Toxin Expert: They’re Poisoning Us! Alexandra Munoz

What have you been doing since Monday?

So Monday I arrived in North Carolina, uh, because last week the Senate passed the Farm Act S.639 with Section 19 in it, which is the, uh, de facto immunity provision which grants major corporations that produce dangerous chemicals, uh, immunity essentially when there's any type of failure to warn claim abroad. Brought against them. And so since Monday, I have been trying to help stop that from happening in the House at North Carolina. And so last week they removed the provision in the House, uh, in the Agriculture Committee. And then this week, uh, that same piece of legislation went, uh, before another committee and then before the House floor. And there were a number of attempts to bring back the de facto immunity provision into the legislation. So I have been meeting with legislators and speaking with people on the ground, trying to inform everybody what this provision is really about and trying to get it taken, you know, keep it out in the House. And luckily, the House passed a version of the Farm Act, S.401, that did not contain the de facto immunity provision in it. So that was a really big victory for us.

It was.

I'm a little confused. Will that victory last, or is it real?

Yeah, it's so— it's— it did last because the House passed S.401, but today, uh, the Senate took up S.401 for a concurrence vote. So they have to— because they passed a different version of the Farm Act, they then needed to agree with the version that the, uh, House had passed and they didn't agree with it today. They voted no on this version.

Did every— can we see who voted yes and no on this? Because I tried to see that and it kept saying that there was no votes and I was like, oh, I'm not sure.

I think that at some point they listed. I did get a video of, I think, the board. So we should be able to look on there. Um, I believe 30 people voted for it.

Okay.

Uh, from the count that I remember seeing. Okay. And so to answer your question, it lasted because even though they disagreed with it, now we're in a different process called— the bill has been sent to a conference committee where now the Senate and the House have to come to some kind of agreement between the two different versions of the Farm Act that they've passed, the one with the pesticide immunity provision and the one without it. And if we hadn't succeeded in the House, if we hadn't gotten it all the way through the House without that, then it would have just passed today and been North Carolina would now have de facto immunity for agrochemical companies. So that didn't happen.

So can I ask you a question? So the conference committee is behind closed doors and then once they come to a decision, is that what the decision is or does it have to go back to the House and the Senate to be voted on again?

I believe that the House then has one chance to kind of vote on it. That's my understanding. But it's actually been really difficult to get really clear answers on exactly the process. So that's been, I think, part of the confusion. And even this week, rules were being changed as they were trying to end the session before their recess. You know, suddenly in certain committees where amendments aren't usually allowed, then they were allowed and things like that were changing so that last-minute changes could be incorporated into the legislation.

Is this normal?

My understanding is that there's— it is normal in North Carolina, and I guess it's normal to an extent in some of the other states. But I've definitely heard some people say that the way the legislation is running in North Carolina is engaging in a lot more tactics that seem to leave the public out, to make changes at the last minute that don't necessarily incorporate the voice or will of the people. And even in that committee hearing where the amendment passed that removed Section 17 from S.401, we saw that vote count happen. Right. And so it was an auditory vote count at the beginning. And then it was clear that the ayes had it when you listen to the volume. Yeah, but the chair was about to call it for the nays until one of the members stood up and called division and asked for a roll count vote. A voice, you know, each person had to say their vote. And when we saw that happen, then it was clear that the nays did not have it. And yeah, the, you know, the ayes had it.

Were you there in person when that happened?

No, I was watching it in the video.

Are people allowed to go there in person?

They are.

So when you were watching it in video, you're in the next room?

No, she was—

I was— I was at home because this was the week that they passed it from the Senate. So it wasn't even on the agenda at all. They brought it onto the Senate floor without it being on the agenda, voted it through. They didn't allow even debate or vote on the amendment that had been proposed to remove Section 19 in the Senate. And then the next morning, they had the Agriculture Committee hearing at 11:00 AM. So we had just overnight to sort of rally everybody's support and let the House know that the people don't want that.

So this kind of stuff happens in North Carolina with other issues?

That's my understanding. I'm not from North Carolina, so I can't speak on exactly what's going on, but that is what I've been hearing is that there's a lot of tactics that can be put into play when they're really trying to put something through where they do an auditory voice count and then the head of the committee calls it the way that he wants it, even if it's not really the vote. And so unless someone in the committee calls for a roll call vote, it can just go the way the committee chair wants.

And do they have to beat him to declaring that?

Do they have to what?

Beat him to declaring that? Or can he declare that and then they're like, oh wait, no, you gotta do a—

She was really fast.

Yeah.

You were watching it with me. She was like, well, she called him on the yay, the whatever it is, the ayes for both. She, he said ayes for both. And then she's like, you said it twice. It's aye and nay, you know?

Yeah.

And then he immediately started to like go into it and she's like, Nah, you know.

So what you're telling me is if he calls it like that, it's then official. So they would have to beat him to it to call for a—

That is my understanding. But I'm not an expert on the rules of exactly that timing. But that's the way it seemed from watching it.

What other states are acting like that?

I'm not sure. You know, in terms of the state legislatures, how things are acting. But I know that some of the states have things called sunshine laws in their legislature where things have to be more visible. You know, committee hearings have to be announced a week ahead of time so that people that want to come and give testimony can. What we saw a lot with this piece of legislation was that committee hearings were announced less than 24 hours ahead of time, and then the committee hearing time was changed right on the day that you were thinking about coming. That's exactly what happened. And so people that have lots of things going on plan to be there at a certain time, and then they change it the day of. And those folks can't come.

Yeah, they only let so many people speak at the hearing, right? Public people. Well, was it every other one? One was for it, one was against it. Did they vet that? Seemed like that was the case.

No, I think it was just the way you signed up, because as you come in, you sign the piece of paper saying you want to speak.

Yeah, I think it— yeah, everyone can sign in and then it's really at the discretion of the chair of the committee Who gets to speak. And so sometimes they'll change the order and put, you know, oh, interesting. Um, certain people ahead of time and they decide how long everyone gets, you know, whether it's 1 minute or 2 minutes or 3 minutes.

If we're afraid he's one-sided, why, why, why do you let everybody? It seemed like, I don't, it seemed like every other person was for it. That was just coincidence.

I don't know how he— they— I don't know how the order was, and I wasn't there.

So, and then were there a lot of other people who wanted to talk?

I don't know. I wasn't there at that committee hearing, so I'm not sure. I feel like— I think the people that wanted to speak at that one got to.

Oh, okay.

Um, but definitely in some of the committee hearings, I think when there's been a lot of speakers, they've given everybody a really short amount of time.

Um, well, and then you were in a committee meeting and they turned off your microphone.

Yeah, that did happen.

So they turned your mic off after a time limit?

No, it was never on.

Yeah, so right before— so I had spoken the week prior in a committee hearing, um, and I'd been given 1 minute to speak. And then the next week I was in another committee hearing, and they give everybody 2 minutes. And right when I was— right when it was my turn to speak, right after they called my name, some people came over and switched the microphones that were there, and the microphone that I was speaking out of was off. And so I know on the livestream of it, people couldn't hear my speech for the most part.

Okay. All right. Well, your mic's on now. What were you going to say?

I was going to say that these pesticide immunity provisions are incredibly dangerous for the future generation. And that is my deepest concern about them, because, you know, the way that it's been framed, this legislation, is that it's just about glyphosate and it's just about protecting Bayer, this one chemical company. But this— the way that the legislation is framed is that it regulates all the chemicals regulated under FIFRA, which is the act that sort of gives the power to the EPA. And that includes all fungicides, insecticides, rodenticides, things that kill mold. Um, it's many chemicals. It's more than 15,000 chemicals. So it's not just farm chemicals, it's things that you find in your home— disinfectants, things that people use to sort of deal with pests in their home. And it's also all of the future chemicals in that space. So anything new that's brought to market once this type of provision is in place will automatically get de facto immunity, and the companies will— we know that these companies don't provide sufficient data to the EPA. So under FIFRA, the companies submit their own safety data, and a lot of times they use a loophole called conditional approval that allows them to skip submitting certain tests. And the EPA doesn't seem to keep track of whether or not they submit those tests 10 years later. And so there's chemicals that have missing safety information there's chemicals where really important tests that should have been run haven't been. And the company— there's a lot of evidence showing now that these companies manipulate their own data. They intentionally do the studies they know won't show a problem. They don't submit data when it does show a problem. And so the labels that are on the products don't warn about the actual health harms of these products. And they're missing the proper warnings. And that's what this whole thing is about, is that the, the way the legislation is written is it's saying that the— everybody should presume that the labels are sufficient to warn people, and therefore nobody should be able to sue these companies for failure to warn because they already have a label that's been approved by the EPA. But that's why all of these lawsuits have happened against Monsanto Bayer, is because They aren't warning that Roundup causes non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Right.

They still refuse to acknowledge it, even though there's substantial scientific evidence and there's a lot of people that have gotten non-Hodgkin's lymphoma from it and have suffered greatly. They don't care. They still don't want to put it on the label. And now they're trying to get this de facto immunity passed so that people can't sue them.

Yeah, well, because Bayer has 181,000 lawsuits right now. I mean, of course they want this.

Yeah.

I mean, it would make sense for their side to be like, oh, we can't be sued. And it's just really frustrating as I mean, we don't use these chemicals in our, in our farming, in our home, like we choose different things to clean with or, you know, treat things with. But like, do you— and maybe you don't know this, but like getting into the water supply is a huge concern, you know, like maybe we don't use it, but other people in our area do. And so what, like how— so like it gets into our water and then we get sick and then we We can't— we have— we would have no recourse.

You would have this law. Of course. Yeah.

I should say, because I think some people are confused, even because of the way they were arguing it at the hearing, we're not saying that amendment wasn't saying you can't have your chemicals, right? It was just saying you can get sued.

Yeah.

