Technology
200. Are Antimicrobials the New PFAS? with Arlene Blum
In this milestone 200th episode, Arlene Blum, a pioneering mountaineer and environmental advocate, discusses the parallels between mountaineering and chemical policy reform, particularly focusing on t...
200. Are Antimicrobials the New PFAS? with Arlene Blum
Technology •
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Interactive Transcript
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So antimicrobials are like PFAS, a chemical that seems good, and it seems to have a useful function,
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but the question is, does it really? And often we found that PFAS had no function or little function,
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particularly given the potential for harm, which we've been learning more and more about. So antimicrobials,
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for example, in hand soap, actually don't provide a benefit. Both the Center for Disease Control
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and the FDA say it's much better to wash with plain soap and water, believe it or not.
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Soap and water washes away all the germs, bodily fluids, every gross thing you can imagine.
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Soap and water is the best. And antimicrobials actually are not better in fact, in some cases,
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they're worse because they can be sticky, while soap and water makes everything clean and
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cleans away all the problems. Antimicrobials have been shown to cause a wide range of
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health harms, different antimicrobials, but allergies, asthma, they also, they kill bacteria,
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so they're highly toxic to the little creatures in the creek.
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I'm Meg Karn, an outdoor and environmental journalist, and this is the Outdoor Metamilist podcast.
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Thank you for joining us so that together we can create a better outdoor space as we recreate.
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What if the same determination it takes to climb some of the world's highest peaks was also the
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key to tackling some of the world's biggest chemical threats? That's the story of today's guest,
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Arlene Blum, a pioneering mountaineer who led the first woman's ascent of Denali and led the
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first American ascent of Anapurna I. Arlene later turned her focus toward another steep climb,
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protecting the public from harmful chemicals. As the founder of the Green Science Policy Institute,
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she's helped face out toxic flame retardants and raised global awareness of PFAS,
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also known as Forever Chemicals, and you may remember her from our Forever Chemicals podcast
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series last year. Now, Arlene is sounding the alarm on what could be the next PFAS, antimicrobials.
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And as we celebrate 200 episodes here on the Outdoor Metamilist podcast, we are excited to explore
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the parallels between adventure and advocacy, and how we can carry the many lessons we learn in
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the wilderness into creating change within our own communities. Thank you so much for joining us
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on the Outdoor Metamilist podcast. If listeners are familiar with Forever Chemicals podcast,
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then they may recognize today's guests. So Arlene, you've described mountaineering and scientific
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advocacy as having some very specific parallel challenges. So can you share a little bit about some
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of your early expeditions and how they prepared you in your current career and kind of like a lifelong
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mission of battling chemical policy reform? Yeah, and I'd like to call it more healing the world,
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making things better. And I think it's part of the same process. So back when I learned to climb
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at Reed College, it was great. Lots of the climbers, women, women, and there was no problem. But when I
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started going on expeditions, I discovered that women often weren't included. And back when I
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wanted to climb Denali, I was told women could come along as far as base camp to help with the
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cooking at a reduced price. And so I just thought, I wonder if a team of all women could climb Denali.
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And that seemed like a pretty revolutionary idea. This was back in 1970, after century ago.
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And I found five other women and we climbed Denali. And indeed, I was the co-leader, but I
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real leader was a very experienced Alaskan woman climber who was not good at altitude, which she
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hadn't neglected to tell us and who collapsed unconscious just below the summit. And so I was 25,
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and I ended up rescuing an unconscious person from below the summit of Denali, which really
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increased my confidence that I could do challenging things. I actually grew up with not too much
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confidence, but climbing can really help. So I continued climbing with men and women. And then,
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again, I was told women couldn't climb to 8,000 meters. And so I organized a team of women to
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attempt Anna Pernowon, which didn't have much history in those days. And we thought, well, it's
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one of the less high 8,000 meter peaks. And it was the first one I ever climbed in 1950. So maybe
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it'll be one of the easiest. And your listeners might know Anna Pernowon turns out to probably be
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the most dangerous and maybe the most difficult of 8,000 meter peaks. And we did climb it. It's the
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first women's descent and the first Americans. And I guess I've done number of other first
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lead first descent of expeditions in India and Nepal. And once I wanted to see the whole Himalayas,
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and I get motion sick in cars, and you know, to do expeditions in India, you have to go up these
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curvy roads, which was miserable. And I thought, well, if I walked from one end of the Himalayas to
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the other, I could see the whole thing without getting motion sick. So I spent a year walking across
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Bhutan, Sikkim, Nepal, and India. I think what I've learned very late in life, like now, is kind of
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my gift is having a vision of something that makes the world better, giving women a chance to climb
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my mountains. And then just being very determined to find others to share my vision and to make it a
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reality. And so in my scientific work, I feel like I'm doing the same kind of thing. It actually
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started, my scientific work started back in the mid 70s when I was climbing an easy 23,000-foot
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peak in India with Bruce Carson, who was then America's leading young rot climber. He actually
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pioneered climbing grade sixes in Yosemite without petons using chalks. And he persuaded people
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like Ivan Chenard and Royal Robbins that this was possible and led them up these grade sixes.
