Podcasts about volatile organic compounds

In this episode, I chat with Emily Sundström (Wellness Chef & Nutritional Therapy Practitioner). We chat about cooking, baking, her personal health journey, tumeric wellness shots, and healing from VOC's (Volatile Organic Compounds) in a New Build. Emily and her sister Allie run their Nutrition Practice together called Nourished Abode.Connect with Emily —Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emily_sundstrom?igsh=MWU1bTU1YzlqazQ5MQ==Nourished Abode: https://www.instagram.com/nourishedabode?igsh=b3liMDU5Njl3angyConnect with Katarina —Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nourishedwithtina?igsh=MWg5OXVmbHNkOXVyYQ==Youtube: https://youtube.com/@katarinagreer?si=LeTy0awzM8MJQpew

Early diagnosis and treatment of Parkinson's disease is critical to slowing its progression. Long before neurological symptoms appear, patients exhibit early signs, some of which are associated with specific chemical scent signatures known as volatile organic compounds. Researchers study these as early biomarkers of disease for future diagnostics applications. In this episode, Iris Kulbatski from The Scientist spoke with Drupad Trivedi, a University of Manchester biomedical researcher and lecturer in analytical and measurement science, to learn more about how fatty skin secretions in Parkinson's disease and one woman's sensitive nose may lead to early detection and intervention. The Scientist Speaks is a podcast produced by The Scientist's Creative Services Team. Our podcast is by scientists and for scientists. Once a month, we bring you the stories behind news-worthy molecular biology research.

In this video, Dr. G reveals the “dirtiest” and “cleanest” laundry detergents, helping you identify products that may contain harmful chemicals and toxic additives versus those that are safe and non-toxic. Learn which detergents protect your family's health and the environment, and find out how to make cleaner choices for your laundry routine. #laundry #wellness #chemical === Thank You To Our Sponsor! Puori Click here https://puori.com/drg and use code DRG for 20% off the already discounted subscription prices. === Show Notes: 00:00:00 - Introduction: Is Your Laundry Detergent Toxic or Clean? 00:00:41 - Personal Experience with Conventional Detergents 00:02:01 - Overview of the Investigation into Laundry Detergents 00:03:11 - Importance of Understanding Laundry Detergent Ingredients 00:03:32 - The Problem with Phthalates in Laundry Detergents 00:05:01 - Phthalates and Their Impact on Health 00:07:21 - Carcinogens Found in Laundry Detergents 00:09:00 - Volatile Organic Compounds and Their Effects 00:10:01 - Antibacterial Agents and Their Risks 00:10:43 - Understanding Skin and Respiratory Issues Related to Laundry Detergents 00:11:05 - The Impact of Microplastics from Laundry Detergents 00:11:21 - Hormonal Disruption and Environmental Concerns 00:11:38 - The Importance of Environmental Responsibility 00:12:04 - The Problem of Greenwashing in Laundry Products 00:12:25 - Vague Claims and Lack of Certifications 00:12:39 - Misleading Terms: Natural and Non-Toxic 00:12:56 - Understanding Biodegradable and Plant-Based Claims 00:13:27 - The Issue with False Certifications 00:14:25 - The Need for Ingredient Transparency 00:15:02 - How to Choose the Right Laundry Detergent 00:15:51 - Key Ingredients to Avoid in Laundry Detergents 00:16:30 - Recommendations for Safer Fragrance Options 00:17:08 - Overview of Product Review Process 00:18:09 - Companies with Questionable Laundry Detergents 00:19:00 - Middle of the Pack: Brands Needing Improvement 00:19:46 - Top Three Recommended Laundry Detergents 00:20:37 - The Importance of Choosing Safe Products for Children 00:22:14 - Understanding Greenwashing and Its Impact 00:22:30 - Closing Thoughts and Gratitude 00:22:39 - Weekly Well Wishes Be sure to like and subscribe to #HealThySelf Hosted by Doctor Christian Gonzalez N.D. Follow Doctor G on Instagram @doctor.gonzalez https://www.instagram.com/doctor.gonzalez/

In our Crufts 2024 round up I'm taking a look at the natural healthcare vibes and much more chatting to both familiar voices and new ones, talking to people and companies with a focus on natural health, grooming and wellness.I catch up on the latest from natural balanced and complete food firms including  Paleoridge, and why Honeys has launched a bespoke service, including cooked options for certain cases.I also caught up with Coya and their freeze dried raw where convenience meets natural health. Exhibiting for the first time Ingenious Probiotcs highlighted the benefits of boosting the microbiome not just in your dog, but in your home too - eliminating any risks of Volatile Organic Compounds.I met up with Bugalugs and chatted about their new range of natural supplements, and to Photizo discussing the increased demand for ‘red light therapy' and why they think Crufts visitors are interested in natural healthcare. We chat about Crufts and why I love it as an educational experience about dogs, your choice, the scope to get the best out of your dog, the teamwork and how to build the indelible bond.I shout  about being live on Channel 4 with Mr Binks talking about English Toy Terriers as one of the Native Vulnerable breeds.  We also catch up with Lady B and the National Foundation for Retired Service Animals and a huge announcement.Visit Paleo's websiteand Ingenious Probioticsand Coyapetand Bugalug's Pet CareAnd the NFSRAand Danetre Health ProductsHoney's Raw Dog FoodAnd Earth AnimalFor more about Anna go to annawebb.co.ukMusic and production by Mike Hanson for Pod People ProductionsCover art by JaijoCover photo by Rhian Ap Gruffydd at Gruff PawtraitsAdvertising and sponsorship opportunities info@theloniouspunkproductions.com

This episode cotnains: Steven and Ben have a low-effort, high stress-relief episode. Nothing matters anymore: Steven's world is on fire with COVID hitting his house again, and it's looking to derail Steven's wife's 40th birthday plans. Well, they were secret 40th birthday plans that Steven has worked really hard to set up, and now are in peril. Some days, Steven just needs a nap and a juice box. Ben prefers the term “house spouse” to “stay at home parent,” but Steven HATES it. Devon isn't here because he went to Omega Mart in Las Vegas: that crazy fever dream/theme park/grocery store. Ben's mom is recovering well from surgery, and Ben has dealt with stress by forgetting a bunch of stuff he actually did do and escaping into Elden Ring.   Clean your room!: Air purifiers aren't enough to clean your home from wildfire smoke. After a wildfire, if you want to stay healthy indoors, it's not enough to just open windows. Volatile Organic Compounds can stay in floors and walls. How do you get rid of them? CLEAN UP! Mopping, dusting and vacuuming can get those VOCs out of your surfaces. Good luck if you have popcorn ceilings, like Ben does. Ben remembers finding patterns and images in the popcorn ceiling back in high school. Steven remembers the word Pareidolia: the perception of random images, especially faces, in random shapes and lines. https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/10/air-purifiers-arent-enough-to-clean-your-home-from-wildfire-smoke/   Science Fiction:  Where does Steven go for a pick-me-up when he's down? Enter Peacock's own Twisted Metal. Thanks for the recommendation, Devon. After three episodes, Steven sees it's a decent show. It walks a fine line between being absurd and serious, but it's all still believable within the show. Steven and Ben wonder what is going on with LOKI in season 2. Like, what's up with X-5? Oh that's right, this is a TIME TRAVEL SHOW. We're all experiencing temporal whiplash. Maybe they'll tell the rest of the story at another time? For all time, always. Ben's son is not into this season, but is begrudgingly allowing us to watch LOKI instead of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Can you believe that Disney showed surprising restraint by not peppering the MCU's version of 1977 with a bunch of Star Wars posters? The late-1980s McDonalds is incredible, now Ben wants an apple pie. Remember when McDonalds had lore? The McDonalds Cinematic Universe with the Hamburgler and fry guys and all the nostalgia! Is Sylvie's manager a young Mobius?   We talk even more after the break: Let's talk about Fallout Wasteland Warfare! Steven's never played the tabletop game, but he's excited about painting a Frank Horrigan figurine from it. Do you even Fallout, fool?: https://falloutfacts.com/fallout-frank-horrigan . Ben's learning to git gud noob in Elden Ring, after noping out of it half a year ago. Big thanks to JumpinProductions for their Noob's Guide for Elden Ring: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvSjDM1TnnA_lZWYp4N8hqj6IKNv3P7tc. In contrast to Elden Ring, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are power fantasies. Steven tells Ben about i-frames. The real game is timing. Giant disgustingly beautiful enemies? Run around them! Stormwind Castle has incredible detail showing ancient battles and sense of place. Is Elden Ring the game of the decade? How could we know? After A LONG TALK about Elden Ring, Ben recommends 3D Sen VR: an NES emulator that makes ye olde Nintendo games 3D diaramas and it's incredible. http://www.geodstudio.net/ We rank Batman movies, and Steven continues to sing the praises of The Batman, even over the Nolanverse. It's so good, mainly because it brings in the detective side of Batman.

