If you’re remodeling or renovating an existing home, or building a new house, you DON’T want to miss this show. Our guest, Jay Watts, has been the VP for technical services and special projects at AFM Safecoat (the leading provider of environmentally responsible, sustainable, and non-polluting paints, stains, wood finishes, sealers, adhesives, and related green building products) since 1994. AFM has been providing 100 percent toxicity-free multi-surface solutions for over 40 years.
Today, we’re going beyond volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and digging deep into the chemical toxins present in today’s paints, primers, and other building products including solvents, heavy metals, chemical residuals, carcinogens, and other harmful preservatives. Jay explains the difference between an MSDS and an SDS is and who it really benefits. Jay leaves us with tips on hiring and engaging contractors, the difference between low and zero VOC, the importance of product sampling, and he reveals the biggest sources of pollution in our homes.
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Episode Links:
- AFM Safecoat
- Formaldehyde Reduction Attenuation Test
- AFM Quickspec Worksheet
- AFM Safecoat Acrylacq
- AFM products
- Non Toxic Environments (podcast)
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Narrator
How would you like to improve your health and keep your family safe? You're listening to the healthy home hacks podcast where we firmly believe enjoying optimal health shouldn't be a luxury. healthy home authorities and husband and wife team Ron and Lisa will help you create a home environment that will level up your health. It's time to hear from the experts. listen in on honest conversations and gain the best tips and advice. If you're ready to dive in and improve your well-being and increase your energy, you're in the right place. All right, here are your hosts, Val biologists, authors, media darlings, vicarious vegans and avocado aficionados, Ron and Lisa Beres.
Ron Beres
If you are remodeling, renovating, or building a home, you don't want to miss today's show. Our special guest today is the former co-owner of the San Diego based design firm Shaw watts design. Jay has been a VP for technical services and special projects at AFM Safe coat. Since 1994 FM safe code is a leading provider of the environmentally responsible, sustainable and non-polluting paints, stains wood finishes, sealers adhesives, and related green building products. They've been providing 100% toxicity free multi surface solutions for 30 years. Not a licensed contractor but a dedicated di wire. He takes the approach of testing every product to determine its health worthiness and you hear that health worthiness and efficacy.
Lisa Beres
We've known Jay for years and worked closely with him during the six years that we own green nest comm j is a wealth of knowledge. And as we put together our dream list of podcast guests, Jay was at the top and he's here to shed some green light on the products we use every day in our homes and office spaces since after all guys. The EPA states that indoor air on average is two to five times more polluted than the outdoor air. Let me repeat that the indoor air in our homes and our offices is two to five times more polluted than the outdoor air.
Ron Beres
So welcome to the show, Jay!
Lisa Beres
Welcome, Jay.
Ron Beres
Oh, my goodness back in the greenness days I would call you some of the trickiest questions and you just throw out the answer, so easy Jay.
Jay Watts
First, thank you for having me on the show I really feel honored to be on the show today and you're right Ron.
Ron Beres
That was very modest Jay. I always said you�re a role model you certainly are now. I was always eager to talk to you because
Jay Watts
I knew you were going to try to throw me a trick question, right? So, I had to be really ready for that.
Lisa Beres
Yeah, Jay always had an answer and we got so many customer questions because we sold so much of the AFM products and other products and so was great we all learned a lot because the consumers would just like you guys listening would have questions that maybe we hadn't thought of before and hadn't approached so Jay little encyclopedia but it's real treat to have him here today. I know you guys listening are excited so we're just going to dive right in. So, VOC�s, volatile organic compounds, which we talked about so much on this show, they pollute the air and they've been linked to respiratory and memory problems. Some paint manufacturers such as AFM safe code, who we're talking to today, eliminate toxic ingredients such as solvents, heavy metals, chemical residues, formaldehyde and other harmful preservatives from their zero VOC paint. We know AFM Safecoat was originally formulated for physicians to assist chemically sensitive patients, those with chemical sensitivities and to help in solving the problems associated with something called sick building syndrome if you've never heard of that, but AFM Safecoat was green before green became mainstream. Jay, can you share with our listeners a little history of AFM.
Jay Watts
It goes back all those years. We've been around now close to 40 years and the original founder of AFM was a paint manufacturer here in Southern California. And in the course of his career, he had exposed himself to all the different chemicals that are used in the architectural coatings world he was what's called a toll manufacturer, which basically means that if you want a coating to be made any kind of coating that within regulation in California, you could have him make that for you. And so, he was asked by different companies to make all kinds of different coatings and day in and day out exposure as you both know day in day out exposure to these chemicals can have a huge impact on your immune system. Well. He got sick and of course back then there was no field of Environmental Medicine at the time. If there were some doctors that were very few in the country, he was able to connect with the physicians that are in Texas with the American environmental health clinic in Dallas, Texas. And there's, they were able to determine fairly easily because they knew what work you had been doing. But they were determined what was affecting his immune system in a negative way. And basically, they told them what you've got to change what you're doing, or you're not going to be doing it very much longer. He came back to California with kind of this whole new vision about what he needed to do. And of course, what also came to light at the time was his employees at about 40 employees, and they were calling in sick all the time, oh, wow, boy, oh, boy, something's connecting here, you know, I'm sick, they're sick, what the heck is going on. So, he started with his chemists started to play around with the formulations to try to bring down the toxicity as best they could. And we were fortunate because some of the people that he had met in Dallas when he was at treatment, were willing to be on what's called canary in the coal mine. And so, we were able to take the initial formulations and go back to these patients and have them tell us whether or not these formulations were going to be acceptable. And of course, there was a lot of No, they're not go back to the lab and work on those. And so over a period of time, it�s kind of ratchet down the ingredients, we got to a kind of a basic database of ingredients, we felt were the most tolerable for the most people. I think what this kind of leads to in the discussion is about the whole idea of chemical sensitivity. And what that is, well, of course, what that simply means is that your immune system, which our immune systems are a wonderful thing that we have here to kind of protect us. But if your immune system is repeatedly attacked, by outside forces, in this case, chemicals, your immune system has the ability to kind of fight that off. But if it's too much over a short, long period of time, where you're working in an occupation, where you're getting exposed to every day, or if there was a massive exposure. Anyway, the immune system basically tips over. Yeah, and once it tips over, then you wind up being sensitive to a whole bunch of different things.
Lisa Beres
Yeah, you mentioned the Environmental Health Center in Dallas, and yes, William Rea, who, a lot of people, if anyone's had chemical sensitivities, they know his name. And that is something that they treated right? They treated chemically sensitive people. And would Dr. Rea discuss something called the rain barrel, so like, our bodies are like a rain barrel, and they fill up with a sustenance coming from everywhere, whether it's the air, we breathe, the water, we drink, the products, we use the food we eat. And then pretty soon, when we have too much toxic overload, there's a crap, that would be like a spill like a little crack, maybe that would be an allergy, maybe it would present itself as an allergy is saying, hey, something's a little toxic here. But as you get more and more toxic exposure, and your body burden gets too high, that's when you start to have real issues. That can be anything from respiratory issues all the way to cancer, and chemical sensitivities, somewhere in there. And so, I think it's a really good thing for listeners to kind of have a visual of that, and understand how we go from point A to point Z, there is a process and your body does speak to you. And it is really important to listen to those signs that it's giving you.
Jay Watts
I agree. You mentioned the barrel, and I was just thinking exactly that same image of the barrel.
Lisa Beres
Yeah, I always think of him when I think of that.
Ron Beres
Yeah, ever meet him. Did you meet Dr. Rea?
Jay Watts
I never did. I was in a conference call one time, and he passed away a couple years ago. So yeah, I was in a conference call with him. But as close as I got, you know, you've seen his books. He's got the two big books on chemical sensitivity. They're both about two inches thick each. And if you're of a mind to get into the science of this, it's pretty fascinating.
Lisa Beres
Yeah, we met him at a Building Biology conference a couple years ago.
Jay Watts
The whole issue is very personal. Because one person within families, one person�s sensitivity has nothing to do with another person's sensitivity. And so, we see it all the time. And if you remember, during the greenness days, you would talk to a client who the wife or the husband was sensitive and the other person wasn't right. And there can be a little bit of a disconnect.
Lisa Beres
For sure. That's a big issue. I want listeners to really hear that because if you're having issues and you're someone in your family isn't or vice versa, that doesn't mean that there's not toxicity in your home and your environment, that we are all different. We all come into the world different and were raised differently, have different exposures, women versus men, we talked about this on a mold show that we had, because a lot of times with mold issues, the same thing happens. Maybe not everyone in the house is sick from the mold, but some people are. And so, it's always good. It's back to trusting your intuition and your gut. Because you do know you mentioned when you're out of the environment, that's a clue to you're out of the environment, you feel better, you go back into the environment and you keep getting sick. That's also a sign that Gosh, maybe something's not right with this environment. Maybe I need to look at instead of just loading up on drugs and pills, maybe I need to look at my environment.
Jay Watts
Yeah. Real quick story I was at a local bank or a big bank and an old building was built in the 60s. And they really didn't go into the bank. I usually do my banking outside. But I went into the bank one day and I'm in there and I walk in and go, something's wrong in here. And I was standing in line I was eavesdropping in the car in front was talking to the teller and the teller she was mentioning, and she wasn't feeling good. She had this weird, I come to work, and I'm okay. But about middle of the day, I start to feel a little sleepy and it�s kind of headachy. And so, when I stood Scott up to the front, and I said, I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself, or were hearing what you're saying. And I said, when you actually leave and go home, do you start to feel better? And she said, Well, yeah, I do. And in the morning,
Lisa Beres
Who doesn�t feel better when they go home from work?
Jay Watts
So yeah, mostly. Well, anyway, so I said, Well, I don't know if you noticed this, because I got the awareness. I said, I think this building is moldy. I think we got a serious mold problem here. Did you see visible signs of mold? I didn't see it. But you know, the smell. Yeah. You can smell it. And I go, there's mold in here. And she goes, Oh, really? And I said, this is what's affecting your immune system here. You need to be aware of this. I swear, within a month. It's a big high-rise building. I drove by it, and they had put the mold sheeting over the all of the building.
Lisa Beres
Wow.
Ron Beres
You�re like a soothsayer, Jay.
Lisa Beres
They thought they met an angel.
Jay Watts
I immediately stopped banking with them.
Lisa Beres
Like, I'm not getting moldy.
Jay Watts
I won't mention who they are. Protect the guilty. Oh, my God.
Lisa Beres
No, that's great. That is one of those divine timing moments. And don't you guys sell a mold prevention?
Jay Watts
Actually, we do we sell�You know that area of materials is a little tricky, because you're dealing with mold is a whole kind of segment of the business. There's a lot of rules and regulations, what you can can't do what you can and can't say, we do make a product that is actually a maintenance sealer, you actually spray it on a surface that's been decontaminated first, and then the sealer allows that service to resist any mold or mildew that want to come back. But it's only good for about six months, and then you got to redo it again. So okay, a lot of people, they want a more permanent solution. Oh, gotcha. They've got mold behind their walls, they want to take the walls down, take out the mold, and they want to spray something or decorate or treat it so that once they close it up, they don't have to think about it anymore. And of course, I'm always saying, well, these are kind of the situations where people are trying to put a band aid on something Oh, yeah, it really makes more sense to me that if we've got some kind of moisture intrusion problem, we need to figure out where that is, yeah, and we need to trigger that and get that done. Instead of worrying.
Lisa Beres
I feel like that could be our new podcast title, Run, get to the root. Oh, I like I feel like I say this on every podcast, whether we're talking about mold or other health issues, it's like, we live in a society that really likes to mask and treat whatever the problem of one symptom is, whether it's something in our home or our health, rather than getting to the root, I know you guys sell the Penetrating Water Stop, and all your water barrier nontoxic products. And that's a great example of a product that could actually get to the root and treat the root versus just, Hey, what do we see on the surface? Let's try to fix that.
Ron Beres
That's very pointless. Yeah, I'm curious to know, we talked about trends of this bank that's basically covering themselves up protecting itself getting rid of the mold. But what trends are you seeing right now in terms of home projects, and renovations? Do the lock downs and ever getting out of the lock downs? What did you see? And what are you seeing now emerging as we leave the lock downs?
