#49 - Kate Donovan - The link between Environmental Policy and Human Health

So there's actually quite a lot of research and scientific information that has shown PFAS, well, 2 particular chemicals of PFAS, PFOA and POFOS, have been linked to testicular cancers, to high cholesterol, to hormone disruption, to thyroid issues, to impacts on immunosuppression impacting the uptakes of vaccines, to developmental delays and concerns, high liver enzymes. I'm not a doctor, but there is quite Quite a wealth of information out there to the point where the US EPA and other government entities have really said that there's no safe level of PFAS to our bodies.

Hey everyone. Today I'm thrilled to welcome Kate Donovan, a passionate environmental advocate and senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Kate brings a wealth of expertise in environment, health, safety, sustainability, and public policy. with a focus on eliminating toxic chemicals, reducing plastic waste, and protecting public health. Kate, I'm so excited to have this conversation today. Welcome.

Thank you so much for having me.

Great. So if you can kick off by just giving us an introduction, who are you? How did you get here? Why do you do what you do?

Yeah. So, you know, you gave a brief bio. I've been working in the environmental law and policy space for over 24 years at this point in time. We've been talking about the climate crisis for a long time. And when I was in high school, we were talking about the climate crisis and it really motivated me at that point in time to realize we only have one planet. We don't have a planet B. And what does it look like for the rest of our generation and future generations to come? And that's what really got me interested in environmental science. And as I kind of went through college and I had some mentors of mine that were lawyers and that worked in the government space, and I really looked at that as a way of being a place I could influence change. And so I've spent my academic and professional career trying to learn more, you know, becoming a lawyer and working in lots of kind of really interesting areas, public sector spaces, private spaces, and now for the last 6 years in nonprofit world.

That's awesome. And I mean, honestly, the environment is something that feels, at least from the conversation I've been having, it feels like it's taking a bit of a backseat. Maybe you can help by just helping us like dig deeper into what you're looking after. You know, what are the things that are concerning? What are the things that pop up? What are the themes that you're, that you're experiencing?

And, you know, I started with climate, right? And that's certainly one of the most existential threats we have that we're working with as a society. But as I kind of, as I became a mom in particular, my daughter's now 9, I became a little bit more focused on things around our home. I'd always been conscious about environmental issues, but in particular plastics and toxics that really find their way into our everyday lives and just learning more about the health and the science behind what we're learning. And that's really, I think, propelled my work at least over the last 5 to 6 years to be more focused on particular things like PFAS chemicals and our drinking water and our household products, our use of plastics. And the ubiquity of that and really wanting to focus my energy on working with governments, state and federal, to turn off the tap to these substances that are, that are really impacting the health of our lives and our, and our future generations.

Yeah, we always hear that, that these things are, you know, these things are really bad for us. And most of us decide not to go down to the details because it's like opening that can of worms might change our lives forever. And that's what I found super exciting about this conversation. When we decided to speak and chat, I was like, you know what, I'd love to go as deep as possible. Take us through your journey. When you talk about plastics and toxics and how that impacts us and our children, our families, what have you discovered? You know, how bad is the situation? What can you share?

Yeah. And of course, this is a professional and personal journey for me as well. And really now that I'm deep in it, living my personal life with kids is is very hard and takes a lot of mental, takes up a lot of mental space in my brain, in addition to showing up to work every day, trying to make change for obviously the broader world and the planet. So, I mean, I can start with plastics. Plastics are everywhere and the rate of plastics in which we are creating, in particular single-use plastics, has been exponential over the last 20, 25 years. And is expected to triple by 2050. These are the projections. We're expected to have more plastic in the ocean than fish in the next number of years. These are incredibly scary statistics because one, we know that plastics are made out of thousands and thousands of chemicals. There are all sorts of chemicals that are added to plastics to ensure they don't degrade in the sunlight, to ensure they have stability, to ensure that they hold up over a longer period of time, that they're colored. dyes and pigments, all of these different thousands of different chemicals that are added to plastic to give plastic products certain characteristics and capabilities. But we know that plastic is not forever and it degrades. And when it degrades, it sheds into microplastics. And those are the microplastics that we are ingesting every single day. Recently read a statistic that we're ingesting about a pen capful of microplastics each day. We've heard things about eating a credit card's worth of microplastics in a short period of time. So it's really invading every aspect of our food chain. There's been lots of different research and studies from scientific and medical studies, as well as studies like organizations like Consumer Reports that does a lot of testing on food. And once you realize you're ingesting all this, And the potential health impacts, it's really scary. Children are now being born with microplastics and PFAS chemicals, which we can talk more about, in their bodies from birth. And that is new.