Two federal agencies issue warnings on alcohol consumption and the use of masks. As talk of the virus cranks back up - share this podcast with your favorite masked friend. Dr. Miriam Grossman explains why the current transgender movement in the country is akin to the horrors of our past in treating mental patients. Her newest book is a must read called "Lost in Trans Nation." Plus, Steve Moore our chief economist explores a potential government shut down next month, 8% mortgage rates, and his review of the Republican field economically. Plus, Newt Gingrich confirms what we've known for some time about the Husk's "leadership." - For more info visit the official website: https://chrisstigall.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrisstigallshow/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChrisStigall Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chris.stigall/ Listen on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/StigallPod Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/StigallShowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As we all know, sometimes it isn't easy being green. Especially when it comes to sustainable, affordable, earth-friendly architecture. Remember the story of the three little pigs? It didn't work out so well for the two pigs who built cheap houses out of straw and sticks. But what if it were feasible to build durable, eco-friendly buildings out of straw or sticks—or even corn cobs or woodchips? Our friends at Nomadic Earth Architecture say it's possible, and they want to tell you how.As our regular listeners know, a theme that we've returned to often in season four of the podcast has to do with how younger generations—Millenials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha—are responding to the climate crisis. To that end, we'll be talking now with Jesse Nathanson and James Sledge—two young changemakers who are passionate about teaching better ways to build. They are here to tell us about their global initiative called Nomadic Earth Architecture—an organization that is all about inspiring people to build their own sustainable, non-toxic buildings out of cheap, easy to find natural materials. Guests:  Jesse Nathanson Cofounder and and project manager for Nomadic Earth Architecture International social worker and aide Facebook James Sledge Cofounder and and project manager for Nomadic Earth Architecture LinkedIn Facebook  Mentions: Magnesium Petrification VOCs International Community Development Masters Keywords: architecture, natural building, sustainability, non-toxic, ancient technology, resources, accessibility, education, runoff, magnesium, packaging, organic materials, affordable housing, volatile organic compounds, VOCs, housing crisis, toxicity, health, affordability, environmental justice, social justice, intersectionality, copowerment, stewardship, relationships, indigenous peoples, community Find us on our website: Earthkeepers. Donate here to Earthkeepers Podcast.Our parent organization: Circlewood. Join the Stand.

Carolyn Harding with Tracey and Sean Barnes, flower farmers facing, not one but two imminent asphalt plants on either side of Alexandria, and next to their farm in St Albans Township. Tracey Barnes is a mother and flower farmer with a deep love for the natural world. Along with her husband and three children, she lives and works full time on their flower farm in Alexandria, Ohio. Before she began farming in 2016, Tracey worked connecting people with plants, as a Volunteer Coordinator and Horticulturist in public gardens. She received her Bachelor of Science Degree in Agriculture from The Ohio State University. Tracey's love of travel has taken her around the country and abroad, but the place she loves the best is her home, in Alexandria. Sean Barnes has always loved being in nature. His interest in plants drew him to Horticulture, where he earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Agriculture from The Ohio State University. He has worked mainly in public gardens, but got his start working in greenhouses and nursery production. In addition to flower farming with his wife since 2016, he is also a certified Arborist, with an endless passion for trees and forestry. When Sean is not farming, he is usually spending time with his kids, or finding time to travel to the places where he is most at peace, in the woods. Last night's Township Trustee Meeting was packed, but the Trustees did Not want a repeat of the heated BZA meeting, so they told folks to ask their questions online…..and the packed house waited to hear more information…. Several pieces of literature with information were passed around - * One paving company has history of violating EPA permits -water & air; * Large scale manufacturing operation; * Production of 3,000,000 tons/year w/ surface area 15 acres; * Runs 24/7, 300 days/year; * Requires 385 trucks/day to haul out asphalt continuously; * Water for dust suppressant, what source; * Noisy, bright, smoky, heavy industrial operation; * A bag house will collect particulate from mixer, but no other air pollutants, Sulfer Dioxide, Nitrogen Oxide, Volatile Organic Compounds, Carbon Monoxide; * No capture of blue smoke from silos of hot asphalt; * quarry pond used for industry and run-off returned, enroute to acquifer and private well water. https://www.facebook.com/groups/904509544135710 GrassRoot Ohio - Conversations with everyday people working on important issues, here in Columbus and all around Ohio. Every Friday 5:00pm, EST on 94.1FM & streams worldwide at www.WGRN.org, Sundays at 2:00pm EST on 92.7/98.3 FM and streams at www.WCRSFM.org, and Sundays at 4:00pm EST, at 107.1 FM, Wheeling/Moundsville WV on WEJP-LP FM. Contact Us if you would like GrassRoot Ohio on your local station. Face Book: https://www.facebook.com/GrassRootOhio/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/grassroot_ohio/ SoundCloud! https://soundcloud.com/user-42674753 Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/.../grassroot-ohio/id1522559085 YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAX2t1Z7_qae803BzDF4PtQ/ Intro and Exit music for GrassRoot Ohio is "Resilient" by Rising Appalachia: https://youtu.be/tx17RvPMaQ8 There's a time to listen and learn, a time to organize and strategize, And a time to Stand Up/ Fight Back!

Kalliope Tsirilakis, M.D. discusses what parents should know about Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). She shares common VOCs that could be present inside households and how the irritants can trigger asthma and allergies. She highlights the recent concerns and debates around gas stoves, as well. She provides tips for how families can protect indoor air quality in the spaces they occupy.

If people can post videos from inside collapsed buildings, how do we not have more available (and advanced) technologies to locate and rescue them?

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit news.nathanwinograd.orgThese are some of the stories making headlines in animal protection:Subscribers can also listen to the podcast above, which includes extended commentary on many of the issues, including the appointment of a special envoy for animals at the State Department for the first time ever. According to the announcement, “Overfishing, pollution, pesticides, disease, urban sprawl and, of course, climate change contribute to declines in imperiled species' populations worldwide.” The envoy's job will be to help the U.S. and other countries address these threats to animals. Unfortunately, while the act of appointing a person tasked with representing the interests of animals is progress, we fear that the philosophical approach by which this particular envoy will approach this critical task is not. In fact, rather than looking to create a brighter future, the special envoy appears committed to defending an antiquated one that will exacerbate, rather than lessen, non-human suffering and death.For those who want to skip the news and go straight to the main discussion, it begins at the 18:25 mark.There is also a 15-minute sample of the podcast for those who have not yet subscribed. Sample podcasts are also available on Apple, Spotify, and Google Play.California's SB 879 banning “the testing of pesticides, chemical substances and other products on cats and dogs” was signed into law. As of January 1, toxicity testing for consumer and industrial goods on dogs and cats will be illegal. Although the legislative sponsor called these tests “barbaric,” the new law allows testing on other animals. It also “exempts medical and federally required testing from the ban.” Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate passed S.2952, the FDA Modernization Act. The bill removes the requirement that drugs “be tested on animals before they could be used on humans in clinical trials.” Instead, the bill “gives drug sponsors the option to use scientifically rigorous, proven non-animal test methods,” including cell-based assays, organ chips, computer models, and other non-animal or human biology-based test methods.The bill, sponsored by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Rand Paul (R-KY), passed unanimously. It will (hopefully) be taken up and passed in the House of Representatives.San Francisco is now home to the nation's first restaurant for dogs. Dogue serves pastries, “dogguccinos,” and on Sundays, soup and “a $75, three-course tasting menu.” Patrons are encouraged to slurp up their soup from the bowl.If your dog has a knack for being there in times of trouble, it is no accident. Studies have found that dogs can tell human moods by facial expressions and language. They are so good at this, they can figure out whether someone is happy or angry by just looking at the top half of someone's face. But a new study finds that they do not even have to look at you to know something is wrong. The study concluded that dogs could detect when people are upset by smell. Specifically, they detect changes in breath and body odor that results from the release of “Volatile Organic Compounds produced by humans in response to stress.” 

Funny that we want to both make indoor spaces separate from the nasty outside but also connect to the outdoors when it's peachy. Jake kicks it off admirably by linking air quality to CONTROL (surprise, surprise). This podcast will be one in a bit of a mini-series on the broader topic of Indoor Environmental Quality (including things like thermal comfort and acoustics) and the connected topic of ventilation and its IAQ role.IQAir - https://www.iqair.com/us/ (good air quality monitor for homes)Pete's resource: https://www.buildingscience.com/document-search (click on the box for indoor air quality)

Today's good news: Researchers at the Université Sorbonne Paris Nord have trained ants to sniff out cancer, and Honduras puts a stop to open-pit mining. If you'd like to lend your voice to the Optimist Daily Update, send an email to: editorial@optimistdaily.com. Listen to the Optimist Daily Update with Summers & Kristy - Making Solutions the News!

What VOCs are and how safe they are.

Can vaccinated individuals develop long COVID after breakthrough infections? Find out about this and more in today's PV Roundup podcast.

Hey guys, we are back from Vacation!!! We missed you all so very much. Welcome back, let's jump right back in. This week Alicja and Dee will be discussing all the hidden dangers in your home and how to avoid them as well as how to resolve the issue. V.O.C'S aka Volatile Organic Compounds, basically are organic chemical compounds whose composition makes it possible for them to evaporate under indoor conditions according to the EPA. Dee's randomness (her fact if you're not familiar) is all about Victorian decor. So grab your tea or beverage of choice and have a listen. If you are enjoying our show please share, like and subscribe, send us a voice note and a review. Thanks in advance for your review. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/teaoverinteriors/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/teaoverinteriors/support

