Disclaimer: This is an automated transcript, we apologize for any errors. If you notice any problems, please email the show at teachmeaboutthegreatlakes@gmail.com. Thank you.

Stuart Carlton 0:00
teach me about the Great Lakes. Teach me about the Great Lakes. Welcome back to teach me about the Great Lakes a twice monthly podcast basically, in which I A Great Lakes novice asked people who are smarter and harder working than I am to teach me all about the Great Lakes. My name is Stuart Carlton, I work with Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant at Purdue University. And I know a lot about just how wet your feet can get on a day in which it's not supposed to rain, but it rains anyway while you ride your bike into work. But I don't know a lot about the Great Lakes. I'm joined today by Carolyn Foley Carolyn, how are you?

Carolyn Foley 0:31
I'm doing well. Thank you, Stuart, how are you doing? I guess you

Stuart Carlton 0:35
got a wet foot, we have a 9/3. We're interviewing fire department head. And so we had a 930 meeting. So I had to pedal and fast. And it wasn't supposed to rain. But it was during that thing where it's like the air is heavy with water and your feet are wet. And you're glad you have fenders on your bike to prevent other things from being wet. And it's just genuinely unpleasant. But it was a nice meeting with the Department of the candidates. What all wasn't all better.

Carolyn Foley 0:57
That's good. Yes. And we are definitely in the weirdness of spring where it's like it's snowing, it's 70 degrees, it's raining, what's it going to do next?

Stuart Carlton 1:05
It's kind of fun. No, I like it. No, last week, it was super oh my goodness, outside, I could have worn shorts. But you know, not everyone has a body made for shorts. But we had a good time doing the grilling and chilling and all that was good. That actually normally here what I do is I inserted like a really clever more or less clever transition from our little banter into what our guests will be discussing, I do not have a clever or semi clever transition here. So I'm just gonna did

Carolyn Foley 1:32
not set you up particularly well. So I apologize, I didn't set myself

Stuart Carlton 1:35
up. So I'll do what I do normally, best of all, is lean into the awkwardness. So I will lean straight into that awkwardness and plumb it down. And we're going to we're going to talk about, you know, actually a big thing. So a big thing that we talked about all time is contamination in the Great Lakes, right. It's an amazing freshwater resource. But there's some significant issues with it. human induced issues a lot, although there's other things. And so one of the things we're talking about are different contaminants. And there's a ton of those out there. And we love to talk with experts about the different types of contaminants. And so our guest today, she does all kinds of really interesting research. She's environmental chemistry, you know what, I'll go into all those details in a minute. This is all just a long way of me introducing the one the only researcher feature a theme song. Researcher, a feature researcher teaches about third grade. It always seems like such a good idea when I'm like at home recording the stuff and then when we have the zoom on and like I'm looking at the guests, and I'm like, Oh, this is horrible. This poor person. Here we are. The thing is, what are you going to do? It's not like we can not play the music. Our guest today is Dr. Marta Venier. She is an assistant professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University. Our huge rivals I guess down south, although I will be honest, I am unfamiliar with the outlines of the rivalry because I just don't care. But Duly noted. So caveat, etc. Marta, how are you today?

Dr. Marta Venier 3:10
Hi, good morning. Hi, Stuart. And Carolyn. Thanks for having me. I know we shouldn't be rival, but I don't care either. That's what I hear. So

Stuart Carlton 3:17
I don't know. And printing needs to be careful before being too late. Right? fallacious? I think because it's think that most everything basketball is pretty good this year. Anyway, good. So environmental chemist, I don't even actually know what environmental chemistry is. How do you like get into environmental chemistry? Like when you were a kid? Did you have the little chemistry set where you mix in acids and bases and make it explosions? Or what was the deal there?

Dr. Marta Venier 3:38
No, I actually don't have one of those stories. When, when people say I wanted to be a chemist since I was five years old? No, not really. I went into chemistry, because I wanted to go into hard science. But I want it all at the same time, something that was more tangible than physics or mathematics. Or maybe I didn't think I was smart enough to be a physicist, I don't know. And then I went into analytical chemistry because I really wanted to measure chemicals. And I was fascinated by how instruments work. And then my husband got a job here at Indiana University. We were not married at the time, and I decided to follow suit. And things actually worked out serendipitously because I ended up working with one of the best environmental chemists in the world, really, I was really lucky, which is Ron heights. He's a guru of mass spectrometry, those fancy instruments that we use to measure chemicals. So everything worked out perfectly. Or in other words, I was very lucky.