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And that I heard led to the beginning of Patagonia and Royal Robbins. He was amazing visionary climber.
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We were climbing an easy 7,000 meter peak with a big cornice on the summit. And he stepped through
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the cornice and fell to his depth. And he was 24 years old, horrible. And I was really depressed,
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and I wanted to do something in his memory for the environment, because he was a very strong,
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early environmentalist. And I learned that there were these flame returns in kids pajamas that
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looked really harmful. And the chemicals were like 10% of the weight of the pajamas. They probably
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got into the children. And we did an experiment. We found a little girl whose mom had bought her
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pajamas in the UK. So she hadn't had the flame return in pajamas like American kids did. And we
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put her in the American pajamas, collected her urine. And the first day, there were cancer-causing
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breakdown products in her urine. So that meant that the chemicals went from the pajamas into
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the little girl. And in America, chemicals that we eat, like foods, drugs, pesticides, are regulated.
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We may argue about how well that they are regulated. But things, at least then, in pajamas and
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furniture and consumer products really weren't. Anyway, so we discovered that it was a very strong
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mutagen, a carcinogen, and in those days, we published our paper, a lead article on science.
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The next week, we're on the three morning shows, Good Morning America, the Today Show,
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and every parent in America knew and three months later the chemicals in pajamas were banned.
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And that's the value, by the way, of a unified media where everybody in America
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has the same messages and things can really happen. So that's how my career started
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and working on harmful chemicals. And I think what I found is both in expeditionary climbing,
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working on chemicals. You start with a vision, being at kids pajamas without cancer-causing
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chemicals, or a team of women getting to the top of a 8,000 meter peak. And then you find others who
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share your vision, other climbers, other scientists. Then you have to raise money, resources,
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get equipment, pack heavy loads. And in all these things, treasure the mountain. It sounds glamorous,
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but really like what I do, what you all do, it's hard work. And along the way, there may be
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avalanches and blissards and occasional yaddy will pop out, but you just have to keep persevering.
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So that's my analogy. And after years of climbing and hiking, my knees aren't so good for climbing
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mountains now, but I get very similar satisfaction. And indeed, I think it's more important
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making the world healthier. No, I love that analogy because I think it's very relatable. And I think
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when you have something that feels a little more abstract, like chemical regulations or something
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like that, putting it more into the physical makes it easier to understand kind of like how you can
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accomplish those things. And much of what you have just told us is that predominantly what's covered
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in your new book, Breaking Trail, or do you kind of like delve into other areas of your life and
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lessons that have transferred from climbing into your environmental work? Well, Breaking Trail took a
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long time to write. I wrote my first book, Anaperna, Women's Place, about the 1978 Anaperna
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Climb in a year. And then I said, you should write about your life and how you got to Anaperna.
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And I thought, oh, that will take another year. And it actually took me 20 years because it's a
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really personal book of understanding. I had a very challenging childhood and understanding how
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the challenges of my childhood led to whoever I am now. Like I grew up in a house that was really small
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and full of cigarette smoke, loud TV and people arguing. And I was in Chicago and I would love
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and winter just to run out in the snow and shovel snow. And the colder and the more blusherty it was,
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the better I liked it compared to my smoky, noisy house. And so I've always loved being outdoors
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and blushered, which some people think is unusual, but I could trace it back. So anyway, so I kind of
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did a lot of tracing back to my childhood. So it's a very personal book. I also was doing
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science at the time. So I wanted to call the book mountains and molecules and the publishers thought
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molecules wouldn't sell. It was called breaking trail, but it's breaking trail in mountaineering
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and in science is how I like to think about it. Yeah. And one of those things that you've done to
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break trail, especially in science is the Green Science Policy Institute. And that's something that
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hopefully people are familiar with because you've done a lot of great work and your role with
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phasing out harmful flame retardants and raising awareness around PFAS or forever chemicals
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is amazing. But what strategies in those processes and like the years of work you've done
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have proven to be the most effective, you think, in terms of actually driving change?
