I have to say, I think we're very good about recycling. I like to compost. I've seen stasher bags. They did not have reusable zip lock bags like that when I was growing up.
No, we were putting our peanut butter and jelly in that bag, coming home, putting it in a trash. That was it. We didn't think anything about it. But now, I mean, if you see somebody with a plastic grocery bag in a grocery store, everybody's kind of looking at them, like, my goodness, it's the thing of the past.
I got a thousand canvas totes, okay, and I'm carrying them all out like the Hulk.
Yes, now, a nice canvas tote. You're definitely keeping that. You used to keep all those plastic bags under the sync in another plastic bag thing of the past.
And there might be a pretty good reason for that, according to a recent consumer report, right right. I'm glad you saw that, because that's exactly what I wanted to talk about. This consumer report was talking about the chemicals that are found in some of these plastics and packaging that we use us for our food, and that made me kind of nervous because everything low key is packaged in something. Even the oranges coming in a net. You
can't just buy a couple loose. I mean sometimes you can, but they want you to use those little thin green film bags. Usually those are compostable, but a lot of times it's not.
And if you don't put it in the compost.
Then what then what?
I'm t T and I'm Zachiah and from Spotify. This is Dope Labs.
Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that makes it hardcore science, pop culture and a healthy delsa friendship. This week we're talking about the chemicals that are commonly found in food packaging and lots of consumer products. We want to know more about them and how they impact our health and environment.
Let's get into the recitation, all right, CT.
What do we know?
Well, we know that there's a lot of single use packaging all around us. I mean we grew up during a time with you know, the ziplock bags, all the bags for fast food pizza boxes, everything like that, and so at this point it's almost unavoidable grocery bag. It's just a part of the world culture.
And I think what we also know, well, I can speak for myself in many of my colleagues that we're doing a lot of takeout. We saw that, especially over the early stages of the pandemic, takeout and convenience food. There is a lot of packaging involved in that. If you're not going and picking a bell pepper, you know, or picking a tomato off the vine, it's coming in one of those little plastic containers. Those products are often wrapped for your convenience and safety, but they're made out
of something. We also know that chemicals are everywhere, but not all chemicals are created equals. Some of the chemicals that we come in contact with, like water, which is a chemical. It's made up of molecules, and so water and you know, carbon monoxide are two very different things. Carbon dioxide you don't want that much of, but.
Water we know that we need. We need some of that every single day.
I think this is a very good example of the importance of moving past what you can see with your eyes. We talked about this in a previous episode when we spoke about oysters and seeing their health. But it's easy to look at something and say, huh, seems okay, just because you're looking at it and you don't see a lot happening with your eyeballs, But there's a lot past what these eyeballs can see. So what do we want to know? I want to know about some of these chemicals.
What are they called? Are there different categories of them? Because the only two like bad guy can micals I know about our BPAs and then just styrofoam in general. I know you're not supposed to hit styrofoam in a microwave, but I know there's more to worry about than that.
I want to know how these chemicals in the packaging, how they're affecting the environment. Because we know the landfill, honey, we talk about it all the time. Everything is going into a landfill and we know that once against the landfill that that means is becoming a part of our ecosystem es ecosystem, right, So how is it affecting our environment?
Well, when you know better, you do better. Over the past couple of decades, there's been a greater understanding of things that are around and just in the environment, and how long it takes for things to degrade, and some things don't ever go away. So what's the plan? Is there any policy around this stuff? How has the packaging industry responded to these things like what's the tea? What's going on?
And I want to know what we can do in our day to day lives to not only protect ourselves but protect the environment. How can we consume more responsibly? Because I'm gonna be going to Burger King That's one thing that I know for sure.
You love a wopper.
I love a whopper, I do, and I am going to be going to Popey's, Popeyes Burger King. Hear me up? I mean for real.
So let's jump into the dissection.
Our guest for today's lab is Justin Fouchet.
My name is Justin Fouchet. I'm the operations director at a nonprofit science, research and communication organization called the Food Packaging Forum Foundation.
The Food Packaging Forum Foundation research is the chemicals found in food packaging and its environmental impacts.
So you've been hearing Zaki and I say this term forever chemicals, and a forever chemical is defined as a p FOSS, which is p fa s and we ask Justin to explain at a basic level what p fos are and where we can find them.