Stuart Carlton 4:43
Well, you say we're lucky, but you got to be there to receive the luck, right? Yeah, I mean, of course, anytime anybody ends up in a position, you can look back and look at the lucky points, but let's not sell yourself too short there. Yeah.

Dr. Marta Venier 4:54
And so I restarted my PhD on this side of the world, doing So I work really on the Great Lakes. And I have to admit, coming from the I come from Italy, I didn't say this coming from the other side of the world. Ron was surprised that I didn't know much about the Great Lakes. Everybody thinks that. Everywhere in the world, everybody knows about the Great Lakes. And now, I agree, we should all know about the Great Lakes, but we don't. And so when I actually go to Europe and and give seminars, I, I tend, I show this slide where I show them that the Great Lakes occupy an area similar to the UK to sort of translate and give the impression of how important they are. So I become very passionate about the Great Lakes. And in particular, about measuring chemicals in the environment, I'm very passionate about that no matter where they are, not only the Great Lakes.

Carolyn Foley 5:54
So in terms of those chemicals that you're you're measuring. There's a lot of acronyms that people hear in, you know, in public media, but then also in scientific papers and things like that, like PCBs or P FOSS or P FOAs, or PBDE, or things like that, can you help our listeners understand a little bit like what did those acronyms mean?

Dr. Marta Venier 6:17
Sure. So I always joke that we should buy vowels every once in a while. These acronyms are too much, even for me and my students, and my collaborators note that I am allergic to acronyms. So I tried to spell out everything because sometimes you get down to reading these reports. And you seriously think let's buy a vowel here, because I don't understand what we're talking about. But for chemicals, I'm guilty as charged, we use a lot of acronyms. I guess it does probably it all started with PCBs, polychlorinated by phenols, which are one of the largest group of chemicals that have been started being measured, historically. And I have to say that we're still measuring them at levels that are above our detection limits, so we're not done with them quite yet. The other acronym that you mentioned is PBDE, polybrominated, diphenyl ethers, there's an vowel there at least, so that's easier. And those are flame retardants. And I'm very passionate about that those are my first love. Those are the chemicals that I have done a lot of work for my dissertation. And for a good part of my research, they're slightly newer than PCBs in the sense that we've started getting to know them really, at the beginning of the 2000s are sort of, sort of, so they are young relatives of PCBs, so to speak. And then of course, PFAs, pair and poly floral alkyl substances. Those are the ones that everybody's talking about, nowadays. Because it's probably one of the biggest environmental concern after climate change, or this almost at the same level as climate change nowadays,

Stuart Carlton 8:18
yeah, I want to talk about those kind of in a little bit of detail first. So these so when you hear when you say the actual names of the chemicals, or whatever, you understand why they're all the while the acronyms exist, because it's all just a mouthful. But those those terms like you can identify, you can define those or I mean, you hear a poly blah, blah, blah, and you're like, oh, yeah, that makes sense to me. Right? Yeah, those words are meaningful to you, as opposed to just for those who aren't fluent in analytical chemist, I suppose knows much about him. That's interesting. So well, let's say you talk about PBDE is your first love so I would like to go so let's talk about your first love. I mean, other of course, then your husband who is it?

Dr. Marta Venier 8:55
Okay. Of course, of course.

Stuart Carlton 8:58
We got you. But so so what's the deal with these? These are flame retardants are those things that like people put it in clothing? Or where are these herbs they'd like to, you know, in a thing to put out the fires and fire extinguishers? Or where are these use?