Visit Clare onlineSupport the show-------->Fabian Geyrhalter:        Welcome to the show, Nicole.Nicole Gibbons:            Thanks so much for having me.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Absolutely. No, it's so great having you here. You are the founder of Clare, where you saw a huge opportunity to paint the interior paint industry in new, specifically with designer-curated colors, mess-free peel and stick paint swatches, which are really cool, and premium zero VOC paint delivered to your customer stores. You set out to take the pain out of paint, which I read somewhere on your site. That's not me saying this. You're your modern brand that has pioneered an easier, faster, and more inspiring way to shop for paint. Your mission is to help people everywhere create a home they love.Clare is just a little over four years old and must've been born out of the interior design company you're also running, but your career started at Victoria Secret where you served as the global director of communications and events. Tell us a little bit about how did that idea of Clare, how was it born? How did it all begin?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah. Well, I just want to correct one thing. We're actually only two and a half years old. Yeah. So we're a very young startup in our trajectory, but the idea was really born out of this desire to help people create beautiful spaces. I spent, like you've mentioned, a decade working in retail as a PR executive. While in that job, I started side hustling to explore my passion for interior design. So I did that sort of overlapping for about five years, more or less writing a blog every day and doing dabbling in small interior design projects on the side. Then finally at the beginning of 2013, took the leap to focus on building my design business and my personal brand full time. So after doing that for a few years, I started thinking about what would be the next extension of my personal brand.I never wanted to just be an interior designer. I loved the Martha Stewart approach in that she parlayed her career as a food and lifestyle expert into products that spanned multiple categories and just this massive career that enabled so many people to buy into the Martha Stewart aesthetic. So I started thinking about what I could do in the home space that was along those same lines and explored a number of business opportunities and kind of stumbled upon this white space that is paint.As a designer, I bought lots of paint. I shopped for lots of paint. I helped lots of people choose paint colors, whether it be my private clients, people that I would help doing television projects, or even just folks who would write in on my blog, or be a social media where I was just sort of offering unsolicited free advice when they had questions.I realized that shopping for paint is a really difficult process for the average person. If you're lucky enough or fortunate enough to be working with a designer, or an architect, or someone who can guide you, the process is quite easy. You have someone that you trust who makes the selections for you and you pretty much trust their judgment and sign off, versus the average person who's going at it alone, walks into a Big Box home improvement store, stares up at a wall of 3000 colors. If they want something as simple as white paint, they think it's going to be easy. And then they realize, Holy pal, there are 300 shades of white. How do I know which one is right? And then sort of thus begins this cycle of this painful experience, decision fatigue.Once I realized how the industry was structured, it's highly consolidated, there are really like two or three major players that dominate the whole entire paint market. It just felt like the perfect opportunity. The companies that dominate the paint industry are centuries old. So these are brands that are so giant. They really never felt the pressure to innovate or modernize.When I started Clare and really kind of came up with the idea, probably around four years ago or so, there were so many other industries where difficult shopping experience had been improved and modernized. Think about glasses with Warby Parker or mattresses or all these other categories where someone took a product that was really difficult to shop for and made it an easy, convenient experience. As someone who is incredibly passionate about home and about helping others create beautiful homes, this just seemed like the perfect opportunity and it was a massive market. I didn't want to just do a furniture line or something that would have been more expected and obvious for an interior designer to pursue. I really wanted to build something from the ground up, tackle a massive market, and create a sort of industry-changing business model and brand.Fabian Geyrhalter:        That's remarkable. Those peel and stick paint swatches, it sounds like nothing, but it's so huge, right? I mean, if anyone who went through that painstaking process that you just hinted at on how to come up with the perfect paint choice, you have to get all these tiny little cans, which by the way, is horrible for the environment, all these tiny little cans from paint stores. And then you have to paint on your house, most of the time on the exterior interior, depending on what you paint, and you keep going back and forth between the hardware store in your home. It's a mess, but those swatches, they seem kind of like post-its by nature. It's just so simple. You just put it on the ball.How did you guys around to matching the color on, because we're talking about print and "paper," versus paint, which is such a different medium. It must be so hard to match that identically. I think you guys pulled that off, right?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah. I think we nailed it. I mean, the interesting thing about color that most people don't realize is that color is a science, and any color, really all forms of color has data associated with it and can be broken down into numerical data so that when you're in the color matching process, you can actually measure the accuracy of our paint swatches to the finished actual paint finish within the most minutiae of a Delta E.So it's actually quite a scientific process to ensure the color match. It's somewhat manual, somewhat scientific. You might have to go back and forth a few times until you get it right, but if we can kind of measure to make sure that you're within pretty much an exact match range and that's how you ensure color accuracy.So we have a pretty detailed process. I think a lot of like with traditional paint brands, when you have thousands and thousands of colors, and they're not offering peel and sticks watches in most cases. So there's the little tiny paint chips that you take off the wall at the hardware store. A lot of times people feel they don't match. I think when your pallet is to the point of being four or 5,000 colors deep, you sort of lose some of that quality control.It's very difficult to maintain 100% accuracy when you have that many colors and especially if you're not actually controlling your distribution channels, because a lot of people also don't realize when you buy paint from a Big Box store, they're carrying multiple brands. So they have to have a color it dispensers or sort of colorant in store that work across all the different brands that they carry. So with that, you almost lose a little bit of quality control as well, because you're working within a colorant system that maybe isn't proprietary and there's just more margin for error for the output in the store to look different than the swatch.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Clare is 100% D2C. It seems like having your paint salt at a hardware store would go against what you stand for as a brand, but would you toy with Clare experience stores or pop-up stores of any sorts?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah. My belief and the whole reason I started Clare was that I felt that the paint shopping experience needed to be re-imagined. We started online because that's where our competitors were not, but I think that there's a huge opportunity to reimagine the future of what a paint store looks like, or what a paint aisle within a Big Box store might look like. So that prospect is super exciting and definitely something we think about, and it's really a matter of timing and opportunity, and those kinds of two things being aligned before we'll probably make it happen.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Which obviously is not during a pandemic. But other than that, it's an interesting opportunity. Absolutely. Let's talk about the evil side of paint, how to dispose of leftover paint. How do you navigate sustainability with Clare?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah, I mean, I think for us, sustainability is a focus on kind of two major things. One is the product and how it impacts your home, and your health, and the air inside your home. And the other are just business practices. So things like our packaging and other efforts that we make to ensure that we're really minimizing our impact on the environment.So a lot of people don't realize that paint as an industry is one of the most dishonesty and misleading industries out there. It's a chemical product first and foremost. So no matter how you try to spin it, there is no such thing as a safe chemical paint. It's still a chemical product at the end of the day. Now you can certainly have a better formulation, but it's still a chemical product. It's not like the paint is made of grass and leaves or whatever.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Yeah, yeah.Nicole Gibbons:            So the paint industry has really been misleading with customers about what's in their paint. Even stemming back from like the 40s and 50s when paint was made with lead, which as we now know, is very toxic and harmful to humans and to the environment, but one of the biggest paint companies in the world knowingly continued to sell paint to their customers for decades, knowing that it was harmful to human health and didn't stop selling lead paint until it was banned by the federal government in the 1970s.So that's a very good example of how the paint industry has historically operated at profit over people, I think. Even in more recent times, every few years, in fact, one of the major paint companies is paying massive fines to the FTC for misleading marketing.Several years ago, when the government started regulating, or the EPA started regulating VOC contents and paint, and stands for Volatile Organic Compounds, it's essentially like carbon emissions and CO2 emissions that are emitted by a lot of paints, not Clare, but when the government started putting these thresholds, so they would say, canopy can't have more than X volume of VOC content, what brands ended up doing, and another important thing to understand is how paint is actually sold at the point of sale.So generally companies like a Big Box store or a hardware store will stock a base paint formula, which is essentially like a white paint. And then the colorant is dispensed at the point of sale. So brands would manufacture those base formulas to fit zero VOC thresholds, but then the colorants that were being used were not zero VOC.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Interesting.Nicole Gibbons:            So people thought that they were buying a product that was better for them, healthier for their homes, et cetera when in reality, as soon as you've chosen your color and they put the color in the can at the hardware store, you have a paint that's now back to being filled with chemicals. So even that type of misleading was happening in more recent times.So for us, transparency is super important as well. All our paint is zero VOC. It's GREENGUARD Gold certified. GREENGUARD is a green certification that applies to many products, but GREENGUARD Gold is the highest tier of GREENGUARD certification and for paint. What that means is, they actually put the paint in an environmental chamber that's meant to mimic the air inside a typical home environment, and it measures the off-gassing for two weeks to ensure that it stays below the zero VOC threshold during that entire time, because paint can continue to off-gas for years actually. So when you buy a paint that's not zero VOC, it will be emitting carbon compounds into your air potentially for years. A lot of people don't realize that. Especially nowadays, when we're spending all of our time inside in our homes, it's very important that we make better choices and there's just so much harmful stuff all around us. So we just wanted to minimize that as much as we possibly could.A lot of our packaging and products, like some of our paint supplies and things are made from recycled materials. So whenever possible, we really try to make the best possible choices and we are not doing everything perfectly admittedly. As a young company, there's still a lot of room for improvement. There are certain things that we want to make even more sustainable, but I think we're off to a really good start and we're as transparent as we can be with our customers. We hope that that gives them competence in our brand and in our product.Fabian Geyrhalter:        I love this. Just in my last episode, I talked about that same idea where even though you're trying really hard and you think like you're doing everything as well as possible, there are some things that you yourself know as a brand. You're not quite there yet. You talk about that too. I think that alone is such a huge difference when you think about the paint companies from the 40s and 50s, right. It is so nice as a consumer today to see brands talk about not only the things they do well but also the things that they know want to improve upon because that is just as important and that's how you feel like a brand is really transparent.Let's talk about transparency for a second here. Moving over to your brand language, which is really real. It's very down to earth, you had an instant post about wop remixed, which of course, stood for where there's paint. Your colors are named Headspace, Whipped, No Filter, and Dirty Martini. How did the brand language manifest itself? Did it start with a mantra that you set and then it organically built from there?Nicole Gibbons:            Honestly, so much of it is an extension of me and my personal brand voice, to be honest, but also like the customer that we're reaching and what I think resonates with them. Also just looking at the market and looking at traditional paint brands, I think paint brands are pretty boring. We wanted every element of our brand experience to feel memorable and to evoke emotion. So when it comes to things like the color names, we wanted to have fun with that and create names that made you feel something. Our brand voice on social media, we want to be relatable. We want to talk about what's happening in pop culture and relate our product back to that because that's what people can care about. That's what's top of mind.We don't want to just be this faceless corporate entity that no one actually cares about. We want to be a brand that people connect with and they follow us because we are approachable and, or entertaining, and inspiring. So that's super important. We try to have those core brand, voice pillars of being friendly and approachable, carry throughout every aspect of the brand from the website to our social and more. It's really just, I think, another way that we differentiate ourselves from the market.Fabian Geyrhalter:        I was just about to ask that, how do you set and keep those standards as it relates to the voice? You just answered that there are certain pillars around which you want to navigate as you talk to your customer. But talking about naming, how did the name come about? It's a very modern take on naming. We have many first-name brands floating around, but not Nicole, it's Clare.Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Once you try to actually get some help finding a perfect color, you agree that with a message on your website that says, "Hi, I'm Clare. Think of me as your personal interior designer. I'm here to help you find the perfect color for your space." What's the story behind the name? Who is Clare?Nicole Gibbons:            So it's so funny. I wish I had a more profound name, but originally, when I was thinking of names or when Clare was just in the idea phase, I wanted to be able to talk to some people about what I was working on. So initially, my only intent was just to come up with a working title, just like a good enough name for now and then come up with something perfect later. So I probably spent like 20 minutes. I was looking on a baby naming website where you can reverse look at, like name meaning. So if you wanted your kid's name to mean happiness or whatever, you type in happiness, and it tells you all the names that relate back to that.So I literally typed in things that tied back to color. So I looked up adjectives like bright, and colorful, and vibrant, and whatever, and saw what names came out. Clare just sort of stood out. Clare comes from a Latin root word, clarus that means bright and brilliant. There's a lot of fun wordplay there, both brilliant and bright in terms of color, but also brilliant in terms of being innovative and forward thinking as a brand. I Googled it. There was no other brand that really had the name Clare. There was like an insurance kind of, I don't remember exactly what they sold. There was something, but in a completely non-competitive space.So it was a name that was available and it was a good working title. And then as I really started kind of moving forward with the brand and doing some conceptual branding work and things like that, it sort of just stuck and it fit. There was no other name that made sense. But I think originally, I knew I wanted a name that was personified so we could really build a personality around the brand. That's why I went to a baby-naming website. And I wanted it to be friendly and approachable. And I intentionally wanted a feminine name, because in the paint world, all of the brands that dominate are these hyper-masculine names, Sherwin Williams and Benjamin Moore.Fabian Geyrhalter:        So true. Yeah.Nicole Gibbons:            I think they are not appealing to who's really making the household decisions, which is usually the woman of the house. I felt like paint brands are overly masculine in their appeal.