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Good question. And I will say I just feel so privileged to have found, I didn't start this
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until I was about retirement age. And so I was so happy to have found a way, you know, to take
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the mountaineering skills when I really couldn't climb my mountains to doing things to make the world
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better. And what we do is we find a problem. And then we as scientists, we usually collaborate with
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other scientists to investigate it further, write peer reviewed papers. And then really publicize
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our papers a lot. We work with whoever can solve the problem. And it's usually either business
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or government or both. Often the information business gets about their chemicals is not really
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accurate. And so we like to be a source of alternative information to business and their
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partners. So we're not an NGO that blames and chains, but we're an NGO who educates and helps
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industry business manufacturers to move in a better direction. I've been really amazed how
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well that can work. If you want, I can give you a favorite example. When we started working on
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PFAS, which you know, well, it's a very problematic stain and water repellent chemicals, we read some
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articles that the largest source of exposure for young children was carpeting because they call them
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carpets. They put their hands in their mouths. And the carpet industry are all based in Dalton,
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Georgia. And so we actually invited them to come to Berkeley for one day meeting. And why did they come
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because we collaborate with some of their big customers. We have a buyers club with Google and
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Genentack and Harvard, and who buy lots of carpet and want carpet without PFAS. So they have a healthy
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environment for their workers in the public. But in those days, at Home Depot, we're low is what you
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got was PFAS carpet because that was what people thought they wanted. Anyway, the big customers invited
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the carpet industry. They all came to the David Browers Center in Berkeley and walked in saying,
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you know, well, we used to have this lawn chain C8 on our carpets and we were told that's not so
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good. So now we have a safer alternative, the short chain C6. And we've solved the problem and
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why are you bothering us. And then a bunch of scientists who they knew and respected because we'd
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actually started our meeting with a big Italian dinner with lots of wine. So all became good friends.
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So their friends, the scientists said, well, actually, the chemicals you're using, the C6 are just
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as bad or maybe worse than the old ones because they're more of them. They're harder to get out of
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water. So you haven't solved the problem. And then some of their customers came in and said, yeah,
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we don't want like, you know, Google, we don't want them in our buildings and Kaiser Permanente,
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we don't want them in our hospitals. Harvard, we don't want our students exposed, you know,
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their big customers. And then there were people in the room like from the California Department of
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Toxic Substances saying, well, we're going to be regulating carpets. It'll take us a few years.
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And unbelievably, at the end of one day, they all decided to stop using PFAS and carpets. And
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they did. And it took them two years and by 2020, Home Depot and Loads were advertising all their
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carpets were PFAS free. And the regulation didn't come till 2022. And that is so good when industry
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can see the writing on the wall when they can get good information that they really are harming
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their workers in the public. I don't think anybody wants to do that. So we like to put the case
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together, share it with the industry and have them decide that they want to do something else.
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That's the best way to do it. Now, the outdoor industry, I started in 2013 saying, can I talk
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to you about PFAS? And they would not talk to me. You know, I used to talk it outdoor retailers.
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I got black bombs. Nobody wanted me publicly to say PFAS was a problem. And so we kept trying to
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invite them to come to the David Browers Center for a meeting to learn about PFAS. But nobody really
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wanted to come until I think it was September of 2022, California banned PFAS in textiles.
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And then they all came in November. And we all talked about what they could do to get PFAS out.
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And it was by the beginning of 2025. And I think they all have it out. And they still have good
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functional products. So in that case, they really wanted a level playing field. And they needed
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government action. I just the people in the room couldn't or wouldn't want to make that. They
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didn't want to get in the room to talk about it. You know, because they felt they needed it for
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performance, even though a number of companies in Europe actually got out of it quite a while ago.
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But in any case, so those are kind of the two extremes. And time like, Crowbeals are what we're
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working on now. We're going to have a meeting with people who use antimicron fields in their
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products. And we'll see what happens. Yeah, I think those are such great examples of how like
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industry can like push back in different ways, but also how collaborative conversations like
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you're saying you've had can be so beneficial. Because once they understand this and hopefully
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can see that this isn't issue they can shift early on. But yes, the outer industry did kind of
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drop the ball on that one. And I'm hopefully they learned from that experience. But you mentioned
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antimicrobials. And you've said in the past that antimicrobials are maybe going to be the new PFAS.
