Toxics in Essential Oils
Toxic-Free Talk Radio
Archives of radio interview transcripts with leading toxic-free innovators recorded 2013-2015
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Toxics in Essential Oils
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Diana Kaye
Date of Broadcast: March 26, 2015
Today my guest is Diana Kaye. She and husband James Hahn are co-founders of their USDA certified organic business Terressentials. They’ve been on this show together many times, but today Diana is here to talk about essential oils. On Tuesday Dr. Anne Steinemann talked about how she tested products containing essential oils and found toxic chemicals in them. So now we need to know: are all essential oils the same, or are some more toxic than others? Are they processed in different ways? What should we be asking when looking at products containing essential oils? As an organic body care product formulator for more than 20 years, Diana knows all about this first hand. Diana and James are the husband-and-wife co-founders of the USDA certified organic business Terressentials. They own a small organic farm in lovely Middletown Valley, Maryland and have operated their organic herbal personal care products business there since 1996. Terressentials was originally started in Virginia in 1992. It grew out of their search for chemical-free products after Diana’s personal experience with cancer and chemotherapy in 1988. Prior to Diana’s cancer, they were involved in commercial architecture in Washington DC. Diana and James are proud to be an authentic USDA certified organic and Fair Made USA business. They are obsessive organic researchers and artisan handcrafters of more than one hundred USDA certified organic gourmet personal care products that they offer through their two organic stores in Frederick County, Maryland, through a network of select retail partners across the US, and to customers around the world via their informative web site.
Transcript:
DEBRA: Hi, I’m 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’s Thursday, March 26th, a beautiful spring day here in Clearwater, Florida.
And today, we are going to be talking about a subject that I know a lot of people are concerned about and It’s a very important one. When I say that, I always then say that all the subjects we talk about are important, they are, but some of them are more widespread than others and more dangerous and something that we’re all exposed to more than we should be.
What we’re going to be talking about today is fragrances. And particularly, we’re going to talk about essential oils because we know that synthetic fragrances have a lot of toxic ingredients in them. And I know that myself and many listeners, we’ve already decided to eliminate synthetic fragrances from our lives. But then that puts us into the realm of essential oils.
And on Tuesday, I interviewed Dr. Anne Steinemann and she was talking about her new study. You can listen to my interview with her to get all the details and read her papers on her website. What she does is she takes common everyday consumer products and she actually test them to find out what kind of toxic chemicals are coming off of them that are not necessarily on the label or on the material safety data sheets, but these are the chemicals that we’re being exposed to by using these consumer products.
She made a statement that it doesn’t matter whether it’s a scented petrochemical product or a scented organic product. The same chemicals that are found in scented are coming off both the natural and the synthetic products. And so I know that there are essential oils that are produced in different ways and that they’re used in many, many natural and organic products, both as active ingredients and added fragrance.
So, my guest today and I are going to be exploring exactly those because there are many reasons why you might want to have a naturally scented product both for the aesthetic pleasure of that, but also because they can have therapeutic benefits. So, all essential oils can’t be bad.
We’re going to find out today how to choose an essential oil that can be healthy for you and what are the differences in essential oils and what to look for on a label, what to ask for, so that we can straighten out this whole subject of safe fragrances versus the toxic ones.
So, my guest today, to help us with this is Diana Kaye. She’s been on the show before many times with her husband and she’s a cofounder of their USDA certified organic business called, Terressentials. They make a lot of gourmet personal care products that are lusciously scented with the fragrances. When I first opened one of her products, I thought, “This is the most wonderful kind of fragrance I’ve ever smelled because it was clean and clear and luscious and just a joy to be around.” I thought, “There’s something different about this fragrance.”
So, Diana has been doing this for more than 20 years. She’s an immaculate researcher. She’s totally familiar with multiple chemical sensitivities if that’s a concern for you if you’re listeningShe’s going to tell us all about fragrances in the products.
Hi Diana!
