.

A (11:55)

Exactly. And cast iron is what we've been using for a long time. There's also a type of glass you can use. Yeah, borate glass. That's really good. But yeah, you have to have enough oil in the pan and you or water and you have to stir. Then there's also the question in the kitchen of what you're wrapping your food in. And I think we need to go back to ceramic dishes for storage. Like you have a butter dish, you can have a cheese dish. Not using plastic. And for wrapping we need to let go of the cling film because that is the thinnest, softest form of plastic and it does get into the food and we're all contaminated by plastic particles and it's just about the only toxic substance that those of us in ecological medicine cannot detox. We can't get the plastic out of our systems. We can get the plasticizers out, the phthalates and the bpa, but we can't get the plastic itself out. It just breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces of plastic, from microplastics to nanoplastics. We have to stop buying water in plastic bottles, cling film, plastic chopping boards. All the plastic things in our homes can be replaced by something else. Wood or metal or paper bags.

B (13:10)

One of the things that I was quite terrified about was this thing about black spatulas that you cook with, which I discovered are made of sort of recycled TVs and things like that. And actually when you're cooking with a black plastic spatula, it essentially leeches out into your food in the pan. So that was another one I thought would be a good one to avoid. And I've come across quite a few of those over the years in people's houses.

A (13:33)

I think that's right. And this is the irony that we're all trying to be ecologically sound and leave use stuff that's made from recycled materials. But what is that material? You know, somebody gave me a scarf that was made entirely from recycled plastic, you know, and on the one hand it's good that that plastic isn't going into landfill, but do I want it around my neck? Because the skin, you know, the skin is the largest organ of the body and it's an absorptive surface. You know, plastics are petrochemical. So yeah, I mean, I think there is an issue with implements and I think probably stainless steel spatulas are the best, but you don't want to scrape any kind of non stick surface with it. So wood is great, but wood does go moldy eventually. And I think I would say wooden implements are good so long as and the same with wooden chopping boards. But you must be prepared to change them pretty regularly, like twice a year at least, because otherwise, you know, like all natural materials, they will accumulate mould.

B (14:32)

And when you're actually cooking, are you an advocate of an extractor fan or do you not think that's important?

A (14:42)

Yes, because otherwise you build up steam. Right. We're doing three things in our home. We're cooking which produces steam, we're exhaling, we're breathing out water vapor and we're bathing and showering. And if you have the windows shut and no extractor fan and no ventilation, that condensation is going to build up hugely particularly where the wall meets the ceiling and mold is going to grow there. But mold toxins are implicated in cancer and in chronic fatigue and in and rheumatoid arthritis, as well as obviously in lung problems. And this is most of all an issue in the bathroom. If it's really cold in winter and you just have to close the window while you're having a shower, that's fine. But when you get out of the shower and you've wrapped a warm towel around you, open the window and put on the extractor fan and a blow heater, a hot blow heater, just for five, 10 minutes. Because once you've got rid of the steam, you've stopped the source of the mould. We can look at what's in the bathroom cabinets and a lot of people, women particularly, but increasingly men as well, are putting on their skin stuff that they wouldn't dream of putting in their mouths. So moisturizers, shampoos, shower gels, deodorants, hair products, all these things, perfumes especially these days, most of them are made of petrochemicals. Now, if you think about perfume, I mean, 200 years ago perfumes were just extracted from flowers, but they still are. That's your natural essential oils of geranium and lavender and so on, so you can use that instead. But most conventional cosmetic products, so called personal care products, are full of really nasty chemicals. And the Environmental Working Group in the States found not only there's all the toxic chemicals listed on the label, but an average of 14 chemicals in there not listed on the label, because if they constitute less than 1% of the total ingredients, you're allowed not to list them. Now we have a huge problem with cosmetics that we don't have with food, which is you're allowed to call a personal care product, you're allowed to call it organic if it contains only 1% organic ingredients. So unfortunately, you can't just walk into your local health food shop and say, oh look, some organic shampoo with a pretty picture of a herb on the front. Or what you need to do is look for either the Soil association logo or the Cosmos logo. And Cosmos is an international association for certifying genuinely organic cosmetic products. And the Soil association is part of it. And there is an equivalent for organic clothing, textiles, it's called gotts, the Global Organic Textile Standards, if it's got that label, or the Solar Soil association, it's genuinely organic. But the simplest thing is just to look at the Soil Association's website, health and beauty pages and see what they recommend. Because it's a minefield out there otherwise.