We use the term pfos pafas, and it classically sustains for per and polyfluoro aalcool substances, and the current definition according to the OECD the Organization of Economic Cooperation Development, is that pfos are any fluorinated substances with at least one fully fluorinated methyl or methylene carbon atom. And the main thing to know about these very simply is that these are molecules characterized by having carbon atoms attached to fluorine atoms.
And this bond that Justin is talking about is the strongest known bond that exists. You'd think the bond between JT and young Miami is strong. Well, this is stronger than that. This means that it's virtually impossible for this chemical to break down.
The chemical properties of p fos make them very useful for many consumer products.
The chemical structure this carbon fluorine bond makes them have a high water and oil repellency as well as being very thermaline chemically stable, and research recently over the past few years has shown that they're used across many many
products and really practically all industries. There was a study in twenty twenty published by a research group that found over the four thy seven hundred different pfos chemicals identified by the oecd that are known to be on the market or have been developed somewhere at use sometime.
Justin says that p FOSS has been found in some climbing rope, guitar strings, ski wax, artificial turf, and.
Some cosmetics cosmetics not my skincare, not my foundation, All of those things. Basically p foss are there.
PFIs are found in lots of food packaging materials. But p fos are man made chemicals, and the problem is exactly what we just talk about. They don't degrade, so they stay around essentially forever, which is why they're called forever chemicals.
Many of them can start to break down in the environment a bit, some of them break down more than others, but none of them really break down completely.
So we ask Justin to explain what makes p foss stick around so long.
And it all goes back to this carbon fluorine bond. So, in organic chemistry, carbon fluorine is the single bond and it has the greatest strength that exists within organic chemistry. It's very, very difficult to break this carbon fluorine bond. So normally man made chemicals in the environment that are made up of different types of elements connected together with different ways and different bonds. They can be broken down,
maybe by bacteria, maybe by environmental processes. Maybe they react with their chemicals and eventually they turn back into whatever they started with, just carbon molecules water. But this carbon fluorine bond does not break down easily in the environment like everything else does.
And when we say break down easily, that still takes quite a bit of time. Paper takes two to six weeks to completely decompose, and apple core takes two months. Now contrast that with a plastic bag. We're talking to to twenty years to decompose.
Right, And if that plastic bag has pfos in it, those chemicals don't decompose with the plastic, They stay around for hundreds and hundreds of years. Over the past couple of years, p FOSS has been found in paper and cardboard,
food packaging, plastics, and in some metal coatings. P Foss coatings are applied to these packagings to create a water in grease resistant food packaging, like with burger wrappers or pizza boxes, and that's the reason why your pizza stays in the box and doesn't fall through the bottom by the time it gets to you, And unfortunately it's not as simple as avoiding one type of packaging or food company.
Every food packaging material is different. Right, Because your food packaging doesn't come with a list of ingredients like your food does. You don't know necessarily what's in there. So you might have one plastic or paper plate that is comparatively fairly clean, so to say, right, compared to one from a different manufacturer that uses their own formula. We can't point the finger and say this one packaging is different or better from this packaging because we don't have
the data. But all we can say is that, generally right, non inert materials migrate chemicals. We know that there are thousands of chemicals that could be used in this type of food packaging, but because we don't know what's there, we take a precautionary approach with how we use it to avoid potential chemical exposures that we don't want to have.
A non inert material is a material that will change over time or decompose. An inert material won't change at all, so there's no chemical reaction that occurs in its lifetime. It may seem intuitive to avoid those chemical exposures. You can say well, I'm not eating the wrapper, So I have accidentally done that, haven't we all? You know when you've eating a burger and the cheese is on the wrapper and you want to get that little bit, Yeah, I've eaten it.
You should have left it behind, friend, it's too hard. Justin says we should be concerned about how these chemicals might migrate in to our food.
It's one thing for the chemical to be in the packaging. It's another thing for it to then actually move into your food, a process called migration, and then expose people who are eating that food.
Right.
There was a recent study that came out that showed that pithos migration increased when the food had a high fat content, when it had a high salt content, when it was acidic, and during higher temperatures.
I think I saw something on Netflix that told me that those were all the components of good food. There's a whole cookbook about that.
Yes, and that sounds like all of my favorite favorite treats. I fat, I salt, and hot okay. And I think a lot of us microwave our food when we get home, and a lot of time it's in the packaging. So yeah, that's not good.