So, you know, we weren't taking the chemicals away. We were just saying if somebody believes they are injured, they ought to be able to follow through with that and see them in court.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's been a huge misconception that has been surrounding this in all of the states that I've seen it sort of being debated is that the farmers and the legislature, legislators that Bayer has, you know, so Bayer is the company behind this and they have hired lobbyists through different front organizations like Farm Bureau and CropLife. And those are the people that then convince the legislators to submit this data. And it seems to be that the story that they're telling the legislators and then that they're also telling the farmers is that they're getting so many lawsuits that are frivolous that they're their company is getting put out of business. And then because of that, the farmers won't have access anymore to the chemicals that they're making that they need to farm. And so that's why the conversation has turned into this thing of you're taking away our chemicals. Well, that's not actually what the legislation says at all, right? There's no language in the legislation is trying to ban or remove anybody's access to chemicals. That's not even on the table at all.

Yeah.

All they're saying The way that that is happening is because Bayer is threatening to go out of business, to bankrupt Monsanto, essentially, in order to not sell these here.

How are people doing with these lawsuits? Are people— how's that holding up in court?

Well, the people are winning the lawsuits. That's why they have this problem. And they're getting huge settlements because when the jury looks at the scientific evidence and then sees the internal documents from Monsanto employees explaining how they're going to avoid this toxicology testing or how they're not going to hire this toxicologist because he doesn't want to, you know, frame it in the way that they want to frame it. And he's going to try to talk about this thing that they know they can't talk about. You know, there's all these emails going back and forth that document the fraudulent behavior and the very intentional design of what they've done to hide important toxicological information from the people.

He's a very friendly guy.

He's really sweet.

Good timing, Royal.

Yeah.

All right. Say that last sentence again.

Uh, which sentence? The—

about the scientific data that the emails that are happening internally, and then the jury is seeing that and they're saying, wait a minute, They knew.

Yeah, they knew. So there's, there's documentation of their fraudulent behavior to hide the data that they have that's bad, to not continue testing when they realize there's a certain test or type of experiment that will show the problems with their dataset. Um, and it's okay, actually. We're getting out of here.

He will, he will put his claws into you, so just be aware.

Oh, really? Okay. Are you going to be nice? So, yeah. So because the jury has witnessed this very intention, very intentional, not only failure to warn, but failure to submit the data to the EPA to change their label when they knew it was harmful and intentionally hide that, that's actually what's required in order to win one of these lawsuits. It can't just be that it was a failure to warn by accident. It has to be an intentional failure to warn. So every lawsuit that's won in one of these cases is because they saw that there was an intentional failure to warn about the actual health risks of these products. And that means that these companies are intentionally selling poisonous chemicals to people, knowing the dangers of them and being unwilling to put the proper warnings on them. Right. Like they are essentially committing murder.

So what would the warning—

company—

what would the warning say? Would it say this causes infertility, Parkinson's, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma? Like, or do you know what I'm saying? Like, would it list out that or would it just say this? Like, I don't— I've, I've never even, like, looked at a Roundup bottle, so I don't even know what the warning is.

I think on a Roundup bottle right now, it just says keep out of reach of children and like could cause an eye irritation and maybe a skin irritation. Those are the only warnings that it says. You know, that's why the full list of what it should say, I'm not sure, but it should definitely say may cause cancer and like cigarettes. Yeah. And don't get it on your skin because that's the root of exposure that's really dangerous. And so, you know, the ads for Roundup that used to be run were people in shorts and t-shirts spraying it around their yard You know, it's like with no protection. And that's how they advertise it, was that it was so safe you could drink it, you could spray it in your yard, no problem. And so that's also part of why they've lost these lawsuits is because the advertising promoted completely unsafe usage of the product as well.

So like obviously safe usage would be wearing clothes and gloves and a mask and not getting it on your skin.

Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure exactly, but I think, you know, a lot of times when the farmers use it, they have these sprayers, so they're not physically in contact with it. They're away from where the chemicals are kind of landing. So that definitely improves the safety profile of it. If you're not— if it's not able to even get on your skin while you're using it. Is important.

Isn't that crazy? We're spraying something that's that wild on food.

On food. Yeah. Yeah.

It's really just hard.

Why do you care? This is— I mean, you're not even from the state. Why are you up here?

Well, I'm a toxicologist, so that means that, you know, I've studied a lot of different toxins and I'm a molecular toxicologist. So I've studied how they interact inside the cell in a way, like what molecular mechanisms they engage that lead to different diseases and specifically to cancer. That's been my area of specialty is like how do different things cause cancer at the level of the cell. And, um, and so I am here because I heard about this. So I've, I've taken sort of my own independent route through toxicology and through science, and I've been asking questions for a number of years, you know, not just how do these toxins cause these diseases, but how can we prevent these diseases for people? How can we reduce their exposure at, at the level of entire families and countries? You know, those are the questions that I really care about. And so when I saw this legislation and I saw that it was being run in all of these states, I just immediately felt in my heart that I needed to do whatever I could to help stop it. And so I've been listening to that.

Thank you, because I thought you were from here, and then I found out you didn't even live in the state, and I was like, oh, that's crazy. I mean, very kind of you to come and, and try to help other— what other states have you been in?

I went to Tennessee. That was the first state that I helped in. Um, and part of the reason I felt that and sort of acted on it, I took time to go through all the literature for glyphosate and Roundup and understand the data set and from my evaluation, I was like, well, well, this definitely is a carcinogen from what, from what I'm looking at here. It wasn't a question for me. And, and then I thought about all the future chemicals and I became really concerned about the future generation and the impact this would have on them because a lot of these are endocrine disruptors that can impact proper childhood development and they can also impact fertility. And when those exposures occur early in life, it can have an impact for the rest of their lives. And so the idea of just sort of pre-approving in a way all of these chemicals where there's no, no mechanism of recourse, right, seemed— felt immediately unacceptable to me that this would be the outcome. And then I saw that there were no toxicologists really giving testimony in these committee hearings. And so I decided that I was going to do this and, you know, just do whatever I could to help stop this.

Is this normal for toxicologists?

No.

What are toxicologists normally trying to figure out? How to make toxins work for us?

They— I think they're usually— a lot of toxicologists end up going to work for industry, for these companies. Okay. And help set you know, sort of safe thresholds for different things. And then some toxicologists stay in academia and do research on different types of things. But generally, especially when it comes to Monsanto and Bayer, any scientist that researches their chemicals or that, you know, speaks against them in some way, they tend to retaliate against those scientists. And so there's been a history of that as well. So I think a lot of people that maybe would speak out against this are afraid of what would happen to them if they did.

Are you afraid?

I am. You know, I'm concerned sometimes, but I just feel that my personal fear and whatever could personally happen to me is not as important as protecting the future generation from this.

Where does that come from?

From, from my connection to God and from, you know, feeling like there's a purpose to my life and understanding what that is.

You had mentioned earlier that you were doing this for families and in the future. Uh, that stems from— that for you, that stems from God. And it's not like you've had an exposure.

No.

Or some illness.

Well, I haven't personally. I mean, I've, I've had certain things happen in my life where I knew, you know, I had to change my diet and address things in different ways. But my sister, she is mentally handicapped and my mom is a dentist. And so when she was pregnant with her, she was placing silver fillings, which are half mercury.

Okay.

Um, and in the dental schools, they don't warn the women, uh, I think even now, that that might be dangerous for their developing children. Um, and so that's what we think has hap— you know, was affected her, um, in that way. So I think I've always had a different perspective on things because As we, you know, she didn't know that that's what had happened originally. But as we came to learn about things, it seemed like that was what happened. And she wasn't practicing dentistry when she was pregnant with me. Okay.

You said you had a— you've always had a different perspective on things. Where'd you get that?

Well, I think I just always have questioned things quite a lot.

This is a theme with us.

Oh, really?

Especially right now. Like, we're— we question so much. All the time, and I think it drives some people crazy.

You've always questioned things. Do you remember the very first thing?

The very— I do remember in kindergarten.

Um, I love it.

Uh, the teacher was sort of doing a demonstration while the principal was there, and, you know, said this is half of an apple, like cut it in half, but it wasn't exactly, and I sort of pointed that out. You're that kid. I love it.

I am that kid.

How'd that go for you? I think I— yeah, it didn't go great, actually.

But you've been questioning since then.

Yeah. Wait, wait, wait a minute. This isn't quite adding up to my experience or my observation of it.

Well, then when, when did you start questioning the chemicals?

I think probably so when I was a child, I was just really sensitive to a lot of things and sensitive to different foods. And so I had some food sensitivities. And I think just even the idea that certain foods could make me feel bad and registering that at a young age led to this wider awareness that, oh, maybe other things can impact me negatively, and, and that it's not necessarily what's— what I'm being told could impact me negatively, but how it is within my body. And so I think just sort of developing this discernment of like, we're not all the same and things affect us differently, right? That's one aspect of it. But also, and then realizing, well, if, you know, this broccoli or gluten affects me in a certain way, then— and that's not considered even something dangerous— what about things that are considered dangerous? That are, you know, being used in these very normal contexts without a lot of warning? What are those things doing? And so as I looked deeper into that question, I started to see, oh wow, there's actually so many chemicals that are, you know, in all kinds of products that are approved for usage that are actually known carcinogens or known endocrine disruptors. And, and there's a lot of, you know, as I went through this journey within academia and to study all of this, I saw how much evidence there was for a lot of these chemicals that were just in normal products that nobody was really telling us about. And I, and I was confused because I was just— at first I thought, oh, maybe there isn't enough data to sort of do all of this and regulate everything correctly. And then I kept looking. I was, I saw, well, there is a lot of data. It's just not being implemented into the regulations in a lot of cases, or the way that the regulations are structured and the kind of data that they want isn't the data that we have, even though we have data that shows that it's problematic in some way.