B (17:45)

Okay, so that's cosmetics, and I think that's really clear. And what about food then? Is it as simple as buying organic food? Is that the thing to do?

A (17:53)

Actually, it is. But I would say slight caveat. It has to be Soil association approved organic food. Because there are other organizations that certify, like I think the Organic Farmers and Growers Group, which are less strict. The Soil association is very strict. I mean, some farmers complain that they're fanatically strict and that their certification is really expensive. And those are issues. But actually, I think if you can only take one thing from this, it's buy organic food. Because if you're not, you're eating food that's been sprayed with glyphosate, a toxic herbicide, or grapes that have been sprayed with toxic insecticides. You know, any fruit, the lettuce leaves, all of that has been sprayed with pesticides which were designed originally at the beginning of the 20th century as nerve gases. So these pesticides are neurotoxic. Right. They're in the soil, they're in the food, they're on the plate, they're in your bodies. I see eating organic as health insurance. The best health insurance. Right. You're not eating neurotoxic, carcinogenic, endocrine disrupting chemicals. And the only way to not eat them is to eat organic. Right. You don't have to be fundamentalist about it. If you go out for a meal with a friend, they've cooked for you, love and hospitality takes precedence. And if you're eating 95% organic, then that's okay. Most people's systems can cope with that. Now we should talk about water. If you're not filtering your water, you're drinking other people's drug residues, the PFAS that we talked about earlier, the heavy metals and the runoff from synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and so on. But all of those are kind of accidental. Nobody's putting them in the water deliberately. They're just failing to take them out. But the chlorine is put in the water deliberately. And originally this was done at the end of the 19th century for very good reason, because, you know, supplying safe, potable tap water to 10 million people is a huge logistical challenge. You don't want the cholera bacterium in there. You don't want dangerous diarrhea or bacteria in there. So chlorine kills most of them most of the time. Not all of them. There was an episode in the 90s in Connecticut, and I Think some other states where there was huge Cryptosporidium infections in the tap water despite the chlorine. But there is another much safer way to do it, right? Because chlorine is toxic, right? So toxic halogen. It pushes the iodine out from the thyroid gland and the stomach and the breast and the ovary and all the other organs that need iodine. So we know chlorine's toxic. But the Dutch have a completely different way of killing the bacteria in their tap water. They have a two stage process that starts with physical filtering and ends with ultraviolet light. And we know the sunshine is the best antiseptic. That's why people with TB have been sent to sunny mountaintops to get better. And it mostly worked, right? The sun is antiseptic because of the ultraviolet. So they irradiate their water with ultraviolet and there you go, it's bacteria free. And they're not drinking chlorine in the Netherlands.

B (21:14)

If we don't live in the Netherlands, what should we do?

A (21:17)

Filter your water. Filter your water and filter your water.

B (21:20)

You hear a lot at the moment, don't you, about reverse osmosis filters?

A (21:23)

Yes. Reverse osmosis is just one way of doing it. It's just one way of doing it. And some people worry that it takes out all the good minerals as well. You should get your minerals from your food rather than your water. But natural spring water is full of healthy minerals like magnesium and so on. And I think there's too much fuss made about this one's good and this one's not good. Almost anything makes a difference and you really can taste it. I mean, we have a plumbed in water filter and it's a whole house water filter, which means not only are we drinking safe water and rinsing our rice in safe water, rinsing our vegetables in safe water, also bathing and showering in safe water. And that's very important because the chlorine, you inhale it in the shower and once you've done that, it was only about five, six years ago, then I would notice if I was staying over with a friend and had a shower in the morning. The smell of chlorine was awful because I had become, if you like, de desensitized to it. I could notice it again because I wasn't bathing in it every day. We should mention fluoride as well.

B (22:37)

Yeah, well, yeah, exactly. We should mention fluoride. And actually, I mean, on that, I was quite shocked to discover that only 3% of the population in Western Europe actually drink water with added fluoride And a lot of us in the UK do, don't we? So tell us about this.