And the reason for that is because plastics and also paper and board are what we call non inert materials, which means that the chemical structure of these materials is not fixed. The chemicals inside the material are not bound and they don't stay in the material. They're kind of able to float and move and migrate into the food. Right. So when you expose these not in their materials to lots of heat, the molecules move more.
Those molecules are cupis shuffling right on out of the paper and into your meal. That's wild to me. One of my friends told me that she got rid of all her plasti tupperware and only uses glass. Hmmm, she might be on the something.
She's ahead of her time, and Justin agrees.
A really simple thing to do to avoid exposure to chemicals and food packaging in general is to instead use what we call inert food packaging materials, and the most common examples of this are standless steel, glass, and many kinds of ceramics.
We wanted to learn more about some of the environmental and health impacts of pi fas. According to Justin, there are two factors that go into a risk assessment. One isposure to our chemicals, so how likely are we to come into contact with it? And number two is the hazard of the chemical, so is it going to cause an adverse effect on my body or the environment?
First of all, the exposure part. The fact that pifos are so stable in the environment and they don't necessarily disappear, means that the exposure to them is potentially very long term. And there's been multiple what are called biomonitoring studies, which measure fluids in our bodies. Usually it's blood or breast milk.
There was a study from the German government just a few years ago and they measured twelve different types of pifos in the blood of over one thousand children that were aged three to age eighteen during the second half of the twenty tens dozen fifteen, twenty seventeen, and they found that one hundred percent of those thousand children all
had detectable levels of piphos. Right, this very classic pifos in their blood, and the other pifos they looked for were also detected as well, all lower levels.
You know, this reminds me of a movie that talked about some of this stuff. What it's The Hulk, Mark Ruffalo he's in this movie that talks about p foss basically.
Exactly Dark Waters. It was about DuPont and their production of non stick coatings, and those nonstick coatings had p foss in it. And what happened to a town that was located near that factory. So they experienced a lot of runoff into their water and a lot of people got sick, and there was some folks that also died because of their exposure to these chemicals. This is a true story that was not fiction, that was real, and.
It had me looking at my nonstick skillet like at two brute and it seems like we need to look at everything, your zip lock bag, the rapper like rope, I mean, just everything. Justin told us there are lots of studies measuring p FOS exposure in the environment.
Most commonly, they measured groundwater. They measured ocean water around the world. Big ships went around, took water samples off the side of the boat, checked for PFOSS concentrations.
And these studies are measuring PFOS in groundwater, ocean water. One study even measured p FOSS in the blood of Arctic seals. I hate to tell you, but the results showed that there were pipots in both the ocean water and in the blood.
And the concentrations change over time, so we can see when a chemical has been phased out. We can watch the concentrations in ocean water slowly decrease.
So it's not all bad news. What we can see is when a chemical has been phased out, you can measure, you can detect the concentrations decreasing over time, slowly but surely, and scientists saw this by measuring ocean water in the pfos in it.
Justin told us about another study from just last year, so twenty twenty one, where they tested the breast milk of fifty mothers and they were able to detect p FOSS in every single one of their breast milk and overall they found sixteen different p FOSS chemicals.
This included what are known as shorter chain compounds that were used or created to replace kind of these legacy older p FOSS chemicals like pfos and P four. So it's not only just these older ones we've phased out that are being detected. There's also the newer generation. And that's exactly what everyone should and wants to avoid. You don't want to replace a hazardous chemical with another one that's also hazardous.
Yes, you heard that right. Folks are in the lab making new p FOSS materials that might not be able to be detected by the technology that's currently available. But there are some good guys out there that are working really hard in the lab to develop alternative materials that aren't hazardous.
So it's clear that humans and our environment are being exposed to p FOSS regularly.
We've found it in our blood, it's in breast milk, it's everywhere.
It's even in the Arctic Circle. What come are we doing with pfos up there? So now that we've covered the exposure factor, let's get into the hazard factor. Justin told us that studying the hazards is a bit complicated. It requires a lot of testing and there are many endpoints that indicate impact.
Over the years, various pfos have been reported assigns of literature to be associated with various different health effects that were adverse. It doesn't apply to all chemical or one chemical, but there's been reports of associated metabolic and cardiovascular disease and verse developmental effects and fetuses and children, and there was a more recent study that looked into PFOS exposure and the effects on the immune system function, especially in
the context of antibody responses to vaccines. This became a topic with the COVID vaccine, and there was some evidence to show concern that PFOS exposure, at least some of them, may contribute to reducing our ability for immune systems to function.