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And so for listeners that maybe aren't following the oh, what do you call it? It's like the six.
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Oh, oh yeah. Yeah. One of our ideas that I think has been super helpful is thinking about
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chemicals and families or classes because there's a big tendency. You know, we all heard about
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BPA and water bottles big campaigns and all the water bottles say BPA free. But the substitute is
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often something like BPS, which is very similar in structure and function. And not much is
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known yet about the toxicity. But guess what? If it's similar in structure and function and what
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what do you think the toxicity? And I think you could go through BPA to Z and still find that. So
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let's just not put BPA to Z in our products. PFAS is an extreme example because there's thousands of
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PFAS. And again, it takes years of scientific research and advocacy to regulate a single chemical
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and it's expensive for manufacturers to change processes. So if the chemical industry says, well,
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maybe there was a problem with, you know, the long chain PFAS, but we've got the short chain PFAS
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and they're great. And we really haven't studied them yet, but we're sure they're great.
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Well, they turn out not to be great. And then that's kind of expensive for the manufacturer to have
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to keep changing. You know, we're not saying a whole class shouldn't be used. But if a lot of members
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of a class are harmful, then you should look with some concern before you switch to something that's
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almost identical. Yeah. And so within those classes, there's like six different classes of chemicals.
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You guys have kind of categorized. And you've mentioned a few of them, but antimicrobials is one that
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I definitely want to learn a little bit more about. So what parallels do you see with antimicrobials
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in general within these classes of chemicals in how they are kind of being used and regulated?
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Okay. I'm going to just do one more regression and just encourage your listeners if they want to
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to go to sixclasses.org where they can watch a four-minute video on each of those six classes
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learning where the chemicals are used, where their harmful and how they can reduce their exposure.
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So learning that can really help people in half an hour six classes. So antimicrobials are
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like PFAS, a chemical that seems good and it seems to have a useful function. But the question is,
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does it really? And often we found that PFAS had no function or little function, particularly given
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the potential for harm, which we've been learning more and more about. So antimicrobials, for example,
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enhance soap actually don't provide a benefit. Both the Center for Disease Control and the FDA say
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it's much better to wash with plain soap and water, believe it or not. Soap and water washes away
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all the germs, bodily fluids, every gross thing you can imagine. Soap and water is the best.
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And antimicrobials actually are not better in fact, in some cases they're worse because they can
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be sticky. While soap and water makes everything clean and cleans away all the problems.
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Antimicrobials have been shown to cause a wide range of health harms, different antimicrobials,
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but allergies, asthma, they also, they kill bacteria. So they're highly toxic to the little creatures
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in the creek. So say you wash your hands with antimicrobials soap for 20 seconds. Well, the antimicrobials
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says on the label for it to be effective, leave it on for two minutes or three minutes. Nobody
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does that. Maybe surgeons do it, maybe surgeons need it, but people wash it for 20 seconds. Doesn't
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do anything for your hands. Goes out in the wash water and kills little creatures in the creek.
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And in some cases comes back in women's breast milk. There was a very bad antimicrobial called
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trichlophane that was banned in 2015, but had been used for years and was found in virtually all
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American women's breast milk, even though it had not done anything for hand washing. So another
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problem is our sewage treatment plants work with bacteria digesting the sewage. So you get lots of
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antimicrobials in your sewage plant treatment plant. And guess what? It might stop working, which
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is not a good thing. Even worse, antimicrobial resistance is a global problem. Thousands of people
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die, they're in a hospital, and suddenly they're resistant to all the antibiotics. And we know one
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problem is antibiotics and animal food, but a second problem is the overuse of antimicrobials,
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which can also encourage that. So you only want to use antimicrobials as directed when you know
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they're going to work. And I have to say I go to get my knees or kind of a problem. I've discovered
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I go to the Y and I use the knee machines, and it really helps my knees, but everybody in the Y
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is spraying every machine before and after they use them. A lot of the sprays are
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quaternary ammonium compounds, which are quite harmful. And again, to be used properly, you're supposed
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to be left on wet for minutes, and then wiped off. And people should be wearing protective gear
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when they spray them, because the spray is dangerous. And here at the gym, people are just spraying
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them a lot, then wiping it with their towel, then wiping their towel with their forehead, and being
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exposed. And there's no benefit if you just spray and wipe. So for example, in gyms, we think that
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if people want to clean between users, they should use soap and water or something that's not toxic
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alcohol. And if you really want to be disinfection with an antimicrobial, it should be done
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properly by gym personnel when nobody's there in their way protective gear. So this is a similar case,
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you're hoping for something good, but you're really ending up with with health harm. And in this case,
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it's to the people being exposed to the environment, they kill bacteria, they kill a lot of things,
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to waste water treatment, and to antibacterial resistance. So there are a lot of problems,
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little benefit in most uses. And this is not well known. Everybody believes the right thing to do
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is lots of antibacterials, because since the pandemic, even though most diseases are air transmit,
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not surface transmit, so spraying all those surfaces isn't actually going to help you.
