3M’s Forever Chemicals and a Therapist’s Take on Election Cycle Anxiety | Guest Spotlight

You're listening to Comedy Central. Welcome back to the day Show. My guest tonight is a pro public.

Reporter whose recent article, in collaboration with The New Yorker, investigates three M's use of forever chemicals.

Please welcome Sharon Lerner.

I'm Sharon.

How are you.

All right?

Thank you for coming, Thank you for writing this piece. This is a testament to investigative journalism. How long does it take to write this piece?

Well, it took about a year, a little more than a year, but I was doing other things in the middle.

What exactly are forever chemicals? What did three M do? What were you uncovering in this piece?

Yeah, so I was writing about forever chemicals, which are p fasts is the name of the compounds, And basically they're called forever chemicals because they last forever in the environment and they accumulate in your body. And we all knew, we've known for a while that three M made these chemicals, and I have been reporting on them for a while. What was new with this story was that someone who had worked in the company came to me and offered to tell me her story, and it ended up shedding

She was testing blood and.

Was finding that everyone's blood had forever chemicals in it, and how did three M respond to her research?

Right?

So she ended up she was asked by her boss to test all these blood samples, and these were samples of blood from the general public. So she starts testing them and she keeps finding trace amounts of this chemical PFOS, which was made by her employer in everyone's blood. It's not supposed to be there, right, And then she tests different parts of the country, she tests animals, and she finally brings her results to her boss, and in response,

This amazing thing. He's a scientist. Yeah, she'sist.

She's in the environmental lab.

That's her job, right, And in fact, what they ended up doing was questioning her and saying, this can't be right, and your equipment's probably messed up, and why don't you repeat the experiment? And eventually what she finds is that there is another chemist at the company who had discovered the same thing in nineteen seventy five, so decades.

Earlier, and I what you talked about in the article.

But part of what solidified her belief in her research was she actually tested old blood.

What was that.

So she's testing all these samples from around the country and they all contained pfos and her bosses start saying, oh, you think you.

Get pfas you get pfo It's like we all got it.

Yeah, And they start saying, are you sure because maybe you just think it's everywhere right, You just are delusional basically. And then she ends up testing a sample from rural China and an old sample, right, and it was the first one she tested that didn't have any of the chemical in it.

Wow, And she realized, here, it.

Is someone in rule China who's probably dead at this point, doesn't have forever chemicals in their blood.

And then she ended up testing someone a war veteran who the blood sample was from nineteen fifty seven before Scotch Guard entered the market.

So let's talk about that.

What what are forever chemicals in You mentioned Scotch.

Guard, right, So initially they were in Scotch Guard, which is this coating for fabrics, the carpets, yeap and carpet couches, and then they had also a product that was for food packaging and it was also in firefighting foam, and that was the beginning. Now I cannot name all the products that it's in thousands, really, and you know, the companies say they're in every car and cell phone, they're

I love that they put out a spreadsheet in twenty twenty two. And they've known about this since nineteen seventy five, so fifty years later, super helpful. Do you when you start digging into this, when you start digging into this, do you ever just want to go.

I don't want to hear about this shit?

Well, you know, when I dig into this, what I want to do is tell people.

And that's why I'm here, you know.

Yeah, I mean it is utterly depressing, but I think it would be slightly more depressing not to report on it.

Well, yeah, I mean your article triggered my awareness and then I remember the Mark Ruffalo movie Dark Water, and then I remembered.

I looked you up and you had written about this even.

Before that, and it's like, holy shit, we got to pay attention to this stuff. You know, I have a four year old daughter, and I often am trying to tell her to stop being so pushy, right, hey, chill, you can't keep pushing back, pushing back. But then I meet you and I read this, and I heard you say that you've got to be pushy to dig in and fight against three M that made fourteen billion dollars last year a shitty parent.

Well, to be an investigative journalist, you do have to be kind of pushy. So it depends on whether your daughter wants to be an investigative journalist or not.

I mean, you're you're We're not just putting your pants out at this point.

So yeah, I mean you have to find out things that people don't want you to know. And so, you know, so with this story, you know, the response I got from three AM when I was writing about this in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen, you know, it's this is you know, yeah, you know, it's totally different from the story I got from someone who is on the inside. And it only took me nine years.

You know, right, right? Is there something that you do now differently in your life? A habit knowing what you know?

Are you not drinking water out of the hose like we did in Michigan growing? I mean, is there just something beside because look, a single American citizen taking on three M or DuPont because.

Three AM is not the only company with these reps.

You know, what, what can what can you tell me that that that I can do or you can do besides being aware, which is a positive step.