So would it be the EPA? I guess is the—

like, I guess I'm just so confused that is there a solution to this problem or what I've been trying to ask for a long time actually is how do we solve this? Right? Because now we're in the position where there's thousands and thousands of chemicals. The global chemical inventory, I think, is 350,000 chemicals. The global chemical inventory, that's all chemicals for all things, including plastics and different types of plasticizers and things like that. And of that chemical inventory, There, only 6% of it has been tested for toxicological properties. So a very small fraction. And of that, only 65 chemicals and toxins are really well understood.

65?

65.

350,000. What are some of those 65? Do you know any of those 65?

Well, I think that we would know. I think, you know, a lot of the metals have been really well studied, like nickel, arsenic, chromium. Those are the heavy metal— the metals are really well studied a lot of times. So sort of your traditional toxins, right? The ones that are naturally occurring. And then I'm not sure what else is on that list. Wow.

Offhand.

That's crazy. 65.

Yeah, 65. There is a paper where they kind of calculated this and did all this meta-analysis to figure out, okay, what is the chemical inventory that we're dealing with and How much of it have we really looked at?

So in the United States, are 350,000— are all 350,000?

I hope that number is right. It's either 350,000 or 150,000. I need to—

well, it's a lot.

Whatever that number is, are those all the global— are they all at play in the US, or is it just a fraction of that?

Uh, that I'm not— I don't know offhand. Okay. But there are a lot of chemicals in the chemical inventory here.

And the US has a pretty lenient chemical, like, you know, like a lot of chemicals, whereas like other countries, do they have less or is that just kind of a misnomer?

They definitely— so I can't go into too much. I don't know too much detail about exactly how everything is, is in relation to the other countries. But I would say that there are definitely more banned chemicals in some countries. And they tend to— some countries tend to implement stricter, more precautionary regulatory levels on things. Okay. So and the US definitely has higher levels and they also— the US also ignores their own scientists when they make recommendations about certain chemicals.

So that's how we're seeing the US government or the US.

I'm sort of grouping the FDA and the EPA together with that statement. Okay. Because I know examples in which the EPA and the FDA have ignored evaluations by scientists. So, for example, BPA went through this really rigorous set of studies. The FDA put together a panel of academic scientists that were really equipped to evaluate it. They created all of these really specific experiments to do. And then they also had, I think, some of their own or industry scientists do it. And it was this thing called BPA Clarity, a set of studies. And the academic scientists found that, you know, BPA is extremely potent as an endocrine disrupting chemical and that the regulatory limit that should be allowed was— I think it was way lower than what it was currently set at. And they made this recommendation to the FDA like, this is what we recommend in terms of this regulatory limit. And the— and the— sorry, the FDA. And the FDA completely ignored their recommendation only utilized, I think, the data from the industry scientists and set a different level that was much higher than what the scientists had recommended. And so then those independent— those academic scientists wrote a paper saying, this is what we thought should have been the level, this is the data that we collected, and we want everyone to know that. Hmm.

Well, I remember we had Now Jeans back in the day and it came out they had BPA in them and a lot of people were chucking their Now Jeans. But that sounds like from you it was not legislature, it was just awareness.

Yeah, that was just awareness.

It was just consumers saying no. And so they got rid of their BPA. But I also heard you get rid of BPA.

Well, some people did. There's BPS now. Yeah.

What I was saying. Yeah, there's just— is that true that there's just another they can choose from 13 other toxic plastics to use.

Yeah, I mean, there's so many toxic chemicals in plastic. There's— I think there's 30,000 chemicals that are used to make different types of plastics. Um, they're added to change the consistency and the texture and the color, to make it so that they don't degrade, and different types of properties. And so the bisphenols, which is what BPA is part of, make the plastic really hard. And so that's why the Nalgene were like that, right? These like hard water bottle containers that everyone had. I had one also.

And then did you hear the BPA bad news?

And then I heard the BPA bad news. That was during my graduate studies when I learned about that. And then I saw that they started replacing it with this thing called Tritan, I think, which You know, and I do. And yeah, and immediately my question was, well, did they test that? Because what they do is that they can just switch it and say there's no data that this is toxic. Well, that's because no one's tested it yet.

Oh my gosh. So do you have an Algin? No, no. So what are you drinking?

My glass.

I—

is she good?

I have—

she behaving?

I have glass like this. Yeah, I have different, different versions of glass, you know, or stainless steel.

So, so, so tell me what else. So tell me how else you live a life without plastic.

It's very challenging.

Yeah.

So much cat hair on me now. Sorry. Plastic is so hard to eliminate, right? You have to really make a very concerted effort to eliminate plastic from your life. And even then, the plastic chemicals can sneak into all kinds of other objects. So that's actually what I created in the last year is I've been creating a course for parents about how to reduce their kids' exposure to plastic and to these endocrine disrupting chemicals that are in plastic, because plastic is one of the biggest sources of endocrine disruptors because plastics aren't stable in the way that their material properties are. They're kind of these loose configurations and the plastic chemicals that they add to tune the material properties of the plastic can easily leach out of the plastic into the food or the water or whatever it is that you're using.

See, it's so hard because I'm a mom, obviously, and I have been trying to avoid plastic for the last 20 years, probably. And like, all our food comes in plastic.

Yeah.

I mean, even the food that we grow here and we kill our animals on farm and to give them the best, you know, they never have any stress. Like they have one bad day, we clean them, we take them to the processor, and then it comes back in plastic.

Yeah. Or we bag our chickens.

Oh, that was actually— that's actually been one of the questions that I've been wondering is what, what else can you wrap meat in besides plastic?

Well, there's the butcher paper, but the butcher paper is covered in PFAS.

Exactly.

Like, see, it's just very difficult.

Well, you can can it.

Okay, but then there's the cans a lot of time, but you use the glass.

Yeah, but the lid of the canning jar is a little sus to me. I don't know what's on it, and I just say I'm doing the best that I can. Yeah, I think that's why you kind of have to do, you know, I mean, that's maybe why we should part all of our birds and then we vacuum seal them into plastic.

See, you're vacuuming, sealing into plastic. We should say that too, right? It's more dangerous if it's heated up, right? So like, we dump our chickens, we dunk whole chickens in plastic in hot water.

Oh, really?

180 degrees.

Because that's how you have to store it. That's how all chickens, all the shrink, like it's, it's dunked in water and the plastic shrinks to the chicken. So any whole chicken that you get in the grocery store is done that way.

So it's like, we better start vacuum sealing.

I guess we're partnering vacuum sealing. Like, it's, it's, it's maddening. Like you can go mad.

Yeah. No, it's, it really is. The more you look, the more you see. Oh, it's on the floss too. And it's on the inside of the lid. And then all of the aluminum cans that are not actually aluminum, but plastic.

Yeah. Uh, we use plastic in our garden for the first time, like plastic cover weed fabric basically, cuz we know our limitations. So my mom passed away last year. We had Hurricane Helene, like we're in recovery this year. That's our word for 2025 is recovery. And so I was like, well, I guess let's do plastic weed fabric. And like, people have been like, oh, it's this and it's that. And I'm like, also though, I don't know what else to do, you know? Like, it's maddening.

I think—

you think what?

I think, you know, I think it is maddening. Exactly. It's just there's so many things, and that's sort of the problem, right, is that it's not— it shouldn't really be up to the parents to somehow filter out all of these toxins that are now in everything. And that is now the responsibility of the parent to an extent.

Yes.

But it is— you're living in a society where that isn't being done sort of at the level that it should be. And so there's much more burden, I think, than there should be on people. Because we're weirdos.

Like, because I don't feed my kids McDonald's, I'm somehow depriving them. But because I feed them whole foods cooked at home, That's somehow negative. Like, we have literally had people be negative to us about that. And it's just like, really? Like, I'm just trying to— so I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism at 18, and I'm like, I'm just trying to prevent my children from having a chronic illness at 18. Like, I just want them to have better than I have, you know? And It's, it's maddening. It's just, it can make you go crazy.

Yeah. I think you've got to just kind of take it one little bit at a time and be gentle with yourself, you know, and understand that this is just the situation we're all in and everyone can only do their best.

Did you mention that it's in floss?

Mm-hmm.

What else? What else are we not going to know about or other people going to know about? What are the big, what are the big ones?

Uh, well, I think a lot of anything scented has endocrine disrupting chemicals usually. So all these scented cleaning products that people use, perfumes, uh, it almost seems like everything is scented in a normal grocery store, right? The detergent, the trash bags are really strongly scented sometimes. Just, it seems like everything. I don't know.

We went to an Airbnb and they gave us scented trash bags. I had to put them outside. Yeah, I was like, we can't even put the trash— we bought our own unscented trash bags because the car smell, it was awful.

This is my car smell.

Oh, new car smell.

Oh, the new car smell. Yeah, that's definitely chemicals.

Renting a car is so awful because the smell is terrible. They spray all those chemicals in there.

Anything that has enhanced material properties, I am suspicious of, right? So if it's something that doesn't, uh, that soaks up more water than it should, or doesn't soak up water at all, yeah, or never rusts, or never degrades, that means that they've changed the material properties of that object in some way to make it so that it doesn't weather, essentially, right? So that it doesn't absorb water or get destroyed by water or mold or whatever it is. And the way that they do that most of the time is by adding some type of chemical. And most of the chemicals that they use in that space have either been not tested very much, right, or are some type of plastic chemical. And it just seems like from the data that I've looked at, a lot of the plastic chemicals have endocrine disrupting properties or sometimes are carcinogenic. They're just not really things that the body really was designed to have.

Right.

That's a pretty easy one. That might be any— I would think that's a pretty easy win. Just get rid of your smell-good stuff.

Yeah.

Scented stuff.

Get rid of the scented stuff. You don't need it. You don't.

