Simplified Speech #235 – Talking about chemicals

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Simplified Speech. Simplified Speech is the QLIP series, which features clear, natural, and easy-to-understand conversations between native speakers. Today, joining me for this episode is Indiana. Hello, Indiana. How are you doing? Yeah, I'm doing good, Andrew. And I'm also really excited for our topic today. That is that we're going to be talking about...

chemicals or harmful substances that we try to avoid in our day-to-day lives like household cleaners or beauty products or things like that. This was actually requested by a listener. a member of QLips. And yeah, I think it'll be a really interesting conversation. Yeah, absolutely. So shout out to Aditka, one of our very active Qlips members over on our Discord channel who left us this episode topic suggestion and said, hey guys, can you talk about this? Because...

Aditka is from Hungary, I believe, and she mentioned that there weren't too many... conversations about this topic that she could find in her native language and so if she wants to learn more about it she has to listen to content in English and you know talking about chemicals and substances and detergents and cleaners like this is pretty difficult. So we're going to do our best to have a simple conversation about it because this is simplified speech.

So as we go through the conversation, Indiana and I will stop and break down and explain difficult expressions and vocabulary that we use when we're talking about this topic. Hold your hand through this one, guys, and we'll walk you through it. And yeah, we're going to talk about just...

some of the ways that we try to stay chemical free in our lives. Maybe that's a good way to put it. So we'll get started with our conversation here in just a moment. But before we do, I want to let you know about the helpful study guide and the interactive transcript that is available for this episode for all QLips members. Guys, inside the guide, you will find detailed vocabulary explanations.

and examples of all of the key and important vocabulary that you'll hear Indiana and me mention today. There's also a comprehension quiz so you can test how much you are able to understand. And there are questions that you can use for writing practice or for speaking practice. And of course, it's so good and so important to be active with your English as well. not only doing the listening side but being active and producing the language so those

prompts can help you. And of course, we'll also have a speaking class or several speaking classes about this topic. So you'll be able to speak with the QLips teachers and with other members who are very highly motivated English learners. just like yourself. So if you would like to get all of these benefits and bonuses, plus so many more, then check out our website, Qloops.com, and you can sign up and become a member for an affordable price. Okay, so...

Indiana, with that announcement out of the way, let's get started with our topic today, which is avoiding chemicals and trying to keep our bodies and our lives chemical free and safe and healthy. I haven't really thought about this topic too much before Aditka brought it up, but I know that you are maybe more invested in it than I am.

So why don't we start with you? I'll let you do the heavy lifting for this episode and I'll chime in when I can. But why don't you tell us about some of the things that you do in your life just to avoid using... chemicals or avoid using products that you believe or maybe you feel that could be harmful. And when we say harmful here, I'm thinking of like chemical detergents.

or cleaners or these things that you just get a bad vibe about, right? Like you look at the bottle and you see warnings and maybe you see like a poisonous warning label with like the skull. and you're like, okay, this is like a toxic thing. Like, I don't want to breathe this in. Maybe if you smell it, you almost instantly get a headache. You're like, okay, yeah, this is obviously not a...

healthy product. I don't want to use this too much. I'm thinking about avoiding those kind of heavy cleaners and stuff. Are there any things that you do in your life to avoid using those kind of products? Yeah. I want to backtrack and start this conversation on this topic with a sort of cautionary note or something that I think can be misleading with this word chemical. Like... Chemicals are not inherently bad, and everything around us is chemicals.

I think chemicals is just any sort of compound that you could talk about in a chemistry class like table salt, sodium chloride, right? And that's not poisonous or harmful necessarily. And I think another thing that... I want everybody when they're thinking about this topic to consider is that in large doses, anything could really be.

fatal or toxic right like if you drink too much water you could die from that right so there's i think from with that thought first of all at the beginning of this conversation not every chemical is bad and Many things are not harmful in small doses, but very harmful in larger doses. I think that's a good place to start to consider like, yeah, what do I want to have in my home and what do I want to use? Is it okay if I use this every single day? I think like what I consider.