It is, and you know, it is so widespread now, as you said, it's some tons of products and some water all over the place. So I don't actually I mean, I don't use nonstick pants and that kind of thing. That's easy, or microwave popcorn.

That's easy. Don't use microwave popcorn, you know.

And I have to say, I don't know how it's been if it's been reformulated recently, but that was one of the original things that it was in.

I'm sticking by what I said earlier.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, honestly, as an environmental reporter, a lot of things, you know, horrify me. I would say, actually, the my reporting on plastics maybe left me with more of a you know chain my habits, so like I don't use single use plastic because you cannot.

Yeah.

Well, well, and my question is flawed to you because it always find I always find a capitalism the onus goes on us. Yeah, right, like, hey Sharon, why are you using that plastic bottle? And it's like, well, I assume what's on the shelf is safe for me, and that's not a safe assumption.

And does does our government step.

In on this?

Where? Where?

Where?

Where are they on this?

Well?

Yeah, there are a lot of government failures here in this story. One is that when the three m ended up giving in studies that they had done in nineteen seventy five, nineteen eighty, they finally gave them all to the EPA in the late nineties and two thousand, So that's you know, two two and a half decades after they did them. You're supposed to have had this, give it in immediately if you see that there's evidence of

On that I met that. I make that a week.

But like in the in the year that they phased out, the chemical they made three hundred million dollars, was on the you know market, So it makes no sense, so we have to make it. Actually, there have to be consequences for companies that do this kind of thing.

Well, you mentioned the E p A and there was a you know, there was a new I Forget guideline that they've set up recently. And this has to do with forever chemicals, and we're using that you in the in the article use.

The term p FOSS, right, but that can mean a lot of different.

Well, p fas is the class of compounds. So and and the one chemical that Chris who was talking about was discovering was PFOS. That's one chemical in this class that's called p fas. The class there thousands, right, So p fos is not made anymore, but it's still in the drinking water. And E p A recently said drinking water limit it's for pfos and PFOA fabulous, great, very great.

So, and it's in New York City drinking water.

I mean, it's in everyone's drinking water, you know, And now the challenges local cities are going to have to find a way to pay for filtering this out right, right.

And there is just a big suit, a big settlement with three M where they're going to pay twelve and a half billion dollars. And you think, oh, that's a lot of money, and it's not when you have to actually remove these chemicals from water everywhere.

Environmental crime. That's a new term that I recently heard. And when I read your piece, I said, this is environmental crime. Three M has committed assault in US, maybe murder depending on the classification.

Has anyone at three M? And are there anybody in trouble?

No?

No criminal? Love this story, you know, it's.

Just yeah, yeah, not in a criminal way. But I like the way you put that. It is it is a crime, right, And I mean part of the reason I think it's a crime is because we weren't given any choice in the matter. Right, So nobody said, in exchange for this beautiful, stained free couch, we're going to put a toxic chemical in your body and leave it there forever.

It wasn't like that.

It was here's this product and we know this thing we're not telling you. So it's like bodily trespass really like there, I mean, these chemicals are in infants when they're born, before they're born.

Right. One of the saddest and scariest parts was when in the article you talk about and this is going to be really sad, but how women actually finally showed that they had less forever chemicals in their body.

But that was after they gave birth, because they passed it on to their child.

Yeah.

Right, so this is this is a problem. What can you leave us with Everybody here is now newly aware. Should we call all our congress people? Should we stop buying plastics? Should we Well, I.

Mean here's something, here's something really focused I could do, like fans, the entire audience. I mean, so one of the crazy things is that pfas are still being new ones are still being introduced, So we still have dozens that are being used, but they're still introducing new ones. That is like that seems bananas to me, And that seems like a very focused point that we could you know, do something about.

Yeah, thank you very much for writing this article. Thank you for coming on the Daily Show and talking with us, You make me sick. It is available online at The New Yorker and Pro Publica.

Sharon Lerner, What about the Daily Show?

Now now.

My guests tonight in incredibly prescient booking by our talent people. Is a psychotherapist fancy that best selling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, A dear therapist columnist for The Atlantic. Please welcome to the program, Lori Gottlieb. Please, doctor, you're probably wondering why I've called you here tonight.

Yes, well, my therapist clearly turned off his phone, so I'm sure.

Now are you expecting as a therapist on occasions like this, they always say, you know the Super Bowl, Uh, people get so angry and they're rooting for their teams and there's a huge uptick in arguments and violence and all kinds of other things. Do you expect something similar for an event like this.