Well, I mean, some people think they need cologne or deodorant or—

well, you can use like deodorant that's not scented crazily. I mean, you shouldn't be using deodorant probably because the aluminum, like normal deodorant. You should probably get some like tallow deodorant from Tubes and Co. Yeah, I like that one. Oh, so Emily is my friend, and so I I love me some tubes.

Floss.

Floss.

Well, let's see, all the nonstick pan— anything nonstick, that's a huge category. And, you know, there's the nonstick pans, and then there's now like these green nonstick pans or these ceramic nonstick pans. I'm skeptical of all of them, even the ones that claim to be non-toxic, because I know what it takes to thoroughly test one of these chemicals. And a lot of times when they're using something new, like I said before, they're just not testing it. They just might not be. They might not have tested it that much yet.

What about waffles?

Yeah, I mean, the waffle maker.

Oh, you have a nonstick on your waffle maker?

Well, I bought the ceramic.

And then it gets hot.

And then, like, I have two appliances in my kitchen. That is the waffle maker that's ceramic. And then I bought like this, um, it like makes these little cookies that you can like form into a sugar cone. Because, you know, gluten-free, you can't get like good gluten-free sugar cones. So like, that was my one thing I was like, I'll buy this. It's like an Italian non-stick. I mean, we don't use it that often, but I think—

yeah, I think if you're gonna buy it, then maybe buying it from Europe's a little better because they do have some more regulations in place. But even there, I mean, I don't, I don't know. Yeah, that's true. Honestly, there are so many issues with a lot of these plastic types of nonstick chemicals that it's just hard to know. And that's what a lot of— there's a lot of scientists in that space right now really trying to sound the alarm on the plastic chemicals and how dangerous they are, how many of them they are, how unregulated they are. They've been really trying to get everyone's attention because the people that are researching this are extremely concerned about the endocrine disrupting impact of those chemicals. And it turns out that relatively small doses and, you know, short exposures in childhood can have profound impact on children's development for the rest of their lives. Yeah, it's really alarming.

What kind of—

what kind of short exposure?

So a lot of times the way that conversations are framed in toxicology is this idea of dose makes the poison, right? That there's only at a certain dose, any— everything can be safe. And so as long as we have a low enough dose, you don't need to worry about it. That's kind of the, the old paradigm of how to think about it. But now this research that's been emerging around, around endocrine disrupting chemicals shows that very small doses can be profoundly impactful when children are exposed during what's called sensitive windows of development. So there are sensitive windows of development during pregnancy, in the early— in the first 6 months of life, you know, in childhood, in the early stages of adolescence, where the body is essentially primed to respond to small changes in hormones that it naturally would produce. and those are naturally there to progress development in a specific way. But if you have chemicals that act like estrogens or, or testosterone, which is what a lot of the plastic chemicals act like, they can bind to those receptors, then they can impact the development also.

So it's not a good idea to eat these, eat, eat this conventional food either then?

Yeah, I don't think so.

That, that have been sprayed with pesticides and herbicides.

Yeah, the, you know, the glyphosate is an androgenic chemical, so it can act like testosterone. I'm not sure about the form that's on the food. So there's a lot of chemistry involved in exactly what form is on which. So I can't speak to that in detail in terms of what's on the food with relationship to the endocrine disruption. But even if you just think about, let's say the food was perfect, perfect food, the soil was clean, no pesticides. Even then, I would still really be concerned about the packaging.

Okay.

Right. Because these things, a lot of things that you buy packaged in the store are sitting in plastic for who knows how long. Right. It's probably been heated depending on how it was transported or stored.

Like water bottles are terrible.

Yeah. This, the plastic water bottle.

You know, when I see people drinking those, like we, we went to, my daughter does horse shows and we went to one and like I brought my water and I believe there was another water bottle brought, but it wasn't like, we were there all day and it was hot and my kids drank some of those and I was like, it's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay. Like, cuz they need water, but like also they were like that janky plastic and who knows how long, you know, like all the things. I was just like, it's gonna be okay. I'm just gonna be normal today and not think about all the things that I know about that plastic water bottle.

So you've been traveling for a week. What are you eating? Well, drinking?

I— yeah, I mean, I stopped at the store and bought some water in glass bottles that I try to have with me, and I try to only drink that. And yeah, after reading a lot of the research, it's pretty hard for me to drink water out of a plastic bottle from a store.

But note to self, bring more water.

What do you eat?

I usually try to stay somewhere where I have a kitchen so that I can just cook something myself. I, you know, buy some farm eggs if I can and some just really simple vegetables and meat to cook.

And you bring your own skillet?

I— well, I think if I would, I would if I wasn't flying, you know, and then I kind of have to stuff, you know, I'm in the Airbnb and I'm like, oh, it's always tough, the nonstick and only plastic.

We actually have 4 tote of kitchenware that we bring with us when we go to Airbnbs because I cannot handle it. Like, I have stainless steel, I have a cast iron skillet, I have stainless steel utensils. We even added plates and cups to it because sometimes it's just plastic. And I'm like, who wants to eat off of plastic? Is he getting you with his claws?

Got a little feisty there.

Uh, I noticed that one of your key things is from noticing the apples not properly cut in half to the feeling you had when you ate chemicals. You're an observer. You're just observing, you know, from in kindergarten, just looking at that. You're coming from this— nobody had to tell you. Where do you think that comes from?

I'm, I'm not sure. I guess that's just part of how I am. Yeah, but I definitely grew up in a family that I think encouraged independent thought and questioning things. You know, nobody was telling me not to question anything as a child.

So I thought, how did they do that?

Our 4 children, they are like, I'm always so afraid we're going to confuse them because we're always like being like, well, is that really the right way? Or like, is this You know what I mean? Like, we're always questioning, like, do we believe this or do we believe that? Or is there something else that we don't even know about that, that is the truth? You know what I mean? And so I was always a little, like, nervous for my children. Like, are they getting indecisiveness? Like, what are they getting? I'm—

I feel like our kids are not getting that though.

I feel like they're getting good.

How did your parents instill that? What was the practice?

I'm not sure. I think it was just sort of the example of, you know, my mom, uh, kind of that, you know, she was very independent in certain ways and really would stand her ground for her children. I watched her do that in different situations. Um, and I think also she was always fighting for my sister because when my sister had developmental delays as a baby The doctors initially told her that she was just being a nervous mother, and she was, she, you know, she was like, no, something is off here. And, you know, they told her that she would never speak or that she would never do all kinds of, you know, they gave her a list, I think, of things that she was unlikely to do or that she wouldn't need certain therapies. And my mom was just really fierce and decided to get her as much sort of support as she needed to make sure that she could speak and to make sure that she could do all kinds of tasks by herself. And so I was a witness, I suppose, to her advocacy for my sister for, you know, decades, essentially.

Yeah. Were you homeschooled?

No, I wasn't.

Okay. The, the observation thing Because it's interesting because, um, you allowed yourself to be in tune with your vision, seeing the apple cut wrong, and then now with your feelings of how the chemicals were making you feel. That's one way of learning and discovering, but a lot of people, a lot of times people are having to learn somebody's telling them, um, and they're kind of just floating through life. And a lot of times when somebody has to tell you something, you're not even gonna absorb it anyway. You kind of have to learn it for yourself. So it's interesting to see how you came about that. And then, so then you observe. Then how do you use today's tools to explore that? How do you give yourself permission to say, most people are seeing this different, but I'm feeling or seeing something different. How do you give yourself permission to do that?

That's an interesting question. I think fundamentally I don't feel like I need permission to see it the way that I'm seeing it. I— yeah.

How do you know you're right?

Well, I don't know that I'm right, right? And I think that that's part of this kind of process, right? Like you were saying, there's always the option that what you think about something and what other people think about it and what the truth of it is, the truth of it could be different than all of those options. And I think that's where my sort of viewpoint begins is that I fundamentally recognize that the reality is unknowable as baseline. Right. And I'm comfortable with that. Like, the very truest truth of what's going on with something might not be knowable by me or anyone. Right. There's sort of this level of mystery that's involved. But even with science, there's always another set of questions. So as you do an experiment, it just reveals the next layer of things that you want to look for and to ask about. And I think a lot of times when people take in information or facts or scientific information, and this applies to a lot of scientists as well, they immediately take that information and sort of install it in this space of true fact, right? And there's nothing unshakable about that. But I've watched a lot of science, like I've read deeply through science and thought about things really carefully. And I know that a lot of even though we have sort of validated information, it's always just part of a system that you're seeing. And so if you learn about another part of the system that changes the way everything fits together, then you have to adjust your understanding of it. And that's happened historically with different things, um, but I always bring it into the present moment and, you know, kind of take the information that I know and that I understand and say, well, One day we might learn more, and the things that we learn more about could change the way I understand this right now. This is just part of the understanding. This is as far as our technology can take us to understand it right now. And so that's where I'm oriented, I would say, a lot of the time is realizing that there's more data to be obtained. There's more experiments, more tools that we need to evaluate these questions. To have humility about the fact that we're still learning about a lot of things. And I think that's where a lot of modern medicine, let's say, sort of fails is that there isn't this level of humility about how deep the understanding is of the system or the fact that there are so many questions being pursued in molecular biology and cellular research that could really change how we think about the system and what different things mean. I don't know, is that—

I think of the— a lot of even the health gurus, or, you know, will declare something, you know, oh, it's good to fast. Uh, oh no, wait, it's not good to fast. You know, it's like these trends. It's, uh, oh, you should eat copious amount of meats. Oh no, wait, you should have some carbs too. You know, and people can be so declarative about it. Yeah, you can build brands and personal brands on it and you kind of get in a box and you get kind of getting— you kind of get in trouble. You kind of get stuck if things change or you change.

