Gurus of Nontoxic Living

Marin couple build the ultimate environmentally safe home

Debra Lynn Dadd and Larry Redalia got married under a redwood tree in Marin County. They had organic vegetarian food at an alcohol-free reception.

They live in an "environmentally safe" house in rural Forest Knolls covered in natural paint and filled with recycled wood furniture. They sleep on a natural wool mattress processed in a solar powered mill and are building an electric car and a solar stove out of a cardboard box.

They are not hippies, insists Dadd, 36. She has been called the "guru of nontoxic living."

They do have a color television, a VCR, three phone lines, a fax machine and a computer, and they did rent china for the wedding. "If anything, we're kind of environmental yuppies."

Redalia and Dadd, author of the books "The Nontoxic Home" and "Non-toxic, Natural & Earthwise" (Jeremy P. Tarcher), are creating what could be the green home of the future. And they are not alone.

"You can build your house from top to bottom without using any toxic materials," says Annie Berthold-Bond, publisher of the New York magazine Greenkeeping, a consumer guide to safe and "globally" responsible" products and practices. Dadd is consulting editor.

In Marin County, where a ban on chemical fragrances at public meetings was recently proposed, the movement is going a step further. A unique nontoxic housing project is in the works for people who become so sick when exposed to everyday chemicals that they cannot live without them.

Plans call for avoiding natural gas, chemical-laden indoor plywood or particleboard, florescent lighting, carpeting or toxic adhesives, among other things.

"Its certainly going to be the first federally subsidized nontoxic housing," says Tom Wilson, chairman of the project, called Ecology House Inc.

"We are hoping this will be a little design revolution," says Katie Crecelius of Novato, a housing consultant.

The 11-unit apartment project has a $750,000 loan from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and is co-sponsored by Marin Homes for Independent Living and the Marin Ecumenical Association for Housing Sponsors are looking for a local site with clean air.

The sickness of the project's prospective occupants, known as "environmental illness" or multiple chemical sensitivity" is controversial. There are doctors who question the existence of the syndrome at all, and who say its symptoms appear psychosomatic. At the same time, it is "increasingly being recognized in government regulations and the courts", says a recent article in Chemical & Engineering News.

Dr. William Pierson, president of the American Academy of Allergy & Immunology, says he is "perplexed at best, stunned," that federal money has been allocated for the housing,

Although the symptoms exist, he says, there are no tests to diagnose it. An academy position paper states that it is not an identifiable disorder.

"It is hard to identify them (the patients) with any kind of certainty because the symptoms are really quite diffuse. . . I don't understand how they will select the people who will live in the project."

People with chemical sensitivity symptoms have resorted to living in tents, back yards, porches, trailers and rooms covered in aluminum foil- and are moving to the county- to find cleaner air and escape the fumes emitted by carpets, plywood, plastic counter tops, plant pesticides cleansers and paper.

Dr. Ann Mc Campbell, a general practitioner, had to live on a mattress in her yard for five months after she go sick two years ago and found no where to live that did not make her sicker.

She became so sensitive to chemicals and other elements that, for example, the vinyl in an air mattress made hr dizzy. Th ant spray and the mold in the trailer where she lived made her too sick to sleep indoors. The chemicals in paper burn her fingers and upset her stomach.

Now she spends most of her time in an aluminum foil pup tent with two air filters inside an old cottage in Lafayette. The carpet is covered with sheets to keep the chemical fumes away. She can eat only broccoli, frozen peas, brown rice, millet, chicken and peeled zucchini- "organic, of course".

Some say the environmentally ill are like canaries in a coal mine. "But I always feel like we're turtles without a shell--this (the tent) is my shell," McCampbell says, "The need or housing for chemically sensitive people is just spectacular."

Lesson for the Healthy

There is a lesson in this for those who are not sick, she says. It may be that many of the diseases were taught in medical school like lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis may have toxic chemical components. The real message is that measures people take to help environmentally ill people can only help chemically healthy people too."

As Environmental Protection Agency study found that concentrations of 11 common organic chemicals were two to five times higher indoors than outdoors in both rural and industrialized areas of the country. Concentrations of indoor air pollutants were found to be as much as 1,000 times greater after some activities, such as plant stripping.

In big doses, the effects of chemicals such as the solvents found in dry cleaning and the formaldehyde in carpets could include eye, ears, nose, and throat irritation, respiratory infection and, in some cases, cancer, the study found. "Indoor air pollution is far more dangerous than outdoor air pollution," says Dana Duxbury, and EPA consultant and household hazardous-waste expert based in Andover, Mass.

Ten years ago, there were barely a handful of natural home products. Now there are thousands. There are home insulation's made of recycled phone books, paints made of milk and citrus, floor coverings made from tree bark and ground up rock, carpets without formaldehyde, to name a few.

It is the chemically sensitive, in their search for cleaner indoor air, who are responsible for many of the new gene home products, says Berthold-Bond, also author of the book Clean & Green (Ceres Press, New York) a guide to non-toxic and environmentally safe housekeeping.

Berthold-Bond and Dadd, for example, both have experienced the syndrome but have improved dramatically by avoiding chemicals.

So has Susan Hendricksen. She and her husband, Rob, opened "Hendricksen Naturlich" (natural" in German), a Sebastopol floor covering store 1 1/2 years ago after synthetic floorings began to make her sick.

A designer for 10 years, she was working in a carpet store.

"I'd come home with my eyes inflamed, sinus headaches, a sore throat, no energy, feeling scattered."

She quit the business and later ran across a cork-based natural floor covering that didn't bother her.

The couple also sells formaldehyde-free carpeting. (The linoleum, in 32 colors of dye made of ground rock, is $21 a square yard. The carpet is $28 to $80 a square yard. Business has more than doubled in the past year.

The green movement is in transition. Ever since the massive 20th anniversary celebration of Earth Day last year, there has been an explosion of environmental interest, says Dadd.

Armstrong Paints of San Francisco has begun to offer a "nontoxic painting system" that it says uses no hazardous materials. A Florida institute is offering a correspondence course in "healthy houses." And the number of "green living" books, newsletters and mail order companies seems to be growing daily.

Consumers know they need to do something, but they don't know what. Buy a coffee mug with a whale on it? Move into a tent? Insist on only "environmentally friendly" products? What is environmentally friendly?

"The people making the products are doing this dance with the consumers and nobody knows what the music is," says Dadd. "There are no legal governmental or other generally accepted guidelines for environmentally safe products yet."

Education Solutions

The solution for now, environmental advocates advise, is to educate yourself. Don't buy what you don't need and look for clear and detailed labels. California law regulates environmental advertising terms such as "recyclable" and "ozone friendly".

"Does it seem weird to you? Totally awful and strange?" asks Dadd about her environmentally safe home. There are recycled baskets in the kitchen and raw woods shelves, bare floors and twigs shaped into a heart about the natural bed, where an ocean breeze wafts through an open window. "I don't think this looks tremendously trashy."

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