When I'm thinking about my health or, you know, yeah, what could be harming me is volatile. compounds, volatile organic compounds, which is a term basically for a chemical that gets released into the air and can harm you. So for example, a really common item that would count as that. a volatile organic compound would be bleach, household bleach, right? That's a cleaner that is probably in everybody's house.

like you mentioned, you know, you open up that bottle and you instantly get a headache from smelling it. Like that's definitely not a safe thing to be using regularly or without airflow ventilation. So I think the first thing I always try to consider is like airflow, ventilation, and how frequently am I using this product?

Yeah, so just one simple thing. I try to avoid using bleach unless I really have to use it. And if I use it, I try to make sure that the windows or the doors to that room... are open and there's good airflow maybe i even wear a mask i think that is definitely one simple step somebody could take to try to reduce any negative effects from a household cleaner like that okay so

Windows open, mask on, maybe some gloves. Gloves, great point. Yes. Okay, so avoiding using bleach. I have to say, yeah, I don't think I've used bleach.

bleach in a long, long time. But it depends on the situation. Like if I had a situation where I needed to do some really heavy duty cleaning and use bleach, then probably I would use it. Like I'm not... against using these things really i know when i lived in my previous apartment we had an issue with the drain being clogged and i bought some drain cleaner at that time to try and unclog I don't know, there was like a hairball down there or something. So I had to like bust.

the the clog and yeah that was like a really nasty chemical and I felt really guilty actually about using it because you know you're pouring this down the drain and it's going into who knows where the water supply somewhere down the line. And, you know, you're always worried, like, is this going to kill some fish or kill some little animals that are like.

Living in that ecosystem, like I don't know where the water goes when it goes into the drain, but I imagine somewhere it comes out like into a stream or into a river and maybe that's incorrect. probably gets filtered or something first. But yeah, I still felt really guilty about using that because I'm worried about the downstream effect.

And that expression, guys, the downstream effect means what will happen later, what will happen next as that chemical makes its way through the water supply. So I was worried about that. And then also for my own personal health as well.

seemed like a really really nasty dangerous product like if I were to smell it too long or if I were to drink it or something I would die so I didn't like using that but yeah there was no other way that i could think of to unclog the drain i tried all the other things first and when it comes to like cleaning my home and stuff as well i think i tried to have

Just gentle cleaners, nothing too heavy duty and trying to do cleaning every day instead of leaving things to build up. Because if things really build up and get super dirty and then you do need to clean them. then that's when you're going to need to use those like heavy duty cleaners. Right. And that could be more toxic or more dangerous. So like every time I use the microwave or something, I'll just give it a little wipe.

when I'm finished so that it doesn't build up and get super nasty. I think maybe that's one strategy that I use. That's a really good strategy. Yeah, I think that's great advice generally. Yeah, you can avoid a lot of the, like you said, heavy duty. Great expression for that. So heavy duty means that something is working.

110% and so it probably has some pretty powerful stuff in it that will for example get rid of the grease on your stovetop or something like that like caked on to your stovetop right so you need a heavy duty product to get through that grime and dirt sometimes Yeah, heavy duty. And we also use this to describe things that are very sturdy or very solid or very well built, right? Like a heavy duty pickup truck.

Right. Like you think about this pickup truck that's like really, really well made and sturdy. It's not going to break down that kind of thing. Heavy duty. OK, so, Indiana, I know that you do a lot of little things in your life just to maybe not.

necessarily to avoid chemicals, but just to be more natural, to keep it natural and clean and fresh. So what are those things that you do? Could you tell us about some of them? I think it's true that there are some unregulated ingredients or poorly regulated ingredients that are in a lot of beauty products and household cleaners and things like that, that it's not really clear.

how dangerous they might be. But if you're interested in health and being on the safe side with these kinds of things, I tend to be that kind of person. I don't go really crazy with it or obsess over it, but when I can, I try to pick something that I have researched a little bit or...

seems a little bit a little bit safer or healthier. So one thing that I do is I try to avoid products that have the word fragrance on the ingredient list fragrance refers to whatever the scent or aroma that is in that product is, but it's a term that could be like hundreds of different possible chemical compounds and those are not necessarily regulated and it's not clear which one is being used in the product.

So because there's just not that clarity or that access to the information, like which fragrance is used in this cleaning product or this beauty product, I try to avoid that as an ingredient altogether. So yeah, picking something that does not have fragrance on the ingredient list. That would be another suggestion if you're interested in this that you could try. Another reason for that though too is that I have just a very sensitive nose.