DIANA KAYE: Hi Deb! How is it going today in this lovely spring day?
DEBRA: It is a lovely spring day! I just feel like you get to the certain point in the spring time where you feel like everything is coming again anew. New things are happening in the world. All the plants, there are buds going on and flowers blooming and new leaves coming out and you just think, “It’s a whole new world now. We’re just starting over for the year.” I’m really feeling that in my life. New things are happening in my life and in my work and it’s a good day.
DIANA KAYE: That’s crazy here. We are here up in Maryland. It’s still gray and cold and we’re wondering really when spring is coming, but I took a walk to the garden and we’re finally starting to get greens and flowers popping up, the early ones. So yes, renewal, energizing. Spring is my favorite season of the year, hands down.
DEBRA: Mm-hmm. I totally understand. It’s so vibrant and an opportunity for renewal on every level.
DIANA KAYE: Absolutely! In fact, the later spring, the reason it’s my favorite is because that’s when all of my aromatics start to bloom.
DEBRA: Ah, yes! Yes.
DIANA KAYE: And that’s my big thing. I think the last eight, nine years I have, oh gosh! So many herbs and native plants, but I seek out plants that have fragrance and the heirloom ones are amazing because just like tomatoes, when they breed them, even if they are for organic, they often breathe out flavor in exchange for being able to ship something or to have it look pretty.
I was visiting a friend, a sick friend who’s in the hospital last week and I wanted to get her flowers. Of course, I would normally cut flowers from my garden, but there’s nothing blooming. So, I stopped at a flower shop and I was so disappointed because the roses had no smell.
DEBRA: Yes.
The reason I wanted to take her flowers was because I know, from all of the research that I’ve done over the years that there a many aromatic chemicals, they are called phytochemicals and this is just what they are once we identify them in flowers that make you feel good! They make you feel better. They make you more alert. They are ones that can actually slow your heart, lower your blood pressure.
I can’t imagine if I were really sick in a hospital, I would want to have flowers there with me, to have that.
DEBRA: Is that why people bring sick people flowers? Maybe they don’t even know all these technical things about why they could help people get well and it might just be a symbol of love to people. But then, there really can be a therapeutic benefit from these fragrances.
DIANA KAYE: Absolutely! And especially if they’re organic. They’re just a little note on the side. It’s also color. When our eyes perceive color that sends signal to the brain and certain colors actually again, make you feel better, stimulate serotonin production so, flowers are wonderful thing. Real aromas are a wonderful thing and we shouldn’t deprive ourselves of these things.
Just another little note on the side, I just read another research paper where they determined that in soil, there are these microbes that actually when our hands are in the dirt they stimulate, guess what?! The happy center in your brain!
DEBRA: Really?
DIANA KAYE: Yeah.
DEBRA: I’m not surprised.
DIANA KAYE: So many people are depressed and they live in cities and they don’t dig in them dirt. So everybody go out and dig in the dirt.
DEBRA: Good advice. Especially now, you can plant little seedlings and seeds and then you’ll have the joy of watching them grow and eating those nice little lettuce leaves.
DIANA KAYE: I can’t wait to start taking pictures again. I got my seeds everywhere and we’re ready.
I’m sorry, I digressed a little bit.
DEBRA: Totally fine. Where shall we start?
DIANA KAYE: I’ve been intrigued since you put out the topic here because for me, someone who had experimental double dose chemotherapy and became really sensitize to synthetic chemicals after that experience, at first, I was terrified of anything because I was having these bizarre reactions. I have never heard of chemicals sensitivity. Fragrance sensitivity, I’ve never heard of that.
All I knew is that I came home from the hospital and I was having weird reactions and they seem to occur after about a year and a half of this. We notice that it was when we used or I was around certain chemicals. So, I started freezing everything out of my life that had a scent. And it was such a shame because I really deprived myself of that.
