We're freezing prices for two years in the Virgin Media playhouse. Switch to our super fast, reliable broadband now and freeze your prices or all broadband offers for twenty four months from just thirty five euro month with no activation fee. Switch in store or at Virgin Media dot ie Virgin Media. It's playtime.
Tcenc's applies subject to availability new broadband customers and twenty four month contracts only. You won't receive a price increase with the duration of this contract from thirty five yuro month for twenty four months seventy euro thereafter. NS February eighteenth, twenty twenty six.
Do you know what real power is? It's knowing you're on the same rate for energy all day, every day with a smart all Day plan from Board Gosh Energy. Save up to eight hundred and eighty euro on dual fuel plus get a two hundred and thirty five euro welcome bonus switch today at board Goosh Energy dot Ie board Gosh Energy. Know your Power.
Estimation Annuel bill at twenty six hundred and twenty nine Your new customers only thirst of percentis kent off Smart all day electricity unit rates in twenty nine percent of gas units, sportcash energy dot E for full teesncs.
Oh hey, it's the bouncer who comments on your out of state license because he has a cousin who lives there. Ali Ward back with a fresh and a timely episode of ologies that as an episode and as a species, this one is really long overdue, but it was finally driven by some recent events in Ohio and Jarret and I went to our neighbors to eat dip for a quarter or two during the Super Bowl, and we were pretty shocked to learn how few of our neighbor's friends
had heard of this trained derailment in eastern Ohio. Same thing with my family chat, Everyone's like, what derailment? So I said, Ward, let's talk to an environmental toxicologist about their whole life and this.
So we did so.
I asked around for the best person to chat with, and y'all delivered. So many arrows pointed right at this ologist who did an undergrad degree in environmental science, got a master's in public health and environmental and Occupational health, including a very fancy environmental health Risk Assessment certification, and then earned their doctorate in environment mental, and Occupational health.
They're now doing a postdoc at Northeastern Universities Social Science, Environmental Health Research Institute in Boston, and they've studied anthrax in Alaska, potential antidotes to lethal phosphine poisoning Sneaky p foss. Much more on those later, they studied how climate change impacts epidemiology and mitochondrial poisons. Their work is just this beautiful soup of environmental toxicology, public health, and environmental justice.
They're perfect for this. But before we get to the interview, a quick thank you to everyone who's sponsoring on Patreon at patreon dot com, slash ologies, I love you a dollar or more a month lets you lob questions at our guests. It also keeps show running and for zero dollars. If you like, you can just help us out by telling friends or reviewing, or making sure you're subscribed, or leaving a rating or a review.
I do read all the reviews.
And as a thanks, I highlight a fresh one each week, like this one from Nikki Drinks, who wrote Ali Ward put her whole alla jusse into this show. I tell everyone I know about it. I'm obsessed. Much love to you, Queen Nikki Drinks. I would like to buy you a drink for that. Ala jusse god I hope I said that right. I loved it. Also, Anna Kate Thora hugs to you. Okay, Environmental toxicology and a little bit of
fun trivia. So toxicology comes from the word toxin, which means poison, which was from a Greek word for poisoned arrows, which came from an older word taxa, meaning archery, which came from an older word meaning a yew tree, which, in a weird roundabout way, there's a compound from the Pacific yew tree that was approved in nineteen ninety three as a chemotherapy called taxol for breast cancer among other cancers. And chemotherapy is a type of well administered poison to tumors.
So much more on that whole philosophy coming up. You're gonna love this. So I made this ologist get on the horn to talk about their work and chemical spill, historical disasters, water quality, airborne toxic events, clear gases, white noise, dead fish, dark clouds, chemistry tests, raincoats, lawsuits, and lead. So take a deep breath if your air is fresh, and get ready to love environmental toxicologist. Doctor Kimberly k Garrett.
Sure, Kimberly Garrett.
She's and doctor, right, oh yes, yes, yes.
Yeah, and you can also call me Kim so that's fine too. It's been quite a week.
It has been quite a.
Week toxicology land.
Dang, is there any part of you that's like, Wow, people finally care about environmental toxicology?
Oh? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I'm sad that it takes an emergency or a disaster for people to be interested in the field that I love so much. But you know, there's the room for everybody in the in the toxicology train, so so welcome.
No, but intended on the train. Oh my gosh, we have trains on the brains. What can you say?
Well, I'm from Pennsylvania and my partner, who is not from Pennsylvania, is convinced that every Pennsylvania has a genetic disposition to love trains. I can't escape it.
And how did you decide what to do your PhD In?
Well, when I was an undergrad, I became really interested in chemical toxicology. I initially wanted to go to undergrad for chemistry, but I have really bad test anxiety, and so the testing of the you know, weed out classes at the beginning, really they weeded me out, and so I ended up going into environmental science, and I'm so glad that I did, because I took a toxicology class and I learned about all different kinds of ways that
chemicals impact our bodies. And from then on, I was like, if it's a chemical, I want to study it and how it impacts our health. And so I really got into the laboratory science side. I did a lot of spectroscopy, spectrophotometry, very molecular analytic methods to start to learn about how chemicals impact our bodies and how chemicals interact with each other. So even though I didn't have that official chemistry background, I really learned a lot through hands on research and
learning from other colleagues. And then I wrote to a professor at pitt who was teaching in an organic chemistry class, and that professor was just very wonderful and supportive and that class really really impacted the way that I do my work.
And so this professor, doctor Jill Millstone, at the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Chemistry, ended up changing the course of Kim's life life and on the topic of the past. Let's go way back environmentally toxicologically speaking, what about when this career kind of took a turn. I imagine that we've been using way more human made chemicals and forever chemicals,
and we have better technology to study them. Was there even a thing called environmental toxicology like before the nineteen hundreds, does anyone even care?
Well?
There definitely was toxicology throughout history. One of the founders of toxicology a guy that we call Paracelsus. He was an alchemist and had some pretty bonkers ideas about how the world worked, but he had some good ideas about how chemicals work and how poisons work. And so we think of historical toxicology as very poison driven, you know, mercury in alchemy operations, and cyanide in drinks of rich
men by their future widows and things like that. But I mean, the environment is around and has always been interacting with our bodies. And even if there wasn't the language to talk about it the way that we do now, people knew about associations between what was going on outside and what was going on inside.
So toxicology has existed for thousands of years before the Egyptian hieroglyphs that warned of poisons and before socrates death
by hemlock. But toxicology had its official start on the books in the fifteen hundreds with yes, the Swiss born physician and alchemist Paracelsus, whose birth name was actually Philippus Eurolius Theophrastus Bombastis von Hohenheim, which I fucking dare you to name your next cat Philippus Ariolis Theophrastus Bombastis vaun Hollenheim, please anyway, But Paracelsus was actually a pen name for his non science writing, but it kind of stuck after
his death, like Madonna or Real or Beyonce or Share or a Dell. But his hot jams included hits like figuring out that miners disease or ciliosis was caused by inhaling rock dust and was not, according to the prevailing medical opinion of the time quote a punishment for sin administered by mountain spirits. He's like, no, that's from dust, guys.
But fast forward a few hundred years to the late seventeen hundreds into the mid eighteen hundreds, and there was a revolution mechanically and toxicologically.
That really gained attention in the Industrial Revolution when we saw really really gruesome working conditions in factories and people were being exposed to chemicals in confined spaces, and we can think about things like coal mining too. Is a huge kind of start of environmental toxicology and environmental science.
But a lot of the industrial chemicals that we used during the Industrial Revolution made people very, very sick, and so throughout public health history people have been looking at the ways that those chemicals lead to death and tabulating worker's death and things like that. Really, in the environmental movement in the nineteen sixties really spearheaded the EPA in the formation of some of the occupational safety groups in the US, So it kind of follows the general environmental movement. Yess.