Wow. So like the moms probably have so many microplastics in their system that it's being passed through pregnancy is what you mean?

Yeah, certainly. We know that PFAS chemicals in particular, and I don't know if how familiar you are with PFAS, which is a, is a class of synthetic chemicals. It stands for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. This is most widely understood or known as Teflon. Mm-hmm. Teflon was created, and we've seen movies like Dark Waters or other, you know, known a little bit about how dangerous Teflon and PFAS are. We know that PFAS is passed through breast milk. We also know that once PFAS is in our blood, That the only way your body gets rid of it is when you give birth to a child.

So bad. My God. Okay, so I'm gonna come back to PFAS. Yeah. Just to zoom into plastics for a bit. So on average, every individual consumes maybe a pen cap or maybe a credit card worth plastics a day. And is that average because many people consume products with, you know, plastic, like water in plastic bottles, or is it also Does it also seep into our, you know, tap water and other things that we will find difficult to avoid?

Yeah, it comes from a lot of different places. So the microplastics in particular are shedding and breaking down and are found in our drinking water. They're found, you know, there's many studies that talk about the numbers of micro and nanoplastics found in drinking water bottles, in our food, all along the food chain. We know that when we eat Fish, for instance, especially because things like microplastics and chemicals can bioaccumulate, meaning the smaller fish eat the microplastics and larger fish eat the fish, and it kind of accumulates into the larger species of fish that we end up may have on our plate, which compounds how much microplastic or toxic chemicals we're consuming in that meal. But we also know that milk and dairy and other proteins are at risk of containing microplastics as well as, you know, we can be exposed to microplastics and things in our homes through dust and inhalation. The reality is that most of the products that we're using these days and coming in contact with are some plastic material.

Yeah, that's so true. I just, as you're speaking and I'm thinking about so many different things that I have in my kitchen, just, just plastic everywhere and like cleaning materials, just, there's plastic everywhere. Okay, so it's like, it's hard to avoid it. It's not only about like drinking water and it's everywhere. So what's the impact? What is it doing to us?

Well, you know, the information and the science about microplastics is emerging every day. We are learning more and more about where microplastics are being found in our bodies. There was recently a study that disclosed that every man who was part of the study found microplastics in their testicles. We know that microplastics are being found in placentas, And breast milk. And so we know that it is in our body and we know that the chemicals in plastics can lead to certain health impacts such as endocrine disruption, hormone changes. Of course, this is emerging science. It's, you know, every day we're learning something new and it's a point where we need to be thinking about precautionary. Like we know this is bad and sometimes when science catches up to say, this is the causal link, you know, it could be quite late for us. So being aware of how we're exposed every day and also being aware of the risks that these chemicals in plastics pose to our body should make us think about the things that we use daily, think about how we're consuming, and also help us kind of maybe advocate for changes. Because ultimately, in some regard, which is really infuriating, to a lot of people is that we don't have the choice. We are just given the plastic, right? We often don't have the choice, especially when we're talking about grocery stores and food packaging.

Yeah, absolutely. Like there's always this positive twist on recycled plastic, but that's still pretty bad, right?

Yeah. The concern about, and so that's the other thing, recycled plastic. In some ways, of course, we want to see plastics being made into something else, right? We don't want to keep, because We didn't really start with plastic. Plastic is extracted fossil fuels, right? The companies that are making plastic are fossil fuel companies. They're petroleum products. So this idea that we can continually make something new out of it to save pulling plastic out or pulling fossil fuel out makes us feel better. But we know that because there are all those chemicals in plastic, when we recycle them, we're just recycling the same toxic soup of chemicals into something new. So while I wouldn't say that recycling is certainly necessary as part of our solid waste management and dealing with our solid waste crisis, I just personally am very wary of products that I use around my home that are made of recycled plastic as well.

