In this Simplified Speech episode, Andrew and Indiana talk about harmful chemicals in household products and how they try to reduce exposure to these chemicals in their daily lives. You will hear them discuss common household cleaners, beauty items, plastic food storage containers, and some simple choices that they make to try and stay safe and healthy at home. What you’ll learn with this episode: How to talk about cleaners, beauty products, and everyday items in natural English Useful words and expressions related to safety, health, ingredients, and household routines How native speakers share personal stories, give examples, and explain their lifestyle choices Simple ways people try to avoid strong smells, heavy-duty cleaners, and unclear ingredients This episode is perfect for you if: You are interested in learning how to avoid unsafe chemicals in the daily products that you use You want to talk about everyday health and safety in clear, natural English You want to learn useful words for cleaners, beauty products, and daily routines The Best Way to Learn with This Episode: Culips members get an interactive transcript, helpful study guide, and ad-free audio for this episode. Take your English to the next level by becoming a Culips member. Become a Culips member now: Click here. Members can access the ad-free version: Click here. Join our Discord community to connect with other learners and get more English practice. Click here to join.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Simplified Speech. Simplified Speech is the QLIPP 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 Q-Lips. And yeah, I think it'll be a really interesting conversation.
Yeah, absolutely. So shout out to Aditya, 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 Aditya is from Hungary, I believe, and she mentioned that there weren't too many Thank you for watching!
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. So we'll 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 Q-Lips 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.
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Chapter 2: What harmful chemicals should I avoid in household products?
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, QLips.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. And so, you know, I haven't really thought about this topic too much before Aditya 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 that you believe or maybe you feel that could be harmful.
And when we say harmful here, you know, 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, right?
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 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, and 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. Like I think chemicals is just any sort of compound that you could talk about in a chemistry class like table salt, right? 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. If you drink too much water, you could die from that.
I think 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 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?
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Chapter 3: How can I reduce my exposure to harmful chemicals in cleaning?
Yeah, it's so annoying, isn't it? I find it annoying because you want to live a healthy life and it's so difficult. Why does it have to be so difficult? Why do I have to consider each and every product? 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 going to 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 and 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. And 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, 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. It heats up the candle so that the wax melts, but it's not on fire. It's not producing a flame.
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. If you have a pretty small apartment, smoke could really do some damage to not only your health, but the walls and your furniture. 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?
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Chapter 4: What are volatile organic compounds and why should I be concerned?
We'll be back soon with another episode and we'll talk to you then. Goodbye.
Bye, everybody.