But in doing my research, I learned that as you know (and many people that are listening know) that these chemicals or petrochemicals, it’s now an allergic reaction. We’re having a toxic reaction because we’re more sensitize, we’re more aware of things.
DEBRA: It’s a poisoning. It’s a poisoning.
If I could just interrupt for a second, I was talking to somebody who had me for a consultation this morning and I realize as I was talking to her that I was telling her 30 years ago when I was first diagnosed and learned about MCS — uh-oh! We need to go to break, so I’ll continue this when we come back.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Diana Kaye. She’s the co-founder of the USDA certified organic business, Terressentials where they make fabulous gourmet personal care products.
We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Diana Kaye from the USDA certified organic business, Terressentials and that’s at Terressentials.com. And she has wonderful fragrances in her products that I think are unique in terms of quality. So, we’re going to find out about that as we talk on the show.
Before the break, we were talking about MCS, Multiple chemical sensitivities and I started to say that I was talking to a client on the phone this morning explaining how this occurs. And the way we used to explain it was, it’s like filling a glass with water. Every time you’re exposed to a toxic chemical, it’s like putting another drop of water in the glass and it builds up and builds up and builds up until it gets to overflowing and then you get sick, you get MCS. That was 30 years ago that we’re saying this and that’s how I’ve been describing it since.
Well, many years later, the CDC, Center for Disease Control starts talking about body burden and they say exactly the same thing, that chemical exposures build up in your body and that creates what they call ‘body burden’ and at a certain point, you get to your threshold and then you get sick.
And what I explained to people with MCS all these last 30 years about this is that I would say, “When you eliminate toxic chemical exposures, what happens is that your body’s natural detox process or any other things that you do to detox start lowering the amount of water in the glass or chemicals in your body. And so, it’s below that threshold point and you don’t have symptoms. That doesn’t mean you have no chemicals in your body, but it’s below the threshold of being sick.”
And I just thought that it was really interesting to see the correspondence between what we had been saying all along about what occurs for people with MCS. And then the CDC comes out and starts saying exactly the same thing. And it doesn’t matter if the way you get sick is multiple chemical sensitivities or cancer or obesity or impotence or whatever it is, it’s because your body hits that threshold of too many chemicals in the body and then you overflow and get sick.
DIANA KAYE:Powerful stuff.
DEBRA: Yeah. So, when we inhale toxic fragrances made of synthetic chemicals or containing synthetic chemicals, it’s adding to that body burden. It’s putting more drops of water in the glass adding up to when you overflow.
This is exactly why this is so important. This I why I do this show, this is why my guests do what they do. It’s to keep us from getting to that overflow point and also helping us decrease the overflow once it’s reached. And that’s what this is about.
Okay, good. Let’s talk about fragrance.
DIANA KAYE: Well, you hit the nail in the head. It’s all about decreasing our body burden and also doing the things that will help us to heal our bodies…
DEBRA: Yes.
DIANA KAYE: … to help our internal organs to regenerate, to recover from being really stressed.
DEBRA: Exactly.
DIANA KAYE: So, in my research, that’s actually, what led to the founding of our company was all the research about how I could heal my body way back then. And the one thing I have to say right off, because we’re talking about essential oils and I want to say this and I’ll say this a couple more times to people...
DEBRA: Oh, good.
DIANA KAYE: Never ever buy an essential oil that is not certified organic. Okay, I’m going to repeat. Never buy essential oils that are not certified organic.
DEBRA: Tell us why because I was looking in my very first book that I wrote, Nontoxic & Natural in 1984…
DIANA KAYE: Oh, my God!
DEBRA: …and I had researched essential oils then (and I’m sure it’s very different now), what somebody had told me was that you can just use any essential oil because — I forgot exactly what I wrote. I forgot what I wrote. I’m sorry. But it was about pesticides. They don’t use pesticides on plants that are made into essential oils.
So, let’s start talking about what are some of the things that could be in an essential oil that’s not certified organic.