Jay Watts
Well, it's interesting because we saw absolutely no slowdown in terms of our sales and a couple things that meant to me there was people with time on their hands that they didn't expect they would have a lot of people working at home and the opportunity to kind of take a look at what could be done and what needed to be done. I'm perfect example of that. My wife was telling me all the time now it's time for you to get busy on this stuff. Because I was home working at home for about four months, right at the age
Ron Beres
Were you working? I see a drum set behind you.
Jay Watts
I don't have any drum sets at home. I keep my drum sets in my office.
Ron Beres
Oh, it's your office. Okay. Yeah.
Jay Watts
So, I have my guitars at home, but I'm not playing those very much anymore. What I'm getting at Ron is that there was a lot of time for people to work on projects. And so yeah, we saw that people were now getting busy with all of that right? And there's nothing that I see that slowing this down post COVID I think people are going to continue as you know, we're having a huge real estate boom right now. Yeah, I talked to a good real estate buddy of mine and he's selling homes where people are bidding it up by hundreds of 1000s of bands and the high-end stuff in Del Mar. There may be 10 offers and everyone's bid nuts.
Lisa Beres
Crazy, right? Yeah, homes are flying off. Our producer just bought a home.
Jay Watts
But the other thing just one last thought I'm having the other side of that equation is this whole tiny house movement. Yeah, right. People are, well of course the aging of America we got these families that are shrinking and so they don't need all the space they used to need and so now they're downsizing and so the time Tiny House movement is took on a huge movement huge.
Lisa Beres
I've written some articles on that. And there's a company Escape homes; I'll give a little shout out. They do a very sustainable, tiny home, but like it's a vacation home, but it's a tiny home. It's under 400 square feet. And everything. I mean, they do an impeccable job, not just from a green sustainability perspective, but from a health perspective to I don't know if you're familiar with them, Jay, but check them out.
Jay Watts
I haven't heard of them. I�m kind of interested in that. The other thing I want to digress from the discussion, but you guys aware that there are 3d printed homes now you can actually print a home? So, it was kind of looking around at the world of building to see what people are doing. And this is the new thing. And there's a couple of companies that are doing it now. But the one that I'm familiar with, is a company out in Texas, they're called ICON. I haven't talked to any other people. I've only written up some letter emails to try to get into their crib a little bit and figure out what they're about. But they have some excellent videos on what they're doing with 3d printed homes. And one of the things I'm excited about there is the ability because it's very affordable. This whole housing challenge we have with the homeless, yeah, thinking this might be a solution. And in fact, they are actually working on a project in Austin, Texas, which are headquartered in Austin, Texas have a fairly large homeless community project.
Lisa Beres
Yeah, we were there recently. And I was shocked how much homelessness downtown.
Jay Watts
It seems so funny to say print houses.
Lisa Beres
I guess my brain doesn't comprehend.
Jay Watts
Yeah, well, if you go to their website, when you get a chance, go to the website and look at the video and you'll see the whole video on how it's gone. It's pretty amazing.
Lisa Beres
Amazing. bizarre. Yeah, I don't really totally understand 3d printing. Do you choose what materials you print with?
Jay Watts
Oh, actually, no, it basically what they're using is you're using concrete, okay, and they have the computer set up with the design and then the machine kind of follows the pattern, alright, and it goes around like this and kind of okay, lays it, lays it down in rows, right. And then you can come in later and you can put stucco over it or plaster over it or whatever you want to use.
Lisa Beres
It�s a real house. It's not a paper house?
Jay Watts
It�s not a paper. Okay, you have to put a roof on it. They don't make the roof, but you have to put a roof on it.
Lisa Beres
And they don�t make the roof? That's funny. That�s on you.
Jay Watts
The roof is a different kind of old school, you got to do old school rafters and you know, all that other stuff. In terms of basic wall forms. It's all printed. And it's pretty exciting. I see a great future there. The cost is incredibly affordable, relatively speaking. I mean, I think they're building these little houses for the homeless for under $5,000. Wow. I mean, it's crazy.
Lisa Beres
Is it nontoxic, Jay? Hopefully they're using healthy material.
Jay Watts
It's a good question. Because material selection, it kind of goes that way. And the closer you get to what I would call rock or stone. To me, that's a decision that helps on the health side of decision. You know, of course you get to the natural material. Yeah, I think you're off to a good start.
Lisa Beres
I think you are and not only from a health perspective, but from a long-term withstanding, right. I mean, the ancient structures were all made of stone, they're still standing. Yeah, we have colleagues that Paula and Robert Baker Laporte, who own Eco Nest. And we've seen him do presentations on just the craftsmanship of homes and how they were built so much better. And the beauty and the longevity and how much we'd be better off as a society. If we were building the homes, like to that high quality, they'd be staying longer, people would be passing them down to their children more. And now you've got homes that can be taken up in a tornado pretty easily, because houses are built really quick. And they're just put up and a lot of inexpensive materials, which we're going to get into a little bit on the show, too. What are some of the issues with these materials that are being used that are loaded with formaldehyde and all of these other chemicals?
Jay Watts
You probably get your question answered there sufficiently for you.
Ron Beres
You did I'm trying to figure out, you answered in a way where I got 10 answers. That�s wonderful though, Jay.
Lisa Beres
Well, Jay and I talked before the show, and we were laughing so hard, because we were like, yeah, we're both guilty of the whole, you're working from home, you're more time at home and all of a sudden you're looking at this house that you really didn't pay attention to before and you're like cut that needs painting or that's why didn't I put shows up there you know, and so I think everybody's in that boat where the projects were always there, but now we're working with more time at home, we're noticing it and then you start on one and then you go to the next one and then you kind of get on a roll.
Jay Watts
So I think the other thing that was really fascinating to me was there a lot of people doing their own home gardens, planting their own vegetables and we had an incredible run on one of the coatings that AFM makes called Dyno Seal, which is commonly used as a foundation and roofing coating but it's really good for the planter boxes to keep the soil and the water from migrating into your wood planter box and segregating the wood. So, people were buying Dyno Seal and sealing the inside of their planter boxes before they put their dirt in. Oh, yeah, right. I really love that. Because a, they're growing their own food. Yeah. All right. And I think that's a really good thing to be able to do. And just, it's one of those projects where you really want to do it, but you get distracted.
Lisa Beres
And now with the food getting so Frankenfood with all the GMOs, I mean, my God, they have GMO salmon now, it's just crazy, I can't even. So, it's becoming more and more important to grow your own food just so that you weren't having pesticides, and GMOs and all the weird stuff that showing up in our food. But Jay, you reminded me just now what you said. And I want to tell the listeners this about AFM Safecoat, because they may not know is that your products, most of them create this extremely tight barrier from chemical off gassing. And it's through this process called molecular bonding. And I know you guys even have independent tests that show that say your safe code zero VOC paint reduces formaldehyde transmission by up to 90%. So, this alone, you guys is reason to use AFM's products. And I know this isn't a commercial or plug and you're not paying for this show. But we really love the brand. Yes, the brand and believe in it. But can you shed a little light on that technology?
Jay Watts
I think it was an interesting, not that we went out to do this to actually become a, what I call a remediation company, because we are asked, probably almost 50% of our work now is with people who have made a decision that's not working out for them. And then they need to solve the problem. And so, they've come to us to help deal with that. I'm always a little bit saddened that we're having to come in and the back end of a project and take care of it when another decision might have made it easier. But what we decided we needed to do is thumb and you alluded to it, Lisa, several years ago, we decided to do a formaldehyde, what we call a frat test, or formaldehyde reduction attenuation test. And what we did there real simply, by the way, it's posted on our website on the frequently asked questions, page links. We took a piece of MDF medium density fiberboard and we measured exactly what was coming off the surface. It wasn't an ambient air test. And we measured it got a reading. And then we went through the protocol of using our primer and our paint. And then our clear finishes for clear finishes. We tested, we coated the surface with three coats, and then we measured it and the reductions were as you alluded to very dramatic. In a couple cases, we reduced formaldehyde to 100% of the surface. Wow. Yeah, I mean even so people ask well, that's great with formaldehyde. But man, there's like hundreds of other chemicals. How you doing on that count? Yeah. And I said, Well, there's literally 1000s of chemicals that are used in the coating�s world. And then if you have chemical a and chemical B, and chemical c all kind of mixing with each other in an evaporative environment, then you've got another kind of compound and you can possibly figure out what's going on with that it'd be impossible. Yeah, but what we thought would made sense to take him on formaldehyde, because the formaldehyde molecule is fairly small, relative to some of the larger poisonous molecules, like benzene, Italian lien, their molecules are bigger. So, the concept in real general terms was we're going to build a net. And the net is going to keep formaldehyde from coming up through the net, right? And those bigger molecules, you know, formaldehyde is the size of a pea, and benzene is the size of an orange. So that benzene molecule is going to be sequestered. It's going to be blocked to okay. People say Well, did you prove it and I there's no hard science on it. We don't have the ability to test at that level, it would require a long, long, long, long, really dedicated approach. That would be expensive. And so, we had to decide.
Lisa Beres
Yeah, everyone wants to say formaldehyde, and to be honest, Jay, I mean, it's the most prevalent indoor air pollutant is that it in our floorboards, insulation paints. I mean, it's an air freshener. It's in so many products in your home. And of course, we're talking about paint and the wallboard and things that you're actually sealing in. So, I love that. But Jay, would you be open to taking a call from a caller?
Jay Watts
I didn't know we were going to do that. And I'm excited for that. Yeah.
Lisa Beres
All right. Well, we have Heidi on the line. Heidi Are you there and welcome to the show. Hello. Hi, Heidi. I think you cut off a little there.
Caller, Heidi
Sorry. I'm here. Oh, great. We're so happy to have you. What is your question for Jay? Just trying to figure out you know, when you're budgeting for a remodel, you want to be able to do all the things the right way, but a budget is a budget. So how should I prioritize a kitchen remodel? What would you say like the most dire most important thing to put on the top of the list and kind of go down from there?
Lisa Beres
That's a great question.
Jay Watts
Yeah, it is a great question. Here's how I talk about it. I like to think of make the analogy of your interior being like your skin. Your body, our biggest organ. And so I always want to make sure that we're making decisions on where to spend our money and how to spend our money that we don't cut ourselves short at the end of the project at the end of the project is all the decoration work, that's painting the ceilings, painting the walls, painting your cabinets, doing your floor, I consider those services to be your skin, right? And that's where we want to really take care of business. What that can mean is you may be able to make some compromises with other parts of a project the way for example, what are we building the cabinets out of? Is there some room to move there in terms of our money? What are we doing for a countertop, is there something we can do budget wise that will help us to kind of keep that in under control, so that when we're ready to do the decorative stuff, we're on top of that completely? On top of that, kitchens are pretty big deal, or most probably expensive investment you're going to make in your bathroom in your kitchens, because you've got all those cabinets, very expensive, you got your countertops, very expensive. So, there's a lot of research you need to do. But I would just say make sure that the last thing you do is the healthiest thing you can do. the healthiest thing you can do. Yeah. You know, on a counter, it's what we're spraying on the cabinets. It's what we're spraying on the cabinets. It's the paint on the walls and ceilings, and then your floor. What are you doing with your floor?
Lisa Beres
Yeah, so Heidi, did that answer your question kind of making health a priority, but as Jay saying, like, kind of leave those decisions of the last? Yeah, that makes complete sense. Okay, so go get that beautiful kitchen and be able to breathe healthy with your, with whoever lives with your family? Yeah. Well, thank you.
Caller, Heidi
Awesome. Thank you so much,
Lisa Beres
Heidi.
Ron Beres
Wow. Well say as you just witnessed, our listeners are pretty savvy. And they know a lot of things out there. For example, they're really familiar with MSDS already. Yeah, but you're going to go into detail about SDA, and how this is useful. And who is it really, for?