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Yeah, I know. Antibac cereals are so interesting. I was also going to bring up the pandemic of like,
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I feel like everyone was sanitizing everything all of the time. And then we've kind of carried a
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lot of those habits past that pandemic time, like always using hand sanitizers, always wiping down
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your surfaces with these antimicrobials. I mean, how do you think you can kind of break through so many
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people believing it's a good thing and believing that it's helping them and showing them that there
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are safer and better alternatives that are not as harmful to us or the planet.
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Well, first we're talking to you and telling you in your audience, so we're getting started. And
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that is a big order because the people selling them do a lot of advertising. In fact, we're collecting
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the most outrageous ads to share with some late-night people to see if we can use old comedy.
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If you've ever heard of miracle sheets, which will protect you from baldness and better sleep,
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and what are they? Their sheets plus nano-silver. I don't want to sleep on nano-silver, but mostly it
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goes out in the washwater and highly ecotoxic. The miracle is, unfortunately, what happens to the
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environment for miracle sheets. And there's a lot of that advertising. So I don't know, but I should,
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you're in communication. I should ask you, how do we get the word out? Because that's really what
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needs to happen. I think when people know about it, they make other choices. But as you said,
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particularly since the pandemic, everybody believes it's really a good thing to spray away with
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antimicrobials irrespective of whether we know if there's a benefit and there might be a harm.
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There's a lot of different ways. I love the comedy approach, I think that's very relatable to a
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lot of people and often reaches a wider audience. But yeah, podcasts are also a great way. So we're
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glad that you're here. And you mentioned a couple of alternatives or like one main alternative,
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just being plain soap and water. So is that, do you think that's the primary alternative people
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should gravitate towards? Are there others that are also readily available?
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Well, citric acid is relatively harmless. It's okay. Alcohol, in certain cases, hydrogen peroxide,
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except you don't want to breathe it. So you don't want to spray it. Yeah, the EPA has what they
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call safer choice where they certify certain products as being okay. And it depends what they use.
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Sometimes you do need a disinfectant, but then you want to use one that's the least harmful.
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And read the directions. Like all these quats say, children should not be exposed. They're considered
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pesticides by the EPA. But yeah, the back to school template for what kids should bring back to school
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contains chlorox disinfectant wipes, which contain quats, which children aren't supposed to be
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exposed to. And one question, they say, well, they're for the teacher to use, but you know,
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a friend said her kindergarten daughter is wiping her table with the disinfectant quats. And I'm
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sure that's happening all over the country because that's the sort of template back to school list
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that schools get. And they can change it. But the one they start with has coax wipes and coax
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actually helps sponsor the website. But they also have non antibacterial wipes. And they could switch
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to putting those in the back to school, just like for babies, there's both kinds. And I know which
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kind I would recommend. So if people get alerted to the fact that there's no reason to select
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a product that contains an antibacterial, and they can just have the plain product without it.
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Yeah, with so many alternatives already being available, it is a little bit easier to just
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make a better choice once you already are aware that it could be a problem, especially around
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children. And so if antimicrobials are indeed potentially the next PFAS, what do you think in terms
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of industry and policy, what would success kind of look like to you and your team? Getting people
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to recognize that you don't want to add in materials. I mean, I think when we started working on
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flame retardants, all the scientists would give their papers. And they say flame returns are
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essential for fire safety, but they harm everything. And then they discovered that they actually
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didn't provide fire safety. So they stopped saying that. And people who are knowledgeable know that
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the way they're used, they often don't. So I think the first thing is a general awareness that when
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you is properly like a disinfectant, when you need to disinfect, following directions can be useful.