DIANA KAYE: Okay. Organic is typically about not adding any kinds of chemicals to your processing. There are minimal synthetics that are allowed on the national list. However, in the growing of materials, compared to conventional agriculture, the list of what you can add to the growing medium that you can spray on plants, that you can spray on the soil post harvesting things that are employed in the conventional industry, in the world of USDA certified organic, your list of what you can use is extremely limited.
And when crops are grown on the field and I don’t care if it’s mint or an apple or a tomato or if it’s an animal that is grown, in the conventional world, there are chemicals that are used. There are fungicides, mildewcides, not just pesticides. There are many ‘-cides’ that we have to be aware of.
And then of course, there are the chemical fertilizers, many of which are petro-chemically based or petro-chemically reacted. And by all means these things carry through to the plants in final harvest.
And a lot of people — hopefully this has been dispelled somewhat, but many people are under the impression that you can wash away pesticide as if water is a miracle solvent.
DEBRA: You can’t.
DIANA KAYE: You can’t because many pesticides, fungicides, et cetera, et cetera, soil amendments, they are added to the soil and taken up by the roots of the plant, into the plant and so then, they are in the plant material.
In steam distillation, which is the most common way to extract the essential oil from the plant material, these things definitely are carried over into the plant. And in fact, there’s been a lot of concerns for decades about — let’s use for example, oranges. Many oils from the citrus family are cold pressed. They are not steamed in the field. So, anything that was on the peel of that plant, including dye, might have been added to the oranges. Sometimes that happens post processing, but all of that is pressed into the oil.
DEBRA: Fungicides, fungicides are on oranges.
DIANA KAYE: Everything, yes!
DEBRA: I used to think that that smell, the way oranges smell, I use to think that that was the way an orange smelled until I smelled an organic orange and found out what I thought was orange smell was fungicide.
We need to go to break again, but we’ll be right back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Diana Kaye from, Terressentials. It’s a USDA certified organic business completely through and through, USDA certified. So, she knows all about organic and all about toxic chemicals. We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Diana Kaye from Terressentials, a USDA certified organic business and their website is Terressentials.com.
Okay, Diana. Let’s go on about essential oils.
Are you there? Hello?
DIANA KAYE: Sorry, sorry. Hello! Sorry about that. I didn’t want to make a lot of noise. I was ruffling some papers.
I think this information is so important to get out so I’m going to try to run down some numbers here at point, that is, and give people this information before we forget or it gets lost.
DEBRA: …or we run out of time.
DIANA KAYE: Exactly, exactly.
Essential oils, when they are produces and they are organic certified, and you choose to use these and purchase them – which you should (everyone, don’t buy non-organic) – there’s a tracking that’s involved from the field when they harvest the material. Everything is weighed and documented. And then when it goes from the field, it goes to the distillation.
And many times the people who distill are partnered with the growers. Sometimes the growers do the distillation and it’s done on site in the field. It depends on the material whether it’s done fresh or dried. Most things, I think are done though minimally dried.
So you have this tracking procedure and it has to be documented and your inspector reviews your documentation before you go on to the next step, which would be, if you’re growers and/or distiller, you would then sell your goods to a broker or commodities broker.
Typically, this is how it’s done on the world market. And these people bid and then purchase the whole lot or a portion of the lot that was grown and then their certifier, because remember, this is an organic chain, so the certifier for the broker who buys these commodity things, their certification would be as a handler, someone who was certified and inspected to handle or transfer the material. A handler or a broker who purchases the material may sell to a distributor.
A distributor in the organic chain would also have to be certified organic because the distributors might be the people who take a 270 gallon tote of essential oil or 55 gallon drum and break it down into kilos or they might break it down into a 25 kilo pack, which in the world of crafting products or manufacturing, these are typical container sizes.
So then, if you go to a distributor, a distributor may then sell the products to a retail company who, in the world of organics, if they are labeling their products as organic, legally they are required to maintain an organic certification as a handler processor if they are pouring oils into small bottles for retail sales, the one ounce, half ounce, two ounce, et cetera.