Jay Watts
Yeah, it was a material safety data sheet. Now they've shortened it to safety data sheets, and the format for those has changed as well. And so now what you'll see is you'll see a multi-page canopy up to nine or 10 pages of information, which is all important. For the same single reason. It's important, not so much for the consumer. It's really for people who are in the industry that are exposed to the chemicals day in and day out. And equally important is for emergency response. So, when someone's looking at a material safety data sheet, most of the time, what they're really concerned about, let me look at the ingredient list, I want to look at the ingredient list. And depending on your formulations, depending on proprietary interests in your formulations, and depending on the amount of chemical in the formulation, you're not going to see complete transparency, to be very frank. And I say this, in all honesty, I'm not completely what I would, in my term of transparency, say I'm completely transparent, because I have some very proprietary formulations that I don't want anyone to take, I just don't and I know it could happen. So, I have to be careful about that. But at the same time, I say that, but I also say now I want you to remember what I told you about my history. And that is those ingredients, whether I devotion 100% or not, I promise you that I have tested those ingredients, with all kinds of people with problems, maybe you don't have. And even though they may have VOC that's the other thing we get another discussion on. But even though there may be some VOC ingredients in there, I've worked that out. People say do you test on animals? And I go, are you kidding me? I only test on people. I would never test on an animal. Exactly. So, I try to buffer that because I think people now want it's like food. You want to say the word, but you want to see every ingredient. And I'm not quite there yet with that and whether I ever be I don't know, because that's a decision that's a little bit above my pay scale. But nevertheless, I feel really comfortable when I talk because I have talked about this all the time with people I've tried to be as Frank and as honest as I can when I tell them exactly what's going on. But to answer the question, Ron, Material Safety Data Sheets aren't really for consumers. They're really for people in the industry and people who are emergency responders. That's really what they're about.
Lisa Beres
As far as toxicity don�t, they really only mentioned acute symptoms anyway, pretty much. Yeah, not going to tell you like in 10 years from now.
Jay Watts
No, no, there's no long term. There's no long term, respiratory or?
Lisa Beres
And now legally. Do manufacturers have to show you that if you requested or is that optional?
Jay Watts
It's pretty much optional. It is. Oh, wow. Thank you have to I think it's optional.
Lisa Beres
We were talking about. Yeah, we had a bedding mattress manufacturer an organic mattress manual. And it was really interesting to so much of that is they don't have to tell you what flame retardant chemicals they put in the mattress, they only have to tell you yes, it met the test, the smolder test; the fire-retardant test. But oh, we don't have to tell you what we use it was these cancer-causing chemicals or not? Honestly, if it's something healthy like wool, they're going to tell you right there if they don't tell you they're probably hiding something. Right? Guys are very transparent. I believe you have the safety data sheets on your website for every product, correct?
Jay Watts
Yeah, we do. And we do list the ingredients on like I said, in Section three, or two or three, section three will list ingredients and their percentages. And of course, they're listed in the order of the volume and the product, right? So, you're always going to see with water base. Water is the number one ingredient, right? It's like 60% of the formulation, or 40%, or whatever it winds up being and then it goes down from there. That's another thing though, people see an ingredient, and they kind of freak out. Yeah, one of the ingredients that people kind of get disturbed about as they see titanium dioxide, which is the foundation of the pigment system. It's what makes paint white. Yeah, but they see it and they've read about the dangers of titanium dioxide. Well, titanium dioxide, in a liquid form is not dangerous. It's when it's in a powder form where it could actually be breathed as a friable dust, right? So then people say, Well, what if I'm sanding paint with titanium dioxide in it? Is that dust going to be in order to attack me? And I generally say, Well, if you create it up dust storm, if you sand it so regressively that you've had dust flying around? Yeah, as you know, you've done enough this and anyone who's listening knows you can't sand an acrylic wall paint and get it to dust like that. You can't it's too rubbery, it's too congealed, yeah, it jams up your sandpaper, but you don't get a huge amount of dust going around. And I did wear a mask.
Lisa Beres
I think that's a good point, Jay, because we used to get kind of some crazy calls. Like people worrying about the weirdest, strangest, smallest minute thing. Yeah, where they're kind of missing the pink elephant in the room. Yeah, and there are a lot of pink elephants, not me, I'm wearing pink over here. But I mean, there�s your food, your diet, your air, which we call the umbrella to your home, your indoor air quality. And making sure that you do have an air purifier for moments like that we're going to be having dust and things like that there's such a bigger, more important point, then one day in your life have one tiny exposure to one thing, those are the things that are making you sick, your body's meant to. It's designed to heal. It's designed to make you healthy. It's the constant bombardment of the exposures is where we really go wrong. So, think about that, when you're thinking about your remodeling projects, or just your home in general, think about the things that you're being exposed to every day the plastics that you're using the we could go on and on. But we would get crazy calls like that. And then I'd be like, are you eating an organic diet? Oh, no. Okay, let's start there.
Jay Watts
Yeah, to ask some questions, it could be a little tricky to ask, right? Because it's kind of you're intruding in their world a little bit. But you know, you're saying something really importantly. So, and that is sometimes it's all hands-on deck approach. And what I mean by that is, not only are we making decisions that are the healthy decisions in terms of the products we're going to use, but we also may have to bulk that up by using mechanical means. You mentioned, you know, air filtration and air purification. Sometimes I tell a client, listen, we're going to do all of this, because they say I'm extremely confidently sensitive. Yeah, here's my challenges. And I said, Okay, well, here's how we're going to think about it. Yeah, everything is important here. Everything is going to make the decisions on the coatings and the sealers and all those products going to use. And then on top of that, we're going to do this other stuff, too. And yeah, a lot of people think about that. And they do that already, when I hear that I'm so happy because I know they're doing everything they possibly can. Yeah, if I were to say one thing to a client, I would say make sure your air quality is as good as it can be. I want your HVAC system, all of that stuff that's moving your air around your place, do a good job with that that's such a good thing to think about and a good first step and then make that kind of the goal. You know, here's the goal. Yeah, we want to make this air is breathable and a safe for everybody in our family from grandpa to baby Joe.
Lisa Beres
Yeah, right. It's true. It's the greatest gift. One of the greatest gifts you give yourself is an air purification system. Whether it's a portable one or a whole house, it doesn't really matter just that you're addressing it. And we take over 20,000 breaths a day. It is our life force energy but because we don't see it, just like traditional building products, don't see the off gassing. We don't see the VOC in the benzene in the toluene and the ammonia and the acetone. We don't see those things in the air. Right? So, we just say, Oh, well, that must be healthy. It must not be harming us because we can't see it. But we're inhaling those in, that's our breath. And that is our life energy. So yeah, I think grant and I could give you a strong second on that. I mean, indoor air quality. That's what this is all about. It's all coming down to indoor air quality. And let me just ask you this question because we used to get asked this all the time. Jay, how long do my products off gas? Okay, so if I do have a toxic product, or even a little bit of VOC it's how long for the paint to off gas? How long will I be breathing in those chemicals?
Jay Watts
Yeah. So here are the qualifying factors around that first one is, what are we decorating? First, we have to know what that is. And secondly, we got to know what the environmental conditions are well, the works being performed? Is it cold, hot, humid, dry, those are important conditions. The application of the products is an important condition to how quickly are we applying the coats are we recoding it prematurely? All of those lead to what I call the two events and the two events are the initial what I call a volatility event. That's where all the most volatile things are evaporating. So, what's that mean? Well, when you're in a project, and you're got painting going on, that's when you're going to smell the odors are going to be more strong during that volatility period, that and that last, depending on environmental conditions that can last anywhere for 24 hours, a shortest 24 hours to up to three or four or five days. And then what happens and kind of a bell curve diagram then that that volatility drops off. But what's going on after that is what I call curing. And that's where the coding is actually getting harder and more durable, and really kind of settling down and getting to the point where it's going to perform like everyone expects it to perform. How long is that? Typically, under everything being equal, it's about two to three weeks. Now, here's the qualifier to that. Your personal chemical sensitivity threshold for some people, I've had people who have used our products and heard of others who can be in a space within a day. And then there's people who are on the other end where even though it's gone through two or three weeks, and we feel like it's fully cured, and everyone did the right thing, there's still a little bit of off gassing in there. So, there's no hard. I�m making a long story a short story long. There's no simple answer to that question. What you need to do is you need to maintain your environment, AF post installation. So, what are we doing? We're keeping it warm, we're keeping it dry, we're keeping it ventilated, if we've got mechanical means do that, turn them on. We're going to run those babies until we feel that we've gone through the cycle properly. The challenge here with this is that you may not smell something right. The odor may be gone. Right? Yeah. But depending on your threshold, you may still be having some symptoms that would tell you something still going on here.
Lisa Beres
Yeah. Let's talk about some of those symptoms. We've got watery eyes, maybe a headache, a lot of allergy kind of type symptoms, right? We've got give us some more nausea.
Jay Watts
Yes, nausea. Fatigue is a big one. What I call brain fog. Yeah, you're kind of foggy. You don't know what's going on here. Your kind of slipping a little bit you start to forget stuff.
Lisa Beres
You're like, Oh, my kitchen looks amazing. Yeah.
Jay Watts
Exactly. Right.
Lisa Beres
It�s that new home smell. We got used to loving it and thinking it was such a good thing. But it's chemicals. It's chemicals off gassing VOCs, volatile organic compounds, that are off gassing into the air at room temperature and they're forming gases and we're breathing that in. That's what it is. So, we've got to learn that's not a good smell. When we're talking about this, give us a little, like a couple chemicals that are typically found in say sealants and paints and adhesives. What are the most prominent chemicals?
Jay Watts
Well, you're going to, we've named the big ones formaldehyde, you can see toluene, benzene, some vinyl acetates, you can see VOC�s has kind of become a big discussion point for ingredients. Those are the pretty much the big ones, ammonia or derivatives of ammonia. I don't think anyone any manufacturer would say I'm pouring ammonia into my coating, but they can use what's called an enamine, which is a related family member of. In fact, one of my products hard seal, you guys have used Hard Seal at all or if you remember, it has kind of a sharp smell. And I've had some people say it smells like ammonia in there. Now that's it's not it, but it's related. It's one of those enamine chemicals is related to ammonia. So, it gives you a little sense that it's got a little of ammonia in it, but it doesn't. And I have to kind of walk people through that.
Lisa Beres
Right like aldehydes, the aldehyde aldehydes. Yep. And I think something interesting too, that I learned in working with you guys and back then that the manufacturer can say, Oh, we don't have formaldehyde in this product, but there can be ingredients that form formaldehyde together. That happens in laundry detergent with 1,4 dioxane is a byproduct of the ethoxylation process and people think oh, I'm not getting this cancer-causing chemical called 1,4 dioxane, but it can be being formed in that process. So yeah, so that's a lot of greenwashing that happens in the industry.
Ron Beres
That�s a good segue. So, Jay, you know, everyone say they want zero or low VOC pain. But VOC's are only like one component of a coating. Every ingredient must be enhanced or evaluated for its effect on your health. Can you explain to us some of the misconceptions related to VOC's, and what they are?
Jay Watts
So yeah, the VOC regulation was created by the EPA many years ago, and it was really designed to help us fight outdoor air pollution. We wanted to cut down on the ozone production, smog, known as smog, smog production, which was a good thing. Sure. And so, there was a list of ingredients that were the EPA website, there's over 300 of them and said that a particular ingredient was to evaporate in the atmosphere and mix with nitrous oxides, compounds in the air that could recreate low level ozone. We don't want that. So, we're going to list those as VOC's. A lot of those ingredients are toxic, we don't want to be around them. But the rule wasn't really focused on the toxicity related to human health. What that allows for now is for exemption, there are exemptions to regulation, what I call what we call them now as hazardous air pollutants. The whole discussion about safety in these coatings was all driven by zero VOC goal. We want to make everything zero and if we get to zero, everything's going to be fine. And it was a huge step forward. absolutely sure, for sure. But what was missing was this exemption thing, these hazardous air pollutants, and it's disturbing to clients because they will buy a zero VOC product and then determine after they've installed it that there's something wrong. Who's that zero. Wow, why is this happening? And it's frustrating. Yeah. Because they feel like I've done my due diligence. I figured it out. I did my research and this is supposed to work for me, but it's not why I'm constantly repeating stories like well, there are exemptions to the rules.
Lisa Beres
Exemptions, meaning other VOC's Are you talking about just other chemicals?
Jay Watts
The other chemicals, the hazardous air pollutants that aren't regulated by the VOC regulates.
Lisa Beres
Yeah, I think that's the biggest thing about AFM because you guys actually don't have those other chemicals in there. Right? You're so you're low and zero VOC paints, like other manufacturers, but where you really differ is that you go the next step and say we're not going to put harmful toxic chemicals in our products, right? Not just your paints, but your sealants, your adhesives.
