NZ Skeptics Articles

Go Green Garbage

Mark Honeychurch - 11th November 2024

The Go Green Expo is an annual weekend-long event that has been running for just over a decade. Starting in Wellington, the organisers have since spread to other cities in New Zealand, currently running events in Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch and the Hawke’s Bay. Although the event is slated to be a “sustainable lifestyle” expo, there’s very little that’s sustainable or eco-friendly being promoted at the event.

There are usually some electric cars parked outside the venue, and a few eco stands inside (insulation, solar panels, products made from recycled materials), but these are outnumbered by stands selling health products that have little or no proven value. Brain drinks, acupuncture mats, lots of detox drinks, cacao, fluoride-free toothpaste, hemp and cannabis based products, homeopathy, Bioptron, healthcare MLMs, essential oils, orgone pyramids, scaremongering about wireless technology, diatomic fossil powder, berry drinks, water purifiers, water alkalisers, turmeric powders - that’s just a list off the top off my head. None of these have anything to do with being environmentally friendly or living sustainably - they’re just people trying to make money from selling products with unproven medical claims. None of these are likely to make a positive difference to anyone’s health or lifestyle, but most of them are likely to have a negative effect on people’s bank balance.

In past years we’ve made many successful Advertising Standards complaints about illegal medical claims made in brochures, on posters, and on the Go Green website. We’ve even talked to the organisers about this issue, but they seem uninterested in ensuring that their exhibitors stick to only saying what’s legal - I guess if they police this, they may find themselves unable to sell all of their stands.

Sadly it’s not just this expo that’s been infiltrated by the alt-med pushers. I’ve been to an allergy event that almost entirely consisted of alt-med nonsense, a healthy living fair that was abysmal, and even a craft fair that had Scientologists handing out flyers (admittedly for that event I was with the Scientologists, back when I was pretending I was keen on joining them so that I could get an insight into how they operated). We’re considering visiting some of the other annual events to see how badly they’ve been compromised, such as the home and garden show and the baby expo.

Here’s a sample of the pseudoscience from this year’s event (mixed up with the odd legitimate product or service) - and it’s just the start of the alphabetical list, from A to E.

The Go Green events include a small room for companies who want to give talks, presumably for an additional fee, and each weekend usually includes a dozen or more short half-hour talks on a variety of nonsense. I realised that these talks can kind of be seen as an upside down version of our own annual conference, one where people spread misinformation rather than counter it. Here’s how this year’s rundown looked for the Saturday afternoon we visited:

12:00 Seleno Health Cannabinoid oils for chronic health conditions

12:30 Orba Shoes How the world will really choke on waste, and how we “just solve it”

13:00 Bader Enhancing Your Natural State Of Being

13:30 GE Free NZ Unlabelled gene editing or GE free?

14:00 Kure NZ Benefits of Hemp Oil

14:30 Sustainability Trust & Toast Electric Floorplans & Footprints. Ditch gas first? Heat? Insulate?

15:00 MamaZing Apothecary Mushrooms, mushrooms, mushrooms!

15:30 Lifewave Reactivate your stem cells using light therapy patches

Here’s what happened at just a few of the stands and talks we visited:

The Chiro

A local chiropractic practice with several locations in and around Wellington, and told me they’re careful when they adjust a child or baby’s spine, using an “Activator” device. They had a leaflet titled “Chiropractic for Kiddos” which contained many, many unproven claims about how technology is ruining kids’ spines, and how chiropractic can treat serious health conditions in children, and another one called “Tummy Time” about spinal adjustments for babies, which made me both sad and angry.

Adjusta Mattresses

These mattress sellers approached me, trying on the hard-sell for their expensive (but fun-looking) electronically adjustable beds. Presumably I’m of a certain age (nearly 50) where these beds are more likely to be purchased, and this is why they targeted me. The usual kind of nonsense was mentioned, such as the bed being “zero G”, and that the bed was a registered medical device because it was registered with MedSafe. I told them that this “registration” was likely just inclusion in MedSafe’s WAND database (which is basically a register of medical devices, so that if a device causes injury to someone, MedSafe knows which manufacturer is responsible and can contact them) was not evidence that the bed actually does anything medical, to which they replied that they didn’t know what WAND was. They then showed me their MedSafe certificate, which included their WAND registration number, proving my point.