So a few things that contribute to the environmentalism movement were not as what I assumed was just absolutely shriven balls in a park in the sixties talking to squirrels. Rather, it was renowned marine biologist and conservationist Rachel Carson. She released the nineteen sixty two book Silent Spring about the dangers of DDT and other synthetic pesticides.
And plus there was a.
Massive oil spill off the coast of California, and apparently a river in Ohio was so polluted in the sixties it's straight up caught on fire. Plus, astronauts started taking photos of the Earth from the moon and people were like, yikes, whoa, We're on a planet in space and it's really pretty from there, and it's just a shame to garbage it. So boomers, who were like the gen c of their time were like, boy howdy, it would be so groovy to save the planet. And so in nineteen seventy, the
EPA officially launched under history's favorite President Nixon. So to this day, if you ask the EPA website what do you do, it'll tell you that among its duties are working to ensure that Americans have clean air, land, and water, and that all parts of society communities, individuals, businesses, local and tribal governments have access to accurate information to manage
human health and environmental risks. They make sure contaminated lands and toxic sites are cleaned up by the potentially responsible parties,
and they review chemicals in the marketplace for safety. Although, in a pretty big surprise in June of twenty twenty two, the majority conservative US Supreme Court voted six to three along political lines in the West Virginia versus the US Environmental Protection Agency case, and the Supreme Court blocked the EPA for making future broad regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from coal fueled power plans. So environmental lawyers say that that ruling in June set back renewable and clean energy
efforts by five or ten years. Nine people in America make decisions that affect the world. Oh life, What even is it? Who do environmental toxicologists sort of answer to? Who's kind of keeping an eye out on this stuff to make sure that there's not just like asbestos falling from our Christmas decorations, you know, like there used to be.
Right. So, in the United States, the government authorities on environmental and occupational safety, which environmental toxicology and occupational health go hand in hand because chemical exposures at work are very very important to monitor. In the United States, there's the National Institute of Health has NIOSH, which is the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. There's also OSHA, which is the Occupational Safety and Health but also the EPA.
The EPA looks at a lot of environmental toxicology.
And when you are an environmental toxicologist, do you get to decide, Am I going to study forever chemicals like pfos? Am I going to study gases? Am I going to study microplastics? What kinds of stuff are y'all looking for?
My gosh, it's a big question literally everything. So I guess this goes back to some of the principles of toxicology. So our boy Paracelsus problematic fave he came up with this, I guess, saying of the dose makes the poison, which I actually have tattooed in Latin. I have a poison plants tattoo.
Holy shit, what kind of plants are in there?
So I have fox glove, and there's poison hemlock and daffodils, which are my favorite flower.
But are those so?
Yeah, the roots are really toxic.
I did know that.
Yeah, the bulbs, but they're also being studied for different medicines and things like that. So all of these plants also have active ingredients that in the right doses can be used medically.
Mm hmm.
Let's see. So I think I think those are all the ones that I have on there. But yeah, and it also says a solid dosis fescet venym, which means the dose makes the poison. Wow, it's like I'm going to be a toxicologist. It's going to be great.
Everything fine, it's gorgeous. You also could never get away with poisoning anyone. Yeah, absolutely, You've got to find a different way to kill someone. If you got an enemy, you.
Know, yeah, they would never suspect.
But yeah, when it when it comes to deciding, I mean, gosh, you could study plants, you could study plastics.
Well, how do you how do you know? Do they roll a pair of.
Like twenty sided D and D dice and that's how you figure it out.
Basically, So the idea that the dose makes the poison means that anything can be a poison and there are you know, lethal doses for every chemical and sometimes those adverse effects come at such high levels that you get sick before you can reach that level and you no longer ingest it or things like that. But so that means that the limits, there aren't really any limits to what you can study.
The limit does not exist.
So Kim was interested in endocrine disruptors and also took a liking to inorganic chemistry, which means carbon is not involved. Organic chemistry just means there's carbon. All living things have carbon. Inorganic chemistry thus involves the study of things like metals, So organic carbon, inorganic no carbon.
But don't worry.
You can study danger and not necessarily work in a cam lab at all. There's danger everywhere, yay.
Really, if you're interested in a chemical or even a non chemical exposure of things like noise, exposure to sunlight, exposure to workplace violence, you know there's there's a place in risk assessment for all of those sinds of things, toxicology being just part of that risk assessment.
What about something like this week? I mean, I believe the train derailment out of East Palestine, Ohio was February sixth.
I want to say it.
Was actually around nine pm on February third, twenty twenty three, and the train of one hundred and fifty cars, which is nearly two miles long, was headed from Madison, Illinois to a rail yard in Conway, Pennsylvania. So it crashed on the third, but the controlled burn came on February sixth, which is when most people may have heard about it.
But I wanted to do this episode because so many people I knew, family members, neighbors and friends hadn't heard a word about this crash at all, which kind of mystified me. And then a reporter was arrested, which caused some people to panic, but it turns out it was for speaking while the governor was speaking at a press conference. It just felt like I needed to get a professional's opinion on what is happening.
When did you first hear about it?
So I subscribed to a mental newsletter called Above the Fold, and it comes into my inbox every day, and I received one on Monday, and it said something like train derailment in western Pennsylvania, Ohio region. And I grew up in that area, and I lived in Pittsburgh for the past few years, and I was familiar with the compressed natural gas trains that go through the city multiple times
a day. And some of my colleagues and my friends and I have always, you know, said this would be really, really dangerous if there was a derailment, and so I was afraid that compressed natural gas train had derailed in the urban center of Pittsburgh. And it turns out it was closer to where I grew up than Pittsburgh. So I was familiar with the area, and so I read about it, and I, you know, called my parents because they were fairly close, and made sure everything was okay.
And then I looked into what kind of chemicals had spilt, and I had seen reports that it was carrying fose gene, which is not true. So at first I was like, why are they carrying post gene? But it was vinyl chloride.
More on those in a bit. But meanwhile, Kim had tweeted a thread about the hazards of the crash, and it opened with as an environmental toxicologist who makes a point to hate on Pittsburgh's daily compressed natural gas trains, the East Palestine, Ohio vinyl chloride train wreck is breaking my brain, she writes. We know that vinyl chloride is associated with liver cancer after chronic exposure. That's important to
consider with any environmental release. But the more acute risk in this case is exposure to hydrochloric acid and phose gene, which are produced when vinyl chloride burns. She continues, Vinyl chloride is the main concern right now because it's explosive. So after the derailment, as dark gray plumes filled the skies. About two thousand residents within a two mile radius of this Appalachian Ohio town were evacuated. Tell me a little bit in this particular case what that area of Ohio is like.
Is it really rural?
Yes, so generally western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio are fairly rural. They were more populated during the Industrial Revolution and the steel boom up until about the nineteen eighties when steel left the area, leading to a bit of an economic depression. But I know that train infrastructure is really central to the region, and like I said about Pennsylvanians and their trains, I think the same could be said for Ohio. And it's also an area that has a lot of industry
that is associated with a lot of environmental pollution. So Pittsburgh has some of the worst air quality in the country. They have high rates of air pollution associated cancers, and it's a big environmental justice issue because those risks aren't distributed evenly. You know, there's this this history of industry coming in and polluting and then the community is left
to clean up the ruins. And so this is unfortunately just another case in that in that very rich history of industrial pollution in the area.
Yeah, and now phose gene versus vinyl chloride, can you tell me a little bit because these are words that most of us are not familiar with, but as an environmental soxologist, it's probably like one oh one for you.
Yeah. Absolutely, So vinyl chloride is really volatile. It burns I don't want to say a low temperature, but you know, on the scale of temperatures that things can burn at, it's a pretty low temperature. So when it's exposed to air and heat, it will combust into a variety of
combustion products. So the train derailment started a fire, and the heat was rising, the pressure was building in the tankers carrying vinyl chloride, and so when vinyl chloride combusts, it produces a couple of different products, like carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. But there's also hydrogen chloride, which I can talk about in a minute. But there's also phose gene.