Dr. Marta Venier 9:10
Yeah, so flame retardants are actually used. They have a good reason or good purpose. So they are used to prevent fires or rather the severity of fire once fire catches on. They are added to a lot of products. So think about your sofa, the foam that is under the underneath the cover. Think about curtains, home installations, and all of the electronics that we have in our homes, TVs and computers, laptops, tablets, everything that has a screen and a chip is treated with flame retardants that to the backing of carpets. So unfortunately, these chemicals have been become ubiquitous, meaning they're everywhere, both indoors and also outdoors. The good news is that because we have accumulated quite a bit of information about their presence in the environment, and their negative health effects, so these chemicals, obviously, they are not good for our health and for the environment. And so some of these chemicals have been phased out. So, if you have for example, if you go to Ikea, you buy sofas now or anything that is upholstered, you will not have flame retardants. But this has been the situation since maybe the last three or four years before that if you have an old culture, and also, it's likely treated with flame retardants.

Stuart Carlton 10:51
And so is that I'm guessing I'm inferring that the problem is, is not so much that they're in there, but they eventually leach out potentially, into the environment. And okay,

Dr. Marta Venier 11:01
imagine that every time you sit on your Pluff you plant on your sofa, you have a puff of air coming out.

Stuart Carlton 11:07
Oh, yeah, no, that's not that imaginary in our house. Yeah. And now that I see

Dr. Marta Venier 11:10
Carolyn's cat, I can say that we have actually done a study on cats where we measured flame retardants and cats have very high levels of flame retardants. And you know why? Because they tend to sit on warm electronics, like on warm stuff, and they leaked themselves. So they just did these flame retardants. Sorry, this was a digression, but

Stuart Carlton 11:37
no, no, that's good, actually. So that's one new thing I want to do is we're gonna start having a twitter poll. So that's going to be the first thing in our new twitter poll is Did you know The cats have high levels of flame retardants? So we'll put that up at twitter.com/our thing? Teach me teach teach Great Lakes? Interesting? Yeah.

Carolyn Foley 11:53
And my cats definitely, yeah, they sit on things, and sometimes they chew things. And it's like, no, that's a terrible plan. Um, so in terms of, like, you mentioned, about PBDE, that we're learning more about them. So they've been around for quite a while, right. And it's just sort of over time, science catches up in terms of understanding the human health effects and things like that. You talked about machines at the beginning, and how you really liked those. Can you please say, how you detect them in the environment, like what types of tests you do and things like,

Dr. Marta Venier 12:28
we generally, we can work with all kinds of sample that can be air, water, soil, fish, shoot me to send it to us, and we can test it. And we use what we call gas chromatography, mass spectrometry, which is a way of measuring chemicals at very low levels, we call the trace levels. But even though they are very low levels, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't be concerned, it means that we need very sophisticated and expensive equipment to measure them. But nevertheless, even low levels can have significant effects, because we are exposed continuously, continuously. And so they add up with time. So yeah, so

Carolyn Foley 13:17
in terms of kind of long term exposure. And you mentioned also earlier that this is kind of as big a threat as climate change. But it's kind of like the the suite of chemicals. And the constant exposure is that what you would say is kind of where the threat lies, that it's constant, and there are so many different chemicals, and they have different effects, or is there another way of putting that?

Dr. Marta Venier 13:40
So when I was talking about the series, environmental concern, I was referring in particular to PFAs, I

Stuart Carlton 13:48
was gonna say we can we can sort of transition to that, I think, if we want to kind of introduce it broadly, and then get into why it's such a big concern. But if you want to sort of put a button on flame retardants, let's do that. First.

Dr. Marta Venier 14:00
Yeah, no, I wanted to say, though, that what Carolyn was saying about the sheer variety and amount of chemicals were exposed to every day. And the fact that chemicals have been really produced and released have been steadily increasing with time. That kind of creates a dangerous chemical soup. That's why we call it what we call that is a concern. The good news is in that term before we transition to that is I want to share is that in recent in the recent United Nation, meeting Unia 5.2. The committee has voted to move forward with created creating an intergovernmental panel, pretty much like the IPCC for climate change, but for chemical pollution and chemical waste, and this is great news. There's a lot have a lot more work to do. But at least, it's a step towards recognizing that we do have a problem with chemicals that we need to address. And that requires a global effort.