And here is what I have seen. Many of the retail companies that are out there, they are not certified organic and they are selling these sometimes what we see essential oils being sold as organic or natural without that certification and annual inspection and review of documents, the paper trail, you cannot say that that product is organic. And for the consumer out there, do not trust.
In our case, I want to get as close to that grower as I can. We try to search out relationships with farmer, grower and distillers so that we can eliminate the middleman. Every time we eliminate the middleman, you are eliminating the potential for adulteration. Adulteration can take many forms. It can be where you are adding invisible components or visible components to stretch your oil, to make it look like you have more volume for sale. You can try to boost the profile of that oil to make it smell sweeter, if that’s the case, by adding synthetic.
And I should add at this time that people who do this adulteration, these are professionals. They know what they’re doing and sometimes they work for fragrance houses. Many manufacturers, all they care about is that the scent is the same from a 30,000 gallon batch to 30,000 gallon batch if they’re making a lotion, a shampoo or whatever because people want everything always to be same. They want it to be consistent. They don’t want things to change because they have been born and educated in the world of synthetics and to believe that that’s what their familiar body care products should be. They should also be the same.
DEBRA: Before you say anything else, I want to put a big underline, italics, bold on what you just said because this is exactly why it’s difficult to do things in a natural way because nature is not exactly the same.
DIANA KAYE: No.
DEBRA: Nature is never exactly the same. No two snowflakes are the same. No two fingerprints are exactly the same.
Many years ago when I was first learning this, I went to a company, a major so-called natural company and asked them about coloring, the coloring that they put in their product. They said that, “Yes it was synthetic,” but they had to do that because they had to have a colored product and it had to be the same over and over and over.
And so, that was the end of me thinking that they were a natural company because they might have had other natural ingredients in it. People need to realize that if you’re dealing with anything that’s natural – like I just brought a new scarf the other day, it was made from natural fibers and it has a lovely little label on it that said, “There are imperfections because in nature, nothing is perfect.”
DIANA KAYE: It’s so true.
DEBRA: “...and that the color is going to be different throughout this scarf because this is the natural color.” There was this big disclaimer about how there were variations on the scarf.
But in personal care products and anything and anything that comes from nature, there’s always going to be uniqueness and differences and that you can’t make the same thing twice, you just cannot do it.
DIANA KAYE: That’s why many really large corporations don’t do organic.
DEBRA: Yeah.
DIANA KAYE: They do the natural, which means nothing. There’s no legal definition anywhere in the world for the word ‘natural’ so you can make it mean whatever you want. And in this case it means, “Well, we need that same aroma profile so we are going to manipulate this oil no matter what to get it to be what we want it to be, to match our recipe.” And that’s what they do.
So, with natural product and products that say organic that are not certified, this happens all the time because they want a consistent waxy white product that smells like their signature scent.
Well, in the world of organic and when we’re talking about essential oils, they differ not only in scents, but they differ in their gravity, they differ in the way that they reflect light and these are all things that can be measured to test oils whether or not they are authentic. There are many, many ways to test oils. Of course, though, this is not inviolable because first of all it’s done by human and machine, which can be tricked, so organic.
DEBRA: Okay, so let’s go to break and find out more when we come back.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Diana Kaye. She is one of the cofounders of USDA certified organic business called, Terressentials. They make lovely gourmet scented and unscented personal care products and that’s at Terressentials.com.
Well’ be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Diana Kaye. She is a cofounder of USDA certified organic business, Terressentials at Terressentials.com.
So Diane, since we’re now in the last segment of the show and you know how fast it’s goes by...
DIANA KAYE: Oh!
DEBRA: I want to make sure that we get a key question answered and that is, “What should consumers be looking for when they are looking at all these products on the market? How can they be sure that they have a certified organic essential oil in the product?”