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Yeah.Nicole Gibbons:            I think part of the reason is because a lot of them are catering to professionals and a lot of pro painters are men. But at the same time, when you think about the DIY market, the people making the hustle decisions are women.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Yeah.Nicole Gibbons:            I think the big brands are kind of failing to really resonate in an authentic way. So that was something that was super important as a brand founded by a woman in an industry that is dominated by men to take a complete 180 approach to every aspect of our brand, including the choice of name.Fabian Geyrhalter:        So interesting. I never thought about how those paint names are just absolutely not reflecting today's do it yourself customer. Super interesting. Your selection is still narrow and it's highly curated, and that is by design, less is more. A recent customer review on your website stated, "The limited, but lovely colors totally saved me from having an existential crisis over the thousands of options from other brands. How do you control the number of options to give your customers once you introduce a new color? I know you just introduced a couple of new colors, how do you play this game of keeping things fresh, but yet having it very curated so that people don't freak out about the 4,000 options of white?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah. Well, I mean, we launched with 55 colors and originally, we believed that those covered most of the use cases you would ever have in a home, right? There are certainly opportunities to expand the palette and mix in a few new things, but it's not hard to keep things curated relative to the traditional paint brands that are in the thousands.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Yeah.Nicole Gibbons:            Building on from that original 55, our approach has always been well. If we're going to introduce new colors, let's make sure they're colors we know our customers will love. So, so far every new color we've introduced has been crowdsourced or with some sort of crowdsource feedback from our customers. So they'd either voted on the colors, or with our most recent set of colors, we did a march madness style paint playoffs bracket. The predictions from the customers ultimately dictated which colors ended up in our palette. The two newest colors that we launched were actually a part of the original, like our paint playoffs from last year where we ended up introducing a blue and a green, but there was also a pink and a yellow, but that were super popular. So we introduced those after the new year, this year in 2021. That's always core to us is making sure that we include our customers in the process. And then another core part of our color differentiation is that we're designer curated. So even the colors that our customers helped choose were sort of pre-vetted by me through my interior designer lens. Our original 55 colors were curated by me.I think in the future, there might be some collaboration opportunities with other designers to kind of maintain that voice of authority of being interior designer-curated colors. But I think that having that expertise behind the color palette, as well as input from customers to ensure they'll love the colors really helps to take the guesswork out of the process, and again, give people less choice, but the best choice, right? So really just simplifying those decisions for the customer to help them get to faster decisions, because that's another terrible thing about the paint industry is because there's so much choice. People get paralyzed and it actually takes them a really long time to make a decision, and the buying journey can be really, really long.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Yeah, absolutely. Looking back, because I thought your company was founded 2017, but that's I think when you just started laying the groundwork, and really it's a very young brand.Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:        What was that one big breakthrough moment where you felt like, "Okay, we are moving from startup into brand right now." What was that one moment? It could have been a seed funding or Series A, could have been a moment that you had with a customer where you felt like they totally get it, it could be sales figures, whatever. What was that moment where you set back and you're like, "Wow, this was a special moment."Nicole Gibbons:            Honestly, I think it was the Daily Launch because I had spent probably almost two years at that point, a whole year just thinking about the idea and then another year actually putting that idea into making that idea a reality, and raising capital, and then building behind the scenes all before we launched to the public.So on the day that we launched, we had a tremendous amount of press coverage and the media really got it and described our brand relative to the competitors in the market. I think really captured well how we stood out. And then immediately the customer feedback was super validating. And kind of like the quote that you read from the customer, we heard that kind of thing since day one. "This has been the best easiest paint shopping experience I've ever had. I'm never going back to the Big Box store again." That kind of thing, we heard from the very beginning.Again, are we doing everything perfectly? Probably not. Still a ton of room for improvement, but the basic premise and the basic problem that we set out to solve, I think immediately was validated that we were solving a real problem and creating a much better experience than what these brands who have been around for 200 years have not been able to create. I think we're super proud of that.We're still at what feels like in the beginning of our journey. So there's a lot more room we have in the works to continue improving upon the paint shopping experience, but I think we're off to a great start.Fabian Geyrhalter:        You might be surprised, but I never heard that answer. And I asked that question pretty much on every show, because I think it's so interesting, but usually it's not right when you launch, and usually it's when you launched it, you get some good customer feedback, but that the press was immediately so interested because they themselves knew here is a category that hasn't been disrupted yet, and that hasn't been done in the right way. I remember fast company said the Warby Parker of paint is here, right? So it very, very quickly happened that the press led this conversation, which is, I mean, that's the biggest success you can have if that happens immediately upon launch, because then you know everyone will see a need for this. So that's really great.Well, on the flip side, was there any brand fail that you went through where you felt like, "My God, we just did a huge [inaudible]," and maybe something that listeners can learn from?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah. I don't know if it's so much of a brand fail as more of a business fail or a general marketing fail. We so far, thankfully, have not had any major snafus with our brand voice or anything like that, but we're going through this really painful experience right now in that when we launched, I didn't have a technical background. I'm a very non-technical founder. So I hired a super talented team of people who were great designers to build our website. But at the time, without knowing then what I know now, we built an overly complex custom website. We're a small team. We don't have any in-house developers. So it requires a lot of resources to maintain our website.Then on top of that, I think the architecture wasn't as clean as it could be and it has just created so many problems for us. So two and a half years in we're actually re-platforming our website fully onto Shopify, which is such a great e-commerce platform. Especially when we had zero customers, in general, with MVP, you kind of start small and grow from there, but we came out the gate with this super custom website that looked beautiful, but behind the scenes is just kind of really messy and complicated and it just creates a lot of backend pain points. So we're going through that process right now to re-platform. It's a big undertaking. Actually, I feel like it's more work to re-platform the site than it is to build a brand new site from scratch, because there's more that can go wrong.When we originally built our site, we didn't have any customers yet. Now we have hundreds of thousands of people that visit our website and we don't want to disrupt that experience or lose functionality that was there before. So there's just way more room for errors with this kind of next go around. Yeah, it's taking up a lot of time that we didn't intend to be spending.So I would say launch your brand on Shopify, because you're going to learn everything you need to learn. Maybe when you get to a certain scale, you can go custom, but that was a big lesson learned in what I would consider somewhat of a failed, because I just didn't know better and we just spent way too much developing and building the site that we have that doesn't actually function the way we need it to.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Well, and you come from an interior design background. So of course, the design is most important in the beginning, right? And so one thinks. Think about tens of thousands of people starting shopping on Clare.com immediately, but since you're successful, that happens next. So I think it's extremely important that you talk about something which some people might not think is important. It can be extremely disruptive to a business. I work with an agency that does a lot of Shopify websites. For them, it's the exact same customer that keeps coming back to them. They created it in a different environment, then everything was really clunky. And then it becomes ... I mean, we're talking about a lot of money being spent when you have to redo a site in Shopify.Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:        This is important.Nicole Gibbons:            It's a young startup, so cash is king, so to make a costly mistake is really painful. This is definitely a very costly learning experience.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Yeah. No, totally. Like you said, it's not necessarily a brand fail, and it's not necessarily fail period, because it's just kind of like, it's that whole fail forwards ideas. It was a logical thing to do, to do a site that just looks good.Since this is a branding podcast, I love having my guests always answer this one question, and it's not an easy one, what is one word that can describe your brand? If you literally think about your brand inside out, the culture, what you stand for, your customer, your offering, if you would put it all through a funnel, and outcomes one or two words of like, this is what we stand for, what would it be for you?Nicole Gibbons:            I would say inspiring. That's a word that I think permeates every aspect of our brand experience and how we hope that our customers perceive us from the shopping experience. That is a world of difference from that cluttered aisle and a hardware store in full of inspiration to how the brand engages with us on social media. We want to be there to guide them and there to inspire them, to create a beautiful home that they'll love coming home to every day, and in our color assortment in just our overall brand voice. We want people to walk away feeling inspired by Clare. So that would be the one word that I'd say sums up-Fabian Geyrhalter:        I love it.Nicole Gibbons:            ... everything we're about.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Now that we talk about branding, and I've warmed you up, what does branding mean to you? I mean, obviously you lived in the world of branding all your professional life in one shape way or the other. You were in Internet Kiehl's, then there was the Victoria Secret job, and then you're running your own service company really as interior design. So I think you've seen a lot of different facets. What does branding mean to you?Nicole Gibbons:            That's a good question. I think it can mean many things, but if I had to simplify it, it's creating an aesthetic that could be translated into a lifestyle. I think of Clare very much as a lifestyle brand, but also everything I did before in my career ultimately was around building a lifestyle. So I think in the world of e-comm consumer, you can't just be a nameless, faceless brand because right anyone can create a logo and a tagline, and come up with a name and call it branding. But I think it's truly branding when what you've set out to achieve is absorbed by your customers and that your customers actually relate to, and your customers can derive value from. So that's kind of a little bit of a long-winded answer, but that would be what I think of as branding and what I think creates a successful branding.Fabian Geyrhalter:        I absolutely agree with you. Yeah. It's like there's the foundation, which everyone needs a logo, and a name, and colors, and all of that good stuff, but that doesn't make a brand. That's important to have, but what makes a brand is really the soul of it. And that might start with the founder who injects it into the company, or it might be certain principles, or a greater purpose.Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:        I'm glad that you said that. Absolutely.Nicole Gibbons:            It can't just be some abstract thing. It really has to resonate.Fabian Geyrhalter:        What's a piece of brand advice for founders? Maybe even commerce founders, as a takeaway from what you learned besides starting on Shopify, obviously, but from a brand perspective, is there anything that you can advise the next generation of founders on?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah. I would say focus on experience, you know. I mean, even from the school of Jeff Bezos, but something that I can attest to within Clare is, if you can continuously deliver a delightful experience for your customer, that is what's going to propel your brand forward.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Absolutely. Absolutely. What's next for Clare besides potentially looking at the impersonal retail experience, which I kind of pulled out of you? I'm sorry if you didn't mean to talk about that, but what are you really excited about with Clare for the next, I don't know, six months, a year?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah. I mean, six months, I think in the world of startups still is kind of forever, but just thinking about new products and how we can continue to deliver more for our customers. So we have some exciting things in the pipeline there. Obviously, I touched on this new website that we're in the process of building, which aesthetically will probably look quite similar to our current site, but hopefully, we'll deliver a better just overall experience. So I think that's like a top, top priority that's going to take us even through Q2 and have some cool partnerships in the works. So creating opportunities to reach more customers, but also without giving away too much. But yeah, just creating a cool opportunity for us to get in front of new audiences and things like that. So, yeah, I'd say in the short term, those are the key things that we're most excited about.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Very cool. Where can listeners learn about Clare and start painting the walls on you?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah. Well, visit us at Clare.com, spelled CLARE. You can also follow us on social at Clare Paint, and we hope to see you soon.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Thank you so much for taking the time to be on hitting the marketing call. We really appreciate it.Nicole Gibbons:            Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.