Stuart Carlton 15:12
Interesting. So let's let's talk about one of the things that will be one of the main focuses of that global effort. Let's talk about P FOSS kind of broadly, first of all, let's pretend that I already forgot what it stands for. Just for the listener, maybe they don't remember they were at a you know, at a red light and not put focus. So what what is P FOSS stand for? Again, it's pair

Dr. Marta Venier 15:30
and poly fluoro alkyl chemical substances, okay. And the key here is the part is the F in PFAs, which is flooring. And flooring is a very fascinating chemical element. It's an allergen, pretty much chlorine. So that's the C in PCPs, and bromine, which is the B in PBDE. Those are all halogens. So there's a pattern here among all of these classes of chemicals. And, in particular, fluorine is probably the most special of all of those, because when you create a bond between chlorine between fluorine and carbon, you can't break it in nature. So once you release a molecule out there, in the environment that has this bond, it is so strong, that it can't be break broken. Naturally. That's bonkers.

Stuart Carlton 16:30
It's bonkers. Yeah. Okay. So P FOSS is they are but there are things related to fly. I feel like they come from flame retardants or something like that. Where do they come from? I guess? And how do these? What do they do? I mean, obviously, we're not making chemicals just for the fun of it. That's not these types of chemicals just for the fun of it. And so what, like why, why do we make these and what are they? What are they for?

Dr. Marta Venier 16:51
So they you're right that there was a connection with fire flame retardants, because one of the main uses of flame to pee fast. Sometimes I get confused between all these groups myself. So the main uses of pee fast was in the phones that the firefighter used to extinguish fires. So think about airports or military bases. And unfortunately, those have become one of the biggest hotspots for PFAs contamination because they were used in high amounts for a very long time. But thief as we're all are also used in a large number of other applications. Whenever they are used, they impart to the item, certain characteristics that are desirable. So they make the the item, water resistant, they repel crease and stain. So think about the Scotchgard treatment, you know when you spray on your clothes, because it rains and you don't want to get wet like today. So those treatments are actually do contain PFAs. The car our carpets are treated with PFAs because we don't want stain to ruin our carpets or another big items are anti sick pants. So all those nice pants that you don't have to scrub anymore. Those are treated with PFAs. They're from a chemical perspective, they were a great invention. Really, they improved. The first ads that DuPont released were housewives saying My life has improved so much because I have nonstick pans. And it is true. It's a great invention. But it also comes with a lot of effects. And we are now paying the price for for that

Stuart Carlton 18:45
they leak into the ambiguity of the environment in various ways, right? And they have this unbreakable bond. But so what are the exact effects like what what do they do when they so here I am leaking chemicals. I'm in Lake Michigan, right? And so what happens as a result of those being in there, once

Dr. Marta Venier 19:00
a chemical is out there, this doesn't apply only to P FOSS applies to a lot of these chemicals, especially when they have these allergens in it chlorine, bromine fluorine, they enter into the food chain, so they say water and but then they get into fish. And the bigger the fish the higher demands of these chemicals. And then we as humans eat this fish, and we get the highest levels of these chemicals. And once they are in our bodies, they tend to accumulate. They accumulate in fat or they circulate into our bodies. And so the net result of this is that the CDC The Center for Disease Control that routinely monitors the presence of chemicals in Americans has found out that every American has detectable level of PFAs in their blood.

Stuart Carlton 19:58
And do we know the effect facts, the facts. So that's cool. I'm not at all cool. And so is that just so do we just have a general concern saying this isn't right? Or do we think there might be some method by which you know, like this causes disease or, you know, life effects or whatever? Or is it too early to tell,

Dr. Marta Venier 20:13
we know, enough at this point to know that these chemicals are not good for our health, it's not good to have them in our bodies, and they give a wide array of possible negative health effects going from being linked to obesity, obesity, one of the latest studies show that they diminish the effect of the diminished immune response of our bodies. So at times like this, where we're fighting for during the pandemic, we certainly don't want to know that there's chemicals in our bodies that hamper our response to infectious diseases. But there's other possible effects, like diminished IQ, neurological factors, because the reality is that we know enough to say that they're bad, but we don't know the full extent of how bad they are for our health.