So what do we need to do? What practical advice do you have for the average person who's just going to the grocery store or getting their food? They're typically very busy. Of course, being aware is a huge piece, and I think you mentioned we're constantly Discovering how they're impacting our health and our children's health. If it's everywhere and it's, is it just purity about us being careful with what we buy and what we bring into our home?

Yeah. So I think the first step is to be kind to yourself. And I have to tell myself this all the time. I only can do what I can do, even for someone I would consider myself and my family considers me quite militant around the home. And there are moments where I say I can't control everything and I'm doing the best I can. So awareness is certainly the first step. And just take some time to get to understand what are the things you use the most in the home that you could potentially swap out with something that's potentially not plastic, a bit safer. The kitchen is kind of a great place to start. And it is also can be very overwhelming. And then you think I need to get rid of everything in my kitchen. But I would say start with the things you use the most. For instance, for me, switching to glass storage containers for my food is something that

Like

stainless steel,

glass.

Or I often save jars that I buy tomato sauce in or another product. I will save the glass jars and use those for storing food. This has been around for a long time, but not to microwave your food in plastic. Anything that you kind of heat up, if you make tea a lot, right? Or if you trying to use things that are made out of stainless steel, glass, ceramic, you know, I personally switched to loose leaf tea as opposed to tea bags. As there may be concerns that—

I just learned that very recently that most loose tea bags have plastics in them.

Well, it's because the material, right? If you put a material that tea bags are made out of, usually have some kind of woven polyester or nylon or some other fiber in them that ultimately is plastic. And so when you're heating up a very hot cup of tea, right, those plastics in those particular fibers could leach out into your cup.

Loose tea, and of course a strainer, set of tea bags.

So, you know, that's one thing I think around the home. Certainly filters are also great things around the home. Filters for your water, filters for your air. Those are, I think, important things to invest in if you're interested in trying to kind of ensure the spaces that you're living in are as clean and free of toxins as possible. And this sounds a little kind of silly, but frequent dusting and vacuuming, right? Capturing all these micro or nanoplastics that might be in your air, in your environment, I think are good steps to take. And lastly, certainly not lastly, but one thing to be aware of, which is definitely harder, and I struggle this with my 2 small kids, is clothing. Clothing, a lot of clothing. We know that the expansion of fast fashion and brands that are just putting textiles and clothing on the market as fast as possible are often made with plastic materials. Anything that is polyester or rayon or nylon, those are all fibers that come from some derived plastic product.

Yeah, that's also something that I only learned very recently. It's like the tea bags, clothing, especially for kids. I feel like my wife is always, you know, she would never buy clothes that are not organic, for example. But okay, so with all of this, one thing that I just have, because you started off talking about water particularly, would you say tap water in places like the UK would also be contaminated with microplastics? Or do they typically go through the right level of filtration? So do you suggest that we do build a certain level of filtration internally as well in our home?

Yeah, so I can't speak to the UK's water quality and supply. I'm based here in New York. I do know that the issue of microplastics pervades the entire planet, right? So I would suspect that it is also a concern in the UK as well. In the United States, we don't filter our public water for microplastics. That's something advocates are certainly talking about because that's a concern. We certainly do a lot of filtering of water in the United States for contaminants, right? We're required under law, and I would imagine the UK has a similar structure of ensuring that public drinking water is safe. We start talking about PFAS, there are specific things we can refer to and speak about in terms of water and PFAS and risks, but in terms of microplastics, I'm not aware, at least in the US, of systems filtering for microplastics at this point in time.

And are standard filters, like good filtration systems that a homeowner can build into their water supply, good enough to remove microplastics?