Jay Watts
All of that. That was all the homework we did so far. So long ago, the challenge was we had to make it safe. But we also had to make sure that it worked. Yeah, in the early days of the movement, there was a lot of products that came out really quickly and they probably weren't vetted as well as they could have been by the manufacturers. And unfortunately, the early days, a lot of the green products got black eyes, because people want to use them and they weren't performing like they expected them to perform. And so, the contractors that were trying to get involved with it just said hey, I don't want to do have anything to do with that. I can't work with it; it's not going to hold up and my reputation suffers and the clients unhappy and that will probably lead us to another question I know.
Lisa Beres
Let's go there so what are your suggestions when you are hiring and engaging contractors? What works what doesn't? What should someone do who's trying to build a healthy or do a healthy remodel?
Jay Watts
As I was coming into work this morning, I was riding my bike into work by the way I've got an electric bike.
Lisa Beres
They look so fun.
Jay Watts
It's fun. Yeah. Anyway, I was writing I think about the podcast today and I thought you know what, and I've been thinking about this for a while, what I would love and I'm going to write this and I will share it with you as soon as I finish it because I'm having my legal team kind of make sure that I'm not putting myself in deep water because it's going to be very short and sweet. And basically, what it's going to say is and you know this happens all the time to a client will engage a contractor and the contractor will sit with them and say yeah, I'll do everything you want. And then for reason X, Y and Z they make a substitution decision that the client didn't approve. Here's a good example I just had I talked to a client yesterday on the phone contractor said they were going to do water based floor finish and they used an oil base for finish the client was not on site they were living other places so the contractor didn't have to worry about them maybe coming over to see what was going on. They come over to the house and this oil urethane is blowing them away.
Lisa Beres
Wow. Wow, you're scaring our producer he's that actually happened to our producer. I Yes, yes, it's Spencer. I literally remember that.
Jay Watts
So, with this, and you know, you may scare away a lot of contractors, they're going to look at this little paragraph and they're going to say I'm not going to do that. But basically, what the paragraph says is, we believe them to be as good as the you plan to use. So, we're going to request that you use these products, we've made a decision on products, we've vetted products, and we think these products will replace whatever you're planning to use. If you do not use these products or make substitutions without our permission, our arrangement is off.
Lisa Beres
Oh, that's great. Like a disclaimer?
Jay Watts
Yeah, it's basically saying, either you're going to do it the way we want you to do it or not. Now, there are contractors, they're going to walk away from that, because they don't want to be forced into a position where they have to use something they're familiar with, which is always sad to me, because I'm thinking, guys, gals, wherever you are, add these ideas to your toolkit. Yeah, become better, because more and more people are going to be listened to the healthy hacks podcast, and they're going to hear about this stuff. And they're going to say, wait a minute, I need a contractor that's on board.
Lisa Beres
Right? And if the contract contracts are to think about the exposure that the contractors have to all these chemical, yes, yes, yes, yeah.
Jay Watts
It's like, if the contractor understands that they can add this as a part of what they offer, their clients are just going to get more business because more and more people are going to ask them for it. Exactly. It's a no brainer, don't want to look like they're dumb. They don't want to act like they don't know what's going on. Unfortunately, as you know, and I understand the contractors get very myopic, they've worked with a certain set of coatings, and they trust them, and they know how to bid jobs, and they know what to expect. And you ask them to do something that's off the page. And all of a sudden, there are 30 years of experience just went out the window, right? Yeah, I don't frankly, quite understand that. I've always kind of come to it with the idea. If you're a craftsman, and after 30 years, you should probably be a pretty good one. You're not going to be thrown off by being asked to use a product that you're maybe not familiar with, you would say, Oh, well, okay, I need to learn a little bit about that. What do I need to do? I need to play a little bit.
Lisa Beres
And do you offer a lot of support for the contractors or videos or any kind of assistance?
Jay Watts
We absolutely will they don't come to us as much because as you know, it's growing. It's good. But contractors think of green building project is one offs. Oh, okay, right. I'm going to do this job. I'm going to suck it up. And then I'll never do it again. Or I don't care about it. Yeah. And so, we don't have a lot of contractors reaching out a train me teach me Tell me, partly because they don't want to admit it. They don't want to admit they don't know it. So, I don't want to beat up contrary, there's a lot a really good conscientious people out there doing really good stuff, right?
Ron Beres
Instead of beating up on the contractor, let�s beat up on the people. So, I'm curious. What do you mean anyone? Oh, actually, let's no beat up anyone. But how about, so what areas do people mess up the absolute most in terms of like adding pollutants into their home, and ultimately into the air they breathe?
Lisa Beres
Like, for example, what's a big snafu, Jay, that you see a lot like formaldehyde in cabinetry to me is just such a, another pink elephant. Everybody is so focused on how things are going to look and we should. Our homes should beautiful but they don't even think about what's behind that that MDF and things like that. Would you say its cabinetry? Or is it flooring? Or where do the pollutants get hidden?
Jay Watts
It's the big stuff. Again, like we said earlier, it's the big stuff. It's the skin, it's the walls, feelings, floors, those are the big ones. Those are the big polluting challenges, right? cabinets are another big one, too. The other problem there that I see is, and this goes to the question we discussed earlier, and that is how long does it take something to cure? And a lot of contractors just give a boilerplate answer. They'll say, Oh, don't worry, I'm going to use this product. B to talk off gas and a couple weeks, you'll be fine. This was the case with the flooring problem I mentioned earlier. The contractor said I'm sorry, I used an oil. Why did I use oil? Because I really liked it. It looks good. It goes down easy. I know what's going to do and you don't worry. It'll be fine. After two weeks, right? It's been a month and it's not fine. Yeah. family has breeds in those. Well, they're not there. Right. They have the luxury of being off site. All right. But a lot of clients are not off site.
Lisa Beres
Yeah, no, I think most people are still living in their homes. They're stuck. They're stuck. They're stuck. Yeah. And that's what we're talking about. Because, okay, in two weeks, you go, gosh, everything's fine. I don't smell it anymore. But what was the long-term effect from that chemical exposure? Yeah,
Jay Watts
it goes back to source, the source. The basic sources that we talked earlier in the podcast is about making those source decisions, making the safest source decision. So, what are we talking about source while we're talking? If you're talking about cabinets, what are we building them out of? Can we afford wood solid wood? on wood? We can make accommodations for some combination. Usually it's MDF, which is holding up the veneers, right? So, can we deal with the MDF? Yeah, if cams got a solution for that we can deal with MDF.
Lisa Beres
Is there a sealant that AFM offers that can be put over existing cabinetry?
Jay Watts
Yeah there is in fact.
Lisa Beres
Okay what would that be?
Jay Watts
Okay. The one you don't know about is the one that we make now called Ecolacq.
Lisa Beres
Oh, okay I don't know about that.
Jay Watts
Okay, if you remember back in the Green Nest days, we had the coating we still do called Acrylacq. Yes. Which was our furniture and cabinet finish. Well, we had so much demand for a paint version of the house. Okay, nice. We took Acrylacq like a little lab and we tweaked it to turn it into a base so we could tint it. So now you can paint your cabinets with Ecolacq, which is going to give you that lacquer hardness and durability. Which paint would never do. I don't know maybe read it in any of your tenure. We had the product called cabinet and trim enamel. Yes, I remember that. Yeah. It was pretty good, but it wasn't good enough, you know, and it just wasn't hard enough. And if you got into really saturated colors, got dark cabinets. The pigment load in there was making the film softer longer than it wanted to be. And people were complaining that just wasn't durable enough. And so, we said okay, back up, back out. And we didn't have anything we were recommended for years we were making anything from Safeco for cabinets for painted cabinets for painted cabinets. And then we came up with eco lac and now eco lac is kind of where we go when people want to paint a cabinet and they want to go over an old finish or a new finish.
Lisa Beres
Yeah, is that one of those paints? Do you have to sand it? Or is that one of the paints?
Jay Watts
That's a good question. Anytime you're doing that kind of work and you're going an old coating is in the way we've got to prep it and the best way to prep it is mechanically okay you scuff it up Yeah, scuff it up with steel wool or light sandpaper right? And then you if you're going over an old coder you want to prime it to set the stage because we want good adhesion, we don't want any adhesion challenges don't want bubbles Yeah, so prime and then we paint.
Lisa Beres
That's very labor intensive but you want it to look good and those are your cabinets still cheaper than getting new cabinets and boy just painting the cabinets really can change a whole house.
Jay Watts
Yeah, that's a big deal.
Lisa Beres
Yeah, the Acrylacq, did that have a shine to it?
Jay Watts
Yes. comes in three versions gloss, satin, and matte.
Lisa Beres
So, if someone has a stained cabinet, and they want to seal it, is that the whole product? Yes. It's I would say they're not going to paint it. They just want to seal it. They don't want to paint.
Jay Watts
Yeah, typically. Again, just a couple of things was somebody has a stained and clear finished cabinet. They just want to do that again. So, it's really simple. I mean, basically you go at a scuff up the old coating and you put on Acrylacq.
Lisa Beres
Okay, that's something we always got. So, to recap, because I said this earlier, but it's worth saying again, virtually all of your products create a barrier through this molecular bonding that actually seals in the off gassing of the substrates under it. So, if you just moved into a new home, I got sick from a newly remodeled home, your products would have helped me back then you want to seal in that off gassing. You can do it you can seal on the off gassing of your walls, your flooring, your cabinetry. Am I missing anything?
Jay Watts
You�ve nailed it. That's exactly.
Lisa Beres
I wanted to wrap that up, because I know we got into a lot of chemicals. But at the end of the day, we're really talking about, you don't have to be building a brand-new green home to make your home healthy. You can work with your existing home and take care of these problems without spending an arm and a leg. So, I really want to leave listeners with that and empower them.
Jay Watts
That's really important. The other thing I would just add to the discussion about how you understand what a product's supposed to do for you. We have a program and other manufacturers do as well. But I stress this if like whenever you're making decisions about coatings, try to leave enough time to get samples from the manufacturer. Okay, samples to try those out with your own family. What I do in my family is I have a piece of glass, I use an inert surface because I don't want any reaction to the surface, I just want to test the coating, I will put that coating on my piece of glass. I will let that dry for at least 24 hours before I expose myself to it my exposure myself to it is, I will put it up to my nose and I will take a big whiff of it. The other thing I do is I sleep with it. I know it sounds strange.
Ron Beres
Does your wife get jealous?
Lisa Beres
He�s married to his work.
Jay Watts
Well, we actually know when we put it on our nightstand and then we'll try to determine whether or not we're okay with that. Now, of course, my whole house in our offices are all safe code. And so, I don't really do that much anymore. But occasionally, I'm asked a question about another coating. And I always like to test other coatings and both good and bad and say what's going on with that because I have to say honestly, I've sold other brands. In some situations, I know of a brand that I think's better than mine. And I will tell people about it. Oh wow. Because I know how I am I want someone to give me the lowdown. I don't want to be sold something. I had a customer there. They said Why aren't you trying to sell me Your product? Well, you didn't give me a chance you did, but I couldn't do it. I have to tell you I know about this other product. And I think maybe you should go look at them. And they're like, Oh, that's so great. And I know and you know this, it's all about trust. for someone to trust you, then they remember trust, that trust can be in short supply these days. Right? And so, once you make that establish you create that level of trust. I know that person is going to remember me and they're going to come back to me like they remember you guys, they come back to you, because you've got that trust built. That's the key.
Ron Beres
Perfect example. I want to thank you to a long time ago at Green Nest. I seriously didn't call you frequently and asked you questions that customers are throwing at us and there wasn't a better person than you to really the answer back to them because there's some complicated situations. And we really appreciate you for not only doing that, we appreciate AFM too, but we also appreciate you for being on the show today. You're absolutely the super, you're like an encyclopedia of information. I hope everyone enjoyed this show too. And I hope you learned a ton. And don't forget to visit AFM safe code comm for your next building or remodeling project.