High body emissions released during exercise can combine with bleach cleaners to form potentially harmful indoor air pollution, according to a new study conducted by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder. 

High body emissions released during exercise can combine with bleach cleaners to form potentially harmful indoor air pollution, according to a new study conducted by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder. 

Episode #15’s guest is Zach Marlin. Zach is the Transportation & Treatment Group Director at ERC Midwest and the author of ERC Midwest’s Newest eBook titled “The Lifecycle of Wastewater”. In this episode, we talk about industrial wastewater treatment. Specifically, Zach will walk you through how ERC manages our client’s wastewater, a process that his book covers in great detail. We cover all of the steps involved in the preparation, removal, treatment, and recycling of industrial wastewater. Zach sheds light on the aqueous discard that results from substances having been dissolved or suspended in water, typically during the use of water in an industrial manufacturing process or the cleaning activities that take place along with that process. Tune in to learn what happens after treatment. The treated industrial wastewater may be reused or released to a sanitary sewer or to a surface water in the environment which is a common misconception. If you’d like a copy of The Lifecycle of Wastewater eBook, you can find it on our website at www.ercmidwest.com.

The English Beat- The Tears Of A ClownRancid- Time BombSave Ferris- Nobody But MeReel Big FIsh- Sell OutBowling For Soup- Punk Rock 101Less Than Jake- Al's WarMadness- Baggy TrousersAll sorts of invisible toxins are lurking in our air fresheners. Whether they are aerosol, plug ins, wax melts, diffusers or incense, they could be, & more than like are, potentially dangerous to your family. Most of these air fresheners are very dangerous to our pets if they eat them, roll in them or breathe them in. The Pet Poison Control # 800.213.6680 because it is becoming more common for household pets to be poisoned. Luckily, there are all sorts of natural options to make your house smell better so we can all stop using poisonous cleaners, air fresheners & deodorizers. There are a bunch of companies selling products that are legit healthy alternatives. Wild Earth & Plant Therapy both offer pet friendly essential oils. Aura Cacia, J.R. Watkins, Clean Air Room Spray, Zeofresh, OmniZorb, Woodlore, Desert Essence just to name a few. Remember, just because they may come in a small bottle, a little goes a long way. Just because they may cost more than the common brand name doesn't mean your health & your family's health, including Fido & Mittens aren't worthy. Just as we eat healthy foods we should be breathing healthy air. 

Hi! Welcome back to Fuming. Today I am so excited to announce that I will be interviewing my first guest - a real biologist! - Morgan Pugh. In this episode we cover how Volatile Organic Compounds released by plants are the same as Volatile Organic Compounds released by paint fumes.@taylor.rose on InstagramIf you are interested in any of the scholarly journals, scientific articles, or parasite videos that Morgan mentions, I'll leave them here:Catola, S., Centritto, M., Cascone, P., Ranieri, A., Loreto, F., Calamai, L., Balestrini, R., & Guerrieri, E. (2018). Effects of single or combined water deficit and aphid attack on tomato volatile organic compound (VOC) emission and plant-plant communication. Environmental and Experimental Botany, 153, 54–62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envexpbot.2018.05.001Fini, A., Brunetti, C., Loreto, F., Centritto, M., Ferrini, F., & Tattini, M. (2017). Isoprene responses and functions in plants challenged by environmental pressures associated to climate change. In Frontiers in Plant Science (Vol. 8, p. 1281). Frontiers Media S.A. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2017.01281Vivaldo, G., Masi, E., Taiti, C., Caldarelli, G., & Mancuso, S. (n.d.). The network of plants volatile organic compounds OPEN. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-10975-xhttps://www.ccacoalition.org/en/slcps/tropospheric-ozoneParasitoid wasp: https://youtu.be/Bc69LLLEQRk

The average American spends 1.5 hours a day in their car. That number may even be higher for you. Our cars, especially with the windows rolled up, become a small contained environment. The particles in the interior air of your vehicle get recycled in and out of your lungs, and your body. But what exactly are you breathing in with that new car smell? Welcome to Fatal Conveniences™ This is a bite-sized segment that parallels The Darin Olien Show. In these segments, we get into society's Fatal Conveniences™. I define these as the things we may be doing because the world we live in makes us believe we have to. These things save us time and trick us into thinking they're actually good for us. But it's those same things that are breaking down our health and the health of the environment around us. I've spent most of my adult life obsessively researching these "conveniences." On every show, I pick one topic, and we dive into it. My goal is to make you more aware of these traps so that you can push back on them. Remember, it starts with you and the choices you make.  So, if you're willing to look at your world from a different perspective and make little tweaks that amount to big changes, then this segment is for you. That new car smell is actually a toxic chemical cloud. When you open your new car door for the first time and take a deep breath in, that new car smell triggers positive thoughts. We’ve been conditioned to love that smell. Our brains associate it with success, accomplishment, and of course, a fancy new car. If you can separate your preconceived feelings about this smell, you might notice it’s actually quite gross! A new car smell is a potent mix of overpowering chemical scents that have nothing positive to offer us. In this Fatal Conveniences™ segment, I get into the chemicals that create this potent new car smell. The main culprits are VOCs, or Volatile Organic Compounds. I break down what these are and the three VOCs you should be aware of as it pertains to your vehicle. I go over the harsh effects these toxins have on our health. And of course, I give you some tips on how to cut down the potency of these chemicals and how to avoid them altogether. If you spend a lot of time in your ride, you’re going to want to take a listen to this one.   Other great info in this segment: What are VOCs? What’s “car fluff,” and how does it add to that new car smell? What other vehicle components contribute to that toxic scent? What’s off-gassing? Which car manufacturers are working to cut down on toxics in vehicles? What can you do to eliminate that smell? What states or countries are creating new regulations to protect us? Links & Resources: BBC - Is new-car smell bad for your health? EcoCenter - New Car Study 2012 WebMD - Is that “new car smell” toxic? How to Offgas a New Car Netflix’ Down To Earth’ Official Trailer Download Darin’s amazing new lifestyle app and get 3 days free at 121Tribe.com Barukas Nuts 15% discount with code “DARIN”  The Darin Olien Show is produced by the team at Must Amplify. If you’re looking to give a voice to your brand, and make sure that it’s heard by the right people, head to www.mustamplify.com/darin to see what Amplify can do for you.