A (22:56)

Well, in the United States and Canada, almost everywhere has fluoride in the water. And in mainland Europe, almost nowhere. And that should be a big wake up call, because they are possible. So the situation in Britain until fairly recently was that there were only two areas with fluoride added to the tap water. One was Birmingham and the West Midlands. And the other, well, not technically in Britain, but in the British Isles. The other is the Republic of Ireland. Now, in both those places, they've had fluoride in the water since 1964. And I had been in practice for many years seeing children with assorted problems from all over Britain and Europe. And then I noticed, I think I was quite slow, but eventually noticed a disproportionate number of these really sick kids are coming from Birmingham or the Republic of Ireland. And then I started, I realized, and I measured their urinary fluoride levels, and they were through the roof. And then I measured their urinary iodine levels, and they were unmeasurable. Unmeasurable, just not there. The lab kept ringing me up and saying, oh, sorry, we must have made a mistake. Can you send another sample? Because we couldn't find any iodine. Send a second sample. Nope, there really is no iodine. And these are children with serious developmental disorders of brain and bone. There is a case history in chapter three of getting healthy in toxic times of a little boy who was from Birmingham, had very high fluoride, very low iodine, was 9. Couldn't read or write, couldn't count. Very, very slow speech, really sluggish. Obviously symptoms of hypothyroidism because a thyroid gland can't make thyroxine thyroid hormone without iodine. But he also had a really strange gait. It looked like rickets. It wasn't rickets. His vitamin D was actually okay, and there was something wrong with his bones. And none of the millions of specialists he'd seen could figure it out or give it a. After about a year of installing a water filter, so he was no longer drinking fluoride. Giving him iodine gently, slowly, low dose, building up and then tapering off again. And all the general detox measures we would do and all the B vitamins for the brain function and so on, his brain function improved out of sight. I mean, he caught up. He became able to read and write and speak normally, but the bone architecture was damaged. There's nothing we could do for the bone architecture because fluoride does damage it. So you must ask yourself, why is it being put in the tap water? The reason given is that it's good for children's teeth. It is not the real reason. There's a lot of debate about what it does to children's teeth. It certainly hardens them. It hardens the bones as well. But making them more dense doesn't make them stronger or less liable to break. And too much fluoride causes dental fluorosis damage to the teeth and skeletal fluorosis damage to the skeleton. And there are studies showing that in postmenopausal women, the higher their fluoride level, the more liable they are to have a bone fracture. And it's not about bone density, because fluoride makes the bones more dense, but also paradoxically, more liable to fracture. So you can argue about whether it's good for children's teeth or not. I think what's good for children's teeth is brushing them and taking them off the sugar. But that's not the real reason. Where's the fluoride coming from? Where is it coming from? What is it? Well, it turns out it is a byproduct, a toxic waste product of two huge industries. The phosphate fertilizer industry. These are the synthetic fertilizers that are damaging our land and our crops, and the aluminium industry. And of course, aluminium is a really toxic metal in its own right that we've made barely had time to look at. So this is a waste product. And they used to have to dispose of it safely, and they kept not finding ways to dispose of it safely. They weren't allowed to release it from factory chimneys in the 40s and 50s, when they released it onto the land, the cattle died. It's poisonous. But nevertheless, this hazardous waste, it's hexafluorosilicic acid. And the word hexa tells you there are six atoms of fluoride in one molecule of this stuff. When it leaves the phosphate fertilizer factories, it's classified as hazardous waste. When it reaches your water supply, it's reclassified as a water treatment agent. Same stuff. And this is terrifying and it's wicked. And it's about money and profit. It's not about health, it's not about dental health. And there's now been a case September 2024, in a federal court in California where the Fluoride Action Network, after seven years of campaigning, proved their case in court. And the judge said, yep, this fluoride, at the level we've added it to our water, is lowering children's iq. The other industry that has a stake in this is big sugar, because they can say to mums and dads, don't worry if little Johnny's chewing on sweeties all day. The fluoride in the water will strengthen his teeth. Even if it were true, anything it does do to the teeth, it does by being put on topically directly applied to the teeth. There is absolutely no reason to give it systemically and we shouldn't have to buy a water filter, but we do. But we should move briefly into a couple of other rooms of the house. And I would like to talk about two things in the bedroom. One is the wardrobe. People need to keep moths out of their clothes because moths do like to eat clothes. And if you use the standard mothballs, those translucent purple things, they are full of paradichlorobenzene, which is a really toxic insecticide, the one we found most commonly when testing people for toxins. It's very nasty and you can use lavender oil instead. Moths hate lavender oil. They just hate it. So you can literally sprinkle some lavender oil in your wardrobe once a month. And if you want to be even more sure, then