Lisa Beres
Yes, thank you, Jay. We loved having you. And you guys can hear Jay on his own podcast nontoxic environments. If you want to hear more from Jay and I'm going to put in the show notes. We didn't get chance to talk about it. But they offer on their website AFM Safecoat. A Project Quickspec. It's just a sheet you print out and you can find your project whether you're working at carpeting, roofing, foundations, paint floors, walls, and they'll list the products under that category that you need that are the nontoxic solution. So, it's like a cheat sheet for your home and project. I will put that in the show notes, head to run and lisa.com forward slash podcast for all of the links that we discussed today. And we will see you on the next episode. Get ready to find out what the heck is going on in your home by everyone, everyone.
Narrator
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Narrator
How would you like to improve your health and keep your family safe? You're listening to the healthy home hacks podcast where we firmly believe enjoying optimal health shouldn't be a luxury. healthy home authorities and husband and wife team Ron and Lisa will help you create a home environment that will level up your health. It's time to hear from the experts. listen in on honest conversations and gain the best tips and advice. If you're ready to dive in and improve your well-being and increase your energy, you're in the right place. All right, here are your hosts, Val biologists, authors, media darlings, vicarious vegans and avocado aficionados, Ron and Lisa Beres.
Ron Beres
If you are remodeling, renovating, or building a home, you don't want to miss today's show. Our special guest today is the former co-owner of the San Diego based design firm Shaw watts design. Jay has been a VP for technical services and special projects at AFM Safe coat. Since 1994 FM safe code is a leading provider of the environmentally responsible, sustainable and non-polluting paints, stains wood finishes, sealers adhesives, and related green building products. They've been providing 100% toxicity free multi surface solutions for 30 years. Not a licensed contractor but a dedicated di wire. He takes the approach of testing every product to determine its health worthiness and you hear that health worthiness and efficacy.
Lisa Beres
We've known Jay for years and worked closely with him during the six years that we own green nest comm j is a wealth of knowledge. And as we put together our dream list of podcast guests, Jay was at the top and he's here to shed some green light on the products we use every day in our homes and office spaces since after all guys. The EPA states that indoor air on average is two to five times more polluted than the outdoor air. Let me repeat that the indoor air in our homes and our offices is two to five times more polluted than the outdoor air.
Ron Beres
So welcome to the show, Jay!
Lisa Beres
Welcome, Jay.
Ron Beres
Oh, my goodness back in the greenness days I would call you some of the trickiest questions and you just throw out the answer, so easy Jay.
Jay Watts
First, thank you for having me on the show I really feel honored to be on the show today and you're right Ron.
Ron Beres
That was very modest Jay. I always said you�re a role model you certainly are now. I was always eager to talk to you because
Jay Watts
I knew you were going to try to throw me a trick question, right? So, I had to be really ready for that.
Lisa Beres
Yeah, Jay always had an answer and we got so many customer questions because we sold so much of the AFM products and other products and so was great we all learned a lot because the consumers would just like you guys listening would have questions that maybe we hadn't thought of before and hadn't approached so Jay little encyclopedia but it's real treat to have him here today. I know you guys listening are excited so we're just going to dive right in. So, VOC�s, volatile organic compounds, which we talked about so much on this show, they pollute the air and they've been linked to respiratory and memory problems. Some paint manufacturers such as AFM safe code, who we're talking to today, eliminate toxic ingredients such as solvents, heavy metals, chemical residues, formaldehyde and other harmful preservatives from their zero VOC paint. We know AFM Safecoat was originally formulated for physicians to assist chemically sensitive patients, those with chemical sensitivities and to help in solving the problems associated with something called sick building syndrome if you've never heard of that, but AFM Safecoat was green before green became mainstream. Jay, can you share with our listeners a little history of AFM.
Jay Watts
It goes back all those years. We've been around now close to 40 years and the original founder of AFM was a paint manufacturer here in Southern California. And in the course of his career, he had exposed himself to all the different chemicals that are used in the architectural coatings world he was what's called a toll manufacturer, which basically means that if you want a coating to be made any kind of coating that within regulation in California, you could have him make that for you. And so, he was asked by different companies to make all kinds of different coatings and day in and day out exposure as you both know day in day out exposure to these chemicals can have a huge impact on your immune system. Well. He got sick and of course back then there was no field of Environmental Medicine at the time. If there were some doctors that were very few in the country, he was able to connect with the physicians that are in Texas with the American environmental health clinic in Dallas, Texas. And there's, they were able to determine fairly easily because they knew what work you had been doing. But they were determined what was affecting his immune system in a negative way. And basically, they told them what you've got to change what you're doing, or you're not going to be doing it very much longer. He came back to California with kind of this whole new vision about what he needed to do. And of course, what also came to light at the time was his employees at about 40 employees, and they were calling in sick all the time, oh, wow, boy, oh, boy, something's connecting here, you know, I'm sick, they're sick, what the heck is going on. So, he started with his chemists started to play around with the formulations to try to bring down the toxicity as best they could. And we were fortunate because some of the people that he had met in Dallas when he was at treatment, were willing to be on what's called canary in the coal mine. And so, we were able to take the initial formulations and go back to these patients and have them tell us whether or not these formulations were going to be acceptable. And of course, there was a lot of No, they're not go back to the lab and work on those. And so over a period of time, it�s kind of ratchet down the ingredients, we got to a kind of a basic database of ingredients, we felt were the most tolerable for the most people. I think what this kind of leads to in the discussion is about the whole idea of chemical sensitivity. And what that is, well, of course, what that simply means is that your immune system, which our immune systems are a wonderful thing that we have here to kind of protect us. But if your immune system is repeatedly attacked, by outside forces, in this case, chemicals, your immune system has the ability to kind of fight that off. But if it's too much over a short, long period of time, where you're working in an occupation, where you're getting exposed to every day, or if there was a massive exposure. Anyway, the immune system basically tips over. Yeah, and once it tips over, then you wind up being sensitive to a whole bunch of different things.
Lisa Beres
Yeah, you mentioned the Environmental Health Center in Dallas, and yes, William Rea, who, a lot of people, if anyone's had chemical sensitivities, they know his name. And that is something that they treated right? They treated chemically sensitive people. And would Dr. Rea discuss something called the rain barrel, so like, our bodies are like a rain barrel, and they fill up with a sustenance coming from everywhere, whether it's the air, we breathe, the water, we drink, the products, we use the food we eat. And then pretty soon, when we have too much toxic overload, there's a crap, that would be like a spill like a little crack, maybe that would be an allergy, maybe it would present itself as an allergy is saying, hey, something's a little toxic here. But as you get more and more toxic exposure, and your body burden gets too high, that's when you start to have real issues. That can be anything from respiratory issues all the way to cancer, and chemical sensitivities, somewhere in there. And so, I think it's a really good thing for listeners to kind of have a visual of that, and understand how we go from point A to point Z, there is a process and your body does speak to you. And it is really important to listen to those signs that it's giving you.
Jay Watts
I agree. You mentioned the barrel, and I was just thinking exactly that same image of the barrel.
Lisa Beres
Yeah, I always think of him when I think of that.
Ron Beres
Yeah, ever meet him. Did you meet Dr. Rea?
Jay Watts
I never did. I was in a conference call one time, and he passed away a couple years ago. So yeah, I was in a conference call with him. But as close as I got, you know, you've seen his books. He's got the two big books on chemical sensitivity. They're both about two inches thick each. And if you're of a mind to get into the science of this, it's pretty fascinating.
Lisa Beres
Yeah, we met him at a Building Biology conference a couple years ago.
Jay Watts
The whole issue is very personal. Because one person within families, one person�s sensitivity has nothing to do with another person's sensitivity. And so, we see it all the time. And if you remember, during the greenness days, you would talk to a client who the wife or the husband was sensitive and the other person wasn't right. And there can be a little bit of a disconnect.
Lisa Beres
For sure. That's a big issue. I want listeners to really hear that because if you're having issues and you're someone in your family isn't or vice versa, that doesn't mean that there's not toxicity in your home and your environment, that we are all different. We all come into the world different and were raised differently, have different exposures, women versus men, we talked about this on a mold show that we had, because a lot of times with mold issues, the same thing happens. Maybe not everyone in the house is sick from the mold, but some people are. And so, it's always good. It's back to trusting your intuition and your gut. Because you do know you mentioned when you're out of the environment, that's a clue to you're out of the environment, you feel better, you go back into the environment and you keep getting sick. That's also a sign that Gosh, maybe something's not right with this environment. Maybe I need to look at instead of just loading up on drugs and pills, maybe I need to look at my environment.
Jay Watts
Yeah. Real quick story I was at a local bank or a big bank and an old building was built in the 60s. And they really didn't go into the bank. I usually do my banking outside. But I went into the bank one day and I'm in there and I walk in and go, something's wrong in here. And I was standing in line I was eavesdropping in the car in front was talking to the teller and the teller she was mentioning, and she wasn't feeling good. She had this weird, I come to work, and I'm okay. But about middle of the day, I start to feel a little sleepy and it�s kind of headachy. And so, when I stood Scott up to the front, and I said, I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself, or were hearing what you're saying. And I said, when you actually leave and go home, do you start to feel better? And she said, Well, yeah, I do. And in the morning,
Lisa Beres
Who doesn�t feel better when they go home from work?
Jay Watts
So yeah, mostly. Well, anyway, so I said, Well, I don't know if you noticed this, because I got the awareness. I said, I think this building is moldy. I think we got a serious mold problem here. Did you see visible signs of mold? I didn't see it. But you know, the smell. Yeah. You can smell it. And I go, there's mold in here. And she goes, Oh, really? And I said, this is what's affecting your immune system here. You need to be aware of this. I swear, within a month. It's a big high-rise building. I drove by it, and they had put the mold sheeting over the all of the building.
Lisa Beres
Wow.
Ron Beres
You�re like a soothsayer, Jay.
Lisa Beres
They thought they met an angel.
Jay Watts
I immediately stopped banking with them.
Lisa Beres
Like, I'm not getting moldy.
Jay Watts
I won't mention who they are. Protect the guilty. Oh, my God.
Lisa Beres
No, that's great. That is one of those divine timing moments. And don't you guys sell a mold prevention?
Jay Watts
Actually, we do we sell�You know that area of materials is a little tricky, because you're dealing with mold is a whole kind of segment of the business. There's a lot of rules and regulations, what you can can't do what you can and can't say, we do make a product that is actually a maintenance sealer, you actually spray it on a surface that's been decontaminated first, and then the sealer allows that service to resist any mold or mildew that want to come back. But it's only good for about six months, and then you got to redo it again. So okay, a lot of people, they want a more permanent solution. Oh, gotcha. They've got mold behind their walls, they want to take the walls down, take out the mold, and they want to spray something or decorate or treat it so that once they close it up, they don't have to think about it anymore. And of course, I'm always saying, well, these are kind of the situations where people are trying to put a band aid on something Oh, yeah, it really makes more sense to me that if we've got some kind of moisture intrusion problem, we need to figure out where that is, yeah, and we need to trigger that and get that done. Instead of worrying.
Lisa Beres
I feel like that could be our new podcast title, Run, get to the root. Oh, I like I feel like I say this on every podcast, whether we're talking about mold or other health issues, it's like, we live in a society that really likes to mask and treat whatever the problem of one symptom is, whether it's something in our home or our health, rather than getting to the root, I know you guys sell the Penetrating Water Stop, and all your water barrier nontoxic products. And that's a great example of a product that could actually get to the root and treat the root versus just, Hey, what do we see on the surface? Let's try to fix that.
Ron Beres
That's very pointless. Yeah, I'm curious to know, we talked about trends of this bank that's basically covering themselves up protecting itself getting rid of the mold. But what trends are you seeing right now in terms of home projects, and renovations? Do the lock downs and ever getting out of the lock downs? What did you see? And what are you seeing now emerging as we leave the lock downs?
Jay Watts
Well, it's interesting because we saw absolutely no slowdown in terms of our sales and a couple things that meant to me there was people with time on their hands that they didn't expect they would have a lot of people working at home and the opportunity to kind of take a look at what could be done and what needed to be done. I'm perfect example of that. My wife was telling me all the time now it's time for you to get busy on this stuff. Because I was home working at home for about four months, right at the age
Ron Beres
Were you working? I see a drum set behind you.
Jay Watts
I don't have any drum sets at home. I keep my drum sets in my office.
Ron Beres
Oh, it's your office. Okay. Yeah.