While I was patiently trying to explain to the rep that the piece of paper they had showed me was not evidence of efficacy, Bronwyn was behind me flipping through the folder that contained the MedSafe certificate and bunch of other claims. Amongst these was a claim that their smart beds didn’t use WiFi, because it’s “A silent killer that kills us slowly”, and that, amongst other things, WiFi can impact fertility and cause cancer. Bronwyn decided to take a picture of the page:

At this point the senior rep came round the corner and asked if we were taking photos of their paperwork.This was followed by questions about who we worked for, and why we had taken an interest in their mattresses (they’d approached me!). At this point we decided it was time to move onto somewhere else, and we spent the rest of the afternoon trying to avoid getting too close to the paranoid mattress sellers.

GE Free NZ

Bronwyn and I sat in on a couple of talks. The first was from GE Free NZ, whose president, Claire Bleakley, was there to tell us not only that GE foods are a ticking timebomb, but also that organic food is superior to either GE or normal farm foods, and that fluoride is a dangerous poison in our water. Given that Claire told us that she not only had a bachelor’s degree in science (psychology), but also advanced qualifications (in herbal remedies and homeopathy), I don’t see any reason to doubt her professional opinion on these matters.

Kure

The second talk we listened to was from a company called Kure. I think this name is a little bit clever, as it makes people think of the word “cure” while also being exempt from Advertising Standards Authority rulings. Yep, the ASA doesn’t police product names used in advertising - only the claims made in a product’s description.

This company’s range of hemp products are supposed to treat a range of conditions, none of which have any evidence backing them up. On the website, their flagship product, the Full Spectrum Oil, has very few claims, prefaced with weasel words:

However, in a brochure I picked up from their stand, we see much more explicit claims about their product, including its use in treating cancer:

Kure Plus Full Spectrum Oil has been shown to be useful for those with epilepsy, arthritis, inflammation, pain, cancer, sleep issues, endocrine and gut damage, eczema, anxiety, depression, PTSD, ADHD, autism, Parkinson’s, brain damage and concussion, stress, asthma, PCOS, endometriosis and menopause.

There’s mention in the leaflet of “microdosing”, which usually involves taking a very small, almost homeopathic dose of the substance, with the idea that you can somehow get the same effect with a very small dose as with a regular dose. Of course, this is the opposite of how homeopathy works, as a homeopathic dilution supposedly creates the opposite effect to what a remedy causes when taken in a therapeutic dose. However, for Kure, their idea of microdosing is to take a normal dose, but spreading it out throughout the day in smaller, more frequent quantities. So, for example, for their hemp drops you would take one drop four times a day rather than four drops once a day. So, really, they’re just using microdosing as a buzzword, and ignoring what it actually means.

The talk and brochure also focused on the “endocannabinoid system” - a series of receptors found in different places in the body that use signalling chemicals that are similar enough to some of the chemicals in cannabis that cannabis can trigger the receptors. Although I found a lot of early research making grand claims about the wide-ranging and important uses of CBD, THC and other chemicals to affect the endocannabinoid system, it seems that there’s not much, if anything, out there in the way of mature, large-scale human trials showing that any of these cannabis-derived chemicals can be successfully used in a medical setting. After a little searching through all the hype, I managed to find a more down-to-earth, recent (2023) article from McGill University:

_A limited number of conditions, such as certain forms of childhood epilepsy, have been shown to benefit from CBD. A long list of other conditions show promise, but the studies so far are not all that informative. Optimal doses are unknown. And beyond the drowsiness, dry mouth, nausea, reduced appetite, and diarrhea sometimes reported as side effects, CBD can cause actual bodily harm that may not be immediately apparent, although CBD is thankfully not habit forming.

We can add to this list the fact that commercial products are not always what they seem: when tested, they often reveal different amounts of CBD and THC than what’s on the label, and they are regularly contaminated with heavy metals. Some products claim to be CBD yet contain none of it…

CBD is not an all-natural cure-all; it is a drug. It should be understood as such, even when it is not regulated as such._

EMF Shop

Richard and I stopped at the EMF Shop stand, which is one of the regular stands that’s been at the Go Green Expo for quite a few years now. They sell a curious mix of items. Not only do they have EMF meters and protective products - Faraday blankets, clothes and bags, dirty electricity filters, grounding tape, RFID pouches and shielding paints - but also blue light filtering glasses, and orange LED lights.