You know, I've seen a lot of influencers be like, this is the way it is. But then like they've evolved into something different and it's they won't admit it. Like, they're like saying, now I'm doing this other thing, but they won't say like, I came from this and this is why I, you know, went to whatever it is.

So you think this is— you've questioned a lot of things and you're going up, so there's chemicals is probably not the only one. Is this the biggest problem, the chemicals, on your radar?

I think it is, um, because, you know, there's so many things happening right now, um, but we keep adding new chemicals to our environment and to our food and to our food packaging and everything. You know, we just keep making more chemicals and adding them, and a lot of them don't really degrade, it turns out. Or they degrade in ways that are also dangerous. And when you think about it in the history of time, right, a lot of them have just been introduced in the last 100 years. They've been synthesized and introduced. So this is unprecedented in a way for our planet, what, what the impact of this will be on the environment, on people, on children. Yeah.

How is that? Because, uh, I mean, we didn't get anything not from this Earth, so help me there. Because like plastic, I know, will be with us for like 450 years or something crazy. How is that?

Well, the— so I'm not an expert in this, but I'll try to explain it as I understand it, which is that there's, you know, there's, there's things that come out of the Earth right, as they are, like arsenic or lead or mercury, right? Those things can be found naturally and they can still be very toxic, right? So it's not that anything that's synthesized is automatically bad or anything that's natural is automatically bad. It does depend on what it is. But a lot of the chemicals that have been synthesized are— they— well, so the reason that they're different than naturally occurring things is because they use chemical reactions that that wouldn't occur in nature, right? So they heat it in certain ways or temperatures in certain orders to make things bind that just don't have a process that exists that's like that in nature. So that's one part that's changed, right, is that the, the way that the, the way that the chemical has come to exist couldn't have happened without people intervening into that process. And so that's one distinction. But then, you know, I think it's— and this is just a question that I've been wondering is, well, why are so many of those— why do so many of those seem to have these kinds of impacts, right? And I don't really know the answer to that, right? I'm, I'm still asking a lot of these questions and looking for answers myself. And I think it's a really important question. But it does seem like, for example, with plastics, a lot of those have endocrine disrupting properties and they tend to directly bind to the hormone receptors in the body, which I think is really curious. Like, how is it that the thing that we decided to manufacture so much of that seems to make everything so convenient is also the thing that can bind to hormone receptors in our body? I don't, I don't know the answer to that, but that's the situation that we're in.

Um, so what's the problem with hormone receptors being bound in the body?

So, because it triggers the cascade of hormones to activate as though there were a hormone there, right? So if you're a child and you're supposed to have a certain level of estrogen, and then you take in something that has the ability to bind to the estrogen receptor and that activates the estrogen pathway when it was not supposed to be activated at that time in life, it can alter development.

Early puberty.

Early puberty. Exactly.

We'll see. In my case, my case, I had perchlorate, which is a rocket fuel additive, and it bound to my thyroid. And then I had hypothyroidism at 18. And that's because I drank the tap water in Florida. And, um, I had a toxin test done in my 30s and I still had high levels of perchlorate. And I had given birth to 4 of my children and I was like so nervous about that. Like my children were, you know, made in my body that had this. And, you know, the, the remedy is saunaing. So I've been doing that and Um, yeah, I mean, like, so that's— that was mine. So then the, the iodine couldn't get to my thyroid, and so then that's why it didn't— it stopped working properly and it damaged itself.

Yeah. So is this— be— I've heard that, uh, well, infertility rates are up, fertility rates are down, and testosterone is down.

Infertility's up, fertility's down.

Yeah, that could be it.

And this is estrogen or this is endocrine disrupting.

Yeah, I think there's a massive population level exposure to many different endocrine disrupting chemicals that are negatively impacting fertility rates in both men and women. And there's been a lot of research sort of explaining that and documenting that in different ways. You've got the plastic chemicals, you've got pesticides that can impact that. So many things, you know, contaminants to water, like you said, there's toxins in a lot of places now and many people have exposures to different things. And so that's why this pesticide legislation is so concerning to me because we're already in a very bad position from my perspective. We've already There's already so many chemicals here that haven't been properly tested that people are already being exposed to. And we're kind of in a process of trying to catch up to that with the science and with the screening of things so that there's more information and more regulations that protect people. And if you then give an entire industry the ability to not be sued for the harmful impacts of their chemicals, you're essentially giving them the ability to use the people in the state of North Carolina as lab rats for whatever new chemical they want to bring to market, because they know that if they were to bring— if this goes through and they were to bring it here, nobody could sue them if something really terrible happened. If this legislation went through, that's insane.

Has this happened in other states?

So this legislation was proposed in a number of states this year, in the beginning of the year, and it was defeated in a lot of them. But in North Dakota and Georgia, it did pass and is now law.

I know.

Can it become not law anymore?

I think it would take a new piece of legislation to come and remove that. So it would be a big process. And there would clearly be a big fight. So Georgia, you said Georgia and North Dakota.

Wow. And are there other states currently battling it?

I think that North Carolina is the only active state now. So it was defeated in Iowa, in Florida, in Idaho, Missouri. These are all really big ag states, so that's why they are having it there.

Hmm.

But I just don't like— I mean, I guess North Carolina is a big ag state.

Oh, yeah.

I forget that because, like, our little community here is not— it's fallen away. There's some agriculture, but it's not as big as it once was. You know, and so I forget that East is a lot more big ag than out here, you know.

What my mentor Joe Salatin always wants to— he'll ask, does, does God care? He does a regenerative farming style. You mentioned God earlier. Does he, does he care about this?

I think so.

Why?

You know, we're changing. I think it's tricky territory, right, as a scientist for me to talk about this because on the one hand I need to represent what I know to be true from the data, right? Um, and so I would say from the data, we— there's nothing to sort of say about this. But from my own personal experience as a person, um, I think that even the idea that people can come and decide to make chemicals and materials that simply never degrade, for example, that will just stay in the soil or stay, you know, in the land, that fundamentally changes nature in a way that nature could not have done without that intervention, right? And I think we're just seeing the impact of it. We're seeing these diseases, we're seeing fertility change, we're seeing children being affected by these things. And so, you know, I don't try to imagine what God would necessarily want here, but when I look at it, it doesn't seem like this is part of the order that was supposed to be here.

So, um, I'd say what— oh, um, we've, we talked about going into all the different states. How do people find out it's happening? Like, how did you even find out? I wouldn't have known.

I found out because, well, it started with the raw milk thing that got a lot of attention cuz they were coming after raw milk. And then it was like, oh, wait a minute, there's all these other things in it too. And the pesticide immunity was one of them. And I was like, cuz everybody was going to the raw milk and I'm like, well, wait a minute. Like when I was emailing people in the early days, I was like, raw milk, pesticide immunity, like all the things I didn't agree with. It was like, and I, I mean, raw milk, we milk our own cows, so I don't buy my, I don't buy milk from anybody. So I didn't feel like that was like for us a big thing. I mean, I did stand up for those people, but the pesticide immunity is the one thing that really made me nervous just because I had heard rumblings about it in other places and, um, then you started like showing up on my feed a lot on Instagram of like why this is bad. And the one thing that caught my attention, I think mainly was the, the, like the chemicals that are going to be brought to market that haven't been developed yet. That, that scared me a lot.

Yeah, that's, I think, the scariest part for me too. And So I heard about it just on social media also. And immediately that was the first thing I thought about was, oh no, this can't happen. This will apply to all the future chemicals. And I already see what's happening with the chemicals that we have. What if they don't have to worry about the harmful impacts, you know, and they continue these fraudulent practices? What effect is that going to have on the future generations? How devastating could that be? To them.

And you were talking about how not just in agriculture for that company, it goes into the other chemicals they make too.

Yeah, there's— I think there's some cleaning products that fit into that space and some products that people can use at their homes, uh, people that use ant traps and things like that, different types of, uh, let me get him off the cat. Royal.

Just set up. I don't know. He just doesn't even know you.

Just happy to be here. Gives off a good vibe.

Probably your little heater.

I know, right? You're probably sweating to death.

I am a little bit hot now.

So how would people know? So they just have to— well, they have to follow you. You'll let us know.

Yeah, I'll be— I'm going to be talking about this. As it's happening, so people can follow me.

What's your handle?

My handle is Dr. Alexandra Munoz.

Okay, you have a doctorate in toxicology?

I have a PhD in molecular toxicology and carcinogenesis.

Okay, what do you do for a living?

Um, I have been in the process of teaching parents how to reduce their kids' exposures.

Okay, good. What's the name of that course? You had mentioned that.

Uh, that's How to Think Like a psychologist for parents.

Oh, nice. So what are the key tenets?

So a lot of the things we talked about is really kind of what's in the course, you know, how to make— how to think about how to reduce plastic exposure and other things that don't seem like plastic but have plastic chemicals in them that affect kids' development.

What are those?

What are some of those?

Give me an example of things that she's looking We don't have that.

Don't seem like plastic but are. Is that like the pans?

That's what we're— Yeah, that's how the plastic pans, the coated, the nonstick pans. Those. You're on it.

I think you're on it. I think you're on it. I'm like so—

Let's find one you don't know about. Honestly, like you start talking and I'm like, did you see anything in our house? It's like, oh, well, that's—

I do want to ask you this.

So like, look carefully.

So there's like, um, There's the glass dishes that you store your leftovers in. But the lids are plastic. Yeah. I have tried, and short of spending a lot of money, and then your kids break the lids, and then you just have the bottoms. Like, ask me how I know. Like, it's— I did. I spent a lot of money and I bought like all these Pyrex that have the glass lids, but the lids don't really fit on tightly.

Do you know a solution? Do you have a— For which type of product?

Like, it's like a— like that you put leftovers in.

Okay, so I have been thinking about this a lot.

Okay.