Today we invite Dr Elle Barnes back to the show after our very successful conversation after I took Intro to Plant Science with her at NYBG. Elle is a scientist and teacher for NYBG and in addition to Intro to Plant Science, I recently took The Science of Tree Communication class with as well. It was WILD to learn about the underground “wood wide web” that the forest runs on, and how trees communicate with one another through VOCs. I frequently go for morning walks in nearby woods, and since I took that class, I truly look at forest environment differently, and have such a deeper appreciation for it. Plant friends, there is a network of mycorrhizae negotiating transport of vital compounds for trees under every step we take outside! How cool is that?! In addition to the “Wood Wide Web,” a big part of our conversation in The Science of Tree Communication class was HOW trees and plants communicate with each other through VOCs or Volatile Organic Compounds. Since VOCs are a hot topic in the plant community regarding how “plants clean air”, we took a deep dive to understanding this concept. Get ready to learn all about VOCs, what they are, how they are used and the great “Wood Wide Web”. Thanks to the NYBG for continuing to create enriching courses that have helped further my Plant Parent Knowledge. Check their offerings out here If you are in the NY area, the NYBG is back open, including the Palm Conservatory and is an absolutely DREAM! Consider becoming a member! Have you taken the 2020 Bloom and Grow Radio Listener Survey ?! Please take 5 minutes to take this survey and be a part of the future of Bloom and Grow Radio and Media! I did this survey 2 years ago and it was INSTRUMENTAL in planning episode topics and community resources. I can't wait to hear from you! What's your Plant Parent Personality? Take the FREE Bloom and Grow Plant Parent Personality Quiz to get the perfect plants, projects and educational resources for YOUR Lifestyle In this episode we learn: How and why plants communicate with each other The "fake news" that VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) are all bad for us How plants use VOCs to communicate with each other and themselves The above ground plant communication system If plants ACTUALLY clean the air, and how and why we might have been mislead with this notion If VOCS are all bad The difference between a VOC that comes off of a plant and one that comes off of a carpet The truth about the scent of fresh cut grass (and why it smells that way) What the scent of a rose actually is (it's a VOC!) How plants use VOCs to attract pollinators Maria's OBSESSION with The Overstory How plants and animals have evolved together "The enemy of my enemy" theory when it comes to how plants attract certain pollinators The "Wood Wide Web" and the underground plant communication system How fungi help trees and plants communicate with each other Dr Barnes' most "mind blowing" fact about trees and VOC Why Monstera are conditioned to look for darkness and not light VOCs and the Ozone Mentioned in Today's Episode: Dr's Barnes first episode on BAGR: Mind Blowing Facts from Intro to Plant Science Online courses offered at NYBG (This was based off of The Science of Tree Communication) The Overstory (Maria's absolute favorite book) * Bookstore.com Affiliate Link Thank you to today's sponsors! Soltech Solutions Luxury Grow Lights: Whether its simply getting through the lower light winter- or if you’re like me and you’ve just got too many plants  and too few windows and need to bring more light indoors so your collection can keep growing- Soltech Solutions has the luxury lighting option for you! Soltech is offering BAGR listeners 20% off with code 20BLOOM at soltechsolutions.com once again thats soltechsolutions.com and code 20BLOOM at checkout for 20%off. Espoma Organics: for responsibly made, fabulous indoor and outdoor organic soils, fertilizers, pest control sprays and more visit espoma.com to find your local dealer or check out my amazon storefront of my favorite Espoma products here. Follow Dr Elle Barnes Twitter:@ecoevoelle   Follow The New York Botanical Garden: IG: www.instagram.com/nybg Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NYBotanicalGarden/ www.nybg.org Follow Maria and Bloom and Grow Radio: Take the Bloom and Grow Plant Parent Personality Quiz (Get the perfect plants, projects and educational resources for YOUR Lifestyle) Support Bloom and Grow Radio by becoming a Plant Friend on Patreon! Instagram and Facebook: @BloomandGrowRadio Tiktok: @bloomandgrowradio

Dr. Valter Castelvetro is Associate Professor of Polymer Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry at the University of Pisa, Italy. In the last years he has become interested to some less understood issues about the environmental pollution by micro- and nano-plastics, developing new polymer-selective methods for their detection and quantification, and studying the release of potentially harmful volatile molecular fragments as a result of polymer degradation.

The San Lorenzo Valley in Santa Cruz County has a partial Do Not Drink / Do Not Boil order in affect: is that order appropriate, what causes Wildfire water contamination, and what are good actions we as a community can take? Our guest is Andrew J Whelton, Associate Professor of Civil Engineering and Environmental and Ecological Engineering at Purdue University. Professor Whelton has studied two other Wildfires in California with water contamination and has some thoughts on our situation for the #CZULightningComplexTopics by Time13:49 Water Utility vs State Responsibility 22:28 Can you smell VOCs 24:07 Danger Long Term vs Acute 25:11 Stuck in the Pipes? 26:28 SVOCs 27:18 Can we just flush the system? 29:47 If you lived here… 31:00 Activate Mutual Aid 31:47 Testing Issues – UCSC help? 34:13 When would you be less concerned 36:49 What changes should we make? 39:15 California level issue? 43:20 Take Aways 44:24 Home Water TreatmentWildfire caused widespread drinking water distribution network contamination - Proctor - 2020 - AWWA Water Science - Wiley Online LibrarySan Lorenzo Valley Water DistrictFire Response, How You Can Help – Community Foundation Santa Cruz CountyListener Miles Z made some notes while listening - here they are:In case of doubt, consult the interview, as I am not an expert. The notes are about in the same order as the interview. =miles= Contamination and Testing/Monitoring The state (CA) only requires the water district to test at the source of the water, i.e. where they start pumping it into the distribution system. The rest (downstream testing) is up to the water district. Contamination can come from multiple sources, including backflow when the system becomes depressurized and air contaminated with smoke leaks into the pipes. It can also result from homes that were equipped with plastic pipes that burned. As well as the pipes we know about that burned, i.e. the 5 miles of HDPE pipe through the forest. The monitoring tests that the water district routinely runs downstream are limited to only particular VOC’s (Volatile Organic Compounds) and are targeted at only those that might be produced by adding chlorine to the system. These less stringent tests are for THM’s (trihalomethanes) which are a form of VOC. These tests are not adequate to certify the safety of water possibly contaminated from a fire (as described above). In the Paradise fire, the State refused to take ultimate responsibility for certifying that the water is safe, saying it was up to the local district to do so. (but there are ways the district can reach out for qualified help, discussed below) It is unclear whether or not SLVWD realizes this yet. Additionally, he said “there is nuance” regarding these DND/DNB orders, which I think means that experts disagree on what exactly they mean. (ndlr: good luck with that!) “You have to test fast.” The 7-day turnaround and only 40 samples are woefully inadequate. They should be getting results within a day by utilizing more labs. Apparently the number of laboratories used is a key bottleneck. VOC’s and SVOC’s Benzene can come from burning brush or trees. This VOC (and others) prefer to be airborne, so washing vegetables or taking a shower could release them. Quantities that are toxic may be odorless, so don’t count on being able to detect them by smell. Multiple contaminants can interact, which is one reason why thorough and rapid testing is essential. SVOC’s (Semi-Volatile Organic Compounds) are larger and heavier, so they tend to stay in the water. They also collect in the body in fatty tissue, so the acceptable limits for safe exposure are lower than those for VOC’s. Both VOC’s and SVOC’s can work their way into plastic pipes, so they are hard to get rid of. That’s not a problem with metal, but metal is more expensive. The Water District can reach out for help SLVWD can and should call in other agencies for “mutual aid” as the fire and PG&E crews are doing. They really need to be taking 100-300 samples per week, and use multiple laboratories for effective turnaround. The current turnaround of 7 days is way too long. The equipment required is a GCMS system (Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer). UCSC probably has them, but (a) not the funding (which might be able to come from FEMA) and (b) are probably not certified by the state, though they still could be useful for preliminary results. The current 40 samples will not be representative, and the conditions of the water can change at any time. Contaminants can flow from one place to another within the system. Note that the State is responsible for providing emergency water if the local district cannot in an emergency. Home Water Treatment It’s possible to install a water treatment system for your own home. In general, this is not the best way to deal with the VOC/SVOC contamination for several reasons. There is no official certification for these systems, and the company that sells them will typically run only a single test (for $250-300) which means they could easily misestimate the amount of actual contamination. This has actually happened in Paradise. So what happens is that your insurance pays for it, then they’re done. So if it turns out the system is inadequate, you are on your own. In other words, the financial incentive is designed to create a potentially hazardous situation. It’s much better for the water district to handle everything. One measure Paradise implemented was requiring new homes to have backflow check valves (at $3000-$4000 a piece). Sometimes FEMA money can pay for these.

E-cigarettes use poses a significand and avoidable health risk to young people in the United States. Besides increasing the possibility of addiction and long-term harm to brain development and respiratory health, e-cigarette use is associated with the use of other tobacco products that can do even more damage to the body. Even breathing e-cigarette aerosol that someone elso has exhaled poses potential health risks. Some people have suggested that use of e-cigarettes by young people might protect them from using cigarettes. There is no evidence to support this claim. E-cigarettes contain nicotine, ultrafine particles, heavy metals, and volatile organic compounds and poses a significant and avoidable health risk to youlng people in the United States.