You would really want to check each brand. There is such a wide variety of filters on the market, and I'm not sure of what the filters are in the UK versus what they are here. So I would just recommend that you ask the manufacturers of filter, try to do as much research as possible and ask specific questions about will these capture microplastics? Will these filters capture PFAS chemicals? I think those are really important questions for consumers to be asking.

Honestly, I'm glad we're having this conversation. It's like, as you're talking, I'm thinking about everything that I have at home. And I think managing food containers and making sure we're not, you know, buying food that's contaminated in microplastics is something that's manageable, but water is probably the biggest risk because we do buy bottled water. And yeah, just looking at the type of filters, talking to the companies and making sure we set up the right filters that protect from microplastics and PFAS seems like a huge win.

Yeah. And I would just say about, you know, at least here, and I would imagine this is similar in the UK, there is a whole infrastructure to keep your water drinking and safe, right? So in New York City in particular, there's— New York City has very clean water. Now, of course, you might want to filter it for other chlorine and other things, right? But we would always advocate refilling your water bottle, drinking from waters that are provided by, you know, public utilities. Of course, you can't eliminate every single risk, but for the most part, drinking water that's supplied to people in their homes, and if you can filter it like in your home, that's even better. And I, I would suggest that as a better option than buying bottled water. Of course, you'd wanna know your own specific water supply. That rule probably doesn't apply to everything. Certainly communities that are going through Water contamination crises with PFAS have sometimes been directed to only use bottled water, right? There are extremes on all of these cases, but just your general, in your home, if, if you are being provided safe water from your water provider, then adding that extra level of home filtration would be a good step.

Awesome. Before we go to PFAS, I'm just going to double-click on what you said at the very, very beginning when I asked you the first question. You said like, be kind to yourself, try to take this with like an open heart and an open mind and understand that like you can't control everything. And it's just an important point to always go back to because I think I have people around me in my life as well. And I can see that that level of control creates stress and stress naturally does impact the body and impacts our health and impacts our mental health and impacts our energy around others, which can start also creating different problems. It's like so difficult. It's easier said than done, but being able to maintain that Positive energy and positive vibration while, you know, moving towards a better home sounds like a fundamental step to keep in mind.

That's a great point. Stress is also very damaging to us.

All right. And now PFAS, which just, you know, I don't know so much about it, but from what you're saying, some people call it the forever chemical and it's like impossible to get out of your body. What is PFAS exactly and why is it so bad?

Yeah, so PFAS, as I think I said earlier, stands for a class of maybe 16,000 chemicals. There's just a very large range, and they're synthetic chemicals. They're manmade. PFAS were accidentally invented in the 1930s by the company DuPont, and these scientists found this chemical bond, right? This structure of a fluorine-carbon bond that was really unbreakable, like not breakable, the kind of foreverness of it. And it was a real revolution in a lot of ways. And by the 1950s, the scientists had developed Teflon, kind of like sticking all of these particular bonded chemicals together created this incredibly water-resistant, stain-resistant, smooth, slippery surface, if you will. And it was rolled out and was called Teflon. And we all are probably familiar with Teflon pans. We probably all have a few in the back of our cupboards. Maybe they're not even in the back of our cupboards. Maybe we use them quite regularly because they've been around for a long time. And these class of chemicals have expanded into many, many, many consumer products, not just cookware, and have many industrial uses and are very ubiquitous in our environment globally. And that is a big concern.

So when we say Teflon, the first thing that comes to mind, of course, are like frying pans and nonstick.

Yeah.

And it feels like most people are starting to understand the impacts of it, but how bad is it for us? Like how bad is it for our bodies? Is there any research, any scientific data that's coming out?

Yeah. So there's actually quite a lot of research and scientific information that has shown PFAS, well, 2 particular chemicals of PFAS, PFOA and POFOS, have been linked to testicular cancers, to high cholesterol, to hormone disruption, to thyroid issues, to impacts on immune immunosuppression impacting the uptakes of vaccines to developmental delays and concerns, high liver enzymes. I'm not a doctor, but there is quite a wealth of information out there to the point where the US EPA and other government entities have really said that there's no safe level of PFAS to our bodies.

