“What gets projects done for me is not inspiration. I have no idea what inspiration really is. I know that I get really curious about things, and when that gets mixed with rigor, a project gets completed. And that’s basically it, it’s that simple. When curiosity and rigor get together, something happens. And when one of these things [isn't] there, nothing happens, or the project doesn’t really reach people.”
The title for this could have easily been, if the product(s) you are using in your work are killing you (and thousand’s of others) redesign it/them to be life-affirming. There are too many products, and industries for that matter, that are damaging and destroying everything from our immune systems to our ecosystems.
This is the story of Tom Rioux and how he came to found his company, Earthpaint. After working as a painter for almost 20 years Tom went from healthy to almost crippled in a very short time period. His lungs, kidneys, sinuses, joints, tongue, eyes – his autoimmune system was under attack. It was telling him he was poisoned and it was shutting his systems down. After two years of trying to figure out what was wrong, he found a doctor who finally identified what he was facing.
Tom had Wegener’s granulomatosis, an autoimmune disorder that is a form of vasculitis (inflammation of blood vessels). Autoimmune disorders are diseases in which the body’s immune system turns on the body itself. There are about 100 conditions grouped under autoimmune diseases, and they are reaching epidemic proportions, afflicting 24 million Americans. This is two and a half times the number of people afflicted by cancer.
In the past decade, 15 of the top medical journals have reported rising rates of autoimmune diseases including: lupus, multiple sclerosis, scleroderma, Crohn’s disease, Addison’s disease and polymyositis in industrialized countries around the world.
For Tom the survival solution was two years of massive doses of chemotherapy and steroids. Sick and bedridden, he decided that positive thinking, yoga, and a vegetarian diet could potentially bring him back from the brink. As part of this decision, he moved from New Jersey to Asheville, NC because of its reputation for healthful foods and lifestyles, and because of a zen center where he could live and continue on his road to recovery.
While beginning to reclaim his health at the zen center he discovered they were doing some painting and he offered to help. Upon dipping his fingers into some of the paint they were going to use, his autoimmune disorder flared up and his body began shutting down. First his hand lost function, he couldn’t even pick up a pencil, then it moved up his arm. With this, and similar events including contact with the fumes from a blown radiator, Rioux is convinced that one of the main culprits is the solvent Ethylene Glycol, found in both paint and radiator fluid.
They couldn’t find any paint that didn’t have toxins in it for the zen center, so Tom had an idea. “I just got the dirt from behind the center and made a paint to paint the walls. Earthpaints literally had it’s beginning from dirt in the back yard. “A lot of times paint is earth, or clay, and I wanted to see if we could make some from dirt.”
It worked, and Tom was now on a mission. He now felt creating this new line of safe paint was his responsibility. “If I don’t do it, I don’t know who will.” His learning journey took several years. Along the way he also came into contact with people such as Donna Jackson Nakazawa, also a survivor of an autoimmune disorder. Donna is the author of “The Autoimmune Epidemic: Bodies Gone Haywire in a World Out of Balance — and the Cutting Edge Science that Promises Hope.” From her article “Diseases Like Mine Are a Growing Hazard“
“The scientists I interviewed tended to agree that our day-to-day exposure to environmental toxins — through the air we breathe and the chemicals we absorb through our skin — is a major trigger of autoimmune disease. “Exposures from our environment are a significant contributor to today’s rising rates,” says Douglas Kerr, director of the Johns Hopkins Transverse Myelitis Center and a top clinician at the Johns Hopkins Multiple Sclerosis Center.
“In 2003, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sampled 2,500 people nationwide looking for the “body burden,” or amount of chemicals and pollutants each individual carried. They found traces of all 116 chemicals and pollutants they tested for, including PCBs, insecticides, dioxin, mercury, cadmium and benzene, all highly toxic in higher doses. Then, in 2005, researchers from the Environmental Working Group found something more alarming: a cocktail of 287 pollutants — pesticides, dioxins, flame retardants — in the fetal-cord blood of 10 newborn infants from around the country.”
“Evidence from occupational studies is even more worrisome — because the “guinea pigs” are people. Last year, scientists from the National Institutes of Health and the University of Washington released the findings of a 14-year study of 300,000 death certificates in 26 states: Those who worked with pesticides, textiles, solvents, benzene, asbestos and other compounds were significantly more likely to die from an autoimmune disease than people who didn’t. Other recent studies show links between working with solvents, asbestos, PCBs and vinyl chloride and a greater likelihood of developing autoimmune disease.”