Well, I think that a lot of people are going to be having arguments. They don't know there's going to be domestic violence, but I think there's definitely going to be a lot of arguments happening with friends, families, workplaces, all of it.

And you think, because this is a time when the country is really focused on this and there's really no way to escape it, and so whatever schisms are there are going to be exacerbated.

I think they are.

And also just because we're so polarized, and I think that people don't know how to have conversations about the issues. It doesn't even become about the issues anymore, as we just saw.

But we are siloed.

Isn't the siloing of the nation keep us from having to have those conversations because you don't really run into those people that you disagree with too much except on Thanksgiving.

Well, I think you run into them on social media, and I think that that's where a lot of this is happening. And then people's people get very upset by what they're seeing on social media. And I can understand when we look at the rates of anxiety and depression. You know, we say therapy before diagnosing someone with depression, make sure they aren't surrounded by assholes. Right, So I'm not going to name who those assholes?

Is that really a thing? Like I have depression and you're like, wow.

Well, sometimes it's like I understand, OKT, who drove you here?

Look at who sent you here?

Because the people who come to therapy are are the people who are coming to therapy because the people who should be in therapy are not coming to therapy.

That just blew my mind. So this is people are coming because they feel they don't have an outlet for their frustrations and the only outlet they might have social media is toxic.

Well, I think that what you see on social media again is a lot of this sort of you know, name calling and uh and again there's not a lot of nuance, There's not a lot of complexity. It's a lot of just people fighting. It was like that golf exchange on the you know, on the debate. It's those kinds of things where people are talking about completely irrelevant things or they're just uninformed, and I think that people uninformed.

And relevant a presidential debate. How do you deal with there is an existential fear to this. I mean, for social media to keep people engaged, for news organizations to keep people watching, they have to ramp up the urgency and the existential nature of the crisis. So you're sort of torn between these two impulses. One is to not participate, which would be addicating civic responsibility, but the other would be to bathe yourself in this existential crisis. What choice do you have?

Well, we do have a choice because so look at anxiety. There's productive anxiety and unproductive anxiety.

Well think about it.

If you didn't have anxiety, you wouldn't be able to be safe. That's why we have anxiety. It was like, there's a bear, you better have anxiety. Your unproductive anxiety is I'm just going to stand here. Productive anxiety is I'm going to do something about this.

See that's so weird because my anxiety has never saved me from bears, but it often convinces me I'm not lovable.

So how how I shared too much? How do you just gonna say? How do you?

I watch it?

I didn't want to watch the debates tonight, but I do work once a week now, so I have to because that it's it's toxic to me. I know that I have to participate. But how does that anxiety of watching it? How is that a relic of something.

That's good for me?

It's good for you because then you can take action. By the way, I hope you're taking action on the unlovable thing. I hope you're getting some.

Help with that little thing called mushrooms.

Baby, micro doos away.

Sorry, but it's helpful because you say, Okay, there are two ways you can respond to this. You can say I'm gonna put my head in the state and not engage, which is I hope not the option that people here are taking. And you can also say, oh, I'm just spinning an anxiety, I'm doom scrolling, I'm just you know, getting all worked up. Yes, that's not helpful, that's unproductive anxiety. And then there's productive anxiety, where you say what can I do?

Well?

You can you can get involved in a campaign, you can volunteer, you can please vote, you can get the people around you to vote. There are things that you can do. The thing that you want to do is you want to say what can I control here? And that's where you take your anxiety and you say it's going to motivate me to do something productive.

Does sitting in your underwear screaming at the TV account as action?

No, doc, You're losing me here.

Have you seen an effect of this on relationships, on marriages, on families?

Have you want?

Is this separating people at a much deeper, more emotional level than what we're understanding.

Yes?

Absolutely, you know I when I see couples in therapy often when they come in the person, you know, you say what's going on, and the person wants something to change, But what they want to change is the other person, the person sitting right there. Sure they don't think I want to change myself or I have a role in this.

Are you seeing this in couple in married couples where politics has driven a wedge to them that is that they can't overcome.

Or absolutely, how do you traverse.

A political conversation with a couple?

Yeah, Well, there's this great phrase in therapy. It's saying, I wonder. So it starts with I wonder, I got it, I wonder. You know, it's kind of like, you know, I wonder if instead of taking another drink, maybe you should take a walk when you're feeling sad.

Right as we unfortunately it's a live show, we're out of time. I always say I use that all the time. I wonder why you're searching an asshole that usually work.

Check out Laurie's book.

Maybe he just talk to someone for calling in me Atlantic.

I sorry, hurry got Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show wherever you get your podcasts. Watch The Daily Show weeknights at eleven ten Central on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount

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