So phose gene is famous for being a chemical weapon used in World War One, and it was used purposefully in high concentrations because of its toxicity and it disrupts the interaction between the lowest parts of your lungs and your bloodstreams, so oxygen doesn't get in and so you can't breathe. And it's also denser than air, so it stays closer to the ground. So if you're ever around phase gene, you know you want to get up to
higher ground. And this was really important in the context of World War One, where people were fighting in trenches, and so if you have something that stays low to the ground, then it gets stuck in trenches and so people can't escape. And so unfortunately, it was used as a chemical weapon, and so that's how people know it now, and so that's produced when vinyl chloride combusts. But it
doesn't last very long in the environment. It's half life in the laboratory scale is under a second, so it really depends on how much there is how long that's going to last. But my suspicion is that it was gone from the area after the controlled release within a few hours to maybe a day and a half.
We'll talk more about that controlled release in a bit, because the decision to do it has left people well fuming and now everything else that was a product of combustion, did that rise.
For the most part, yes, So that was the other interesting titbit about the controlled burn there was a thermal inversion coming in. Can I can I geek out about thermal inversions? Okay, So, as a loyal Pennsylvanian, I love our environmental history and I like to talk about it whenever possible. So, thermal inversion is when there's warm air on the ground, but then a layer of cold air comes over top of it, and it acts like a blanket and it keeps all the warm air down on
the ground. And usually that warm air would rise up to the atmosphere. And so because there's that blanket over top, things that are close to the ground don't escape, and so they're stuck down at the ground. And that happens fairly frequently in the western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio area. Anyone in Pittsburgh is probably very familiar with the air
quality warning days and the word inversion. But it was really really important to the establishment of the environmental movement in the United States.
So the year is nineteen forty eight, twenty five miles southeast of Pittsburgh in a small mill town called Donora, which had a zinc smelting plant and.
They were off gassing all kinds of contaminants. It turned out there was a thermal inversion that day, and this was in Donora, Pennsylvania. There was a build up of the contaminant in that thermal inversion and it lasted for days, So people were exposed to this ever increasing concentration of toxic chemicals coming from this industrial plant. Unfortunately, a lot of people were sickened, and people died, and it got a lot of national attention.
A death bringing fog over Pennsylvania's bustling industrial town of Donora. Residents have difficulty in breathing the murky air as the town is plunged into darkness. Oxygen tens careful sufferers in the local emergency hospital. Twenty people die, four hundred others are stricken with respiratory owlents. Investigating the cause of the sudden catastrophe, health officials close the local zinc plant, suspected of emitting poisonous films.
This is also what caused the London fog, which is another example of an inversion causing contamination to stick around in the air.
I had no idea. I thought London fog was the type of trench coat. I had no idea.
Yeah, it feels a little insensitive. Honestly, I guess, I guess London having like water fog is normal. But for me, you know that it's I think of the London fog as the environmental disaster.
Okay, So in nineteen fifty two there was a five day inversion event known as the Great Smog of London that killed around four thousand people. But this metropolitan air pollution, it wasn't uncommon, this was not new to them. London fog was of long used term for this yellowish or pea soupy thick, sulfurous industrial smog that occurred in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds in industrialized cities. Back then, everyone's like smoke six cigarettes with breakfast, Like
who cares? Look at the air. You shouldn't even see air, but look at it. Here we are in this poisonous miasma of airborne waste.
So cheerio.
But what about London fog. The coat manufacturer, what does it have to do with anything? Well, it was established long before that fatal London fog nineteen fifty two event. They started actually selling trench coats in nineteen twenty three. And also, surprise, London fog is an American company. They were founded in Pennsylvania two and I spent at least two hours digging into the research of London Fog coats this week. My brain just would not permit me to stop.
So now you have to carry the burden of trivia that trench coats were named because soldiers in the First World War would wear them in the literal trenches, hence trench coats. But London Fog really made a name for themselves during World War Two. They made like ten thousand
coats for the US Navy. People loved them. And the style that the London Fog founder, Israel Meyers, preferred was kind of a less inspector gadgety double breasted look and favored the kind of sleek single breasted style based on a Scottish coat called a balmacn And Israel liked to call his stylish rain jackets main coats and not raincoats because he was like, hey, even though we worked with DuPont to make these raincoats waterproof, you can wear this
shit no matter what the weather and you can look good. So let's call him main coats, baby. And so London Fog coats became wildly successful name another raincoat. But yes, given the historical inversion events of London fog, perhaps London FOG's slogan of London fog lets you laugh at the weather was like a little too soon.
Oh dear. Yeah.
And so with these, you know, with these types of concerns, with regular weather patterns mixing in with brand new chemicals or not used to, how where does remediation even start? When I see pictures from this Ohio derailment, there's a plume, It's like a column of dark, dark, grayish blue smoke, and then it rises and covers so much of the sky. Why is it such a column? And where is that cloud going?
So the difference between the controlled explosion versus the other options made it so that even though it doesn't look like it, it's basically if you shook a can of soda and you opened it a little bit at a time and let the air go out rather than you know, puncturing the side of it. So the images from the controlled burn are really striking. And you know, that just shows how much energy is contained in those molecules. That is, because of the energy that was released when those molecules
broke up. The height of the plume is unsurprising because of the amount of energy that's in there. And if you went in with a spectrometer, you could look at the plume and see what colors show up, so we can see what kind of gases are in there. But the really interesting thing about those images is that you notice it stops at the top right, it flattens out.
That's the thermal inversion. Oh yeah, So they were trying to do the controlled burn before that inversion got lower to the ground, so they could maximize the amount of dissipation and minimize the amount of contaminants that were close to the ground when the inversion was coming. So shout out to meteorologists for being aware of what was going on and probably making things a lot less disastrous.
And now the vinyl chloride, I understand when it mixes.
With water vapor, does it become hydrochloric acid.
Yes, vinylchloride combusts forming hydrogen chloride, and that, upon contact with moisture, becomes hydrochloric acid. And so if you inhale hydrogen chloride, you have a lot of moisture in your mouth and your lungs, and it unfortunately will become a liquid in your lungs when it reacts, so that's something
to stay away from. But that reaction happens really quickly, and if you know, people are evacuated from the area, then it with the first rain or with just reaction in the environment, that suffocation or drowning risk is no longer an issue.
Is that what's been happening to people's chickens and dogs and foxes and stuff.
Well, I can't give individualized risk assessment or health advice, and I you know, I'm not on the ground to do an autopsy. But from what I've read, unfortunately not all of the animals were able to be evacuated, and so we're likely exposed to phosgene and hydrochloric acid. So those reports make me very very sad, and I wish that every living thing in the area could be evacuated.
So there have been reports of pets and livestock dying from chemical exposure, and scientists estimate that about thirty five hundred fish have died in the streams and the rivers nearby so far, which has left kind of a greasy, fatty, dead fish rainbowy film on some of the local waterways that has been misreported as an oil spill. But why did all those fish go belly up?
I'm not super sure about the fish. I think that would have been a change in oxygen in the water upon contamination. But my guess is for the animals that were unable to evacuate, the exposure to those respiratory toxins is probably probably the cause. Now that the vinyl chloride and the immediate explosion risk is gone, it's important to still monitor your pets if they do become sick. So
there's definitely a few phases of the environmental disaster. We had the key explosion fause gene risk, and now we're looking into more long term consequences.
Did your parents have to evacuate it all?
No? No, luckily they didn't. But my mom smelled it the day after they did the controlled burn. Yeah yeah, but I'm very glad that they were. They were safe.