This is wild.
Yeah, I would have never guessed that PFOS and the OVA vaccine would overlap in any way.
Yeah. Yeah, I don't like it.
It's scary, it really is.
When we consider the body of research on p fos. Remember Justin told us there are over forty seven hundred types of known p fos, and they're kind of different. They're really different, actually. But when we consider where the most research is on pfos, there are two most popular ones, and they are p FOA and p FOS.
They've been investigated for decades and after lots of lots of research, they were found to be persistent and harmful, and they were banned globally under the United Nations Stockholm Convention for almost all uses worldwide, So except for very very few uses that are limited, they're just not allowed to be used everywhere.
The United States signed the treaty but has yet to ratify it, so legally nothing has to be enforced.
It's really difficult to study sometimes the effect of these chemicals because it's not possible or even ethical to do science experiments on people. Right. We can't just expose someone to a chemical and see if they get sick or have some disease in twenty years, So instead scientists have to rely on doing animal studies, often with mice or rodents,
to really understand what the effects could be. We also use what we call in vitro studies, so in petri dishes looking at bacteria, or using computer models comparing the properties of a chemical to other chemicals to see if we expect the effects to be similar. And there are recent studies looking at various pfos that link them to different endpoints, including more developmental effects in these rodents, reducing their birth weight, reduced survival rate of some of the
rodents that we're exposed. There's kind of an increasing level of concern for this group of chemicals, has more and more people look into all these different endpoints.
So this is wild because multiple things are happening here as soon as somebody says, Okay, we've identified this type of PFOS that is harmful, the company says, all right, slight change new chemical. So if you're still looking for old chemical X, people are now using chemical Y. And does that even matter anyway because that treaty hasn't been ratified. I have questions exactly.
So these companies are doing whatever they got to do to a skirt skirt the regulations and still get what they want, which is us consuming their products at a high rate so they can get those dollar dollar bills.
So if we know this, I mean somebody has to care, right, Are there any policies or industries that are responding to this? What are folks doing to address these issues?
So in the EU, at least, there's a law that the manufacturers of food packaging are legally responsible that their food packaging is safe. Now, the exact way that they ensure that they're safe isn't always exactly clearly prescribed based on the food packaging material type, and for paper and board food packaging in the European Union there's not currently what's called harmonized regulation. Plastics, for example, have a much more detailed regulation with a very specific list of chemicals
that can and cannot be used. Paper and board does not yet have harmonized regulation for this that gives exact guidance. But it is the legal responsibility of the food packaging manufacturer that the product that they put on the market is safe.
You know, I don't know if I trust these big businesses to do us right, you know what I mean, Like, that's a lot of responsibility and what that responsibility means changing your processes, which means you might be spending more money on packaging. So if you're spending you know, a dollar on food per packaging and now you have to go up to a dollar fifty, that's a big change if you're selling you know, millions of burgers wrapped in that packaging.
They're saying, it feels like some competing interests there, you know.
Yes, and if it's not enforced or it's not regulated like that, just as talk about the European Union. I don't know what they're doing in the United States, but I have a feeling it's not always the right thing.
Mm Because there are just so many of these pifos. It takes a lot of time and resources to test every one of the.
Chemicals that can take years to complete the test needed on one end point or multiple endpoints. So there's a growing call from lots of different stakeholders and consumer health organizations especially to look at pfos as a group and apply what's called the precautionary principle, which means, if we don't have data yet to absolutely determine that a chemical is safe or is not safe, we don't just assume
it is. We need to err on the side of safety and rather be precautionary and not take unnecessary risks with chemicals we don't understand enough about.
That makes a lot of sense. I would rather err on the side of safety when it comes to these chemicals that are essentially going to end up inside of my body and bloodstream and everything.
In the EU, there's a political initiative gaining traction called the Chemical Strategy for Sustainability. It outlines goals for improving chemical safety in the next few years, and that includes p fos.
There's a group of five member countries in the EU that are developing a restriction proposal that's going to try and propose to restrict or ban pfos as an entire group from entire uses without having to spend the time to locate chemical individually. And there's a lot of people who are really big proponents of this because they see it as being precautionary and also much more effective than playing what some scientists like to call whack a mole.