And are there any technologies or advancements and/or breakthroughs and ways we can clean it out of our bodies if people have been exposed for years and they weren't aware?

Unfortunately, I do know this from the doctors we work with, is that there really is no treatment once you have PFAS in your blood. And another kind of upsetting statistic is that 98% of individuals living in the US, I don't know what the rates are in the UK, have PFAS in their blood. And the only way that we know that our body gets rid of PFAS chemicals is through birth.

Super. Oh, and it, it actually cleans up the mom's body and it kind of ends up in, in the, in the babies. Yes.

And ends up in the offspring. Yes.

Oh my God. That sounds horrible.

Yeah. I mean, it's certainly, we know that babies in the US are, and all over the place are being born with levels of PFAS in their blood.

And what do we have to avoid to avoid PFAS other than cookware?

Yeah, so PFAS, like also similar to microplastics, has this ubiquity about it, right? It ends up in our food chain, it ends up in our water supplies. And certainly one of the most concerning exposure routes to PFAS is when you're drinking contaminated water and of a high level. Perhaps it's been contaminated by an industrial facility, perhaps it's been contaminated from firefighting foam. That is actually one of the ways that many water bodies, at least in the US, have been contaminated with these chemicals, is that PFAS chemicals have been found in firefighting foam. So when military installations or facilities use it, when airports use it, right, on planes, it washes directly off into the watershed. But it's very common now these days for the use of these chemicals to be in a lot of household products. For instance, dental floss. Dental floss, particularly that's advertised as gliding or a very kind of smooth type of product, is known to be Coated with a PFAS chemical. Textiles, you know, things like stain-resistant carpets, stain-resistant upholstery, wrinkle-free shirts, Scotch-guarded things. All of these, those are some good keywords too when you're purchasing stuff to avoid things that may say stain-resistant, waterproof, wrinkle-free. Those are all kind of just tips to be like, to make your ears just kind of perk up and— Right. and say, hmm, maybe that there's a better choice. So, I mean, ultimately, and it's used in lots of industrial, other types of kind of industrial processes. It's kind of like a, I sometimes think of it as like Pam. I don't know if you have Pam, like spray oil spray in the UK, right? You know? Yeah. So like, if you think about, I always find this interesting about how this is a big issue in the United States at this moment too, about artificial turf. It may be an issue out there too, that a lot of these Sports fields and educational fields might be using fake plastic artificial turf as opposed to real grass. And there is a concern that, you know, artificial turf has high amounts of PFAS on it. And it's not so much that PFAS is added to the turf, it's that they use a PFAS substance to coat the mold that the plastic is extruded through to make the grass blades. Which reminds me of the idea of Like spraying Pam on a muffin tin. So you're coating a kind of a turf mold, if you will, with the substance. And so when this kind of plastic grass and turf is released, it's coated with this PFAS chemical that people are playing on, rolling around on, having a lot of contact with. So it's used in a lot of manufacturing settings for, I guess they would say mold releasers or things in that nature or cleaning machinery. And so that's oftentimes it will end up in consumer products. Maybe it's not intentionally added the product, but it's being used in the manufacturing setting, which therefore ends up kind of in the products that we're using in our homes daily.

Okay. So I think it's super clear that, you know, microplastics are everywhere. You mentioned that we're supposed to be tripling the amount of plastic that we have in the world by 2050. PFAS is everywhere. What's happening? I mean, you're also operating at the regulatory level. What do you feel like is happening at that level and what What do you hope to see people do to help move us to a better place?