Oh my gosh.
Now what about long long term? How long will it affect the environment?
Well, that depends on a few important components. So number one is what chemicals are there. P fos, for example, last a long time in the environment. And I'm speculating, but from what I know about firefighting, fluorinated foams were probably used to put out the fire, which I don't knock any fire department for using those because they're what's available right now and it was a dangerous situation. But those chemicals are probably in the environment now and we need to be able to address that.
Let's talk about pfos so. PFOS stands for per floral alcohol and polyfloro algal substances. But unlike me in one minute, you're never gonna have to say that aloud, probably ever, So don't worry about it.
Just call them pfast.
But also do worry about it because they're known as forever chemicals because their carbon fluorine bonds are so strong. Nature just cannot break them down, and that means that they can bind to protein and they can bio accumulate in your sweet soft body. Do you touch P fast Do you think you've been in contact with any?
Oh? Sweet? Yes, so much, so much.
They're in everything, nonstick pans, clothing, carpets, fireproof materials, bottle caps, anything waterproof. Remember that raincoat and the DuPont collab from the nineteen fifties. Well a cancer victim testicular cancer twice, just one A forty million dollar lawsuit against DuPont for dumping PIFAs in a river in West Virginia kind of makes you want to run to the middle of nowhere and just subsist on only natural foods and just be naked.
But I have some bad news for you. Polar bears already had that idea, and pfos have been found in their brains. Everyone's got them, everyone's got them in them. Now what is the danger for all of this human
made convenience? So A twenty twenty paper published in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry was titled per and Polyfloral alkyl Substance Toxicity and Human Health Review, Current state of knowledge and Strategies for informing future research, and this paper reports that epidemiological studies reveal associations between exposure to specific pfos and health effects including altered immune and thyroid function,
liver disease, insulin dysregulation, kidney disease, increased cholesterol levels, adverse reproductive and fetal development outcomes, and cancer.
Yikes. Why isn't anyone doing anything about this? Well?
Ologists are, including Kim, who is currently doing her postdoctoral studies at the Social Science and Vironmental Health Research Institute at their PFOS Project Lab at Northeastern University, and they are helping assess p FAS contamination. They're analyzing the government's rules around it. They're working on community activism and environmental justice, among other things. She's also working in collaboration with the
Silent Spring Institute. Marine biologist Rachel Carson would be proud and Kim is also a co author on two twenty twenty two papers, one Improving Governance of Forever Chemicals in the US and Beyond and Presumptive Contamination a new approach to pfast contamination based on likely sources. AH another reason to love her. She's on the PFOS case.
So those chemicals can last really long time, but other things like the beautiful acrelate that was found in some of the downstream areas a few miles from the explosion site, those get broken down by enzymes in soil and in the water. They're in bacteria and so those are probably being chewed up. And there's like a lot of photodegradations, so breaking down through the sun and oxidation, so exposure to oxygen.
All of those.
Factors act to break chemicals down in the environment.
You know, do you feel like the lora acts a lot.
Do you feel like your environmental toxicologists are screaming from a tree stomp like, becase, I'm gonna pay attention to this.
Please for the trees, let them grew, let them grew.
Yes, yes, absolutely, for a lot of chemical contaminants. And on the other hand, I find myself screaming for people to consider toxicological nuance, which is the thing that I complain to my friends about a lot. Right, So, I guess this kind of gets into some flim flam. The idea that something natural is inherently safer than something that's synthetic is something that I yell a lot about.
I know, whenever environmental toxicologists see something that says there's no chemicals in it, you must just ask we want to hit.
Yourself in the face.
I start, I take pictures of all the labels, and I have a little album on my phone where I'm like, that's not how that works, my dude.
That's water is a chemical.
Yeah, yeah, everyone who's ever diet has had H two O in their bodies.
You gotta watch out for it. I wasn't drinking water.
Don't actually worry if you have H two O in your body. Anything that's made of matter is technically a chemical. Water is a chemical, Oxygen is a chemical. So not all chemicals are bad. And to say that something doesn't have chemicals in it is like saying food doesn't have ingredients. But also, if it's a manufactured chemical, maybe I don't know,
maybe we should test it before selling it. This seems like common sense, but when dollars are at stake, sense kind of goes out the window and straight into a stream. And Kim says that there's a whole area of study and a theoretical framework that environmental toxicologists use, and it's called the precautionary principle.
And I'm a big proponent of the precautionary principle, and it basically says, assume something is dangerous until proven safe, and it's really hard to prove safety, and so there's a lot of complexity in environmental toxicology and risk assessment, and the precautionary principle basically states that we shouldn't prioritize innovation at the cost of public safety, human safety, environmental safety. Remembering that people are part of an ecosystem, We're not
some entity that's separate from the environment around them. The built environment is still part of an ecosystem and things like that. So the precautionary principle really kind of prioritizes safety and knowledge gathering before you know, willy nilly chemical.
Spring and how do they test safety of things, because couldn't it be thirty years before something starts to affect you? Or do do you think with quantum commutings they'll be better molecular models? Or how do we know how it affects animals and humans?
Right, So, there are so many different methods that you can use to study environmental toxicology, and they happen at so many different scales. So if we think really really tiny, we can look at how molecules are interacting with each other and that's what I did a lot in grad school. We can look at the ways that they're absorbing light or emitting light and see what that means about the molecular shape. And then you can go up to cells and you can look at how it impacts the cells,
their respiration rate, any kind of health impact. Pretty good methods to assess, and then all the way up to population levels. So environmental epidemiologists look at towns, cities, geographic areas with high rates of a certain health outcome or exposure to something, and they look at health data there. If a lot of people are getting sick all at once, that's something that you know you want to investigate, And so you can go in and ask about people's exposures.
You know they all smelled a weird smell in their town, then that's maybe a clue and you can look into that. But you can also do with animal models and cellular models and molecular models. You can look at specific toxins and how they work. And when we do that, we typically do what's called a dose response curve, and so that goes back to the principle of toxicology. The dose
makes the poison. And when you do a dose response curve, Let's say you're going to give cyanide to a bunch of cells and study how their respiration rate goes, so how fast they're turning over oxygen, and cyanide inhibits the ability to turn over oxygen, so you can measure the amount of oxygen that's in the plate with the cells as an indicator of inhibition, right, And you can increase the dose and you can plot it on an X and Y access with the X being the dose and
then the Y being the response, and the shape of that curve tells us a lot about the poison of interest. And something that's really toxic is going to have a really steep dose response curve, and something that is not so toxic we consider to have a very gentle uh dose response curve. And I am biased to saying negative outcomes because I love to study poisons, but that's the same principle that's used in DIRREUGT development and medicines.
Right.
The response could be something really good, you know, it could be increase in oxygen use, things like that.
And are there different levels of toxins, some that might affect your immediate respiration versus others that fuck with your DNA?
Yes, absolutely, there are so many of those. So that's when we get to acute versus chronic exposure. And a lot of our information about acute exposures and chronic exposures come from the occupational settings.
I'm at work doing work.
So if there's an industrial accident like a train derailment, right, that's a one time incident. And let's say, for instance, you know the workers who are on that train were right next to it when it crashed, So luckily I haven't heard any reports of any injuries from the derailment. But that's a one time acute exposure, but chronic exposure we can look at at a workplace. So if people are going to the same place every day for a series of years being exposed to the same chemicals, then
that might be a little bit different. And so you are exposed over time. We can think about that with sun exposure, right, So there's an acute outcome after sun exposure unprotected, which is a sunburn, and you can see that and you can feel it, and you know, medical professionals or researchers could see that. But after a long time of sun exposure, sometimes there's a misprint of DNA or a miscopy of DNA and then skin cancer arises.
But that's after a long term exposure. And so soun's a good example of something with a kind of multi exposure level health outcome.