And there's been similar movements on p FOS concerns in the US too. The federal government is starting to look at p fos and drinking water, but on a state level, individual states like New York, Maryland, Washington, Connecticut, Vermont, Minnesota, and a few others are addressing p fos, including those found in food packaging, through legislation.
This has been seen as good from a lot of consumer health organizations. It's led to a bit of confusion and a bit of chaos, unfortunately, of course, because each of these states, they're not necessarily coordinating with each other. They're all setting different requirements for which chemicals are allowed, what kind of reporting manufacturers have to give them to
be able to sell food packaging in their state. The timelines are different when these new laws come into force, and this has really created a headache for a lot of the food packaging manufacturers we've spoken to who really don't know what to expect.
This is a great point. You know, nothing's going to happen overnight, so it could take a long time for us to see the effects of these new laws because a lot has to change. So let's take a break and when we come back, we'll get into how companies are responding to p fosts concerns. We're back before we jump into today's lab, let's talk about next week's lab.
Next week we're talking about how minds Change. We're talking to David mcrainey his book How Minds Change, Blew My Mind and also totalus Dopamine isn't what we think it is and it's actually involved in changing your mind. Make sure you check this lab out next week.
All right, let's get back to the lab. We've been talking with Justin Bouchet all about pfos, what they are, how they impact the environment and our bodies, and the policy response. But what about the food industry. How are companies addressing pifos. There's still a lot of unknowns when it comes to PFOS research, and there are a few
reasons why that is. One is that many companies want to protect their intellectual property and are reluctant to share the exact chemicals that they're using to come up with their products. And like we learned in our episode on nails, regulations on disclosing chemical use and safety vary widely across industries and regions.
Said earlier, there are a lot of different laws that are in progress in different states, So like, what should we be expecting, How are companies adjusting?
It's going to take these companies time. They serve millions and millions of pieces of food packaging a day around the world, so to change their whole supply chain, work with their suppliers and make that switch to non p FoST food packaging is a big effort for them.
Justin told us it's also important to look at the fine print to see if companies are addressing PFOS in all stages of the supply chain, not just the consumer facing packaging.
Right, your food has to go through multiple steps or it ends up at the pickup window.
Is there packaging or material with PFOS in it during the processing of the meat or cutting of the potatoes and shipping it? Betwe manufacturers, and so far we haven't seen so much discussion about those upstream uses of food contact materials and I think that's really a next step that these big players are going to have to start talking about.
Yeah, that's a very good point.
Yeah, because we've been focusing on food packaging, but there's a lot of that happens before it gets into that rapper.
Honey, you know what I'm thinking about. You ever bought like a sleeve of burger patties and there's like that little thin piece of paper with something, Yeah, what's on that?
And we said earlier on in the episode that you can also find it in metals. And so when we're thinking about any of the machines that are used to grind up meat, to cut up slices, to do anything, there potentially could be pifass in those metals.
Nobody been saying nothing. Yeah, conveyor belts, oh Ben, I don't want to think about my food on the conveyed I don't want my.
Back, big big vats. All of these things are coming in contact with your food, and you have to think about that.
I'm gonna know my next chicken's name.
Ah, Henry, you've been good to me. This has been a lot. Okay, to be fair, and you might be tempted to panic because it's very overwhelming, and it feels like there's literally nothing we can do. PIFAs are everywhere, They're all over us, They're all up in our business, and we can't escape. But Justin says that we shouldn't panic and it's not totally on us to manage pfas.
I really want to avoid people from panicking and feeling hopeless and thinking that this is their responsibility. It's not something that the consumer should feel like they have to take on and be responsible for controlling. This is something that the manufacturers of the products that are sold to us, and our governments that have mandates to protect public health are responsible for ensuring.
Justin says that the solution to PIFAs might be bigger than simply trying to replace pfos with less harmful chemicals and instead considering a completely different food packaging system.
I think it's time that we start to think about ways that we can improve the system at its core, rather than trying to play catch up and design new chemicals just to stick with the same kind of life lifestyle. If you think about single use products like paper and plastic wrappers and plates and cups, fifty years ago, we were relying on reusable materials. We were relying on reuse, you know, we were using ceramic plates and restaurants and
glass containers. And this change towards this convenience, throwaway lifestyle is really when we started to see this environmental pollution start to begin. And then now we're also discussing all these issues with chemical exposures.