Yeah, so we are starting to become smarter in terms of regulating it, for sure. The more we learn about it, the more it gives us evidence and information to push for more stringent controls and action. Again, I can only speak to what's happening in the US and in New York in particular where I am. We have created what we would say are, in the US, are drinking water quality standards for a number of PFAS chemicals. In New York, this means that people who are water utilities that supply you water have to be testing the water they supply to your sink and they need to be testing for certain PFAS chemicals. Mind you, they only need to test for a few, right? And we established in the beginning that there's like 16,000+ chemicals. So that's a whole, it's a whole nother can of worms, but we are testing for some of the most dangerous ones, the ones with some of the highest associations to health impacts. So that, that is good. So in New York State, for instance, we are testing for some of these chemicals and water utilities are starting to have to filter it out of our water before it ends up in our tap. The US EPA under President Biden, which we know we're in a completely different situation just as a couple weeks ago, regulated 6 PFAS chemicals nationally, meaning like everyone in every water supply in the US will have to start testing and removing 6 of these PFAS chemicals from drinking water. That rule has been passed. It hasn't really rolled out yet. And I think there are some real concerns amongst the environmental community that that could be threatened or weakened under the new presidency. But again, that's kind of a wait and see what happens with those standards. But the other things that we can do, and ultimately, and this is really my advocacy that we are working on in New York State, is to turn off the tap to its use. We could filter PFAS out of the water all we want. We could filter it out all day, and we will continue to do that, I'm sure, for decades, right? But if we continue to add PFAS to the problem, we are just in a cycle of frustration of, of really never cleaning it up. And how do we do that? We start saying that we can't use PFAS in cookware, in dental floss, in clothing, in textiles, in cleaning products, right? We start to force these product manufacturers to go to safer alternatives and to say it's not essential that we have these dangerous, toxic, forever chemicals being used, first of all, in consumer products. And the next level of that is going to manufacturing and industrial processes saying you need to find better alternatives to use and not continue to have PFAS enter our environment through water or air. Or disposal. One of the big concerns in the US is, is landfills, right? All these products that we talked about ultimately end up in a landfill, right? Mm-hmm. And landfills collect. And we know in New York State there's been testing of a number of closed landfills. Many of the closed landfills are highly contaminated with PFAS. Many of them are very old landfills with not the proper kind of linings, which means when it rains, Garbage juice, or the technical term leachate, kind of pours through the landfill and directly into our groundwater. So the disposal, it's really the whole lifecycle of the production of PFAS, the use of it, and then the disposal of the product at its end use.

Yeah. So it sounds like in places like New York City or New York State, the wheels are turning. People are being more aware. What concerns me as I hear this is that many countries take much, much longer to regulate or don't even have kind of regulation as part of their remit. And yeah, I mean, by the time it seems like that's a problem that needs to be regulated pretty quickly, or it's just going to keep getting worse and worse. And what people end up doing, and I can relate to a few friends and family members who are super aware of this. I mean, I got to learn so much today from this conversation, but I can now relate to why they're just super careful whenever we buy anything or bring anything to the house, or even if it's a carpet or even clothing. So what advice would you have for people who are maybe living in countries Of course, no matter where you're living, you need to be aware of this, but people who really don't have any level of regulation and are super exposed to these contaminants, what advice do you have for them?

I mean, I would just make the point again, I don't know, I guess I'm not sure how it works now that the UK is not part of the EU, but the, we do know the EU has much stronger chemical regulation than the US, and that has been the case for quite a long time. They have a more robust way of regulating chemicals, which is really important. And I think that's true for PFAS in a lot of ways too, that the EU is making steps. I do know recently in France they did try to regulate PFAS in cookware, and the cookware company was able to kind of get an exemption from that. Tefal, which I believe is a French company, was, you know, successful in that. I do think that countries are becoming aware of these concerns in consumer products. And as I mentioned before, what can you do in your own home? Just try to be aware of some of those buzzwords. Of course, avoiding plastic-type materials if possible will always be a safer option. And as we mentioned before, having proper water filters and air filters in your home are good ways. And I would also suggest, and I know it's not for everyone, but get involved in local groups that are trying to influence decision makers. That's kind of where I end up putting a lot of, granted, I do this for a living, but But you know, sometimes you find that putting your energy towards something else and talking to the decision makers and telling them, educating them why this matters to you and your family gives you a little bit more agency in the problem as opposed to just saying, well, I guess this is the way it is and accepting that.