DIANA KAYE: Okay, I think I’ve said this before and I’m going to say it again and I’ll keep saying it until I die. You’ve got to buy certified organic products and you cannot trust a product that just says, ‘organic’ because that’s meaningless. There’s nobody verifying the raw materials, the process and the facility. You cannot trust this.
And I know there’s a plethora of companies out there that are claiming this, but I’m sorry, I don’t care if it’s a woman and at with two children making things thing sin her children, if she’s not certified, you can’t trust it because of the raw materials.
And with essential oils, what would be uncommon is to find an essential oil labeled natural or pure or therapeutic grade that does not have some kind of adulterant in it, whether it is from the field, pesticide, herbicide, fungicide, chemicals like that or an adulterant or some kind of invisible stretching agent. There’s manipulation and this is done all the time. That is the norm in the industry.
And when you’re talking about essential oils, we want to use them number one, because we want the fragrances to make us feel good. There’s no question. Fragrances can make you feel good.
Now, there’s going to be somebody who’s allergic to anything. It can happen to anything at anytime, but in my experience, 24 years we’re celebrating in our business, I have found – and this still surprises me to this day because of the chemical experience I’ve had, the chemical sensitivity – that most people have no problems when they smell real essential oils. When they smell…
DEBRA: That’s my experience too.
DIANA KAYE: Yeah. And when they smell real lavender plant or a bunch of mint, that actually makes you feel good and that’s because human evolves on the planet with plants.
DEBRA: Oh! I just got it, about why I love your fragrances so much. Because when the first time I open the bottle and I smell your—what did I smell first? It was your lemon hand soap and the lavender hair wash. I just smelled them and I had this experience of it like you do when it’s an actual lemon or an actual lavender because it’s organic and it doesn’t have any adulterants and that it actually is the real thing and so, your body is going to respond in a way that it’s like the real thing because it is.
DIANA KAYE: That’s what we search out. There are always going to be exceptions because unfortunately in the world, there’s always going to be a dark person. The world is not a perfect place. But the best chances that anyone can have is to buy certified organic.
In this world that we live in that is corrupted by pollution and people with greed, we don’t have a lot to hang on to, but you’ve got to trust nature. These oils, when they are certified organic, when they come from reputable growers, reputable suppliers, they make us feel good. They smell good. If you look on PubMed, you will find many, many studies that show that these essential oils can beat cancer.
Simple things like lemon, I love eating my lemon peels, my orange peels, I cook with them because I know there are healthy components in them. When you add adulterant, it can change – and not just the physical property of that oil, but it can alter our human response to it.
DEBRA: Right.
DIANA KAYE: So, we’re not getting what Mother Mature created on the planet to help us humans survive.
DEBRA: And that’s what we want. It’s what Mother Nature created because that’s what our bodies are looking for, that they respond differently.
DIANA KAYE: Yes! Yes, we need these things.
DEBRA: We do in order to be healthy.
One thing I wanted to mention is that Dr. Steinemann said that, “Some essential oils are extracted using solvents.”
DIANA KAYE: Yes.
DEBRA: And so, that’s another way. So, if somebody’s looking on the label and they see essential oil of whatever, if it just says essential oil of and it doesn’t say that it’s organic and it’s not an organic product, then that’s probably an essential oil to stay away from. You can’t just look at the word essential oil and say, “Oh, that’s natural and totally safe.”
DIANA KAYE: In my opinion, my personal experience, I would never buy an oil that wasn’t certified organic for all the reasons that we just talked about because I cannot trust what’s in that bottle because in most cases there’s been no one overseeing the process or as I described earlier, the growing and the movement of that oil through the market place.
And in many cases, if it’s a conventional oil that is not certified organic, there were many, many people involved along the way with many, many opportunities to adulterate the oils. And unfortunately, I know a lot of aroma therapist love to use therapeutic grade, but there is no legal definition of that either.