Jay Watts
So, I have my guitars at home, but I'm not playing those very much anymore. What I'm getting at Ron is that there was a lot of time for people to work on projects. And so yeah, we saw that people were now getting busy with all of that right? And there's nothing that I see that slowing this down post COVID I think people are going to continue as you know, we're having a huge real estate boom right now. Yeah, I talked to a good real estate buddy of mine and he's selling homes where people are bidding it up by hundreds of 1000s of bands and the high-end stuff in Del Mar. There may be 10 offers and everyone's bid nuts.
Lisa Beres
Crazy, right? Yeah, homes are flying off. Our producer just bought a home.
Jay Watts
But the other thing just one last thought I'm having the other side of that equation is this whole tiny house movement. Yeah, right. People are, well of course the aging of America we got these families that are shrinking and so they don't need all the space they used to need and so now they're downsizing and so the time Tiny House movement is took on a huge movement huge.
Lisa Beres
I've written some articles on that. And there's a company Escape homes; I'll give a little shout out. They do a very sustainable, tiny home, but like it's a vacation home, but it's a tiny home. It's under 400 square feet. And everything. I mean, they do an impeccable job, not just from a green sustainability perspective, but from a health perspective to I don't know if you're familiar with them, Jay, but check them out.
Jay Watts
I haven't heard of them. I�m kind of interested in that. The other thing I want to digress from the discussion, but you guys aware that there are 3d printed homes now you can actually print a home? So, it was kind of looking around at the world of building to see what people are doing. And this is the new thing. And there's a couple of companies that are doing it now. But the one that I'm familiar with, is a company out in Texas, they're called ICON. I haven't talked to any other people. I've only written up some letter emails to try to get into their crib a little bit and figure out what they're about. But they have some excellent videos on what they're doing with 3d printed homes. And one of the things I'm excited about there is the ability because it's very affordable. This whole housing challenge we have with the homeless, yeah, thinking this might be a solution. And in fact, they are actually working on a project in Austin, Texas, which are headquartered in Austin, Texas have a fairly large homeless community project.
Lisa Beres
Yeah, we were there recently. And I was shocked how much homelessness downtown.
Jay Watts
It seems so funny to say print houses.
Lisa Beres
I guess my brain doesn't comprehend.
Jay Watts
Yeah, well, if you go to their website, when you get a chance, go to the website and look at the video and you'll see the whole video on how it's gone. It's pretty amazing.
Lisa Beres
Amazing. bizarre. Yeah, I don't really totally understand 3d printing. Do you choose what materials you print with?
Jay Watts
Oh, actually, no, it basically what they're using is you're using concrete, okay, and they have the computer set up with the design and then the machine kind of follows the pattern, alright, and it goes around like this and kind of okay, lays it, lays it down in rows, right. And then you can come in later and you can put stucco over it or plaster over it or whatever you want to use.
Lisa Beres
It�s a real house. It's not a paper house?
Jay Watts
It�s not a paper. Okay, you have to put a roof on it. They don't make the roof, but you have to put a roof on it.
Lisa Beres
And they don�t make the roof? That's funny. That�s on you.
Jay Watts
The roof is a different kind of old school, you got to do old school rafters and you know, all that other stuff. In terms of basic wall forms. It's all printed. And it's pretty exciting. I see a great future there. The cost is incredibly affordable, relatively speaking. I mean, I think they're building these little houses for the homeless for under $5,000. Wow. I mean, it's crazy.
Lisa Beres
Is it nontoxic, Jay? Hopefully they're using healthy material.
Jay Watts
It's a good question. Because material selection, it kind of goes that way. And the closer you get to what I would call rock or stone. To me, that's a decision that helps on the health side of decision. You know, of course you get to the natural material. Yeah, I think you're off to a good start.
Lisa Beres
I think you are and not only from a health perspective, but from a long-term withstanding, right. I mean, the ancient structures were all made of stone, they're still standing. Yeah, we have colleagues that Paula and Robert Baker Laporte, who own Eco Nest. And we've seen him do presentations on just the craftsmanship of homes and how they were built so much better. And the beauty and the longevity and how much we'd be better off as a society. If we were building the homes, like to that high quality, they'd be staying longer, people would be passing them down to their children more. And now you've got homes that can be taken up in a tornado pretty easily, because houses are built really quick. And they're just put up and a lot of inexpensive materials, which we're going to get into a little bit on the show, too. What are some of the issues with these materials that are being used that are loaded with formaldehyde and all of these other chemicals?
Jay Watts
You probably get your question answered there sufficiently for you.
Ron Beres
You did I'm trying to figure out, you answered in a way where I got 10 answers. That�s wonderful though, Jay.
Lisa Beres
Well, Jay and I talked before the show, and we were laughing so hard, because we were like, yeah, we're both guilty of the whole, you're working from home, you're more time at home and all of a sudden you're looking at this house that you really didn't pay attention to before and you're like cut that needs painting or that's why didn't I put shows up there you know, and so I think everybody's in that boat where the projects were always there, but now we're working with more time at home, we're noticing it and then you start on one and then you go to the next one and then you kind of get on a roll.
Jay Watts
So I think the other thing that was really fascinating to me was there a lot of people doing their own home gardens, planting their own vegetables and we had an incredible run on one of the coatings that AFM makes called Dyno Seal, which is commonly used as a foundation and roofing coating but it's really good for the planter boxes to keep the soil and the water from migrating into your wood planter box and segregating the wood. So, people were buying Dyno Seal and sealing the inside of their planter boxes before they put their dirt in. Oh, yeah, right. I really love that. Because a, they're growing their own food. Yeah. All right. And I think that's a really good thing to be able to do. And just, it's one of those projects where you really want to do it, but you get distracted.
Lisa Beres
And now with the food getting so Frankenfood with all the GMOs, I mean, my God, they have GMO salmon now, it's just crazy, I can't even. So, it's becoming more and more important to grow your own food just so that you weren't having pesticides, and GMOs and all the weird stuff that showing up in our food. But Jay, you reminded me just now what you said. And I want to tell the listeners this about AFM Safecoat, because they may not know is that your products, most of them create this extremely tight barrier from chemical off gassing. And it's through this process called molecular bonding. And I know you guys even have independent tests that show that say your safe code zero VOC paint reduces formaldehyde transmission by up to 90%. So, this alone, you guys is reason to use AFM's products. And I know this isn't a commercial or plug and you're not paying for this show. But we really love the brand. Yes, the brand and believe in it. But can you shed a little light on that technology?
Jay Watts
I think it was an interesting, not that we went out to do this to actually become a, what I call a remediation company, because we are asked, probably almost 50% of our work now is with people who have made a decision that's not working out for them. And then they need to solve the problem. And so, they've come to us to help deal with that. I'm always a little bit saddened that we're having to come in and the back end of a project and take care of it when another decision might have made it easier. But what we decided we needed to do is thumb and you alluded to it, Lisa, several years ago, we decided to do a formaldehyde, what we call a frat test, or formaldehyde reduction attenuation test. And what we did there real simply, by the way, it's posted on our website on the frequently asked questions, page links. We took a piece of MDF medium density fiberboard and we measured exactly what was coming off the surface. It wasn't an ambient air test. And we measured it got a reading. And then we went through the protocol of using our primer and our paint. And then our clear finishes for clear finishes. We tested, we coated the surface with three coats, and then we measured it and the reductions were as you alluded to very dramatic. In a couple cases, we reduced formaldehyde to 100% of the surface. Wow. Yeah, I mean even so people ask well, that's great with formaldehyde. But man, there's like hundreds of other chemicals. How you doing on that count? Yeah. And I said, Well, there's literally 1000s of chemicals that are used in the coating�s world. And then if you have chemical a and chemical B, and chemical c all kind of mixing with each other in an evaporative environment, then you've got another kind of compound and you can possibly figure out what's going on with that it'd be impossible. Yeah, but what we thought would made sense to take him on formaldehyde, because the formaldehyde molecule is fairly small, relative to some of the larger poisonous molecules, like benzene, Italian lien, their molecules are bigger. So, the concept in real general terms was we're going to build a net. And the net is going to keep formaldehyde from coming up through the net, right? And those bigger molecules, you know, formaldehyde is the size of a pea, and benzene is the size of an orange. So that benzene molecule is going to be sequestered. It's going to be blocked to okay. People say Well, did you prove it and I there's no hard science on it. We don't have the ability to test at that level, it would require a long, long, long, long, really dedicated approach. That would be expensive. And so, we had to decide.
Lisa Beres
Yeah, everyone wants to say formaldehyde, and to be honest, Jay, I mean, it's the most prevalent indoor air pollutant is that it in our floorboards, insulation paints. I mean, it's an air freshener. It's in so many products in your home. And of course, we're talking about paint and the wallboard and things that you're actually sealing in. So, I love that. But Jay, would you be open to taking a call from a caller?
Jay Watts
I didn't know we were going to do that. And I'm excited for that. Yeah.
Lisa Beres
All right. Well, we have Heidi on the line. Heidi Are you there and welcome to the show. Hello. Hi, Heidi. I think you cut off a little there.
Caller, Heidi
Sorry. I'm here. Oh, great. We're so happy to have you. What is your question for Jay? Just trying to figure out you know, when you're budgeting for a remodel, you want to be able to do all the things the right way, but a budget is a budget. So how should I prioritize a kitchen remodel? What would you say like the most dire most important thing to put on the top of the list and kind of go down from there?
Lisa Beres
That's a great question.
Jay Watts
Yeah, it is a great question. Here's how I talk about it. I like to think of make the analogy of your interior being like your skin. Your body, our biggest organ. And so I always want to make sure that we're making decisions on where to spend our money and how to spend our money that we don't cut ourselves short at the end of the project at the end of the project is all the decoration work, that's painting the ceilings, painting the walls, painting your cabinets, doing your floor, I consider those services to be your skin, right? And that's where we want to really take care of business. What that can mean is you may be able to make some compromises with other parts of a project the way for example, what are we building the cabinets out of? Is there some room to move there in terms of our money? What are we doing for a countertop, is there something we can do budget wise that will help us to kind of keep that in under control, so that when we're ready to do the decorative stuff, we're on top of that completely? On top of that, kitchens are pretty big deal, or most probably expensive investment you're going to make in your bathroom in your kitchens, because you've got all those cabinets, very expensive, you got your countertops, very expensive. So, there's a lot of research you need to do. But I would just say make sure that the last thing you do is the healthiest thing you can do. the healthiest thing you can do. Yeah. You know, on a counter, it's what we're spraying on the cabinets. It's what we're spraying on the cabinets. It's the paint on the walls and ceilings, and then your floor. What are you doing with your floor?
Lisa Beres
Yeah, so Heidi, did that answer your question kind of making health a priority, but as Jay saying, like, kind of leave those decisions of the last? Yeah, that makes complete sense. Okay, so go get that beautiful kitchen and be able to breathe healthy with your, with whoever lives with your family? Yeah. Well, thank you.
Caller, Heidi
Awesome. Thank you so much,
Lisa Beres
Heidi.
Ron Beres
Wow. Well say as you just witnessed, our listeners are pretty savvy. And they know a lot of things out there. For example, they're really familiar with MSDS already. Yeah, but you're going to go into detail about SDA, and how this is useful. And who is it really, for?
Jay Watts
Yeah, it was a material safety data sheet. Now they've shortened it to safety data sheets, and the format for those has changed as well. And so now what you'll see is you'll see a multi-page canopy up to nine or 10 pages of information, which is all important. For the same single reason. It's important, not so much for the consumer. It's really for people who are in the industry that are exposed to the chemicals day in and day out. And equally important is for emergency response. So, when someone's looking at a material safety data sheet, most of the time, what they're really concerned about, let me look at the ingredient list, I want to look at the ingredient list. And depending on your formulations, depending on proprietary interests in your formulations, and depending on the amount of chemical in the formulation, you're not going to see complete transparency, to be very frank. And I say this, in all honesty, I'm not completely what I would, in my term of transparency, say I'm completely transparent, because I have some very proprietary formulations that I don't want anyone to take, I just don't and I know it could happen. So, I have to be careful about that. But at the same time, I say that, but I also say now I want you to remember what I told you about my history. And that is those ingredients, whether I devotion 100% or not, I promise you that I have tested those ingredients, with all kinds of people with problems, maybe you don't have. And even though they may have VOC that's the other thing we get another discussion on. But even though there may be some VOC ingredients in there, I've worked that out. People say do you test on animals? And I go, are you kidding me? I only test on people. I would never test on an animal. Exactly. So, I try to buffer that because I think people now want it's like food. You want to say the word, but you want to see every ingredient. And I'm not quite there yet with that and whether I ever be I don't know, because that's a decision that's a little bit above my pay scale. But nevertheless, I feel really comfortable when I talk because I have talked about this all the time with people I've tried to be as Frank and as honest as I can when I tell them exactly what's going on. But to answer the question, Ron, Material Safety Data Sheets aren't really for consumers. They're really for people in the industry and people who are emergency responders. That's really what they're about.