I'm very sensitive to strong smells. And yeah, it's just easier to avoid that for that reason as well. I don't know how you feel about strongly scented, strongly perfumed cleaning products, but yeah, they really bother me. Yeah, I'm not a fan either. I try to avoid it as well. And Indiana, I just want to... take a step back for a minute to talk about those two expressions that you just introduced, regulated and unregulated. So when we're talking about regulations, that's the noun form.

If something is regulated, it means the government has a law or a standard that companies must follow to make sure that something is safe, right? Something is safe. And unregulated means there is no law or no standards and you can just do whatever you want. So yeah, when it comes to the ingredient list, when you look at the back of a beauty product or you look at the back of a cleaner.

or even some food products as well. Sometimes we see like these very, very vague... ingredients like it will say fragrance like what does that mean fragrance I know fragrance is related to a smell like a positive nice smell but like what exactly is that and how are you making that fragrance Or if you look at the back of some food product, like some heavily processed, kind of artificial, unnatural food, sometimes it will say something like color, like food color. And you're like...

okay, what is that? What is food color? Or red, it will say red color. You're like, okay, but what does that mean? That's not a food. I can't grow red color in my garden. So it's something that's not natural. So yeah, those very, very vague ingredients sometimes can be red flags, right? They can be warnings that perhaps this is not so good for our health. So yeah, that's a great point.

Now, I kind of came to this accidentally. I didn't really intend to do this, but when it comes to deodorant, I live here in Seoul, South Korea, as listeners know. For whatever reason, it's not very common to wear deodorant in Korea. And so I remember when I moved here for the first time, I grew up.

you know, wearing deodorant. And then I came here and I looked in the toiletry aisle in the market and I couldn't find any. And I realized this is a thing that Koreans for the most part don't wear deodorant. However, that was a problem for me because I kind of need it and I want to stay fresh and clean. And so I was like, oh my God, what can I do here? Koreans don't wear deodorant, but I'm used to wearing it and it's important for my hygiene to wear this.

And so I looked into some alternatives and I went online and I think I found some like some hippie websites because, you know, we have this expression in English like hippie, hippie. is very loaded. It can mean a lot of different things. But when we're talking about like natural products, we think of a hippie as somebody that's like really trying their best to avoid using anything that's unnatural and really using. a lot of like homemade products and products that

are clean and safe and healthy. And so I found like some hippie websites and they were talking about making your own homemade deodorant using coconut oil and baking soda. And I think even some lemon juice you can use to get like a little lemon like light lemon scent and so I was like I'm gonna try it and it turned out like working perfectly and I still even use it to this day this is like 10 years later it's a little bit

harder to maintain because you have to keep it in the fridge or the freezer so that the coconut oil doesn't melt but other than that it like is very effective and I feel like it's a lot safer than the store-bought deodorant which you know, has a lot of chemicals inside of it and has aluminum inside of it. And I have Alzheimer's that runs in my family, both on my mother's side and my father's side. And I've heard that Alzheimer's is somehow.

linked to aluminum or there could be a link between aluminum and Alzheimer's. So I think it's probably best if I keep that out of my system and I don't let it enter my body. So that's like one little thing that I did, but. Yeah, it wasn't intentional. It wasn't like, I got to stay safe. I got to stop using deodorant. It's just like was born out of necessity because I had no other options.

Are there any things like that that you do? Maybe like some homemade concoction, something that you make yourself to avoid using some other product? That's interesting. You know, sometimes to clean my microwave, like you mentioned that earlier, I squeeze some lemon juice in a bowl with water and I just like blast that in the microwave, put it on.

high heat for a few minutes and the steam kind of with the lemon spreads throughout the microwave and then you can easily wipe down whatever grime or food stains, things, dirt that's in there. That's a good way. Yeah. But I don't know that I make so many homemade things like that. Homemade beauty products or cleaning products. I don't think so. But the aluminum and deodorant thing is definitely something that is talked about a lot.