And for more on this, you can see last week's episode on Melaninology in which we discussed this very thing and what kind of sunscreen you need? What about toxicology movies?
Did Aaron rock.
You get it right, twenty million dollars is more money than these people have ever dreamed of.
These people don't dream about being rich.
They dream about being able to watch their kids swim in a pool without worrying that they'll have to have a hysterectomy at the age of twenty. By the way, we had that water brought in special for your folks.
I actually have not seen you.
I've not seen I haven't either, But still, do you have any interest in seeing it?
Or you like, never can't do it? Oh?
No, it's absolutely It's on in my list of movies to watch for sure. I just have not gotten to it. Let's see, it's a TV show. So Breaking Bad in the first few episodes does the best and maybe the only example of phosphine toxicology or phosphine toxicity that I've ever seen. So, phosphine is a byproduct of methane fetamine production, and it's one of the reasons that meth labs explode.
And so there's a scene in one of the first few episodes of Breaking Bad in which they're making meth and this adversary of theirs comes in into their trailer.
A movie homes you got all day and.
They very strategically release a gas and that gas is phosphine, and so it's an explosion hazard. And the reaction is is pretty spot on for a mitochondrial disruptor, right, so inability to breathe, turning a red. It's pretty good. I definitely point that one out. But also more recently the movie White Noise on Netflix, which it turns out some of the extras for that movie live in the area
of Ohio. I impacted by this. So basically it tells the story of an airborne toxic event of undisclosed toxicity chemical makeup. But what I think the movie does really well is it shows the existential uncertainty that comes with toxicological complexity. So I really related to some of the characters who are at this kind of shelter site. And Adam Driver comes up and he said, they said that I've been exposed to this thing for three minutes. Am
I going to die? And they very calmly say you may die in thirty years and he's like, that's not good enough. Right, But in that kind of event, no one has any idea. But you know, we can say things on a population level, but it's really really difficult to bring that down to the individual level, and I think that that movie really really summed it up. I think my review on Letterboxed was something like finally one for the existentialist academic toxicologists.
I wish there's something that I could do. I wish I could outthink the problem.
I haven't seen it yet, but the timing is impactable. So White Noise was released about six weeks before the Ohio train derailment, and it was shot just a few hours away in several different Ohio locations. Some of the film's extras actually live in East Palestine, and if you look up the trainler for White Noise on YouTube, one of the top comments reads this ag Edd, Well, so what does doctor Garrett say?
I recommend it. It's a fun one. Plus it has a new song from LCD sou System, which.
I really like. Oh that's good to know. Yeah. Did you ever listen to the band The Airborne Toxic Event? No?
I didn't.
That's right.
I feel like I'm a bad media consumer.
No, they were great.
They were an LA band, and the lead singer ended up being like a New York Times bestselling author and like a journalists and stuff. So I'm like, wow, this whole week has really been right up a sale. But can I ask you some questions?
Oh? Absolutely from listeners, they know you're coming on.
But of course, before that, let's give some money to a good cause chosen by the ologist, and this week Kim selected the Southwestern Pennsylvania nonprofit Group Against Smog and Pollution, which has the genius acronym GASP. It was founded in nineteen sixty nine and GASP has been a diligent watchdog, educator, litigator, and policymaker on many environments issues with a focus on air quality in the Pittsburgh region. And you can find out more about them at the link in the show notes.
So keep up the amazing work, y'all. And that donation was made possible by sponsors of the show.
We're freezing prices for two years in the Virgin Media playhouse. Switch to our super fast, reliable broadband now and freeze your prices or law broadband offers for twenty four months from just thirty five euro month with no activation fee. Switch in store or at Virgin Media dot ie Virgin Media. It's playtime.
Tcnc's applies subject to availability. New broadband customers and twenty four month contracts only. You won't receive a price increase with the duration of this contract from thirty five year month for twenty four months seventy euro thereafter as Februar eighteenth, twenty twenty six.
Do you know what real power is? It's knowing you're on the same rate for energy all day, every day with a smart all day plan from Board Gosh Energy. Save up to eight hundred and eighty euro on dual fuel plus get a two hundred and thirty five euro welcome bonus switch today at board Goosh Energy dot Ie Board Gosh Energy. No your power estimation.
On your bill of twenty six and twenty one your new customers one thirty percent is Gento smart all day electricity unit rates in twenty nine percent of gos RSPCA for full teas and C's.
Okay, I know it's on your mind. Let's do it. Let's ask. Let's get back to Ohio. I don't know if you're with kids.
Turn it down for the next thirty seconds so they don't hear me swear so fucking much. I'm gonna I'm gonna ask this one. That is the most asked question. How fucked are we v Griffith, are we just fucking done for uh r J Deutge? So how totally fucked is the region? Rachel Kasha? My only question, what the fuck? There's a lot of fucks, a lot of.
Fucks to be given. Is it Chernobyl scale? No?
Okay, Well, I will say there are a lot of unknowns, and I want to recognize and kind of sit with the uncertainty that we have in a situation like this.
As for.
How hect are we, I cannot say as an individual risk assessor or you know, I'm not directly associated with the situation, but the data that I've seen is I am not running around screaming, very very scared. So what we do know about some of the chemicals that were released there is that they don't last very long in
the environment. And the EPA had a press conference last night where they explicitly said where the plume is moving, where they've detected it, how fast it's moving, and some of the chemicals that are in it, and they also really importantly mentioned the points at which they're registering non detect So if we think of a plume kind of like a perfume, a perfume cloud, right, if you're in the perfume department of the department store, you can start to smell it, you know, at maybe the entrance of
the department store, and then finally when you get to the perfume counter, it's very smelling.
It's a lot.
So the non detect area would be where you can't smell it anymore, so at the entrance where you can't smell it anymore, And so that really indicates that it's being either bio remediated by those little enzymes eating up all the chemicals, or oxidized or degraded by the sun by the time it gets to that point. And that of course is to the limit of detection. So how good the technology is it at finding that? But for most of the chemicals, the limit of detection is far
below any kind of concerning health level. So I'm fairly confident in the data that I've seen from the EPA about those kinds of things. As for individual impacts, you know, you can say how bad is it, but we can qualify how bad is it to human health, or how bad is it to economics in the area, or how bad is it to you know, people who their houses are filled with soot? That's bad, and so risk can
be really individualized. And I don't want to say, you know, one way or the other that this is really bad or it isn't really bad, because that's kind of up to an individual's definitions. So as far as the comparisons to Chernobyl and to some other historical contamination events, I think those are fairly inappropriate because Chernobyl was a radioactive event, for example, and so there's a lot of differences between these kinds of events, and general fear mongering doesn't really
lead to action. I think it causes a lot of negative outcomes where people feel really really scared. And there are lots of scientists working on this, and there's a lot of things that we do know from historic events and we can learn from those mistakes, and we really have an opportunity.
Some people Anna Elizabeth Susi k mb Nana from Canada and Courtney Kudera wanted to know how this might affect the water quality. How does something go from an airborne toxic event you poisoned aquifer, for example.
Yeah, so that has to do with the water cycle and the weather cycle. So if there's ash up in the sky, it might dry deposit, so fall down from the sky or be carried by wind. You have dust in your house, that can be a similar kind of thing. You know, your skin particles float around and get on your stuff, So the same thing can be said for combustion products. But there's also wet deposition where things react in the atmosphere and either dissolve into water or become
something that it is rained down from the sky. And so that's how it really gets into the water system in the soil. As for preventing and remediating that kind of contamination, there's drinking water, and then there's groundwater like surface water that people don't necessarily drink, and so on the drinking water level, municipal drinking water systems have a
lot of filtration in place. And in this case, I really hope that the state and federal government and norfolks othern when you know, if they're found, when they're found responsible for this contamination, I hope that they pay for improvements in those technologies in the affected areas, because what we've seen with PFOSS, when a community realizes they have contamination, the water authority says, okay, we'll we'll get this new technology to help take it out, and then they don't
get support for that funding, and so the cost comes back to the bill payer and the community absolutely should not be responsible for paying for the negligence of a company.