Um, and I think there's, there's a lot of stainless steel containers that are stainless steel on the bottom and the top. I think for families, that's probably the best option because Nobody— it drops, no problem.

I have some, right?

But the only problem is you can't—

then you can't see, right?

Yeah.

So I did see some that were stainless steel on the bottom and then had kind of one of those silicone-edged lids with a glass see-through. So that was kind of a good compromise. I— silicone is still, I think, problematic.

Don't tell me.

Why?

You don't prefer silicone?

Well, like, my super cubes are silicone, but I try to only put cold in them.

Yeah, I think that's a good rule.

Like, I'm not like baking in it. I mean, I do have some silicone, like, donut molds because, you know, you can't fry donuts. I know, we don't really use them ever. Um, yeah, it's hard. It's hard. There is a lady on Instagram, I blocked her because of it.

Because it was—

because, yeah, she— because, like, I was getting served her content. I did not follow her, but, like, I looked at some of it to, like, see the validity of it. And she was like, well, all this research. And I was like, could you cite some of those so I can go look at that? And she's like, I'm not going to do your— my research for you. I'm not going to do your research for you. I'm like, no, you just have to give me the link and I'll go read it. Like, I don't need— you know, anyway, so I had to block her because I was—

parchment paper.

Yes. Don't talk to y'all. I don't want to know.

It's bad news, huh?

Bad news.

So what do you use instead of parchment paper?

I just got things stuck and I just deal with getting it off. Okay, that's sort of my solution to a lot of things, is more scrubbing. Yeah, I know.

Well, life is— see, like, this is it. Like, this is what my one friend says. She's like, I just want a little convenience. Like, everything in my life is so hard because I'm cooking everything from scratch. I'm, you know, sourcing my food from farmers, you know what I mean? Like, it's the natural way of life or whatever is it doesn't lend itself to any sort of convenience. And she only has 2 kids.

Yeah, I, I, and so I'm like, and that's how I feel.

I'm like, I just need a little bit of convenience, just a little bit. I don't want a whole lot.

Yeah, I think you deserve it too. I know it's so many things and it's so many things you have to adjust. And yes, I think you're doing an amazing job. Thanks. You know, it's It's clear that you have implemented a lot of systems that reduce your family's exposure.

Yeah, I have. I have really tried hard. The parchment paper has been one.

The last to go.

And I think that's part of just the time we're in.

Even Ziploc bags. Yeah.

No way.

They're horrible.

Oh no. Yeah. But like, what am I going to do? Especially silicone bags. I'm also not a fan of.

I'm not. I can't afford those. Because have you seen a gallon one-size-one? It's like $99 for one, for one gallon-size bag. I'm like, I can't afford that. Even if I— I mean, because do you know how many gallon bags I have in my freezer of strawberries?

I don't like— I imagine you have more bags than many people.

Are you still on this journey? Are you still going further and further down this rabbit hole?

Which rabbit hole?

Like she's talking, you know, we're gonna, you know, maybe we'll get rid of Ziploc bags one day, or the parchment paper. Are you still going down it or have you found the sweet spot?

No, I'm still going down it. Yeah. I mean, I, I don't have kids and I, you know, so it's easier for me to implement, I think, a lot of things, right? I don't need as much equipment, right, to sort of navigate everything.

Yeah.

So I just have some little snack containers that are stainless steel. I bring those around, you know, And a lot of things, it's easy for me to make the changes. But of course, I'm still finding things once in a while where I thought it was fine and then it turns out it's not. And I think that we all just have to be gentle with ourselves and not try not to sort of get overwhelmed by it because that is kind of the immediate reaction. Right. And that's part of what I teach about in my course is that you know, is how to navigate the overwhelm of this process, because it just— a lot of times it's just immediately overwhelming when you try to sort of start thinking about all the things you have to change all at once.

Yeah.

And so implementing the things that you can change one step at a time, being gentle with yourself, not going into all of the stress and sort of what will happen if this, this, and this, like, just right. We have to also just trust and, and, and move carefully and do what we can, but not— because if you're stressed about it, it's worse. It's also a problem. Yeah, stress is bad. Stress is really not great for you.

What is this?

Are you gonna come visit me now?

This is a different—

this is Almanzo. Oh, he's like, these cats are all of a sudden cuddly.

All of a sudden they just love you. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard because I just want a little bit of convenience. I just want a little bit of, of ease in my life. And, um, I told Justin today, I was like, I don't think I can deal with another frustrating thing today because I just felt very frustrated about the whole S401. Yeah, like I just felt very frustrated about that. And, um, you know, calling politicians is not an idea of fun for me, emailing them incessantly and telling them to stop. It's just not fun. And I was having a frustrating moment with the freeze dryer, and I was just like, I don't know how much more I can take of this because it's just— it's the overwhelm of Justin. So Justin, I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's in my 30s. And Justin was diagnosed with chronic Lyme in his 30s. And so that's kind of— we, we were already on a path of, of, you know, living more non-toxic and then, you know, going to a doctor's appointment, you know, he was sick for like 18 months before we figured out what was wrong with him and going to these doctor's appointments and these, um, integrative doctors are telling us, you know, don't do plastic and, you know, this and that.

And.

It was so overwhelming and just disheartening.

Yeah.

You know, so I feel like we've been on this journey for a long time, but still I can always learn something new, like parchment paper is terrible.

What year or decade did all this come into play? And so maybe we need to look backwards to how we're going to go in the future.

All the toxins.

I mean, yeah, all that. So, so You know, we were eating organic. Everybody was eating organic in the '20s, say. So when did all this—

I don't know the history of it too much, but I think I would say, you know, between the '20s and the '70s, many things were introduced that weren't there before.

Well, World War II, a lot of stuff was being developed. And then NASA also was developing stuff for space travel and the world embraced it, I guess.

I don't know.

So like pre-World War I, certainly there wasn't even a word organic because everything was organic, right?

Yeah, but I know, I don't know too much. I'm, I'm not, uh, the history of it is— I'm not, definitely can't speak to it.

Is that where we're going? Is that where you're going? Are we gonna, are we gonna go out and live off the land?

I mean, that's That's sort of where I'm at right now is we've added so much now that to even reverse where we're at, I don't, I don't see how to do that currently. Like how to bioremediate all the toxins that are here is a huge question that's open.

That's wild.

So you're saying you couldn't even go so, so rural to escape everything?

They're finding, they're finding chemicals in Antarctica, right? There's accumulation of PCBs in cold regions because of the way they drift through the environment. Yeah, there's microplastics and plastic chemicals, I think, in almost everything that gets tested now.

It's not even safe to eat the fish from the ocean, right?

So I think there's a part of it where you just have to say, "This is where we're all at collectively," and kind of trust that what you choose to do and what you can do, there's going to be a limit to that, but that's just how it is right now. I just try not to go into a state of panic about that, because that is something that we can kind of keep a check on, is how dark we let our perspective be about it. But I think it is really problematic that all of these things are here. And I'm always looking for, okay, instead of focusing on how bad it is, I'm going to look for how can I help solve this problem? What can I contribute to solving this? Because to me, that is kind of the most pressing question right now is how do we leave this planet for the future generations in a way that isn't totally filled with toxins that don't break down, that all the ecosystems aren't filled with toxins? How do we leave something that is a little bit better? And how do we put into practices, into regulations, and into our decisions? And how do we ask companies to be more responsible about what they're making and try to think ahead about what the impact of all of this is going to be? So I guess I just immediately deal with the overwhelm and the panic by trying to help and that shifts it for me internally.

Because you didn't get paid to come up here, did you?

No, I didn't.

So you took time out of work for this?

Yeah, I, yeah, I stopped what I was doing a lot to be, be able to be present for this and help with this.

And that's the biggest and that's the most important thing you could do to, to flesh out the— you had this concern, I want to do something about it. This is the most important thing you can do. Yeah.

Yeah.

Because she's going and talking to the legislators and I'm assuming you're educating them and are you changing anyone's mind?

Do you know that?

Do you—

you know, I don't know for sure what the impact is, but I think that they are hearing things that nobody else is come to tell them, because a lot of times they've only heard from the lobbyists that are supporting legislation. And those people have been painting a really narrow picture of what this is about. And so even the idea that it applies to 15,000 chemicals and all future chemicals is not something that they usually hear from the lobbyists.

So, I mean, the Ag Committee that we watched 21 of those representatives to 13. You know, a lot of, a lot of the representatives who spoke, you know, they said a lot of good stuff.

They really did. And that was really great.

It was so great to hear that.

Um, does it actually help to call? Like Rebecca gets on the call. Oh my God, I got to go inside and email. I know. And for her to go inside and make calls or email before 9:00 is a big deal because that's when you got to work because it gets so hot after 9:00.

So today I was like, I have to go inside.

Does it work? Is that really good?

Yeah, it really does make a big impact. Yeah, because so I've watched, been, I've been there in the offices while people are calling, you know, calling and sending emails. And like, I went and visited someone this morning and they were sitting there reading the emails that the people had sent from our calls to action. And so, wow, when your inbox is full, and it usually isn't, of hundreds of emails about removing something about pesticide de facto immunity, that has an impact. And so it does take a lot of people doing it to have that impact, but they are definitely listening. And I think that if we— if all of that hadn't happened in the way that it did, I think probably the House would have passed it with the community. Yeah.

What about going in person? Like, is that a big— is that a bigger impact than just calling and emailing? But if I go in person and I— do you like— this is my question. Do I just go meet with my people or do I meet with anyone who will meet with me?

I think if anyone will meet with you, that's definitely worth going.

Can you meet with the actual— because like when I'm calling, I'm not talking to the representative or the senator. I'm talking to whoever answered the phone. Do I ask? For the person, or how does that work?