Episode Summary:You’ve likely heard something about human pheromones. In this episode, Dr. Dan tackles this topic and discussing the following:Introduction to smell and volatile organic compounds (VOCs)Chemical communication in other organismsChemical communication in humansSummary and future outlookEpisode References:Story of Oscar the Cat: https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/nejmp078108See here for a review on odor-evoked memories: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/6/3/22/htm McClintock discovery of menstrual synchrony: https://www.nature.com/articles/229244a0Testosterone levels in men rise when smelling the shirt of a woman ovulating: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20424057Paper showing humans can smell fear: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12011790People who are happy give off different VOCs: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11153847VOCs and MHC proteins: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20356897Effect of VOCs on Mood: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10627087VOCs emitted from anxious individuals can make others anxious: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20929974Tears of sadness in women decrease sex drive in men: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21212322Infants recognize the smell of their mothers: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2717541/Certain VOCs can increase cooperation in others: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23717389

Learn about why researchers have broken down the smell of old books; new research that shows why your brain has a kind of Spider-sense; and the Panspermia theory that human life originally came from outer space. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: Researchers Have Broken Down the Smell of Old Books — https://curiosity.im/2V6WlkL Magic Or Medicine: Medieval Mysteries [Curiosity Podcast Episode] — https://curiosity.im/2trTo2y Seeing and Reacting to a Threat Doesn't Happen in the Order You Think — https://curiosity.im/2V7XjO2 The Panspermia Theory Says Humans Are From Outer Space — https://curiosity.im/2V98Cp9 If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.

So, what is Building Biology? I find many homeowners aren’t aware of this field, and yet it’s been around for a while, and can be a really helpful resource if you’re trying to create a home that supports your health and wellbeing. There is a lot that is do-able in your existing home, new build or renovation, that often doesn’t cost anymore but simply requires some knowledge and desire to put into practice. SHOW NOTES: Narelle McDonald is a certified Building Biologist & Feng Shui Consultant the founder of Healthy Living Spaces, President of the Australian Society of Building Biologists, and advisor for Chemfree Community. Her focus is on environmental health for the home with a special interest in children’s wellbeing. There are many elements in a building that can affect quality of life, physical health and emotional wellbeing. Improving our health in all aspects of our life is important as everything is interrelated. Building Biologists have long been aware of this and consider our homes our third skin because of this connection. Narelle is passionate about providing education and empowerment to those she works with to bring about positive lasting changes. Creating healthy buildings, conscious consumers and bringing balance and harmony. Narelle believes by combining both the science of Building Biology and the ancient art of Feng Shui this holistic approach enables us to create amazing spaces to flourish in. Some of the topics we discuss are: What Building Biology is. Some key mistakes homeowners make when renovating or building that can impact their own health and the quality of their home’s environment. How to work with a Building Biologist and find one that’s reputable. What are the simple ways to improve your home’s ability to support your health, whether building or renovating - that anyone can achieve. Some useful resources to learn more about Building Biology for your home. I often find homeowners can get super scared about this information … EMFs (or Electro Magnetic Fields), VOCs (or Volatile Organic Compounds), toxic substances etc. Narelle has some fantastic knowledge to share on how you, as an informed homeowner, can deal with this and educate yourself. This is about you being empowered as you create your sustainable home. Listen to Narelle’s actionable advice now. FOR RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST CLICK HERE

Your hosts, Duane Knickerbocker and Bill Small, get after it quickly today with the significance of things that may smell good in the house but could be tragically dangerous to children or pets. Some of those cleaners in your kitchen cabinet under the sink, they’re toxic but smell really good. Maybe good enough to want to eat or drink if you’re a small child who doesn’t know better. But wait, there’s even more that they address and it impacts everyone in the home. Air fresheners. Those things you plug in or pop up or peel off to make the home smell fresh. You know what they’re talking about. They smell great! They’re also potentially toxic to breathe. They’re called Volatile Organic Compounds. VOC’s. What you’re buying is the actual “off gassing” of these VOC’s. Doesn’t sound too healthy does it? It’s not! Don’t overdo it. Let fresh air carry some of the smell in your home without all the artificial and unhealthy smell. Phew, that’s just the opening. PG&E rebate programs are changing. What is it you need to do to make the most of it? Hint, reduce before you produce. It’s all there on the PG&E website or even the Brower Mechanical site. Watch the 9 steps to getting your house right for energy efficiency it’s easy to access and actually easy to do. Move forward one step at a time in a proper sequencing. Plan. Don’t reverse engineer your system. Do it right the first time. You save in so many ways. You’ll love the caller on blown in insulation and the response to her concerns about the speed with which the action could be taken. Secondly, the significance of the process to be sure you can trust the representative visiting your home gets a full discussion. There’s a reason for Brower sending you a brief bio on who it is that will be coming to your home. Finally, and so important is the discussion on time of use energy consumption so you know there’s a way you can save a fair amount of money if you play the game correctly. Summer cooling is one thing but wait until you hear the situation for winter heating. You’ll be very surprised. It’s a huge deal. For more info.. Brower Mechanical. 916-624-0808. On-Line at www.gosmallsolar.com.

Show Notes for April 2018 – Episode 20 Sorry for Audio Quality. I had a cold. Volatile Organic Compounds in Feces Associate With  Response to Dietary Intervention in Patients With Irritable Bowel  Syndrome – CGH Helicobacter pylori Eradication Reduces Risk for Metachronous Gastric Cancer in High-Risk Patients – NEJM Eosinophilic gastroenteritis and other eosinophilic gut diseases distal… Continue reading GI Pearls – March 2018 – Episode 20

