Lyle Hurd: We’ve talked a lot about toxicity, and we all know today that with what’s going on in our environment we need to get indoors, out of the outside and in our house to be able to be safe. Tell me a little about indoor air quality. Dr. Gloria Gilbére: You know it’s one of the worst situations that we have to deal with right now and one of the most chronic. One in 4 in the United States, actually, I should say North America because Canada was included in that, have allergies. One in 14 have asthma, and one in 18 have what we discussed in earlier shows—chemical sensitivities—meaning that it doesn’t matter what they use, if it’s not an organic compound, they react to it. HL: Are you safe in your house then? GG: No, you’re not because you’ve got dust, cleaning products [and] carpeting. People paint their homes and they don’t use paint that doesn’t contain any volatile organic compounds. I was just recently quizzed by a local radio station about toxic paints. They know that I’m building a new office so they asked if I was going to have the whole office be green. And, I said, of course I am; I’m not going to build an office that isn’t all green. They said, well, but what’s the difference; why do we have to have non-toxic paint? The smell goes away after it dries. Well, it doesn’t. It’s airborne and it could be up to 6 years [before it disappears] depending on the paint LH: Wow! GG: So, when you’re talking about painting I have found that the best quality paint—and I use Benjamin Moore, I don’t mind saying it, their best quality paint—you only add $5 to the cost per gallon—per gallon. So, if your health isn’t worth that can you imagine a nursery in a home anywhere? You have to have your body be in an environment that’s 80% clean so that the 20% of the time that you are in a polluted environment it’s not going to sabotage you. We’re not going to exceed that toxic load that we talked about earlier, that the body exceeds its toxic load at a certain level. So, we try to keep the air quality as clean as possible and that’s from everything, including—I have a very, very close friend that helps me teach a lot and I teach in schools locally, and his name is Dusty (holds up stuffed animal). And, do you know what Dusty is? He’s a cute, little furry friend with his little fangs on the sides. LH: I’m not sure, what is Dusty? GG: Dusty is a dust mite. Children in the schools love it when I teach there. But, Dusty is cute as a stuffed animal but the dust mites can actually invade most of our pillows. That’s why you should always [wash them]—you know people sometimes have their pillows for 10 or 15 years. Children have a lot of allergies, not just children, but specifically children because their immune system is not able to cope with all [of] the dust mites. A foam rubber pillow, [is] #1, is a petrochemical; you should not be using foam. LH: Really? GG: Absolutely, unless it’s natural rubber. There are companies now that sell natural rubber pillows and mattresses. But, I have an organic down pillow that has been hyper-washed. That means that they wash it 50 times to take all of the dander and all of the dust off of the feathers before they make the pillows. But, I still wash that pillow once a month; it gets washed in hot water, dried in a hot drier and put back on the bed. So, your close proximity, think about it is your sheets, your blankets and your pillow, right? It’s in direct [contact] for 7, 8, 9 hours a night. LH: But you kind of said sheets and mattresses, or pillows and mattresses. Your mattress is okay, isn’t it? GG: No, because the mattresses all have—think about it—the mattresses have, under law, have to have a spray of flame retardancy, unless you get a letter from your doctor, which I have written many, many recommendations for patients to get a mattress made without the flame retardants, without the scotch guarding—think about it , Lyle—and then you end up with all of the foam which is a petrochemical, and all of the other c