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I'm not saying the whole thing isn't, but the way they're usually used, you know, like spraying them
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widely in the gyms, which we're doing all over the country, you know, we had a summer student who
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went to 20 local gyms and over half of them were using these quadrionary monium compounds at sprays.
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So success would be, I think, if the companies who made them recognize that they could still have
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good products and move to safer alternatives. And so they can't do planes open water because you
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don't make a profit, but they can put citric acid in a preservative in it and call it something
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green clean and still make a profit, whatever they need to do. So I mean, we do think working with
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the manufacturers and educating them to better choices. Government regulation is tough. I think
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federal regulation right now is pretty off the table. I mean, it has been for quite a while,
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that the states have taken the lead on things like PFAS. And now there's, I don't know what's going
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to happen, the attempts from the federal government, you know, to preamp the states, which would be
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very unfortunate, I think. Anyway, regulation is hard and slow. So it is better if manufacturers and
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businesses make better choices around their products. And I think it's hard for consumers to
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distinguish, you know, we don't have the time to read all those little words on the label. On the
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other hand, there are soaps, dawn dish soap, which everybody loves, the nice blue dawn, you know,
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that they wash the birds at on my safeway. There's a row of nice blue dawn that everyone loves. And
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below that is antibacterial dawn, which is pink and orange. And if you read the label very carefully,
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it says chlorozylinol antibacterial hand soap. And that's because they have put in a harmful
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anti-microbial and it's not allowed in dish soap. But there's this thing where it is allowed in
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hand soap. So it's labeled as handsome. It's very strange. And I think that's not good for their
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brand. You know, people really like that. But if people started reading the print on the label,
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they might start questioning it. So I kind of think it's an industry's best interest to get
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ahead of consumers and just move to healthier products. So anyway, long answer. But I think that
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that would be very helpful for the companies and the world if they could move away from some of
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these harmful anti-microbials to safer solutions. And I mean, I love to see industry kind of like
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leading the charge on some of these topics, especially moving away from harmful chemicals.
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I also think that consumers do have a lot of power in terms of where they're spending their
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money and what they're asking for from companies. I guess Disney and Jimmy Kimmel would be a recent
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example that we saw that a lot of consumer pressure played into their role of like reinstating him.
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So how do you think consumers can help push for better regulations around things like antimicrobials
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or really any of those six classes of chemicals? Well, I guess they have to read the labels,
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but it's pretty easy to just because you usually says in pretty big letters antibacterial or
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antimicrobial. So that's to be avoided. And just to say hand sanitizers usually fine, it's usually
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just alcohol and aloe vera. If it says antibacterial, it's a problem that there's a very small amount
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that does. So that's actually a pretty simple one. If people recognize that the antibacterials
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can be health harmful and don't provide a benefit and just don't buy them. But getting that word out
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without an advertising budget because there's a lot of advertising, outrageous advertising,
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but it's favoring them. But it's just a lot of work with so many products to get educated and
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make better choices. But there are consumers who want to do that. And that I did recommend
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watching our six classes videos to get some starts on how to do that. Yeah, if there are other
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resources, if people want to learn more about antimicrobials or any other chemicals that could be in
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their products, I know the Green Science Policy Institute, you have a lot of resources on your
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website. So what would be some of the primary ones you'd point people to? If you go to GreenSciencePolicy.org,
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EWG has a good website listing products. I think nowadays if you go go or you can actually get
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good information, sunscreen, for example, of many, many resource consumer reports, has great
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information, you know, the New York Times, wire cutter, often it will have good information. So,
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but it's a lot of work for all the things you buy to do that. So it's much better if the
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manufacturers take on the burden rather than the consumers trying to shop their way out of these things.
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Absolutely. Well, Arlene, thank you so much for your time and for sharing this important message.
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I think everyone should definitely head to the Green Science Policy Institute website. And I
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subscribe to your newsletter. I think there's a ton of great content in there. And check out Arlene's
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book Breaking Trial. I'm looking forward to reading it. I haven't read it yet.
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Erojourney and your story through the mountains and also science is very inspiring.
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Thank you. And I was inspired by the really good job you did on your story on PFAS.
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And maybe you'll do a similar story on antimicrobials. I would be delighted.
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Maybe, maybe.
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Thanks for listening. And if you like what you hear, let me know. Leave a review and be sure to
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