Yeah. And honestly, when I brought up countries, I still do see that Europe has great regulation. The UK has great regulation, but if you go down to like Turkey or Egypt or the Asian countries or the UAE, like GCC or South America, you're just way more exposed and you know that there's zero regulation. I think the question I'm trying to dig into is if you have a family member, and this is like something that we had that is actually happening in our family, that is super involved in this and is part of a community, but the rest of the family is super oblivious to all of this, that person can come out to be a bit Too frustrated or anxious, or they're affecting themselves and their kids and they're creating a lot of anxiety and panic in their lives. Would you say that that person with the experience and knowledge that you have, and it's an important question for me because, yeah, really understand the science behind this and you've been super involved in the space. Would you say that that person should keep doing what they're doing, or do you think that that puts them in a position where they're impacting their social life and their mental health more than they should, or should they actually educate everyone around them? What advice would you have for that individual?

I'm chuckling because that is me in my, in my family, right? And maybe our family members will say, there's always one in the family. I'm at heart passionate about what I do, and I don't think I'll ever stop trying to inform people. I have learned over time that people will listen or they won't. And you, you ultimately depend how open they are to the conversation is just You just have to accept that. And they may not be as open as you want them to be. I know I have some family members that are very open to it and ask for my advice all the time of like, what about this? What about this? I have some family members that I think it just, you know, because ultimately this creates anxiety, right? We're all just trying to survive in a world that is quite upsetting, right? And sometimes people think this is just another level I cannot add. And I don't want to have the knowledge because I'm just trying to survive. Yeah. So I try to be sensitive to different members. Some of my closest members, you know, like your siblings, you tend to feel like you can be hard on because they're your family. But I would just say it's a balance and sharing information where you can. I mean, sometimes I find articles and oftentimes I write. For me, because I write about this stuff a lot, I often will send out things that I've written and because people love and care about me, they might be interested in reading what I wrote, which might be easier to digest than me just coming to one's house and saying, appearing that I'm criticizing someone's kind of choices or, or how they're going about their day. And gift, you know, I use opportunities at gift-giving times, birthdays, to, to buy things that I think they would like and need.

Yeah, I love that. Honestly, the one thing I relate to is it can be a very lonely journey, especially because people around are start kind of labeling that this person is just like being difficult or sometimes might label that that person has a problem when that person is just like super well-informed and understands things that they don't. But again, what you said at the beginning is super important because mental health is a crucial part of how we raise our children and how our long-term health will probably play out. And being able to also let go sometimes sounds like an important balance where it's not always so critical to the point where it feels like there's anxiety in the decision. So when I notice something wrong, I get anxious, I create resistance. I create this energy that pushes people away versus accepting that it's there sometimes and not always reacting very negatively, but constantly working towards improving my surroundings and my environment. I think the reaction, the negative reaction or the fearful reaction is probably an unhealthy step that creates a lot of this uncomfortable energy in the family.

For sure. And when you add kids into it, it's, it's a balance. My kids are very aware of my views and I would say Out of, you know, also share them. Right. But sometimes they're saying, mom, don't say anything. Right. Or don't being embarrassed. So when I try it, when I want to send some snacks into school that are not individually packaged. Right. Or—

I love this. Yeah. Cause they feel like we're a little different than everyone else, or we have harder boundaries.

Halloween candy has always been an issue at our house because I have tried to only find candies that are in little paper boxes, which is only Junior Mints in the United States. And no one likes those. And they get quite upset. But anyway.

Cool. So, so the last question I have is just to also leave this on a high note. What gives you hope in the fight against microplastics and PFAS in the future?

Just that the more that we're learning and that there is more attention, there are more people talking about it. It is on the radar, which is important, and that there are lots of people working in this space trying to really find a better path for our health and our environment.

I love it. It's just like more informed individuals, like people approaching this topic seriously and sharing information.

100%.

Awesome. Kate, this has been super helpful for me personally, and I'm sure so many people are gonna, are gonna benefit from this. It's a topic that is not brought up enough, and it's a topic that can be really bad for us and everyone in the world if we don't start tackling it together. So thank you so much for sharing and for coming on here today.

Oh, you're welcome. Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you, Kate.