Yeah yeah, I saw that twenty five thousand dollars for the five thousand residents, and I could not believe my eyes.
So the railroad.
Company Norfolk Southern, is worth over fifty billion dollars and has now upped the relief to locals at one million, which is less than the cost of a condo in La Okay. But initially they pledged twenty five thousand dollars to the Red Cross to cover the whole town. Like yeah, like, that's not even a sandwich at the gas station. Yes, someone who eats a lot of gas station landwiches, I can tell me.
I feel like, for a little audio in that, you could get Lucile Blooth saying it's a bananam go.
What could it cost ten dollars?
Seriously, that to me is just like Wow, they really should have held off and come up with something better, because that's that's horrible. A lot of people had questions about impacts on wildlife and plants. Whitney Liliana Ramirez, Riley Axelf and They Mullen, Natalie J. Curly Fry, Chris West, Curly fre Waners. So what are the effects of disasters like these on wildlife habitats and what can we do to help?
Okay, let's see, So this is kind of more of an ecotoxicology question, but I will answer it to the best of my ability. I tend to if you're on the public health side of things. But the environmental contaminants are sometimes taken up in the soil, and they can
be taken up in plants. And so I've seen a lot of people saying, you know, don't eat food grown in eastern Ohio, and I don't think that that is the answer, but I think that farmers in the region should consider getting crops tested for heavy metals PCBs, VOCs, because a lot of environmental contaminants get transformed into other things, which for the most part, those tend to be less toxic, less harmful, and they also get taken up into plants.
Just a side note, a PCB is a polychlorinated by phenol and they're human made chemicals. They can cause cancer and immune system and reproductive harm. They were banned from being produced in nineteen seventy nine, but that doesn't mean that they're not still around. And a VOC is a volatile organic compound that is a gas that arises from a solid. Either way, Kim says that when it comes to environmental toxicology, the party responsible for contamination should pay
for testing. It's only polite, and if you're in an area where there's been an accident or potential exposure, document as much as you can. Go to the doctor, report symptoms, take notes, take photos, document, document document.
I know in Pittsburgh we have a lot of lead in the soil, and so it's an issue where people who are trying to do urban gardens tend to get raised beds with soil from elsewhere because the lead can be taken up into the plants. Generally, that's what would I would look for in agriculture. For plants generally, I really don't know what the impacts will be on the plants and of course for wildlife in the area. I think the initial acute issue of faust gene exposure has
already passed, and unfortunately that did take a toll. But moving forward, there are ways that communities can come together and monitor these kinds of things. And in some of the historical examples, we've seen communities come together and map where they notice maybe fish are dyeing, or even with things like West Nile, if you see a dead bird, you report it to someone. For the East Coast, sometimes we get West Nile virus outbreaks and birds die from it,
and so you report them. Coming together and doing community science can be really, really valuable in these situations, and so I'm definitely recommending that, and I hope that if people do community science, I hope they don't find anything bad.
Yes, A lot of folks and circling back to the whys of Emily McLeod, Paul Smith, Nano naturalist, Jackie and Isabella wanted to know why burn it? Nano nationalist says, I'm a chemical engineer, and I want to know who in the fresh hell decided it was okay to set vinyl chloride on fire. I live in Ohio. Can you tell I'm mad? Was setting it on fire done deliberately? Did it just burn it very low temperatures?
From my understanding, there were three options, well, I guess there were four options. The ideal situation would have been if there was no fire, and just these tanks of vinyl chloride just took little tumble and nothing happened. Then you know, has Matt Cruz could come in and sh those tanks full of vinyl chloride to a facility where they can appropriately dispose of them. That's often number one.
Which didn't happen.
Often number two is puncture the tank when there's no fire, which would leak vinyl chloride out into the environment. And as we've seen with cancer Alley in Louisiana, and it's one of the chemicals of concern on Camp La June where you may see tv ads asking to participate in lawsuits and studies. It's very persistent in the water and
the soil if it is not broken down right. And so vinyl chloride is a carcinogen, and when we think of carcinogens typically we think of chronic exposure, and so that would be something that's of concern with chronic exposure through drinking water, and so that's really really hard to remediate. So you can think of that as spilling something into a river and the river takes it far away, it takes it far and wide, and so that's a lot harder to clean up than some of the other options.
The other two options had to do with fire. From what I am understand, there was fire already happening around these tanks because of the derailment, right, big train accident. Unsurprising that there might be a fire. And as that heat rose, the pressure inside of those tanks rose, and they knew that they were going to explode. The risk of explosion was so high, and so that's why there
were calls for evacuation. Right. You don't want to be around a train tanker full of anything when it explodes, and so that's the other option is just wait around and see if it exploded. And another component that went into that decision, I assume is the thermal inversion coming in. So you wouldn't want to wait around and see if it was going to explode and then have it explode during the thermal inversion. So what they did is they
punctured smaller holes in the tankers. So this is the fourth option, and what they did, so they punctured holes in the tankers to do a what's called a contry release and control. I mean it didn't really look controlled, right, It looked very very just so intense, but knowing you know, the burning rate. There's a lot of mas that goes into these kinds of things to determine how far something's going to move or how fast something is going to react.
And so they cleared out the area. So that's one thing that they were able to control, is getting everyone out to a safe distance away from the immediate risk of fostene exposure and also just general explosion. And so they were able to control that, and they were also able to control the time that they did that, so they didn't have it waiting around for the thermaline version to come in.
So remember the nineteen forty eight Denor Pennsylvania disaster and the Great Smog of London in nineteen fifty two, right, So one reason it had to move quickly in this case is to avoid more pollutants getting trapped and blanketed low. So the inversion in Ohio only let the billowing fumes go up so far and then it started to flatten, and that's why the plume over East Palestine looked like a horrifying atomic mushroom cloud.
The other component of the burnoff that's really interesting and I think saved a lot of grief from later You know, I don't want to say officially, you know that this has been a really beneficial thing, but the breakdown of vinyl chloride turning into some of those other combustion products, those breakdown in the environment really easily into less toxic products.
Vinyl Chloride doesn't break down as fast when it's not combusted, so by burning off a lot of that vinyl chloride, they reduced the amount that got into the waterways, so it was transformed into other products which were acutely very toxic but didn't last long in the environment.
So that's the good news. That definitely made me feel better. And Kim was interviewed in Newsweek a few days ago and explained to them that yes, a controlled burn might have been the best of two bad options, and that the health risk of vinyl chloride is greater once it's in the water supply, which is likely what nudged official to burn it before the weather and version and before it leaked into the water. But once a hazardous chemical is out, and about how does one unring that bell?
So patrons including Kate Munker, Joe Porfito, Elena Krusen, Shelby Mills meg Shooter asan first time question asker Ross Banerjee, Eleanor Stevenson and Ed nog All wanted to know about bioremediation, and some folks asked about pharmaceuticals in the water supply, and for that, I'm going to direct you to the Environmental Microbiology episode about testing sewers for COVID, and we also discuss pharmaceuticals in the water, so I'll link that
in the show notes. Other cleanup questions were asked by Gina Grimm, Omeximore, Christina Kunz, Lisa Emrich, Bubrie, Catherine Fox, Emily P. Kelsey Simpson, Alisha Henning, Leah Anderson, Darme, marx orbach Mia and Hayley Kennerley. What about other ways to clean things up environmentally, things like sending fungi that want to gobble certain chemical compounds that we don't want in there.
What's the best way to clean this up?