Lisa Beres
As far as toxicity don�t, they really only mentioned acute symptoms anyway, pretty much. Yeah, not going to tell you like in 10 years from now.
Jay Watts
No, no, there's no long term. There's no long term, respiratory or?
Lisa Beres
And now legally. Do manufacturers have to show you that if you requested or is that optional?
Jay Watts
It's pretty much optional. It is. Oh, wow. Thank you have to I think it's optional.
Lisa Beres
We were talking about. Yeah, we had a bedding mattress manufacturer an organic mattress manual. And it was really interesting to so much of that is they don't have to tell you what flame retardant chemicals they put in the mattress, they only have to tell you yes, it met the test, the smolder test; the fire-retardant test. But oh, we don't have to tell you what we use it was these cancer-causing chemicals or not? Honestly, if it's something healthy like wool, they're going to tell you right there if they don't tell you they're probably hiding something. Right? Guys are very transparent. I believe you have the safety data sheets on your website for every product, correct?
Jay Watts
Yeah, we do. And we do list the ingredients on like I said, in Section three, or two or three, section three will list ingredients and their percentages. And of course, they're listed in the order of the volume and the product, right? So, you're always going to see with water base. Water is the number one ingredient, right? It's like 60% of the formulation, or 40%, or whatever it winds up being and then it goes down from there. That's another thing though, people see an ingredient, and they kind of freak out. Yeah, one of the ingredients that people kind of get disturbed about as they see titanium dioxide, which is the foundation of the pigment system. It's what makes paint white. Yeah, but they see it and they've read about the dangers of titanium dioxide. Well, titanium dioxide, in a liquid form is not dangerous. It's when it's in a powder form where it could actually be breathed as a friable dust, right? So then people say, Well, what if I'm sanding paint with titanium dioxide in it? Is that dust going to be in order to attack me? And I generally say, Well, if you create it up dust storm, if you sand it so regressively that you've had dust flying around? Yeah, as you know, you've done enough this and anyone who's listening knows you can't sand an acrylic wall paint and get it to dust like that. You can't it's too rubbery, it's too congealed, yeah, it jams up your sandpaper, but you don't get a huge amount of dust going around. And I did wear a mask.
Lisa Beres
I think that's a good point, Jay, because we used to get kind of some crazy calls. Like people worrying about the weirdest, strangest, smallest minute thing. Yeah, where they're kind of missing the pink elephant in the room. Yeah, and there are a lot of pink elephants, not me, I'm wearing pink over here. But I mean, there�s your food, your diet, your air, which we call the umbrella to your home, your indoor air quality. And making sure that you do have an air purifier for moments like that we're going to be having dust and things like that there's such a bigger, more important point, then one day in your life have one tiny exposure to one thing, those are the things that are making you sick, your body's meant to. It's designed to heal. It's designed to make you healthy. It's the constant bombardment of the exposures is where we really go wrong. So, think about that, when you're thinking about your remodeling projects, or just your home in general, think about the things that you're being exposed to every day the plastics that you're using the we could go on and on. But we would get crazy calls like that. And then I'd be like, are you eating an organic diet? Oh, no. Okay, let's start there.
Jay Watts
Yeah, to ask some questions, it could be a little tricky to ask, right? Because it's kind of you're intruding in their world a little bit. But you know, you're saying something really importantly. So, and that is sometimes it's all hands-on deck approach. And what I mean by that is, not only are we making decisions that are the healthy decisions in terms of the products we're going to use, but we also may have to bulk that up by using mechanical means. You mentioned, you know, air filtration and air purification. Sometimes I tell a client, listen, we're going to do all of this, because they say I'm extremely confidently sensitive. Yeah, here's my challenges. And I said, Okay, well, here's how we're going to think about it. Yeah, everything is important here. Everything is going to make the decisions on the coatings and the sealers and all those products going to use. And then on top of that, we're going to do this other stuff, too. And yeah, a lot of people think about that. And they do that already, when I hear that I'm so happy because I know they're doing everything they possibly can. Yeah, if I were to say one thing to a client, I would say make sure your air quality is as good as it can be. I want your HVAC system, all of that stuff that's moving your air around your place, do a good job with that that's such a good thing to think about and a good first step and then make that kind of the goal. You know, here's the goal. Yeah, we want to make this air is breathable and a safe for everybody in our family from grandpa to baby Joe.
Lisa Beres
Yeah, right. It's true. It's the greatest gift. One of the greatest gifts you give yourself is an air purification system. Whether it's a portable one or a whole house, it doesn't really matter just that you're addressing it. And we take over 20,000 breaths a day. It is our life force energy but because we don't see it, just like traditional building products, don't see the off gassing. We don't see the VOC in the benzene in the toluene and the ammonia and the acetone. We don't see those things in the air. Right? So, we just say, Oh, well, that must be healthy. It must not be harming us because we can't see it. But we're inhaling those in, that's our breath. And that is our life energy. So yeah, I think grant and I could give you a strong second on that. I mean, indoor air quality. That's what this is all about. It's all coming down to indoor air quality. And let me just ask you this question because we used to get asked this all the time. Jay, how long do my products off gas? Okay, so if I do have a toxic product, or even a little bit of VOC it's how long for the paint to off gas? How long will I be breathing in those chemicals?
Jay Watts
Yeah. So here are the qualifying factors around that first one is, what are we decorating? First, we have to know what that is. And secondly, we got to know what the environmental conditions are well, the works being performed? Is it cold, hot, humid, dry, those are important conditions. The application of the products is an important condition to how quickly are we applying the coats are we recoding it prematurely? All of those lead to what I call the two events and the two events are the initial what I call a volatility event. That's where all the most volatile things are evaporating. So, what's that mean? Well, when you're in a project, and you're got painting going on, that's when you're going to smell the odors are going to be more strong during that volatility period, that and that last, depending on environmental conditions that can last anywhere for 24 hours, a shortest 24 hours to up to three or four or five days. And then what happens and kind of a bell curve diagram then that that volatility drops off. But what's going on after that is what I call curing. And that's where the coding is actually getting harder and more durable, and really kind of settling down and getting to the point where it's going to perform like everyone expects it to perform. How long is that? Typically, under everything being equal, it's about two to three weeks. Now, here's the qualifier to that. Your personal chemical sensitivity threshold for some people, I've had people who have used our products and heard of others who can be in a space within a day. And then there's people who are on the other end where even though it's gone through two or three weeks, and we feel like it's fully cured, and everyone did the right thing, there's still a little bit of off gassing in there. So, there's no hard. I�m making a long story a short story long. There's no simple answer to that question. What you need to do is you need to maintain your environment, AF post installation. So, what are we doing? We're keeping it warm, we're keeping it dry, we're keeping it ventilated, if we've got mechanical means do that, turn them on. We're going to run those babies until we feel that we've gone through the cycle properly. The challenge here with this is that you may not smell something right. The odor may be gone. Right? Yeah. But depending on your threshold, you may still be having some symptoms that would tell you something still going on here.
Lisa Beres
Yeah. Let's talk about some of those symptoms. We've got watery eyes, maybe a headache, a lot of allergy kind of type symptoms, right? We've got give us some more nausea.
Jay Watts
Yes, nausea. Fatigue is a big one. What I call brain fog. Yeah, you're kind of foggy. You don't know what's going on here. Your kind of slipping a little bit you start to forget stuff.
Lisa Beres
You're like, Oh, my kitchen looks amazing. Yeah.
Jay Watts
Exactly. Right.
Lisa Beres
It�s that new home smell. We got used to loving it and thinking it was such a good thing. But it's chemicals. It's chemicals off gassing VOCs, volatile organic compounds, that are off gassing into the air at room temperature and they're forming gases and we're breathing that in. That's what it is. So, we've got to learn that's not a good smell. When we're talking about this, give us a little, like a couple chemicals that are typically found in say sealants and paints and adhesives. What are the most prominent chemicals?
Jay Watts
Well, you're going to, we've named the big ones formaldehyde, you can see toluene, benzene, some vinyl acetates, you can see VOC�s has kind of become a big discussion point for ingredients. Those are the pretty much the big ones, ammonia or derivatives of ammonia. I don't think anyone any manufacturer would say I'm pouring ammonia into my coating, but they can use what's called an enamine, which is a related family member of. In fact, one of my products hard seal, you guys have used Hard Seal at all or if you remember, it has kind of a sharp smell. And I've had some people say it smells like ammonia in there. Now that's it's not it, but it's related. It's one of those enamine chemicals is related to ammonia. So, it gives you a little sense that it's got a little of ammonia in it, but it doesn't. And I have to kind of walk people through that.
Lisa Beres
Right like aldehydes, the aldehyde aldehydes. Yep. And I think something interesting too, that I learned in working with you guys and back then that the manufacturer can say, Oh, we don't have formaldehyde in this product, but there can be ingredients that form formaldehyde together. That happens in laundry detergent with 1,4 dioxane is a byproduct of the ethoxylation process and people think oh, I'm not getting this cancer-causing chemical called 1,4 dioxane, but it can be being formed in that process. So yeah, so that's a lot of greenwashing that happens in the industry.
Ron Beres
That�s a good segue. So, Jay, you know, everyone say they want zero or low VOC pain. But VOC's are only like one component of a coating. Every ingredient must be enhanced or evaluated for its effect on your health. Can you explain to us some of the misconceptions related to VOC's, and what they are?
Jay Watts
So yeah, the VOC regulation was created by the EPA many years ago, and it was really designed to help us fight outdoor air pollution. We wanted to cut down on the ozone production, smog, known as smog, smog production, which was a good thing. Sure. And so, there was a list of ingredients that were the EPA website, there's over 300 of them and said that a particular ingredient was to evaporate in the atmosphere and mix with nitrous oxides, compounds in the air that could recreate low level ozone. We don't want that. So, we're going to list those as VOC's. A lot of those ingredients are toxic, we don't want to be around them. But the rule wasn't really focused on the toxicity related to human health. What that allows for now is for exemption, there are exemptions to regulation, what I call what we call them now as hazardous air pollutants. The whole discussion about safety in these coatings was all driven by zero VOC goal. We want to make everything zero and if we get to zero, everything's going to be fine. And it was a huge step forward. absolutely sure, for sure. But what was missing was this exemption thing, these hazardous air pollutants, and it's disturbing to clients because they will buy a zero VOC product and then determine after they've installed it that there's something wrong. Who's that zero. Wow, why is this happening? And it's frustrating. Yeah. Because they feel like I've done my due diligence. I figured it out. I did my research and this is supposed to work for me, but it's not why I'm constantly repeating stories like well, there are exemptions to the rules.
Lisa Beres
Exemptions, meaning other VOC's Are you talking about just other chemicals?
Jay Watts
The other chemicals, the hazardous air pollutants that aren't regulated by the VOC regulates.
Lisa Beres
Yeah, I think that's the biggest thing about AFM because you guys actually don't have those other chemicals in there. Right? You're so you're low and zero VOC paints, like other manufacturers, but where you really differ is that you go the next step and say we're not going to put harmful toxic chemicals in our products, right? Not just your paints, but your sealants, your adhesives.
Jay Watts
All of that. That was all the homework we did so far. So long ago, the challenge was we had to make it safe. But we also had to make sure that it worked. Yeah, in the early days of the movement, there was a lot of products that came out really quickly and they probably weren't vetted as well as they could have been by the manufacturers. And unfortunately, the early days, a lot of the green products got black eyes, because people want to use them and they weren't performing like they expected them to perform. And so, the contractors that were trying to get involved with it just said hey, I don't want to do have anything to do with that. I can't work with it; it's not going to hold up and my reputation suffers and the clients unhappy and that will probably lead us to another question I know.