“We’re sold a bill of goods.” states Tom, exasperated from the big picture of it all. “Are we poisoning anybody in the manufacturing stage? Are we poisoning anybody in the production stage? Are we poisoning anybody in the disposal stage?” These are the types of questions we need to be asking.
As word spread about Rioux’s efforts, he began to receive help from a wide range of people, including help from prominent retired polymer scientists. In fact, they began to “come out of the woodwork” to help him. “I wanted to see if it was actually possible to make the professional grade paints that I was used to, without the poisons that made me sick” he explains.
All along the way he would face the same hurdles over and over again when informed by people in the industry that, “it can’t be done,” or, “but you can’t do that.” Tom has a big heart and is enjoyable to be around. He also has determination required to pull off such an undertaking, even to the point of being defiant when necessary.
Some of the problems with “regular” paints and stains that Tom was determined to overcome included:
• Paint not only emits numerous on Toxic Air Contaminants (TACs), but emissions can continue for extended periods of time. It is estimated that less than fifty percent of the VOCs (volatile organic compounds) in latex paint are emitted in the first year. This means that much of the dangerous toxins continue to be inhaled long after the paint has dried.
• Low-VOC paint does not necessarily mean low toxicity.
• the poisons and poisonous emissions come from substances such as ethylene glycol, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and benzene (a carcinogen).
By producing a safe paint, he could also address the associated human health issues arising from these problems. Some of these include:
• According to the World Health Organization, Painters are twice as likely than other people to get cancer.
• Children have higher exposure and risk to indoor air pollution than adults; partly because they have smaller lungs with faster breathing rates.
• Even if a person is not sensitive to chemicals themselves, children or guests could be harmed by the paints chosen.
• As well as the fact that most chemicals in paint have unknown long-term effects on human beings.
“The harmful solvents irresponsibly used in latex paint can be obvious or they can be very hard to detect. Ethylene Glycol is one of the most obvious poisons used in latex paint; it’s also used in anti-freeze, and known for its toxicity. Common Latex paint is not as safe as many would like you to believe. Why? Bottom line … It’s a petro-chemical, a crude oil by-product. Cheap, available, and easy to produce. It has been irresponsibly manufactured for the sake of profits.
“As is so common in our unsustainable “Growth” economy, a few got rich and millions got sick. It’s wealth creation at the expense of the health of the American public. All justified by brilliantly blind scientists who say things like, “It’s just a little bit.” Or “At those levels it won’t’ hurt anyone.” Or better yet, “If customers want better performance this is the only way to do it.” But the poisons just build up and up and up until BOOM! Our Planet and our immune systems explode with toxicity.
“Standing in Lowe’s or Sherwin Williams he asks, “Is this product safe from manufacture to the landfill? Do I want my kids playing on this paint? Will this paint damage my baby’s nervous system?” I’m not willing to take those risks. I’m going with clay and plant oils.”
What does Earthpaint make? And what about all of those questions about performance?
“From a professional standpoint, I’ve always been drawn to natural finishes because of their amazing beauty. For instance, the richness and depth achieved with clay plasters on walls is something that can never be achieved using regular paint. There are texture variations that seem to appeal to a deep level of the human brain. Bringing nature onto the surface like that tends to give people a first impression that says, “Oooh. I like this!” The effect is multidimensional rather than flat. Different angles reveal subtle nuances, different lighting opens up entirely new shadings and can transform a room’s character by day and night. ”People throughout history have appreciated the depth available from natural plasters. Egyptians created stunning frescoes dating back to 1420 BC, while Michelangelo and Botticelli transformed the Sistine Chapel with famous works of their own. These frescoes have been successfully brought back to life because of the richness and depth of the natural plasters they used as their base.
“Antonio Stradivari used organic oils and resin when he finished his violins with pine resin and flax oil. When observed in different light, gorgeous hues and entirely different grains of wood leap forward. This is the way wood is meant to be seen. In its glory! Not soaked in petroleum by products and covered in plastic which is essentially what’s being used all too often in the form of polyurethane.”
This brings to light the fact that the US has essentially the opposite approach of many other governments, especially in Europe, which have made changes with the knowledge that poisons put in paint are harmful, and many of these stay so even after the paint is dry. European environmental policy has its “precautionary principle” of preventing harm before it occurs. Introduced in 2006, the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization & Restriction of Chemical substances (REACH) program was introduced to assess the potential health hazards of 10′s of thousands of chemicals introduced to the market before existing safety evaluations for new chemicals were set in place in 1981. This legislation places responsibility on the chemical industry to demonstrate the safety of its products, before they go to market.