Yeah, so that again depends on the chemical. I'm important think about the specifics of toxicology, but it really depends on the chemical. And so you know, I'm glad that Norfolk, Southern and the EPA released the manifests so we know what chemicals were there and even if those chemicals break down into other products. You can look up data about that.
There's a really cool resource called pubcem where you can type in the name of a chemical and find out more information than you would want to know about it. And it's my favorite website, and so you can look those up on there. But it's also important to take into consideration, you know, how much was there. One thing that I see that's missing from the manifest and some
of the other documents is how much was released? Right, so the EPA documents that have been made public for the environmental sampling, but it would be really really interesting to know how much was released, and so then we can start to look at things like how fast is it being degraded, Like if if we started with this much and if we're this far away and this amount of time from that release, that can tell us a lot about what's happening in the environment.
Kind of like one of those math problems where if Tommy boards a train from Pittsburgh at sixty four miles per hour and Susie's train is headed east, what time will they meet in a combustible ball of cancer smoke? But also where is that plume headed? With how much vinyl chloride. But really the fallout from the crash is being tracked through the Ohio River and experts say that it's flowing at a rate of about a mile an hour. And as for that oilychene on the creeks that we
mentioned earlier, the jury's still out. Some say it could be natural or bacterial from the fishkills, but the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Production was quoted as saying that a bacterial machine will typically break into small platelets when disturbed, while a petroleum machine will quickly reform. And another way to tell them apart, they say, is by smell. Natural
machines don't smell like petroleum. But as a precaution, Cincinnati and other locations that draw water directly from the Ohio River are using different intake systems for a few days or urging water customers to use bottled or filtered water.
So with that in mind, I think that one of the best ways is going to be through municipal drinking water filtrations. So things like granular activated carbon reverse osmosis, those technologies are very good at getting your everyday contaminants out of your water. As for maybe airborne dust, things when you go back to your house, you might find
a lot of soot on your items. I had an apartment fire a few years ago, and luckily nothing was damaged, but there was soot everywhere and it lasted for so long. So when you're looking at soot, you want to make sure that you spray it down with like a little soap solution with water, because those dry particles are respiratory, your atints, and they're larger particles. So the N ninety five's will help with the soot exposure. They might not help with really small molecules right like they could get
through that very small filter. But with the soot, you'll probably sneeze less and you know, be able to smell less while you're cleaning your house with the soot, But be sure to spray that down before wiping it up.
Am I asking for early death if I burn incense while I work?
I am of the opinion that breathing anything other than air is not ideal.
Okay, that's good to know, that's really good to know.
So basically the idea is, if it's not air, don't breathe it. Your lungs are so cool and so good at their jobs. They're The lungs are incredible. They're my favorite organ. They have all these really cool defenses to keep things that are not air out of your body. So we have something called a mucociliary escalator, which is a bunch of tiny cells with tiny little hairs on them that move up up all the time, and they're controlled by your neurologic system, and if they encounter something
that shouldn't be there, they move even faster. And they also there are cells that secrete mucus, and so mucus. Ciliary escalator comes from like the midpoint in your lungs, all the way up and it is why you cough, why you get phlegm, and the mucus traps inhaled particles and carries them up so you can cough them out. Mucus deserves their respect.
Ah, yes, our friend mucus. I used to bleep the word mucus in previous episodes, but I don't anymore. I've grown as a person. I hear it still grosses me out, but I have a new appreciation for it. And Kim asked if she could possibly rant about vaping, and I gave her the floor.
So clearly, your body is saying please, don't put weird stuff into your lungs. They're so sensitive. There's a direct link to the bloodstream down in the alveoles, which is the smallest little part. So the idea that vaping is safer than cigarettes is a false comparison. In my opinion. Cigarettes are one of the only things that we have that we know is a direct link to cancer, to specific kinds of cancer, where if you get lung answer
and you smoke, that's basically the causative agent. Comparing that to vaping, you know, there are very few things that are more dangerous than smoking. Vaping again, you're inhaling things that are not water, and they're fairly unregulated in the United States. So when I was going through grad school, there were fewer regulations on vaping and it was seen as this big, you know, revolutionary thing. But the issue
is that you're inhaling vaporized particles. Your lung doesn't want any liquid that you don't want to put liquid in your lungs, and even a vapor you can get dermal exposure to things. You can get it stuck on your lips and get burns and different things that way. But the real issue is the flavoring agents. So the tobacco that's in cigarettes has a little danly atom coming off the molecule that irritates the back of your throat, and
so that limits the amount that you can smoke comfortably. Right, Oh, Vaping tobacco has been developed so that it doesn't irritate, so you can get a much higher dose with fewer adverse immedia adverse effects. And so that's a problem that we see with kids and teens vaping. They're getting these huge amounts of nicotine, which is a carcinogen and just really overall, really bad. And then you get the flavoring agents. And there's a chemical called diaceteal which is a really
good example of this. So it gives butter it's flavor. It's also produced on coffee roasts, and it's associated with something called popcorn lung. So are you familiar with that.
I eat way too much rack way popcorn, or at least I used to, and so I was familiar with people who worked in popcorn plants, right.
Yes, So workers in popcorn facilities were coming down with this very specific lung disease and it was attributed to the butter flavoring, which is fine to eat, so this is another principle of toxicology is exposure roots. So it was fine to eat, but to inhale was a huge problem and it resulted in this really bad lung disease. And so there have been cases of diaceteal being in vape juices right, butter flavored vapes. There's also so a cinnamon flavor called cinnamide, which is of concern for a
very similar reason. And so I would be very very careful with vaping. And I do not condone breathing anything other than air.
This might change my lights and incense right as I sit down to work have it.
Yeah, yeah, And of course you know that's an individual risk thing like I have asthma, So I wouldn't do it.
So in a twenty twenty one study titled the Adverse Impact of Incense Smoke on Human Health From Mechanisms to Implications, my heart was broken as researchers reveal a shit show of health problems that can come from habitual incense burning, including lung disease, eye issues, throat irritation, lead poisoning, disrupted fetal development, dementia, heart disease.
And cancer, all kinds of cancer.
It also noted that burning a lot of incense is just comparable to secondhand smoking. So there goes my hobby. What about candles, Well, the wicks may contain lead and the soot is bad for your lungs and for your house. But if you're burning pair candles, those are made from byproducts of the petroleum processing industry. And one twenty thirteen Polish study concluded that sitting next to a burning paraffin
candle is like being adjacent to a combustion engine. So I guess we got to slow our roles on the candles. Maybe open a window at least look into an air purifier, try to find joy in something else, as impossible as that sounds. And yes, I am as sad as you are. But listen to the twenty twenty two recap I did around New Year's Maybe get an LED lantern on your desk. We talk about those. It's visually pleasing. I use it as a productivity tool. Led lanterns, they flicker, They're worth it.
What else can we do in the future? Patrons Rachel Genteel, Timothy Huang, Noel Dietz, Chris Brewer, Jennifer Piacente, Curly Fry Bubbery and Isabelle all asked about environmental toxicological prevention. What about for the future. What are some things that people can do to keep themselves safe in general from environmental toxins?
What should they worry about? What shouldn't they worry about?
Well, I guess it's kind of my duty to say don't smoke, don't smoke, don't be But a lot of our chemical messaging is very individualized, and the chemical regulation in the United States puts the burden of proof on communities and individuals to bring these issues to attention. So precautionary regulation, especially of new and emerging chemicals, is really important, and we really need to reassess whether or not we should give companies free rain to put these chemicals into
the environment. But on an individual level, I really recommend checking out the Green Science Policy Institutes Consumer Resources, so.
A wonderful site for the cautious consumer. This Green Science Policies Institute site. So it warns against furniture manufactured before twenty fifteen because it may contain added flame retardants, older immersion blenders because they may leak chlorinated paraffins, which is
a type of chemical found in flame retardants. They advise to look for fragrance free personal care products since the ingredient's fragrance or perfume or perfume often mean thalates are present, and I was like, what's a thalate?
