For nearly twenty years - in books, articles, and as an editor - Annie Berthold-Bond has been researching and writing about the connections between the environment, personal health and well-being, and has become a leading authority. She is the author of three books: Better Basics for the Home (Three Rivers Press, 1999), bestselling Clean & Green (Ceres Press, 1990), and The Green Kitchen Handbook (with Mothers & Others; foreward by Meryl Streep) (HarperCollins, 1997), and wrote the chapter on cleaning in The Healthy School Handbook (NEA Professional Library, 1995). She was founder and editor-in-chief of Green Alternatives for Health and the Environment, the national consumer magazine designed to provide a community to the emerging environmental health field, and the founding editor of The Green Guide (a publication of Mothers & Others), an Utne Reader Alternative Press award recipient for general excellence in newsletters. She is currently editor of Ecowire, an environmental news roundup for shopeco.com, and associate editor of News on Earth newsletter. Annis is also the author of dozens of articles, the editor and designer of her own web site betterbasics.com, and she authors a popular column "Ask Annie." Dubbed "The Green Heloise" by Library Journal, Annie has been featured in many magazines and newspapers (including the New York Times and Martha Stewart Living), and is a frequent guest on radio and television programs. Her greatest passion, outside of her family, is packaging information for the consumer on how to practice conscious harmlessness.

Having never had a serious health problem, Berthold-Bond became severely chemically sensitive after being exposed to pesticides in 1980. Her illness required that she be in an environment free of petroleum-based chemicals. Not an easy task in the late twentieth century, she began doing research into practical, nontoxic ways of cleaning and maintaining a home, learning willy-nilly as she went along. After getting well enough to have a child, she became particularly concerned about the environmental exposures of children, and the consequences of society's over-reliance on chemicals and their effect on the environment as a whole. She lives in Rhinebeck, New York with her husband Daniel, daughter Lily, two dogs, and an abundance of deer, wild turkey, and other wild birds and animals. She is continually adding to her large database of healthier alternatives and is committed to providing people with information to help them establish more natural lifestyles.

Annie Berthold-Bond
E-mail: AnnieBBond@aol.com