green fibres, a company in Totnes will send you their moth spray, which is a mixture of lavender oil and neem oil. That's N W M neem, from the neem tree in India. It's a herbal Ayurvedic remedy that goes back thousands of years and it kills most bugs. So that's the alternative to mothballs. Now, mattresses. I was really shocked when researching my first book in 2018, 2019, to discover what most conventional mattresses are made of. I mean, hundreds of horrible chemicals, and you're absorbing them all night through your skin, you're inhaling them all night through your lungs. The good news is, though, that if your mattress is more than a year or two old, it has finished out gassing those chemicals. They've gone so you're safe, so you don't have to rush to replace it. My concern is, if you're buying a new mattress, do buy organic. It's much easier now to buy an organic mattress than it was even five, 10 years ago. There's plenty of them. Get an organic mattress, especially for your children, and always have the bedroom window open. So one of the many chemicals that's in mattresses is also in other soft furnishings, like sofas and carpets and cushions and curtains. So moving briefly to the living room, if your sofa is made and your carpet is made of synthetic material, anything synthetic that means it's made of petrochemical material. That means it's flammable. So by law it to be impregnated with flame retardants. Okay, that's a safety thing. But the flame retardants are polybrominated. That means they're full of bromine. Now, we've talked about the dangers of chlorine and the dangers of fluoride. Bromine is the third one in that group of toxic halogens that pushes iodine out of the thyroid gland. We do have an epidemic of low thyroid, both underdiagnosed and, and diagnosed. And you're inhaling those flame retardants for a year or two after you buy a new sofa. So either buy second hand or buy one that's made of natural material, you know, wool and cotton, rather than one that has to have a flame retardant in. I find it fascinating that natural materials like cotton and wool don't need flame retardants because they are naturally fire resistant, but nature made them fire resistant and I just found that fascinating. And the last thing we should mention, I know we're running out of time, is we really should mention not just chemical pollution in the home, but electromagnetic pollution in the home. Now, it's not just in the home, it's outside as well. If you go past one of these cell phone towers, electrosensitive people can feel it. They call them cell phone towers in America, mobile phone masts in the uk and you know, there have been studies done in Switzerland. I think if you live nearer than 600 meters to one of those, your risk of dementia is double that of someone who lives further away than 600 meters. That's obviously an arbitrary cutoff point, but the closer you are, the worse it is. But in your own home, if you've got Bluetooth, you've got your wifi router, you've got all your devices, you've got your mobile phone on. Now, I'm not saying you need to cut off communication and go back to the 16th century. There are ways to live with this 21st century technology much more safely. Firstly, I'm speaking to you now from a computer with perfect broadband, perfect Internet. And there's no wifi in the house. It's Ethernet cables, it's plumbed in if you like. And you can get protective cases for your mobile phone. You can put it on flight mode whenever you're not using it. Most of all, you can text rather than call. And if you do call, you can put it on speakerphone and keep it at a distance from your head. If you look carefully at the product insert that comes with your new mobile phone, it's in the box. It says, do not hold this nearer to your head than 1 or 2 centimeters. Do not hold it touching your ear. And the reason the manufacturers put that warning in is because their insurers have told them they'd better. So it is known, it is known that this technology is very, very dangerous to us. But there are ways you can use it that protect you from it and especially protect your kids from it. I mean, don't have a WI FI router in a bedroom. Don't have one of those intercom baby alarms in your baby's room because they are irradiating the baby with a kind of electromagnetic radiation trillions of times stronger than what we evolved with. Go stand barefoot on the grass to get back in touch with the electromagnetic field of Mother Earth. That's what we evolved with. Even 10 minutes a day can make a real difference. So three go home tips really Eat organic, get a water filter and moderate your use of the mobile phone.

B (34:20)

Thanks so much, Jenny. We covered a lot of ground, I think, but there's some really interesting stuff in there. And yeah, thank you very much for being here. Really appreciate it.

A (34:28)

Pleasure. Absolutely lovely to talk with you, Matt.

B (34:34)

Thanks very much for listening along today. As I said earlier, Jenny has some pretty strong views and you may not agree with all of them, but the way I see it is things like getting a water filter or avoiding plastic food containers seems like common sense to me and it's pretty simple to do. Will we ever know how much difference they'll make? Probably not, but I think knowledge is power and it does allow us to make our own choices about these things. Next week's episode will be a house visit, so do come back for that. If you don't already follow the show, please tap the follow button and you'll be alerted as soon as it comes out. As always, you can find us on YouTube and Instagram and you can watch behind the Scenes house tours with our guests over on Patreon. The handle for all of those is at Homing with Matt. This episode was produced by Pod Shop with music by Simeon Walker. Thanks again for being here and talk to you all next week.

A (35:25)

Bye bye.