This is such a great point that Justin is making reusable containers is nothing new. I mean, when we were kids, reduced, reuse, recycle, you know the thing, and it's the original way that things were done. I mean, for real, plastics only really started becoming really popular in the nineteen sixties. It had been around for a lot longer, but not a part of every single person's everyday lives. Do we really need to rely on single use packaging for every meal and every delicious treat?
You better pour that juice into a glass, get that capri sun out of here. But there's also trade off with all of this stuff, you know, packaging. Some things that we may consider convenience are often really useful for folks to prevent waste. On the other hand, right, so you may want only one bell pepper or one avocado. You brought something to my attention. TT this new technology that really puts p FoST to shame.
Yeah, I recently saw an article in Scientific American that talked about a spray on wrapper that is completely biodegradable, antimicrobial, and it should help with reducing the amount of plastic waste that we have. So the research was out of Harvard and they created this device that sort of acts like a cotton candy machine and it covers the food and this fiber that washes away when you're ready to eat the food. Probably won't work for a sandwich, but it will work for your fruit.
That is very very cool.
And we've also started seeing a lot of food brands that are making the switch to other non pfoss chemical alternatives, and that includes the company that owns Burger King called Restaurant Brands International. They have promised to remove all pifos from their guest facing packaging by twenty twenty five. So there's a lot of efforts that are being made in the food industry to help decrease our exposure to pfos.
We are only here because we are chemicals, right. Chemicals themselves are not the problem. Chemicals make our health and our world possible, but we have to develop and manage and think about how to use them responsibly and not just short sighted. You know, we need to think long term about how do we develop, create, and use chemicals and when are new types of chemicals really essential?
Well, you heard the call. It sounds like we need more chemists, more engineers, more smart folks to think about how to solve these problems.
And we also need to make sure that the folks that are making the decisions about what is going into this packaging that they know that we know. Okay, we see you, and now we're not going to let them off the hook that easy. We as consumers are going to be checking in and making sure that they're very transparent with the chemicals that they're using in our food packaging. It's time for one thing.
I gotta admit, this lab made me think about things differently, and my one thing is going to focus on this new device that I got as a gift, and it's called the low Meat. The low Meat allows you to put your food scraps and waste into this little bucket and it basically simulates decomposition. You can add these little microbial tablets to it if you want to, but it just breaks down your food with heat and grinding into
basically soil. And every time I am stunned. Wow, and the soil even changes based on what I put in. I put a lot of leftover fried rice and orange chicken in recently, and I said, ooh, that was greasier than our thought.
So you can use that soil to then put it in my plate. I guess that's what compost is. But every time I'm like, no, you can't do this is alchemy. My one thing this week is for everyone to kind of look up what they have locally to be able to start composting if it's something that sounds interesting to you. So locally for me, there's Compost Crew also another organization called Apex Organics. So I really encourage everyone to just
do a quick Google. If you're thinking about composting or wanting to reduce the amount of waste that you have coming out of your home, do a quick Google search and find your local compost company.
That's it for Lab seventy four. Call us at two zero two five six seven seven zero two eight and tell us what you thought, or give us an idea for a lab. We should do this semester. We'd like hearing from you, and I especially want to hear what kind of reduce, reuse, recycled strategies you're using in your home. That's two zero two five six seven seven zero two.
Eight special thanks to today's guest expert, Justin Bouche.
You can find Justin on LinkedIn, and you can learn more about the Food Packaging Forum at Food Packagingforum dot org or on Twitter at FPF Foundation.
And don't forget that there is so much more to dig into on our website. There'll be a cheap cheat for today's lab, additional links and resources in the show notes. Plus you can sign up for our newsletter. Check it out at Dope Labs podcast dot com, and you can find us on Twitter and Instagram at Dope Labs Podcast.
TT's on Twitter and Instagram at dr Underscore t Sho.
And you can find Zakia at z said So. Dope Labs is a Spotify original production from Mega Ownmedia Group.
Our producers are Jenny Ratleitmask and Lydia Smith of WaveRunner Studios.
Editing and scoring by Rob Smerciak and Griffin Jennings, be mixing by Hannes Brown original music composed and produced by Taka Yasuzu and Alex Sugier from Spotify. Creative producer Miguel Contreras.
Special thanks to Shirley Ramos, Jess Borrison, Yasmine, afifikmu Ilolia, Till crack Key, and Brian Marquis. Executive producers from Mega Own Media Group are us T, T Show Dia and Zakiah Wattley.