Today's Guest Hero is Dr. Tamsin Lewis. You can find her at curoseven.com or @sportiedoc on Twitter. Hello, my cubicle conscious, open space surveyors, corner office respirators, home den inhalers, a nd coffee shop sighters. My name is Brock Armstrong, and I am… not the Workplace Hero. You see the reason the website for this podcast is www.workplacehero.me and not .com is because this podcast is about making you into a workplace hero and I want you to be reminded of that every time you visit the website, send me an email, or tell a friend about this podcast. And you will, right? Right? Before we dive in, I want to thank everyone who, at the time of this recording, has left a review on iTunes for the podcast. On the Canadian side: Dean Dwyer, elllietown, mijustiin, cawood1 and Elliotonitunes. On the #murican side: alex arrick, tdubs530, MAR150 and ukaserex. From the bottom of my workplace casual heart, I thank you all for your support. And without sounding too needy, if your name wasn’t on the list I just read, it would really help me out if you took a minute or two to give the podcast an iTunes boost. It is a small but meaningful way to show your support for the show. Just go to workplacehero.me/itunes and you will be directed right there! Easy! Ok, on with the topic at hand. I was listening to a Scientific American podcast a while ago and was excited to hear that a new study (released Aug 2016) had been done on how effective plants can be at cleaning the Volatile Organic Compounds from the air. As someone who has worked in extremely tightly sealed office buildings most of my life (you gotta keep that -30 degree Alberta air out somehow) I have often had a plant or two near my desk — but was only going on a hope and a dream that they were actually providing any benefit beyond covering up some coffee stains or overzealous permanent marker manoeuvres. The Scientific American podcast said, and I’m sure we can all agree, that Air pollution outside is easy to spot, hanging over the city, or puffing out of an exhaust pipe. But there's a lot of indoor air pollution, too, even if it's not as obvious. It's caused by volatile organic compounds or VOCs. Vadoud Niri, an analytical chemist at the State University of New York, Oswego says that they can come from building materials like paints, carpet, adhesives, vinyl floors, varnishes, solvents, personal care products, cleaning chemicals, air freshener, and even cosmetics. And that cosmetics part is what caught Niri's attention. One day he went to a nail salon with his wife and he noticed the smell of acetone and since he was doing air analysis at the time, he thought he might be able to do something about this issue. Niri figured one friendly and efficient way to get rid of acetone might be with houseplants. So he reviewed decades of literature and ran his own experiment, using an airtight chamber, and eight VOCs, in concentrations similar to those found in nail salons, against five common houseplants: a jade plant, a spider plant, a bromeliad, a Caribbean tree cactus, and what’s known as a Dracaena plant. Turns out, after a twelve-hour test, it was the bromeliad that gobbled up the most chemicals from the air. And the Dracaena beat out the others, sucking up a whopping 94 percent of the acetone. He presented the results at a meeting of the American Chemical Society, in Philadelphia. The paper is titled: Monitoring volatile organic compound removal by common indoor plants using solid phase microextraction and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry — if you are interested in looking it up… but I will read you some of the abstract now: Air pollution is one of the most important environmental threats to the health of the residents of all communities and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are among important air pollutants. These compounds are ubiquitous in the natural and industrialized world but are found in the highest concentrations in indoor environments. Some of the chemicals belonging to this group are benign to human health, or even necessary for normal physiological function. However, a substantial proportion of VOCs are detrimental to human health with effects ranging from dizziness and nausea to central nervous system damage, various forms of cancer, and even death. Because of the serious nature of VOCs as a health hazard, many remediation techniques are being developed. Phytoremediation, the use of plants to mitigate environmental pollution, offers one of the most practical solutions regarding cost and efficacy. Five common plants were selected for this study. Three treatment conditions were applied to each plant to isolate active VOC uptake mechanisms; covering the base of the plant in foil, no foil, and the use of a light. Of the five plants; Guzmania lingulata showed the greatest overall VOC uptake in light treatment conditions with more than 80% removal of six of the eight target VOC compounds over a twelve-hour sampling period. All tested plants showed less than 50% removal of dichloromethane or trichloromethane over the twelve-hour sampling period. My office now is literally littered with plants. Some of the plants from the study to clean my air and some that I just like looking at. Which in and of itself gives us some benefits as well. As the author of the study Biophilia: Does Visual Contact with Nature Impact on Health and Well-Being? said (in a rather lackluster scientific way) “It seems worthwhile to encourage interaction with plants, both outdoor and indoor, as this is likely to be a useful environmental initiative with a sound cost-benefit profile.” Enter Dr. Tamsin Lewis (who asked me to tell you guys that she is fighting a bit of a cold so forgive her croakiness). Yeah, I think this concept of indoor pollution is increasingly being recognized as a problem. There are two problems, the circulation of the air and the air conditioning which dries out the skin and the mucus membranes of the nose and the mouth. But it’s lack of air flow and lack of air quality, which can include things like a high content of carbon dioxide, which can effect even how we breathe, for example. So, there are lots of different parts there. It’s ventilation and really how strong the air conditioning would be in the office as well. I am Dr. Tam, as I like to call myself, or otherwise known as @SportieDoc where you can find me on Twitter. I run a company called CuroSeven in the UK which will be relaunching as FIBR Health in a month. Essentially what I do is run a medical and wellness consultancy where we follow a functional medicine model. Where we take people’s information and data and make it meaningful and try to get people on a better path to health and longevity. My background is a Medical Doctor “generalist” then I went into psychiatry and then after that I took time to become an elite triathlete - how that happened is a long story - but I took four years out and raced at the highest level of triathlon and Ironman. It taught me a lot about resilience, taught me a lot about physiology, taught me a lot about psychology and interpersonal relationships, and I have used all of that to change the way I approach my patient care today. I asked Tamsin to sum up the biggest health issues that she sees arising directly from our office jobs. So at the moment we see a lot of people that have... well the main things that I see are people with chronic low energy, I see a lot of people with low libido, I see people who just can’t stay awake in the afternoon, I see people with chronic mild pain issues, lower back pain, that sort of thing. And on a separate point many people with mood and anxiety issues which is compounded by the day to day environment in which most people, a lot of people, we have to be in an office environment and spend a lot of time there. So I would definitely like to address some of the issues that come up on a day to day basis in their environment of their office. Now most of those things on that list didn’t surprise me but you mentioned libido. I don’t want to derail our conversation too much but I don’t think that is something that most people connect with their office job. No! It’s true. I mean it’s complicated because it depends on the relationships with the people you have on your team but certainly, libido comes into it. Probably because of the sitting position. I don’t know if anyone’s ever addressed that, certainly not on your show yet but when people sit, they normally scrunch over slightly, they compress their certain um… genital regions. They change the temperature in the genitals, and that all indirectly can impact the sex organs essentially. So yes, that is one aspect. The other aspect is related to the diurnal variation in light exposure in the office. And we know that light exposure can affect testosterone production. So getting that bright light in the morning is very important for turning on the brain to tell the testes to produce a healthy amount on testosterone. So often when people aren’t getting that blue light exposure from a natural source, or even from an unnatural source like a light box, the testosterone production can go down - in susceptible individuals. I’m not saying this will happen to everyone but it certainly can come up as an issue. I am so happy that Tamsin brought up lighting, which I plan to tackle in a full episode but let's take a quick closer look at that while we are here anyway. There is a recent (at the time of recording this) NY Times article called Light Bulbs That Help You Sleep by Ronda Kaysen that sums some of the issues up nicely. It says that light interferes with our circadian rhythm, the internal clock that tells our bodies when to sleep, when to wake up and when to eat. Stare at a bright, bluish light — like the one from your smartphone, tablet or television — and your body sends a signal to your brain to stop producing melatonin, a powerful hormone that helps you fall asleep. Disruptions to our circadian rhythm can affect weight loss, libido, mood and sleep patterns. And chronic sleep deprivation can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and even certain cancers. That blue glare is not limited to our electronic devices either. LED bulbs used in desk lamps and ceiling fixtures also emanate blue light, even if it appears to you as white. It doesn’t take a scientist to notice that incandescent bulbs feel soothing, like the light from a candle or campfire, while LED lights often feel like you’re staring at a fricken blowtorch. Dr. Tam and I talked about how lighting is often chosen. I know there are a lot of issues around office lighting which is often chosen because of their low price not because of their high human compatibility. Correct and we do a lot of strip lighting which is just terrible for the brain in general but people don’t think about it, do they? It’s only once you are out of that environment and immersed in the world of wellness and biohacking that you start to look at things more closely and realize that they do in fact impact your health and how you feel on an hour to hour basis. Without getting too deep into lights and wavelengths and stuff like that, what is the issue with those cheaper types of strip lighting? Is it the flickering, the colour intensity, what is it about those lights that is really doing the damage? I think it is both of the things that you mentioned. I think it is also the fact that our bodies aren’t meant to be exposed to that light intensity for that long of periods of time. I think that a short amount in the morning of that blue light is good, but as you say, it isn’t all the right wavelengths. And also that it is literally on all day and there is no variation in the lighting at all. So all of the above. Like I said, there is no change in that lighting quality at all, so that’s definitely one aspect. And that fact that people are in that environment for so long and that is often the only light they see especially in the winter months. So as opposed to the sun moving across the sky and changing colour and position and all that stuff, we’re sitting, static, under these lights that aren’t moving, aren’t varying, aren’t changing. Interesting! And obviously, also you get the impact of the computer light which has well-researched effects on circadian rhythm and secretion of different hormones that are light dependant. So, I bet some of you can guess what your homework is going to be… But I won’t get ahead of myself! One potential solution seems to be to replace (as they say in the New York Times article) the blowtorch with the campfire, especially after sundown. As technology for LED lighting improves, companies are making more dynamic lighting that adjusts as you go through your day. And last spring, Apple introduced the Night Shift function in iOS so users can reduce the amount of blue light emitted from iPad and iPhone screens. A company called Lighting Science has produced a line of what they call “biological bulbs” that give off light meant to work in sync with your circadian rhythm, instead of disrupting it. Philips has a line of smart bulbs called Hue, with preprogrammed settings that can transform light in a room from a warm, reddish glow to a cool, aqua blue one. And this is a cool feature - you can program it to slowly turn the lights on in a bedroom to wake you up in the morning. Which doesn’t help if you are like me and sometimes sleep with a Zorro-like mask on. Ronda concluded her New York Times article with this: With a few bulbs, I transformed the bedrooms in my home into warm, cozy cocoons of glowing yellow light. Although the mood has done nothing to convince the children that their beds are not trampolines, they do seem to drift off to sleep faster. As for me, no amount of soothing light in a bedroom helps if I’m binge watching “The Affair” all night in the living room. But at least it’s a start. And that has been my experience as well. I diligently wear my blue blocking glasses, I have a blue blocking screen protector on my iPad and always have the “Night Shift” feature in iOS enabled but my solid night’s sleep is still offset 50/50 by a crappy night’s sleep. But much like taking a multivitamin, it’s gotta be helping… right? Back to Dr. Tam Ok, so we’ve talked about light and air quality which are things that people don’t feel like they have a lot of control over. But I feel like you might have some solutions for us to minimize the damage from both of those things. Yeah, I encourage people to improve their circadian exposure to light. So I encourage people to have a light box on their desk which they can use in the morning, which emits blue light, and to use that for at least 20 minutes. And we encourage people to get out into the natural light at lunch time if at all possible. Go out into some green space and take some deep breathes - which will tie into the air quality. I also encourage people to install software on their computer or wear blue light blocking glasses any time after 4:00 pm. I wouldn’t encourage that before then because it can make you sleepy. There is software you can get, I know we use f.lux which takes out blue light from the screen. Those are a few things. I also have people use little mini ionizers which improves the local air quality environment around you. You can get them on Amazon - little ionizer boxes. You could encourage your boss to get a larger unit that cleans the air like the HEPA air filter brand - but that is a separate question. But yeah, those are the main things that we would do. How about plants? Would you encourage people to put plants around their desk to improve the air quality? It certainly does, but it’s whether you are allowed to. That’s what we come up against with many people - they aren’t actually allowed to use or have plants in the office for, you know, quote/hashtag #healthandsafety reasons, which is nonsense really. But by all means, if you are allowed to have one, get a plant. Normally this is where I would give you your homework assignment, but instead I asked Tamsin: if she could get you Workplace Heroes to implement one thing into your workspace, right away, what would it be? The least expensive option would be to have the mini ionizer air box on your desk. The second would be to have a stool, like a Salli stool where by everything you do at the desk, that is encouraged by the Salli stool (and I have no affiliate relationship with them I have just used them) I found that it improves people’s health generally on a daily basis. So that is the one I would advocate, changing your sitting position and really encouraging you to think about your posture in front of your desk. So there you have it. We have another expert vote for minimizing our habitual sitting in a static position at our desks. We may feel like the air and light around us are out of our control and that we are at the mercy of the building super intendants but that is not entirely true. With an air filter, some plants and some carefully chosen light bulbs, and maybe a funky pair of yellow glasses, we can become the Hero over our own invisible pollutants. ** Workplace Hero is researched, written, narrated and recorded by me Brock Armstrong with editing help and voice acting from Eleanor Cohen. Podcast logo by Ken Cunningham and music by my old band, The Irregular Heartbeats. Today Heroic idea came from the New York Times article Light Bulbs That Help You Sleep by Ronda Kaysen and Scientific American’s podcast A Green Solution to Improve Indoor Air Quality by Christopher Intagliata. You can find a transcript of today’s podcast at www.workplacehero.me/hidden

We're not talking toll house cookies here. That's a very different "good". Yummy good. You know those great smelling little things you "pop-up" around the house or the "plug-ins" that fill the house with floral aroma of Irish fields in the summertime? Yes. Those really fragrant smelly things that started way back in the day with sprays and little green trees. They can emit toxic VOC's. Volatile Organic Compounds. The very stuff you smell your house up with could actually be polluting your interior air! Not good. That's just the tip of the iceberg for a really great show. Did you know there was a "Green MLS" for real estate agents? More on that in the show too. Also, there's still time to have Brower do an audit on your home energy system to see if solar may benefit you AND qualify for the federal rebate this year! Brower Mechanical is a consultant based company doing what's best for your home's energy system and your peace of mind. Contact Duane at 916-624-0808 or on line at www.gosmallsolar.com.