It's a— I think it can be hard to get an appointment, right? Because they're very busy. There's a lot of issues. But if, if it's your representative, right, if they're— if you're in their district, then I think it's much easier to get an actual appointment. And they do tend to really listen to the people who are their direct constituents. And so that I think is very impactful, right? If you're a constituent and you know who your senator is and you know who your representatives are, then going to speak directly to those people is probably the most impactful thing you can do, right? Because it's their job to listen to you, the people in there.

What's the best thing to say to them?

You know, I think there's so many things that you can say about why this legislation is problematic. I would just pick which part of it speaks to you and which part you feel really passionate about, right? So if you have children and you're concerned about their exposure to chemicals, and you already know that this industry is willing to submit fraudulent data, willing to sell things without the proper warning labels, what are they going to do when there's no mechanism of accountability, right? What are they going to bring that's new that they're going to test on the people here that your kids might be exposed to? You know, you can say that you don't stand for companies having de facto immunity for, for all of these products, for new products. It's not fair, right, to people. It's not— it's not informed consent if the warning labels don't reflect the actual health harms of the products.

Well, and I mean, I, I cried. Talking to some of them, like, I got so emotional. And then I was like, they're gonna think I'm a crazy person now. But I was like, it really, like, it's making me tear up. Like, I'm so sad. It makes me so sad. And I just, like, my, my representative, I told her— not the representative, but her person— I was like, she'll do the right thing, right? Like, that's what I kept asking. Like, she's gonna do the right thing by our children. That's the most important thing is like our children.

And what'd she do?

She just was— she did the right thing. She did vote against it.

She did.

Now, is it true that the Democrats—

or to remove them—

Democrats and the Republicans are doing the right thing? It's split, or is it heavy Democrats or heavy Republicans?

I would say the Republicans are usually— which, of doing the right thing or not doing the right thing?

Doing the right thing and get— keeping the people free to sue if they want to.

Yeah. So the Democrats tend to be all for keeping the people free and allowing them to sue. And it's a lot of times the Republicans that are really heavily in support of this.

Wow.

Which is interesting. So the Make America Healthy Again was a largely Republican initiative. So is it hit or miss with the Republicans on that, or some of the Republicans didn't sign up for the Maha, or, or, you know what I mean? You might not know this answer. It's, it's really interesting. Um, it's just really interesting to see how it went.

I think that, um, well, generally Maha has not really been a part of the Republican Party, right? That's a new, a new component of it. So a lot of the Republicans that are representatives didn't necessarily have that as part of their platform. Right. And I think a lot of times the representatives that are from farming districts or, you know, then they— their constituents really want them to protect the chemical companies because they need it for their businesses.

But I think that's only because they, the lobbyists, have presented it in that way. We're going to go out of business. You won't be able to get the chemicals because we're not asking for the chemicals to be removed. We're just saying you can't sue them.

Right.

So that's—

or that you can sue them.

Yeah, that's what I mean, that you can sue them.

Yeah. But I think also, you know, the Maha report, for example, that came out didn't go very deep into the harmful impacts of pesticides. And, you know, I think maybe some, some representatives that are Maha don't maybe haven't learned about the harmful impacts of pesticides. Right. They might— there's so many toxins now that to know about everything does require a lot of, of learning and study and awareness. And so I think there may be a lot of people that would be concerned if they had more information, but they haven't been presented with that information yet. And so that's why education for everyone is such an important part of stopping this legislation, is because a lot of people don't have all the information. They don't know how harmful these chemicals can be to childhood development, to fertility, to causing cancer. They oftentimes think that these chemicals are really safe and that the EPA has done a good job of regulating them. And so sharing more information about that and kind of exposing the truth about that, I think, is part of the process that we're in right now, where there's a lot of people that just don't have the information, and they also can sometimes tend to be the people that think these are really important tools. I know there's a number of— yeah, I'll just say that.

Why does This whole bill included all kinds of stuff. So if this bill doesn't get through because of the pesticide immunity, well, then we don't get, what, $40 million in hurricane relief or something like that? So why are all these other things in the bill that don't have anything to do with it?

I think they did take out the relief funding.

Oh, they took it out and maybe made it a separate bill.

Yeah, I'm not sure what happened. I think that they took it out. When they took out the pesticide immunity, they also took out the relief funding, to my understanding.

I mean, took it out. So that means now North Carolina isn't getting funding.

I'm not sure what has happened.

I need to look into that.

Yeah, there are a lot of things happened in the last couple of days with them sort of shifting things around and reorganizing them. So I don't— I don't know the story on that.

So now the Senate passed it through as it was. The House is the one who then we successfully made an amendment to keep out the pesticides. Somewhere raw milk got dropped.

It got dropped from the Senate before it came to the House.

Now it's going to the committee. Now what can we do?

So, yeah, so now it's in the conference committee and they did just announce the people that are going to be in the conference committee this afternoon. So now we have a list, I think, of about 10 or 11 representatives and senators altogether that are going to be the ones who decide what happens here. So where do we find that list? Yeah, I think we can just maybe put it as part of the show notes or something. And people should definitely start contacting those folks and, you know, letting them know how they feel about this issue.

In sales, when we want to go in and sell somebody on something, in this case we want to sell a legislature on saying no to this. What's the benefit to them? So in sales, it's not about us and how we feel. It's about how does it help the legislature person or what they care about? So maybe they care about the state or whatever. What's that angle? What do they care about?

Well, I guess it would depend on the person, right, who you're, who you're addressing. But I think from a, you know, these chemicals can still be really harmful and they still don't— they currently don't have the proper labels, right? So adding this immune de facto immunity provision isn't going to change the science of what the chemicals are doing to people's health. They're still going to have the same impact. And so if a lot of people are made sick by something and there's a cost to that, instead of that cost going to the company through a lawsuit, it's going to shift back to the state. Ah, so that's one. So then one way—

one—

whoa, so then the state would have to be responsible?

Oh, I, I was gonna say reelection.

Oh shoot.

I mean I think that we tell them, like, this is like, for me, my senator and representative, I am— this is Winnie.

Who's next? The milking cow?

I'm letting them know, like, I'm watching how they're voting and it will be whether they get my vote or not. And I will make sure everybody knows how they vote.

There you go. No. And maybe in a disarming way. It's not even like, you're not getting my vote. It's like letting them know that you're not the only one feels like this. And there's a lot of people that feel like this and there's a lot of people watching.

There are.

And I think because Justin, he said to me when I was like, I have to watch this on that first ad committee, he's like, why? And I was like, I want them to know that we're watching.

We know what's happening.

And in fact, it's been interesting. So I've been watching a lot more, but okay. So it wasn't on the agenda today in the House. So I didn't watch. I would've had it on my phone going, but I, I, oh, on the Senate.

Yeah.

That's what I was in the Senate. Yeah. It wasn't on the agenda, but they read it in right at the beginning.

I know. And, and so then I felt really like taken advantage of, because I, I looked.

Right.

And this is like that sneaky tactic.

Yeah. This has been—

no, I think it's trickery. Yeah.

I think this has been happening a lot with this legislation in the different states where it's not on the agenda and then it is on the agenda or it's on the agenda and then it's off the agenda when the people show up. There's definitely been— it seems like tactics have been employed to try to keep people out of the process, to keep people from watching, you know, to keep people from speaking.

There was over 400 people on, on those various house. And I don't know if it's because it was of the pesticide immunity or if that's a normal thing, but I plan on like checking in now and being more aware. Like, I'm, I'm— it's wild to me just Like, we've been living here for 24 years and I've never really engaged in this process. And I'm like, what have I been doing with my life? And I don't love politics.

But now your life's more stressful.

Yeah, it is. I know. I don't know what to do because I don't trust these people that have been elected. They, they aren't doing anything for us. They're doing things for themselves. I guess I don't really know what their, what their gain is.

Do we know?

Do we know what the gain is?

I, you know, I can't speculate about that.

No, you can't. But I just, I don't know. It's, I, I want to get more involved, but I also don't because it's frustrating.

So, yeah. So I think, you know, that's part of it, right? It's like, it's the same as with all the plastic things, right? You kind of need to decide what— how much of it you can engage in in a way that doesn't create a lot of stress for you. And that's your limit, right? And that's okay.

So you said when you get overwhelmed, that's how you cope. You just get— you just get to fight. So what is— what is, uh, when—

and I also set boundaries for myself, right? I think I break things into small pieces and say, okay, this is what I'm going to look at now, or just this. So it's not everything at once.

Yeah, you're not looking at all the states, you're just doing like part of North Carolina's whatever.

Yeah, I mean, this has been pretty full-on, but has been. But we can, you know, it's just we can only do what we can do, right? And we have to set our own boundaries so that it's what our system can handle. For whatever reason, right? It doesn't— if you have kids, if you have a job, if you have all the things, where does it— what piece, you know, feels okay for you to take on?

Yeah. So we've talked about a lot tonight for, you know, dealing with legislation and then even just living a more toxic or toxic-free lifestyle. So somebody's feeling overwhelmed by any of this, you can get overwhelmed by all of it. You know, trying to live a life without plastics to cutting your, you know, downsizing your Wi-Fi, getting, you know, we don't have any cell phone reception out here and we're pretty happy about that.

Yeah, we don't like that. People are like, oh, you don't have cell phone reception?

Oh, like even our clothes. Like, my goodness, you're going to buy clothes. They're going to have fumes on them. You— okay, so we'll go to Goodwill. That's worse because it's so full of Tide. It's so bad, it's not even funny. Rebecca's had to soak washes, you know, 3 times, and then all that's going into the water system and whatever. So what is some— what are— what's 3 things people could do if they get overwhelmed? Like, I like that attitude of just, you feeling overwhelmed, we'll just do something. That's within your control? That's the most powerful thing you can do. What is it?

I think the first thing is to just take a deep breath, right? If you're feeling overwhelmed, just stop what you're doing and take a deep breath. He likes to put his hand on your heart too.