And I'm not even clear on how much evidence there is for whether it causes problems. I've also heard of it being linked to breast cancer. But yeah, that's definitely a common one that you hear about. I really don't know. like if there have been more recent studies or new information about that. But yeah, you hear about these links and these things that...

that could be a problem for your health. And it can get really scary when you think like everything around me could be harming me, right? So I also want to want to stress that like... You know, I agree it's better to be safe than sorry. And I try to avoid chemicals that I've heard might cause cancer and things like that. But, you know, you can't avoid everything and you're going to have to.

interact with some of these products. And I hope that listeners don't get too stressed about this because, you know, it's a great idea to avoid some of these things when you can, but... There are these things, these forever chemicals or these microplastics that you hear about PFAs or PFAS. Sometimes people call them PFAS. And...

they're just like everywhere. They're all over our water supply. They're in our bodies and they're probably bad for us, but you know, we can't really avoid them. They're, they're in every product that we use basically. So. At some point, I think you also just have to raise up your hands and say, okay, I'm doing my best, but I'm not going to stress about this every day and, you know, every waking moment.

I don't know. It's really hard because I really do agree and I want to avoid these dangerous things. But I also like, you know, I know it might actually be more harmful if I'm thinking about this every day and, you know, in all of my free time, right? Yeah, it's so like annoying, isn't it? I find it annoying because you want to live a healthy life and it's so difficult. Like, why does it have to be so difficult? Why do I have to?

consider each and every product. Like why can't companies just make things that are healthy? And even when it comes to food, because I think for me, the best way to stay healthy is eating pure, natural, unprocessed foods, right? So like, yeah, eating heavily processed foods is definitely a way that we're gonna get sick or...

maybe develop cancer or something like this. So I try and eat as much unprocessed natural food as I can. But then you're like, okay, I went to the grocery store and I bought some vegetables, but then... Are they pesticide free? Are they organic? Are they natural? Like, is even eating this carrot going to cause me some problems because of the way that this carrot was grown? So it's just like, you can really, really go down the rabbit hole.

It is like annoying that we have to be so cautious and so careful about each step of... the consumption process. So unfortunately, Indiana, like you said, we have to wave the white flag and surrender because we can't really control every little element of the things that enter our lives. Right. That's true.

But, you know, I keep flip-flopping here, right? Because I really do think about this sometimes and I try to be careful with what I use. So to return to our listener and member. Aditka's original question, right? What are some things that you do to avoid harmful chemicals or things that are bad for you in the house with household cleaners and things like that?

Well, something that I do, which is simple that I think, you know, a lot of people could do. If you are somebody who burns candles because you love a scented candle, it makes your house smell good and it relaxes you. Instead of burning a candle, which of course you have a flame in your house and that's producing smoke and that's not very good for you. let alone any fragrances that you can look into or research independently in that candle. You know, try to get a candle that has some...

fragrances that you're confident about. But instead of burning it, you could get a candle warmer, which is a product that it's basically like a little heat lamp. So it heats up. the candle so that the wax melts but it's not on fire it's not producing a flame so you can still enjoy the smell it makes the candle last way longer and then you don't have an open flame in your house creating smoke so you know if you have a pretty small apartment

Smoke could really do some damage to not only your health, but like the walls and your furniture. So that's something to consider. One other thing that I am pretty serious about is I do not microwave my food in plastic. There is a chemical that can be found in many plastics called phthalates.

Now, that has a pretty weird spelling. P-H-T-H-A-L-A-T-E-S. Phthalates. Now, I'm not a scientist, right? But I'm pretty confident from what I've read that... phthalates when you heat them up in the plastic that they're a part of they can kind of release from that plastic and move into something else like the food that's in that container and they can definitely uh i've seen i've read that they could be linked to cancer and other problems like that so because we don't know

what is in our plastic all the time right I think it's just a lot safer to microwave food in glass or maybe on a ceramic plate or something like that. So I will never microwave my food in plastic because it's like so much work to try to figure out what kind of plastic the container is and that's just an easier... better safe than sorry thing for me that I don't have to stress about.