Richard asked the owner of the shop, Andy, about one of the Faraday bags they had on show with a wireless router in it. When he asked if the bag would stop a mobile phone ringing, he was told that the bag was designed to filter out some of the electromagnetic rays but not all of them, so electronic devices like phones and routers would work the same, but be less dangerous. To me this sounded like the device was doing nothing at all - if there’s no change in performance, presumably there’s no attenuation of the signal going on.

By this point I was doing my usual thing, asking innocent-sounding questions that are aimed at expanding the conversation to new areas of pseudoscience, and allowing the person I’m talking with to keep digging the hole they’ve been digging, showing their utter ignorance of any actual science. After I’d asked about the EMF meters (which all looked horribly over-priced for what little they can do) and mentioning that I’d seen them earlier that week at a ghost hunting event, Andy started talking about some of the issues with EMF and how it can make us sick. At this point I made a mistake, while trying to sound knowledgeable about the problems of EMF “pollution” and ElectroSensitivity, by dropping the phrase “geopathic stress” into my sentence.

A confused look came over Andy’s face, and he told me that he was knowledgeable about geopathic stress and was able to help people with this problem. I think the odd look was because he’d not mentioned geopathic stress to me, and nowhere at his stand was it mentioned either, but here I was bringing up this very fringe idea that he just happened to be an expert in.

I suddenly realised why this could have been a mistake - I remembered that several years before, when visiting this same stall at a previous year’s Go Green Expo, I’d collected some of the company’s brochures and talked with the staff about their products and their geopathic stress claims. Then the next week, at our Activism meeting, I’d submitted an ASA complaint about how the company was telling people that we’re all being poisoned by “geopathic stress” - natural EMF coming from the earth - and needed to buy their products in order to protect ourselves.

So, the reason I knew about this geopathic stress nonsense was because I’d successfully had the ASA tell Andy to remove all mentions of geopathic stress and its dangers from his website and brochure. And I realised that if Andy figured this out, I’d be rumbled. But, as he kept talking, the look of confusion went from his face and he settled into talking about one of his favourite topics - him.

Andy told me that he’d been called out of the blue by an old man a few years before, and that this man was a local dowser who wanted to give Andy all of his dowsing secrets. Of course, Andy was keen to learn, and so the magic of dowsing was passed to him. What he learned was that he could use a pendulum or brass rods to find water and other underground features, such as “energy lines” - and that customers paid him to find water on their properties, as well as advise them on where to place their houses on a property avoiding negative energy lines and even aligning with a confluence of positive energies. In his own house, his cats sit in places where these positive energy lines are strong.

I talked about how I own a pair of dowsing rods, and have used them and seen them cross over, but Andy said that these days he only uses one rod - and in his head he decides what direction of movement indicates a positive result. So, if he thinks that left is Yes, when the rod swings to the left that means he’s found what he’s looking for. And he can decide what the rods are looking for by asking a question of the universe. He simply needs to put his intention out there, and the answer will come back to him by moving his dowsing rod. And because the universe knows everything, past, present and future, you can ask questions about pretty much anything you can think of and receive the answer.

As an example, Andy told me that if he’s had chicken in the fridge for a few days, the answer to whether that chicken is still safe to eat is out there in the universe somewhere, in the aether. And, so, his dowsing rod can tune into this source of information and let him know whether he should throw away the chicken or if it’s safe to eat.

At this point I decided that I’d heard enough - it was obvious that, as is so often the case with people selling pseudoscience, what Andy sells and promotes publicly is just the tip of the iceberg of what he actually believes. I had flashbacks to the editor of the NZ Journal of Natural Medicine explaining to me in detail that her life is connected through a series of events that involve spirals, and that they’re all connected in meaningful ways (and no, her name wasn’t Junji Ito), and a USANA Multi Level Marketing agent telling me 9/11 was a false flag operation, and then asking me if I really wanted to know how deep the rabbit-hole goes. So, before Andy could trap me for the next hour, talking about his theories of the universe, I thanked him and made my escape.

After we’d all finished visiting the stands, leaflets in hand, and Katrina’s kids had had their fill of ice cream and lollies, we escaped and went to a nearby bar to decompress. It was nice to see that there were fewer stands this year than in previous years. I’m not sure if this was a conscious decision to make the event less crowded, or if it means that there’s a dwindling number of alt-med companies out there. Obviously I hope it’s the latter, but I suspect the former is more likely to be the case. I’ll be back to the Expo next year, and if there are only a dozen stalls left standing I’ll be a happy man.