Biography

The Short Version

Debra Lynn Dadd has been a leading authority on eliminating toxic chemicals in the home since self-publishing the first book on the subject in 1982. Debra is the author of Home Safe Home: Creating a Healthy Home Environment by Reducing Exposure to Toxic Household Products (Tarcher/Penguin 2004). She also publishes the online directory "Debra's List," which contains nearly 1000 links to nontoxic, natural and earthwise products, and the popular "Green Living Q&A" blog. Debra is a regular contributor to Ecological Home Ideas magazine, is a consultant to individuals and businesses, and lectures frequently. She lives with her husband and cat in Clearwater, Florida.

The Long Version

"If I had to choose one phrase to best describe myself," says Debra Lynn Dadd, "it would be down-to-earth visionary." For over twenty years Debra has been one step ahead of consumer interest in both health and environmental issues, leading the expansion in both these markets with her consumer guidebooks on natural living.

Debra began her career as a writer not because she wanted to write, but because she had something to say that she thought would help others live healthier, happier lives. That motivation still holds true today.

Debra had developed an immune system malfunction known as "environmental illness" or "chemical sensistivity," which caused her body to react negatively to virtually any household product made from petrochemicals. When she realized that not only could this illness be reversed through avoidance of toxic chemicals, but could be entirely prevented, she had to tell the world. She didn't want others to suffer as she had.

In 1982, she self-published a small book on finding nontoxic and natural products, called A Consumer Guide for the Chemically Sensitive. Her then-boyfriend responded to a magazine ad run by Bon Ami Polishing Cleanser asking readers to write in and tell the company about their experiences with Bon Ami. He said, "You should talk to Debra--she's recommending your product all over the place as being one of the only nontoxic cleaning products available." They called Debra and immediately whisked her to Chicago to be trained by the Daniel Edelman Agency, then sent her and her self-published book on two 5-city media tours.

At the time, Debra was working as a research assistant to Merla Zellerbach on her book Type 1 / Type 2 Allergy Relief System, which was being published by Tarcher. She had told the Editor about her book, but initially the Editor didn't think there was a market. After her media success with Bon Ami, Debra was referred to literary agent Martha Casselman, who worked with Debra on her proposal. She submitted it to Tarcher again, and this time, it was accepted the very day it was received by the Editor. Thus, her first book, Nontoxic & Natural, was published in 1984.

This groundbreaking book was the first directory of nontoxic and natural products ever published and the first for the general public that identified exact toxic chemicals in consumer products and their health effects. East West magazine (now Natural Health) put Debra on the cover of their April 1985 issue, with a full-length interview inside. Debra started a small business selling her books by mail order and publishing a newsletter. She appeared on many local radio and television shows and nationally on CNN and Dennis Wholey's Late Night America.

With that first book, Debra discovered her calling. "Bookmaking comes naturally to me," she says. "The research is like a treasure hunt, the writing like piecing together a quilt. I love the whole process. And then, when the book is published, I get to go out in the world and talk about it. I just am a communicator. Even without a contract, I make books. I keep a journal, and I use book writing process to learn and figure things out. If I have a problem to solve, I write it out."

The success of Nontoxic & Natural led Tarcher to ask Debra to write a follow-up book. Where Nontoxic & Natural was a directory of products, The Nontoxic Home (Tarcher, 1986) led the reader through their homes, telling where to find toxic chemicals and how to replace them with less toxic and more natural products. Book sales jumped after an appearance on the national television "Home" show. From 1986 to 1990, she wrote a column for Let's Live magazine.

By 1987, Debra was living in a completely nontoxic home in an idyllic Northern California forest. For the first time in her life, she lived in a natural ecosystem, rather than in the built environment of city or suburbia. "This had a profound effect on my awareness of who I am as a human being, and my place in the world," says Debra. "I realized that I was affecting and being affected by an environment that was much larger than that circumscribed by the four walls of my home and was able to see that our consumer choices also affected the larger environment as well as our own health." With that insight, Debra began to research the environmental effects of consumer products, long before there was general market interest.

In 1989, Debra was named a "leading thinker" in the book Meetings With Remarkable Men and Women, published by East West Health Books (now Natural Health magazine). Others included on the list that numbered nearly one hundred were Christiane Northrup, M.D., Frances Moore Lappe, Helen Nearing, Gloria Swanson, Andrew Weil, M.D., Louise Hay, Yoko Ono, John Denver, Salvador Dali, Roberto Rosselini, Edgar Mitchell, Wendell Berry, and Joseph Campbell.

Nontoxic, Natural & Earthwise (Tarcher 1990) added products that had environmental benefits--such as being recycled, energy-efficient, biodegradable, or organically-grown--to the previous lists of nontoxic and natural goods. She was right on target with the groundswell of consumer interest in the environmental effects of consumer choices--release of this book coincided with the 20th anniversary Earth Day celebration and the bestseller 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth, in which both her books and newsletter were recommended. The media again responded with appearances on radio talk shows in major markets (such as the Ronn Owens Show on KGO radio in San Francisco) and national television shows including the Today show and Geraldo. Articles appeared in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and The New York Times, among others. In 1990 and 1991, she wrote a column for Environmental Action magazine.

The Nontoxic Home & Office (Tarcher 1992) continued to focus solely on the health effects of products in the home, with a new chapter on the home office.

As products with environmental claims flooded the market, Debra became increasingly concerned that many of the products that made environmental claims were nothing more than green hype. Because there were no standards or guidelines for evaluating green products, in Sustaining the Earth, published in 1994, she called for sustainability to be used as the standard for evaluating consumer products, and told everything a consumer needs to know to evaluate green products for themselves.

In 1997, Home Safe Home (Tarcher/Putnam, 1997) was published--a new, completely revised edition of her books on household toxics which combined the resources of one book with the text of the other. It has regularly ranked in the top 10 percent for sales on amazon.com. The revised and expanded edition of Home Safe Home (Tarcher/Penguin 2005) contains much new material on household toxics and safe alternatives, including an entirely new chapter on building and remodeling materials.

Debra has written many articles for Natural Home magazine since its first issue in 1999, including their Q&A column and feature articles. Her articles also appear regularly in Ecological Home Ideas and Natural Living magazines.

Since September 2004, Debra has published Debra's List, a comprehensive online directory of nontoxic, natural, and earthwise products. "I've collected so much information on products over the years, and I am finding new ones every day. It's nice to finally have the technology of the Internet that allows me to update and organize these product resources and share them with everyone."

In September 2006, Debra started her Green Living Q&A blog, which was an instant hit with her readers. Anyone can post a question, which is answered both by Debra and her readers, who have a tremendous amount of collective wisdom, knowledge, and experience about green living.