This has always baffled me because if you’re someone using oils like an herbalist would be using herbs to help people get better, you want the absolute best. You want some guarantee that what you have is pure and natural and that those aroma chemicals, when we inhale them and they go into our body, into our bloodstream, that they are going to be beneficial for our body and not harmful.
To me, that’s why I’m in the world of organic because I need to heal our body. I want to find the best purest things that Mother Nature has out there because those are the things that keep me well, that will help my body regenerate itself and hopefully help me to live a long life that I was supposed to have.
That’s what I want to give to other people and why Deb, I love what you’re doing, giving the education and why I am so appreciative of this opportunity to try to get the word out there to people that we have so little in this world that we can hold on to. We have our families, we have our pets, but when it’s real nature, we have to bring that into our lives because what I just talked about earlier, how the microbes in the soil can actually — when you have your hands in the dirt, it can make your brain happy?
DEBRA: Yes, it’s all in our [inaudible 00:46:01]
DIANA KAYE: Exactly, this is the natural way of life on the planet and we should not deprive ourselves of these things. But folks, please don’t buy non-organic products because they’re not real and they’re not there to benefit you or us. And we don’t want to be putting all these chemicals in the waterways because it harms the fish, we drink the water, it harms wildlife.
I’m sorry, I’m on this role. It’s spring. I want to take back. I’d love to see – and I don’t know if it’ll happen in our lifetime – I’d like to get the ball rolling where we get people on board with organic so we can try to repair the damage that humans have done over the last 100 years.
DEBRA: I love that.
DIANA KAYE: When I go out there and I dig in the dirt and I plant seeds and I talk to the growers, I try to establish relationships as often as possible with people who are the grower.
I had a great conversation with a young woman who is working with folks in Africa and this is a free trade organic plantation and this is so sad. They were certified organic and now, they’re not. The government is spraying chemicals overhead for mosquito because it’s a huge problem in Africa. So now, all of these local community organic businesses are destroyed. They cannot sell their products as organic.
It takes three years and hopefully, some of those chemicals will have dissipated in three years. But here’s the irony, there are many essential oils – and again, I invite people to go on the internet. There are documents, you can go to PubMed, a very reputable place, you can find research about essential oils and how scientists are — because we made a disaster with antibiotics and pesticides, certain people are saying, “Well, maybe we need to step back.” They’re stepping back and finding out that essential oils can actually kill mosquitoes effectively without harm to other wildlife or humans.
DEBRA: Of course, of course we can.
DIANA KAYE: There’s quiet research that’s being done and that’s wonderful that there are some scientists out there and universities where people have a conscience and they are trying to repair things and that’s great.
And I think, Deb, what you do is wonderful because this is what we need. We need everybody to tell their neighbors, tell their friends to get on board because if we all do a little part, we’re rebuilding a little bit. And some people, to them it seems, “So hopeless. I’m only just this one person. What can I do?” but you know what? It makes a difference. It really does.
DEBRA: It does. It really does.
DIANA KAYE: Essential oils, it takes acres and acres of crop material, plant material, in many cases, to produce 16 ounces, a pint of essential oil. So imagine, if each person buys products that are certified organic, think of the acreage that we are helping to sustain as chemical-free or as close to nature as possible.
DEBRA: Yup, so much stuff.
Well, we have less than a minute so, I wanted to say thank you so much. This is exactly the information that I wanted to have us talk about on the show today. And I feel like I understand the situation a lot better now and that I can look at your products and evaluate what’s going on with the fragrances or not going on with the fragrances.
DIANA KAYE: Can I say one thing Deb? Sorry.
DEBRA: Yeah, we only have 15 seconds.
DIANA KAYE: Oh, people who have chemical sensitivities often can tell what other people can’t because they are atoned to the chemicals. They often can react and they can sense when something is not really natural or organic. You’re a good person.
DEBRA: And that’s all the time we have. Thank you!
DIANA KAYE: Oh, no!
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well.