Matt's taking a deep breath. Okay, what else?

And then, you know, and then make a list, right? Make a list of just whatever. If you want to just focus on one thing that month or that week that you want to implement or change or advocate for, right? Then you kind of make a short list of what that looks like, and then you just take it one thing at a time.

I like this. All right, I need this in my life.

You gonna remember that?

I think so. You have to help me.

You're gonna make a list?

What's your list?

Because it's funny, because like I would get in there and I would like write my email and I would try to like write an email from my heart, you know? And I mean, not to every single person, but to, you know, do a mass email. And, um, and then I would do that and then I would call a couple people and then I'd be like, okay, I gotta step away, get outside, do something, touch dirt, you know?

Let me see if I can get this question right. So legislatures run, well, first they run Democrat or Republican, and then they run explaining what they aim to do and their personality or their drive or their hopes, and you're voting on that. And then, does then the legislature, does the politician then, after he's voted in, act on that, act on his heart, so to speak, doing what he or she thinks is right. The people already voted him in based on them, and now there's a certain extent that they need to trust them in that to make their decisions. That's option A. Option B, is it supposed to work where we elect our politicians and then they're supposed to constantly try and figure out what the majority of the people want and act on that? Do you understand that question?

Uh, I think so. So you're saying should they rely on their own sort of— yeah, what they would do, or what they ran on, what they were doing?

This is what I'm going to do, you're going to vote for me or not, and then you're going to have to give me a certain level of trust to just go and do. Or is it B, I mean, it feels like, I don't know, uh, it feels like B is someone who's constantly trying to figure out what the majority of people want.

You know, I, I, I guess it's a mix probably is the reality of it, right? Because they're always going to have their own personal position on something that's impossible to avoid. But they also are going to always have constituents that are going to be calling them and telling them, okay, what they want. Right. And so I would imagine that there's some balance between the two things, and especially when there's a topic that you're not an expert in and that is very complex, like this piece of legislation. There's nothing simple about it here. Right. The, the language of this legislation is complicated, sort of understanding The toxins that are in this space is complicated. The amount of toxins makes it complicated. The lawsuits that have already happened that they don't have the history of, that makes it another layer. There's so many layers to this question, and there's so much legal information that you have to take the time to really study and understand. It took me many hours to wrap my head around what this means. Weeks of study, I would say, a lot of conversations with people more knowledgeable than me to really understand what's going on here, to be able to communicate about it in a way that makes sense to people. That takes a lot of energy and time. And so I can imagine that legislators don't necessarily have the time to devote to study all of these things at that level of detail. I don't know if all of them do, but this topic definitely requires a lot of time and energy to really understand it.

Okay, so I have this question.

In your experience with the different states, is the language pretty much the same in each state, or is there—

they change it? They change it a little bit. They change it. They, they're sort of the way that it is structured has been changed in some states. So North Carolina is different because there's a rebuttal to the presumption that the labels are sufficient that supposedly removes this liability shield.

Okay.

But then so I had to learn about that when I came here because that was different than what had been proposed in Tennessee. And, you know, there's also been a process where as the constituents voiced their concern about the legislation to the legislators, then the legislators have come back with amendments to the legislation that change the language in a way that sometimes seems to address those concerns. But because it's sort of this legal language that you or I aren't trained to understand, it's hard to tell if it really does that. And so then you kind of have to check with people that know about that and say, well, is this really changing it or is it still doing the same thing? And a lot of times it seems like it's still just doing the same thing, but they've changed the words around. They've changed the way that it kind of moves through something around. And so, yeah, there's a lot to look out for with the language on this one.

Yeah. You're an observant person, so you've noticed that a lot of times these politicians they don't even know. They might not even know about— well, they're not going to know about every single topic that comes through, so they don't have a stance. Some, they might not have a personal stance or a strong one. And that's why you think in some cases they could be rather neutral, and it might make it— and that's why it would make a difference that people are calling and informing them and coming in and seeing them.

Yeah, I think, I think it makes a huge difference that, you know, the people that are concerned about this take the time to learn about it and then come and communicate with their legislators because they might not have heard about it from anyone else and they might not have the time or, like you said, the personal stance on it. And so people getting educated, being able to communicate about this in a clear way, in a simple way, and telling them why it's a problem, I think is incredibly important to stopping this legislation because this is going to go to the federal level next. They've already tried to have this in federal and other moments federally, but we're expecting them to make a big push for it this year because they've made a big push with the states. They've now gotten it passed in two states. Right. And they have been lobbying in D.C. for it.

Whoa.

And there is a lot of support for pesticides and the pesticide industry for chemical farming in D.C.

So if it goes federal, that means it overrides the states.

Yeah. Like even though North Carolina does. But then I guess then the government would then be sued if someone was harmed.

This is interesting. So if somebody got hurt by these chemicals, in North Carolina. Yeah. If they— if the chemical company's got the protection, somebody could then sue the state.

Oh, is that— I don't know.

I'm asking.

Oh, I'm not sure. I think that they could sue, for example, the people maybe that sell it. It could shift to the— I think that was— I remember that was a concern with someone I spoke with that then it would shift to the person selling it that would be responsible. Wow.

Um, okay.

If the EPA actually made them give their data and like they, they had to do certain data, would that cut down on a lot of problems? Or, I mean, it's the EPA. Like, I don't have a lot of faith in that, you know? But what if, if for some crazy reason the EPA was like, okay, we have this however many chemicals and we're missing the data sheets or whatever the sheet is, the, the— what is it that they're supposed to do? The safety studies. These don't have the safety studies, so we're pulling them off the shelf until they give us these safety studies. But they could just fudge the safety studies that they give them.

Yes.

Is that—

Yeah, I think it's it seems to be a problem that the companies that produce the chemicals and make profit from them are submitting their own safety data. They have not done a very good job of acting with integrity. Right. I think, I think in an ideal world that would be fine, right? If I were running a company that was making something like that or any type of chemical product, what I would feel was okay in terms of the level of testing would be probably very, a very high standard. That would be, to the best of my knowledge, what I could do to ensure that it was safe for people. And I wouldn't, I personally wouldn't feel comfortable to sell something that might be dangerous to people if I hadn't done right, if I hadn't done that study, or if I, if I knew that it was dangerous to people, I would personally never sell it. But these are bad faith actors, right? We know that they're willing to sell things that cause cancer, that they know cause cancer without the proper warning label. They're willing to give people cancer. They're willing to destroy families. And now, and now they're asking to not be held accountable for that. That's who we're dealing with. So when they submit data, it's really different than if I were to submit the data. And so that's, I think, really fundamentally the problem is that there are these organizations and companies that exist that are simply willing to sell poison and not tell people that it's poison. That's the easiest way to put it. They're selling poison and they don't want to tell you that that's what it is. And they know. And you would never do that. No. You would never do that. You would never want to cause harm to anybody. You would never want to do that.

Well, based on talking with you, the takeaway here is first, people can, well, they can be like you and be observant, trust their own senses, and then follow up on that, observe that. One thing they can do to be observant and find out about these things is follow people like you, these kinds of things in social media. And stay on top of it. Um, secondly, you can take a deep breath because the overwhelm's setting in. Then they write a list. But you also said many times in this interview, be gentle on yourself. So that list can be overwhelming, so just be gentle and just tack it one by one. Um, I like to say, uh, just if you did 1% every day, you'd double in just 72 days. It's the rule of compounding. Um, so just a little bit of change every day, not, not overwhelming, or you're just going to get burnt out. And then lastly, it's just let the legislature know. I don't— I think people think they, they don't know they can do anything more than voting. And then that it is important to call.

It's so important.

Or make visits.

I think we really saw that this week, the impact of people's emails and phone calls. I witnessed it and I watched the legislators get those emails and phone calls. I watched them. I think even, you know, it sort of overwhelms them when there's so many. And that makes an impression.

The one chairman at the Ag One, Rebecca, he got up there and he's not short-winded, but he— first thing he said was, no, nothing on milk, nothing on shrimp, nothing on pesticides. And it's like he had to tell everybody to relax.

Yeah. And that's what he'd been getting all the emails and that was what everyone was making noise about. So So there you have it. You can see the measurable impact of the input in what they were saying afterwards. And they took out those things. They did. Right? I don't know what happened with the shrimp, but—

Well, apparently they were trying to like stop the shrimping industry. I didn't get too much into it because I was like already in the business side.

The trust protest of shrimpers.

They had like 1,000 shrimpers show up in Raleigh.

Wild.

The point was that man seemed—

He seemed overwhelmed.

And he needed a deep breath too. That way. He was pretty just like old and boring and calm and just— but that one statement, I saw the most animation I saw from the whole meeting. It's just kind of like, okay, everybody relax, put you on edge. He was disarming everyone right out the gate.

Well, because I think we were all like, on the edge of our seats, like, what's going to happen? How is this going to play out? We're not sure. And so he wanted to just get it out right away.

Yeah.

Which was, which was nice of him.

So tell everybody where they can follow you and one more time about your course.

Okay. So you can follow me on Instagram at Dr. Alexandra Munoz, M-U-N-O-Z. And I'm also on Twitter or X @amtoxicology. And the name of my course is How to Think Like a Toxicologist. And I'll be having another module opening soon. So it's sort of— it's a course where people sign up and the lectures are taught live so that people can ask questions and we go through it together so that there is this container for dealing with the overwhelm also, because I think that is such a huge part of implementing it, right? Is how do we implement this information? It's not just enough to have it, but how do we actually implement it? And so that's what I try to like to help with for parents.

Is there a website for that?

Yes, the website is riverwindinstitute.com.

We'll link that too. So I was looking it up, make sure I follow you. So Thank you. I know you got to go to DC tomorrow, so— yeah, or tonight.

Tomorrow.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much. Appreciate you. Thank you.