I don't even know.
Those have been linked to testosterone disruption liver toxicity, and we mentioned this in the Melaninology episode last week. But be careful too with imported skin lightning or anti agent creams unless you're certain that they don't have mercury in them. You can avoid food that comes in contact with greaseproof packaging because that may have pifos, like microwave popcorn and some fast foods. This fact makes me very sad and
also hungry to avoid pifos. Also, you can use cast iron or glass or ceramic cookware rather than non stick taflon. And so for the patrons who asked about pifos, you're welcome. Catherine Brignak, analysta young Emily staffer Boreal, Becca rob marriage keyd to Cure and wells how.
I use their PFUS guide to pick out new outdoor equipment. So I got a new rain jacket and I used their little tool to figure out which one was PFOS free.
Oh good.
Other than that, like, I want to emphasize that just because a chemical is associated with adverse health outcomes in one particular setting doesn't mean that we need to be really really afraid of it. Or on the other hand, just because there's no evidence available that something is dangerous, we shouldn't assume that it's safe. So it's really important to consider that nuance. I think paying attention to exposure root is important, and I think that the tide Pod
challenge actually really exemplifies that. So again, kind of like similar to diacidel landri. So you know, unless you're allergic to some of the ingredients, it's usually pretty okay to get on your skin. You can wash it off. Your skin has a whole bunch of defenses that protect the insides of your body, just like your lungs do and your GI tracked i'll have different defenses, and so getting it on your skin no big deal. However, you don't
want to eat it. You don't want to eat it because your GI tract has totally different defenses compared to your skin and your respiratory system. So it's really important to consider what the chemical is and the exposure route.
Good advice from doctor Garrett. Yeah, And what about the hardest thing about your job? The hardest thing ab having an environmental paxologist.
I honestly think it's the amount of flim flam that's everywhere, you know. I I think there's there's so much misinformation about that, and it's easy to be very scared of about chemicals. Right, there's you know a lot of examples of a very terrible things happening after people are exposed.
What about the best thing?
Oh, the best thing I think is getting to solve complicated puzzles and also help people understand what is going on around them and how their body interacts with the environment and how we're not so separate from the environment as we'd.
Like to think. Is that behind you? Is that a periodic table? Oh?
Yes, yes, I have, I have that. I have an estradial molecule.
And yeah, I love the notion that you like to solve puzzles when the periodic table is just kind of like one assembled puzzle as it is.
Yes, right, yeah, absolutely, Yeah.
It took a lot of problem solving to figure out where each molecule goes, or each atom goes.
Do you think you'll ever get a periodic table tattoo. Any elements you would get tattooed on you.
It's so hard to pick. I don't think I have a favorite element. I also have like equilibrium arrows, so I feel like I maybe shouldn't get more chemistry and toxicology tattoos.
But you know, did you have to search for any kind of non toxic ink for that?
Fine?
No, I didn't. I was just like, I'm accepting this risk. I definitely have the little thought, you know, each time I put on lipstick and like, there's probably lead in here, but you know, you can have a little lipstick as a treat. Though lead exposure is one where there is no safe dose, so you can't just have a little lead as a treat.
Dang it.
I don't want anyone to think that I'm advocating for that.
And yes, apparently there is lead in a lot of lipsticks. But you can go to the FDA site which I'll link on my website, and you can see which lipsticks and which shade have the highest amount of lead. And topping the charts from an FDA study was Mabelene's color Sensational Shade one twenty five in pink pedal. I'm gonna look that up right now and tell you what it looks like. A wonderful pinky nude shade versatile. Anyone could wear this as long as they don't mind seven point
one to nine parts per million of lead. Laurel owns Mabelene and they had some of the highest rates of lead on there. But it's not just the drug store goodies either. Nars also clocked in with a few high ones. But even Bertsby's lip shimmer has some let in it, so do some research. The FDA says it should be safe at the levels they're at. Anything under ten parts
per million should be safe. But also remember that the world is imperfect in so many ways, and our generation and your children have a lot of survival bonuses that our ancestors couldn't ever dream of, like, for the most part, plumbing and walls, doors, soap, antibiotics, dating apps. So at the end of the day, people you will never meet are working hard to keep you safer among some environmental
toxins we're learning about. So thank you to all the ologists listening for making the world a cleaner and safer place, including kim Oh my gosh, this has been such a joy. I'm so lucky that you answered our bad signal.
Oh thank you. I hope that the things that I said makes sense.
So take calculated risks, ask smart people, not smart questions, and keep your eye on the sky, Ohio and everywhere. You can follow doctor Kimberly Garrett on social media at the links in the show notes, as well as the charity of her choosing gap. We are at ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at ali Ward with one L on both. I'm at ali underscore ologies on TikTok. You can say hello. Smologies are shorter, kid friendly versions of ologies.
They are cleaned up of my filth. Those are up at aliwar dot com slash Smologies that's linked in the show notes. Aaron Talbert admins Theologies podcast Facebook group, with assist from Shannon Felts and Bonnie Dutch. Noel Dilworth does the scheduling. Susan Hale handles the merch and they both do so much more. Emily White of the Wordery makes professional transcripts which are up for free at aliward dot com slash Ologies stash extras that's linked in the show notes alongside bleeped episodes.
Kelly R.
Dwyer works on the website and assistant editing was done by Jared Sleeper of mind Jam Media with smologies and lead editing done by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio, which is link in the show notes. I accidentally just texted I love you to Mercedes on a group thread with Jarrett, but I meant it honestly for both of them. Nick Thorburn did the theme music and if you stick around until the end of the episode, you know I tell
you a secret this week. It's one of my favorite places in the world is a willow structure in the gardens of the Natural History Museum in LA It's been there for almost a decade. It was made by an LA artist named David Lovejoy, and it's just beautiful little willow home, just sitting in the garden. You go in there and it's like a dark little nest of twigs and it had to be rebuilt once before, and I
got to go help David rebuild it. And when Jarrett and I got engaged the NHM, let us take photos in the museum as well as in the willow hut, which was magical and not to be too sad. But my dad also knew that I loved the Willow Hut and he was making me a small model version out of some willow branches that grew at the edge of the river my parents lived on back in twenty twenty. But then he got sick and he never got to
finish it. And that little model my dad was working at my sister's house, and my summer project this year is to finish it up. But I got an email from the NHM a few weeks ago saying that the willow structure was to be dismantled and removed. But they knew there how much I loved it, so they saved me a branch. And so big thanks to Diana Saldana at the Natural History Museum of La County for letting me know and for saving me a twig from it.
Sarah mcattack McNulty was visiting La and visited the museum and brought this branch back to my house. So this willow twig is now mounted on my wall and I stare up at it wistfully every day. And for more photos of the Willow Hut, you can go to Instagram and look up the hashtag willow hot Wednesdays and you can see.
It in all of its glory when it existed.
So I hope you get to cozy up in whatever your favorite place is. It's nice to have a favorite place, even if it's just in your mind.
Huh okay for.
Bye Pacaderma College Homeology or doo Zoology, Lithology and zoology, zeurology, parapology, the apology, seriology, theology.
Let's get this place cleaned up a little bit. We're freezing prices for two years in the Virgin Media playhouse. Switch to our super fast, reliable broadband now and freeze your prices or law broadband offers for twenty four months from just thirty five euro month with no activation fee. Switch in store or at Virgin Media dot Ie Virgin Media. It's playtime.
Tcenc's applies subject to availability new broadband customers and twenty four month contracts only. You won't receive a price increase with the duration of this contract from thirty five euro month for twenty four months seventy euro thereafter. N February eighteenth, twenty twenty six