Lisa Beres
Let's go there so what are your suggestions when you are hiring and engaging contractors? What works what doesn't? What should someone do who's trying to build a healthy or do a healthy remodel?
Jay Watts
As I was coming into work this morning, I was riding my bike into work by the way I've got an electric bike.
Lisa Beres
They look so fun.
Jay Watts
It's fun. Yeah. Anyway, I was writing I think about the podcast today and I thought you know what, and I've been thinking about this for a while, what I would love and I'm going to write this and I will share it with you as soon as I finish it because I'm having my legal team kind of make sure that I'm not putting myself in deep water because it's going to be very short and sweet. And basically, what it's going to say is and you know this happens all the time to a client will engage a contractor and the contractor will sit with them and say yeah, I'll do everything you want. And then for reason X, Y and Z they make a substitution decision that the client didn't approve. Here's a good example I just had I talked to a client yesterday on the phone contractor said they were going to do water based floor finish and they used an oil base for finish the client was not on site they were living other places so the contractor didn't have to worry about them maybe coming over to see what was going on. They come over to the house and this oil urethane is blowing them away.
Lisa Beres
Wow. Wow, you're scaring our producer he's that actually happened to our producer. I Yes, yes, it's Spencer. I literally remember that.
Jay Watts
So, with this, and you know, you may scare away a lot of contractors, they're going to look at this little paragraph and they're going to say I'm not going to do that. But basically, what the paragraph says is, we believe them to be as good as the you plan to use. So, we're going to request that you use these products, we've made a decision on products, we've vetted products, and we think these products will replace whatever you're planning to use. If you do not use these products or make substitutions without our permission, our arrangement is off.
Lisa Beres
Oh, that's great. Like a disclaimer?
Jay Watts
Yeah, it's basically saying, either you're going to do it the way we want you to do it or not. Now, there are contractors, they're going to walk away from that, because they don't want to be forced into a position where they have to use something they're familiar with, which is always sad to me, because I'm thinking, guys, gals, wherever you are, add these ideas to your toolkit. Yeah, become better, because more and more people are going to be listened to the healthy hacks podcast, and they're going to hear about this stuff. And they're going to say, wait a minute, I need a contractor that's on board.
Lisa Beres
Right? And if the contract contracts are to think about the exposure that the contractors have to all these chemical, yes, yes, yes, yeah.
Jay Watts
It's like, if the contractor understands that they can add this as a part of what they offer, their clients are just going to get more business because more and more people are going to ask them for it. Exactly. It's a no brainer, don't want to look like they're dumb. They don't want to act like they don't know what's going on. Unfortunately, as you know, and I understand the contractors get very myopic, they've worked with a certain set of coatings, and they trust them, and they know how to bid jobs, and they know what to expect. And you ask them to do something that's off the page. And all of a sudden, there are 30 years of experience just went out the window, right? Yeah, I don't frankly, quite understand that. I've always kind of come to it with the idea. If you're a craftsman, and after 30 years, you should probably be a pretty good one. You're not going to be thrown off by being asked to use a product that you're maybe not familiar with, you would say, Oh, well, okay, I need to learn a little bit about that. What do I need to do? I need to play a little bit.
Lisa Beres
And do you offer a lot of support for the contractors or videos or any kind of assistance?
Jay Watts
We absolutely will they don't come to us as much because as you know, it's growing. It's good. But contractors think of green building project is one offs. Oh, okay, right. I'm going to do this job. I'm going to suck it up. And then I'll never do it again. Or I don't care about it. Yeah. And so, we don't have a lot of contractors reaching out a train me teach me Tell me, partly because they don't want to admit it. They don't want to admit they don't know it. So, I don't want to beat up contrary, there's a lot a really good conscientious people out there doing really good stuff, right?
Ron Beres
Instead of beating up on the contractor, let�s beat up on the people. So, I'm curious. What do you mean anyone? Oh, actually, let's no beat up anyone. But how about, so what areas do people mess up the absolute most in terms of like adding pollutants into their home, and ultimately into the air they breathe?
Lisa Beres
Like, for example, what's a big snafu, Jay, that you see a lot like formaldehyde in cabinetry to me is just such a, another pink elephant. Everybody is so focused on how things are going to look and we should. Our homes should beautiful but they don't even think about what's behind that that MDF and things like that. Would you say its cabinetry? Or is it flooring? Or where do the pollutants get hidden?
Jay Watts
It's the big stuff. Again, like we said earlier, it's the big stuff. It's the skin, it's the walls, feelings, floors, those are the big ones. Those are the big polluting challenges, right? cabinets are another big one, too. The other problem there that I see is, and this goes to the question we discussed earlier, and that is how long does it take something to cure? And a lot of contractors just give a boilerplate answer. They'll say, Oh, don't worry, I'm going to use this product. B to talk off gas and a couple weeks, you'll be fine. This was the case with the flooring problem I mentioned earlier. The contractor said I'm sorry, I used an oil. Why did I use oil? Because I really liked it. It looks good. It goes down easy. I know what's going to do and you don't worry. It'll be fine. After two weeks, right? It's been a month and it's not fine. Yeah. family has breeds in those. Well, they're not there. Right. They have the luxury of being off site. All right. But a lot of clients are not off site.
Lisa Beres
Yeah, no, I think most people are still living in their homes. They're stuck. They're stuck. They're stuck. Yeah. And that's what we're talking about. Because, okay, in two weeks, you go, gosh, everything's fine. I don't smell it anymore. But what was the long-term effect from that chemical exposure? Yeah,
Jay Watts
it goes back to source, the source. The basic sources that we talked earlier in the podcast is about making those source decisions, making the safest source decision. So, what are we talking about source while we're talking? If you're talking about cabinets, what are we building them out of? Can we afford wood solid wood? on wood? We can make accommodations for some combination. Usually it's MDF, which is holding up the veneers, right? So, can we deal with the MDF? Yeah, if cams got a solution for that we can deal with MDF.
Lisa Beres
Is there a sealant that AFM offers that can be put over existing cabinetry?
Jay Watts
Yeah there is in fact.
Lisa Beres
Okay what would that be?
Jay Watts
Okay. The one you don't know about is the one that we make now called Ecolacq.
Lisa Beres
Oh, okay I don't know about that.
Jay Watts
Okay, if you remember back in the Green Nest days, we had the coating we still do called Acrylacq. Yes. Which was our furniture and cabinet finish. Well, we had so much demand for a paint version of the house. Okay, nice. We took Acrylacq like a little lab and we tweaked it to turn it into a base so we could tint it. So now you can paint your cabinets with Ecolacq, which is going to give you that lacquer hardness and durability. Which paint would never do. I don't know maybe read it in any of your tenure. We had the product called cabinet and trim enamel. Yes, I remember that. Yeah. It was pretty good, but it wasn't good enough, you know, and it just wasn't hard enough. And if you got into really saturated colors, got dark cabinets. The pigment load in there was making the film softer longer than it wanted to be. And people were complaining that just wasn't durable enough. And so, we said okay, back up, back out. And we didn't have anything we were recommended for years we were making anything from Safeco for cabinets for painted cabinets for painted cabinets. And then we came up with eco lac and now eco lac is kind of where we go when people want to paint a cabinet and they want to go over an old finish or a new finish.
Lisa Beres
Yeah, is that one of those paints? Do you have to sand it? Or is that one of the paints?
Jay Watts
That's a good question. Anytime you're doing that kind of work and you're going an old coating is in the way we've got to prep it and the best way to prep it is mechanically okay you scuff it up Yeah, scuff it up with steel wool or light sandpaper right? And then you if you're going over an old coder you want to prime it to set the stage because we want good adhesion, we don't want any adhesion challenges don't want bubbles Yeah, so prime and then we paint.
Lisa Beres
That's very labor intensive but you want it to look good and those are your cabinets still cheaper than getting new cabinets and boy just painting the cabinets really can change a whole house.
Jay Watts
Yeah, that's a big deal.
Lisa Beres
Yeah, the Acrylacq, did that have a shine to it?
Jay Watts
Yes. comes in three versions gloss, satin, and matte.
Lisa Beres
So, if someone has a stained cabinet, and they want to seal it, is that the whole product? Yes. It's I would say they're not going to paint it. They just want to seal it. They don't want to paint.
Jay Watts
Yeah, typically. Again, just a couple of things was somebody has a stained and clear finished cabinet. They just want to do that again. So, it's really simple. I mean, basically you go at a scuff up the old coating and you put on Acrylacq.
Lisa Beres
Okay, that's something we always got. So, to recap, because I said this earlier, but it's worth saying again, virtually all of your products create a barrier through this molecular bonding that actually seals in the off gassing of the substrates under it. So, if you just moved into a new home, I got sick from a newly remodeled home, your products would have helped me back then you want to seal in that off gassing. You can do it you can seal on the off gassing of your walls, your flooring, your cabinetry. Am I missing anything?
Jay Watts
You�ve nailed it. That's exactly.
Lisa Beres
I wanted to wrap that up, because I know we got into a lot of chemicals. But at the end of the day, we're really talking about, you don't have to be building a brand-new green home to make your home healthy. You can work with your existing home and take care of these problems without spending an arm and a leg. So, I really want to leave listeners with that and empower them.
Jay Watts
That's really important. The other thing I would just add to the discussion about how you understand what a product's supposed to do for you. We have a program and other manufacturers do as well. But I stress this if like whenever you're making decisions about coatings, try to leave enough time to get samples from the manufacturer. Okay, samples to try those out with your own family. What I do in my family is I have a piece of glass, I use an inert surface because I don't want any reaction to the surface, I just want to test the coating, I will put that coating on my piece of glass. I will let that dry for at least 24 hours before I expose myself to it my exposure myself to it is, I will put it up to my nose and I will take a big whiff of it. The other thing I do is I sleep with it. I know it sounds strange.
Ron Beres
Does your wife get jealous?
Lisa Beres
He�s married to his work.
Jay Watts
Well, we actually know when we put it on our nightstand and then we'll try to determine whether or not we're okay with that. Now, of course, my whole house in our offices are all safe code. And so, I don't really do that much anymore. But occasionally, I'm asked a question about another coating. And I always like to test other coatings and both good and bad and say what's going on with that because I have to say honestly, I've sold other brands. In some situations, I know of a brand that I think's better than mine. And I will tell people about it. Oh wow. Because I know how I am I want someone to give me the lowdown. I don't want to be sold something. I had a customer there. They said Why aren't you trying to sell me Your product? Well, you didn't give me a chance you did, but I couldn't do it. I have to tell you I know about this other product. And I think maybe you should go look at them. And they're like, Oh, that's so great. And I know and you know this, it's all about trust. for someone to trust you, then they remember trust, that trust can be in short supply these days. Right? And so, once you make that establish you create that level of trust. I know that person is going to remember me and they're going to come back to me like they remember you guys, they come back to you, because you've got that trust built. That's the key.
Ron Beres
Perfect example. I want to thank you to a long time ago at Green Nest. I seriously didn't call you frequently and asked you questions that customers are throwing at us and there wasn't a better person than you to really the answer back to them because there's some complicated situations. And we really appreciate you for not only doing that, we appreciate AFM too, but we also appreciate you for being on the show today. You're absolutely the super, you're like an encyclopedia of information. I hope everyone enjoyed this show too. And I hope you learned a ton. And don't forget to visit AFM safe code comm for your next building or remodeling project.
Lisa Beres
Yes, thank you, Jay. We loved having you. And you guys can hear Jay on his own podcast nontoxic environments. If you want to hear more from Jay and I'm going to put in the show notes. We didn't get chance to talk about it. But they offer on their website AFM Safecoat. A Project Quickspec. It's just a sheet you print out and you can find your project whether you're working at carpeting, roofing, foundations, paint floors, walls, and they'll list the products under that category that you need that are the nontoxic solution. So, it's like a cheat sheet for your home and project. I will put that in the show notes, head to run and lisa.com forward slash podcast for all of the links that we discussed today. And we will see you on the next episode. Get ready to find out what the heck is going on in your home by everyone, everyone.
Narrator
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