Right. That's like a very simple choice that I'm not going to be thinking about every day and stressing about. So yeah, I microwave my food in glass and I use a candle warmer instead of burning my candles. So those are two things that I do. Yeah.

nice i'm not really a candle guy i don't burn any candles but if i were to burn candles that's a great tip And I'm totally with you on the microwave and plastic as well. I kind of feel like growing up, that was just a thing that everybody was taught back in Canada is don't microwave plastic. I'm not sure. Maybe it was like that in...

the States as well. But that's something that I've carried forward with me my whole life is I'll never microwave plastic. And this is another thing I think just growing up when I was growing up. that I guess like in the late 80s, early 90s, there were still a lot of people that said microwaves were unsafe and that you could get cancer from using the microwave. So I think that caused a little bit of trauma. So I do use the microwave.

like an anti-microwave guy however if i have an option just between like throwing some leftovers in a frying pan or popping them in the microwave i'll almost always just put it in a frying pan and and heat it up that way I think that might be a little bit of that microwave trauma from the propaganda, the anti-microwave propaganda when I was growing up. And yeah, even some things with frying pans as well. Like you have to be careful about the cookware you use.

In an ideal world, I would use cast iron. I used to use cast iron before I got married, but now in my new home, I have this like induction oven, so I can't use cast iron with it. So I have to use like... these special frying pans that work with the induction stovetop. And I'm very careful with those as well. Like I always make sure that I use some kind of cooking tool that won't scratch.

the frying pan because I'm worried that the like the coating on the frying pan could maybe get into my food and then make me sick somehow. So I'm a little careful about that. Also, Aditka, in her request, she mentioned talking about water and do you drink water from plastic bottles or how do you get your drinking water? And I'm lucky enough that I have like a filtration system in my home.

The water that I drink is always filtered before it comes out of the tap. How about you, Indiana? What do you do for drinking water? Oh, yeah, that's a great question. And that is something that is worth... looking into depending on where you live. When my husband and I bought our house as part of our home inspection, the inspectors found that there was a lead water main. So the... connection to the the city's water and

you know, the pipes that carry the water that we use for drinking and using the bathroom into our house. The connector was made of lead. So obviously that is not safe at all. So we had to get that replaced. There has been historically an issue with lead in the water pipes in my city. and in surrounding cities. So yeah, this is, of course, totally regional, but that's something to consider, like how safe is your drinking water? And is it worth it to try to use a filter or something like that?

Since there's no lead in my water anymore, right, because we replaced it, I'm not so concerned about filtering my water. But yeah, I think that's another easy thing if you have evidence or reason to believe that your water, your drinking water is not so good.

should be pretty easy to find like an activated charcoal filter in a water bottle or something like that i'm pretty sure those get rid of a lot of um problematic ingredients ingredients that's probably the wrong word um things that are floating around in your water yeah yes

Yeah, good point. And like I said earlier, I think it's just so frustrating that we have to go to all of these lengths. We're busy enough, we're stressed out enough in our daily lives, and now we have to worry about the pipes. that our water is transported through into our home, right? Like here in Seoul, the water is actually very safe to drink. It's totally fine to drink tap water.

You know, I used to drink tap water for many years before getting married. And then my wife was like, what are you doing drinking tap water? Are you crazy? And I was like, it's fine. I'm totally fine. It's clean. It's okay. But then she was like. yeah the water might be okay when it comes out of the processing plant but then it's going through all of these old pipes and like how are you sure that the pipes are safe and the pipes are clean and then i was like yeah that's probably a good point

I'm not sure. And I know a lot of Korean people don't trust the drinking water. They say it's not so good, but yeah, the government says it's fine. I never had a problem with it. Doesn't smell, tastes totally fine. So yeah, it's kind of annoying that something as basic as drinking water is something that we have to be concerned about. But hey, that's reality. That's the world that we live in. And everybody can make their own choice.

for themselves about that anyways indiana i think we've said a lot about this topic and i hope aditka that you found it useful and educational and informative. And guys, we would love to hear your opinions and thoughts about this topic as well. It's kind of a loaded topic. So I know that many people do have lots of opinions about it. So we really want to hear what you think about chemicals, about staying safe with the daily products that you use in your life.

And the best way to get in touch with us and to share your opinion, not only with Indiana, not only with me, but with our entire community is over on our Discord server. It is free for everyone to join. And you can do that just by following. the link that's in the description for this episode. Also, make sure to check out our website, qloops.com, for the helpful study guide and interactive transcript to accompany this episode.

Okay, Indiana, I think that'll bring us to the end. So thank you so much for the conversation today. And guys, please take care. We'll be back soon with another episode and we'll talk to you then. Goodbye. Bye, everybody.