The US chemical industry rails against REACH style legislation, and “overly onerous’ proposals for reforming the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) in the US. TSCA has remained virtually unchanged since it was signed into law in 1976. Interestingly, the US chemical industry is against a proactive stance for many reasons, one being that it would drive chemical production overseas to China. Actually, as it turns out, China is in the process of enhancing its regulatory requirements, including making them more like the European Union’s REACH Regulation. Looks like the EU and China will be poised to out-innovate the US in green chemistry and lead the Green Chemistry Revolution.
In addition to redesigning paint as a product, Rioux also has ideas for how to reinvent the overall business model for paint as well. “Shipping paint around the country isn’t a sustainable solution either.” His concept is that most paint would be regionally produced based the available resources. Made from US sources, Earthpaint’s Venetian Plaster is an example. It’s heavy and costly, so why ship lime from Italy? We have great lime in the US for stunning venetian plaster. One of dozens of Earthpaint products, Rioux has a manufacturing facility designed to produce more than 1 million gallons of paint, plaster and finishes per year.
Earthpaint strives to be life-affirming in every way possible:
The products are safe and biodegradable. Tom formulates the products with the help of environmental scientists and toxicologists. Many, in fact, are edible. “If my son can’t come in the lab when I’m making it,” he declares, “I won’t make it.”
The paints are made from natural materials. Earthpaint’s raw ingredients include clay, lime, nontoxic acrylic, linseed and flax oils, citrus solvent and pine resin—a byproduct of the paper industry.
They use 140% wind energy offsets. “we found that we could actually give back 40% of our energy consumption by offsetting the cost of Wind Energy for people using electric in Atlanta. It’s more effective for them to use Wind Power near the source than for us to build new generating stations, so, in reality we pay for others to use Wind Power so we can use the grid near us with less ecological footprint.”
100% of wastewater is recycled.
Raw ingredients are sourced from locations within a day’s drive of Asheville, NC
While we are all too often disconnected from nature, there is an easy, direct, solution to begin the reconnection – bring nature inside. The benefits have been written-up extensively, and some of them include an increase in mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health.
Kamal Meattle lived in New Delhi his entire life. But when a trip to the doctor revealed that Delhi’s air was killing him, his lung capacity had dropped to 70%, they suggested that he should leave the city. Breathing Delhi’s air was killing him, as it is reported to contribute to the deaths of 10,000 people each year. Faced with “keep breathing this air and you will die,” Meattle embraced it as a challenge. He was going to find a way to create healthy air and prove his doctors wrong.
In his research, which included studying NASA’s research for off planet colonies, Meattle (rhymes with beetle) found 3 common houseplants plants that enable us to grow fresh air indoors.
Working with the people at the Paharpur Business Centre & Software Technology Incubator Park, where he was CEO and director, they came up with a potential solution. They put 1200 plants into the 20 yr. old, 50,000sq ft building where he and 300 other people worked. The results speak for themselves. When compared to other Dehli buildings, the people working inside this building for 10 hrs experienced:
• A 42% probablity of increasing blood oxygen level by 1% if in the building for 10 hours
• Eye irritation incidents were reduced by 52%
• Respiratory system irritation was reduced by 34%
• Headaches were reduced by 24%
• Asthma was reduced by 9%
They measured the results over time (currently over 15 years of data) and found an astounding increase in human productivity by over 20%. The plants also reduced energy costs by more than 15%. The building has been rated by the government as the healthiest building in New Delhi.
I love these types of studies because they bring our attention back to the fact that everything is interconnected. Plants produce life giving oxygen and use the CO2 we exhale and other gases as nutrients to provide life, and the cycle continues. When you look at it this way, is it really so amazing, or did Meattle re-awaken long lost common sense. He is now reshaping the vision of what a commercial building is and the benefits it should provide. He believes he has created a model not only for New Delhi, but for the world at large.
Project this forward. What if 20 years from now you are looking to rent some space for your growing company. One complex advertises an average productivity increase of 10%. You go to other office complexes and ask what their productivity increase projections are. They look at you with a blank stare. Then you ask them about the average increase in the level of happiness of the people who rent there. Now they politely see you to the door because you are a bit off. (There is a lot of evidence that people who are around nature and can see nature are generally happier and healthier. More on this in a later post.)
This story will appear in the future. And it will be because we woke up to the fact that we are connected with all other life and that bringing nature, bringing plants indoors in droves, is not only life-affirming, it is productivity enhancing.
His TED video is only 6 min, and well worth the watch. You can learn more about Meattle on the TED site, as well as on the Paharpur Business Center website.
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