Stuart Carlton 21:12
Gosh, when so when? When did this start? When it's like when so when were they first P FOSS in particular? Like when do they first started to get introduced into the environment,

Dr. Marta Venier 21:21
their mass mass production started in the 70s, really. And there's this really nice book from Robert Bilad, cold exposure. He tells his story as a lawyer in his battle against Dupont, which is the biggest company producing PFAs. And it's really interesting to see for how long these have been produced, and introduced into the environment, even when the company knew that the effects were were negative. So they've been out for quite quite some time.

Carolyn Foley 22:05
So in turn, yeah, so that's really tricky. But so one thing that surprises me a little bit, I guess, I didn't realize that it was like, it didn't start till like the 70s. Because I'm so used to chemicals that, you know, they've been around since the 30s, or whatever. So that's really interesting.

Stuart Carlton 22:20
But Better Living Through Chemistry. You're right.

Carolyn Foley 22:22
Yeah, yeah. And then, okay, so we talked a little bit about some, my cat is still sitting behind me. We talked about how, like, a cat might lay on things, and then lick themselves and adjust things that way. We talked about like, sitting down, you mentioned carpets. So I assume, you know, if we walk around, we potentially track it out there. And then you also mentioned that there are different kind of mitigation mechanisms where like, you no longer have these materials in your couch. If you buy a new couch. We've talked about stuff like that with microbeads, to how you know, they're not in products anymore. Are there things that people can do short of waiting for, like companies or legislators to sort of ban uses of chemicals? Are there things that people can do to sort of minimize their exposure to P FOSS? Because I guess the other thing too, and I think we should link to the list of papers, like I was looking at your your publications before we spoke with you, and you've got it like they're in makeup, they're in like so many different things in different places. So are there things that people can can take steps that people can take to kind of minimize their exposure?

Dr. Marta Venier 23:34
What I've learned with time working not only for with pee fast, but also with flavored targets, for example, is that there's a growing movement of informed consumers. So consumers are becoming more and more informed and making informed choices. This is what we can do as consumers make, make sure that you are aware of what you buy, and what you what you use. At the same time. It is really overwhelming even for me, sometimes I am stuck for weeks where I have to buy something like what what do I need to buy, for example, I had to buy car seats for my kids. And I had just published a paper where we had the reported flame retardants on car seats. And I was really what am I going to do? What am I going to buy? And so even for me, and I know that I have a lot of information, it's really overwhelming. So I can't imagine for people who don't have all of this information. So it's good to stay on top of these things and be careful with what you buy. At the same time also, there's this interesting process which we call a whack a mole game. I don't know if you have ever played that game where you whack Oh, yeah. So this happens with chemicals and So you may read, for example, free of BPA, right, there's doesn't have any plastic. Unfortunately, most likely that item has BTS, which is a replacement. And even if you're not chemists, you can tell that it will be very similar molecule. And so with similar characteristics and similar health effects, and so when one chemical is pushed out, another one comes up like in the worker ballgame, which is not necessarily a good cycle, because we don't, we don't know enough of the new chemical of the new replacement. And after a few years, we realized that it's as bad as the chemical they replaced. And so this goes in full circles. And it happened with PFAs as well. So P FOSS. And before which would probably have heard, because we start to see on pans and pots, advertise the P has free. But when you actually read P FAS free, it doesn't mean that it's completely devoid of P FOSS. It's mean that it's without one or two like P FOSS or before, but there will still be some other P FAS in there. Just different kinds.

Stuart Carlton 26:15
Yeah, that's just the challenge with this whole deal. Right, is that? So, you know, I referred earlier to the Better Living Through Chemistry idea of like the mid 20th century. But I mean, it's absolutely true. When you look at what is enabled, thanks to you know, chemistry, it's just astounding, and all of these quality of life improvements. But so often it comes with your your right. Unknown at bare minimum, and then sometimes really deleterious health and environmental effects. And there's no way to know but but it's also like, Well, gee whiz, you know, flame retardants I don't, I would prefer my couch not set my child on fire. And so it's just so complicated.

Dr. Marta Venier 26:50
Let me get this straight. I'm a chemist, I appreciate chemistry. I think chemistry is very important. I'm not against chemistry, I want safe chemistry. I want safe chemicals set chemicals that are not going to harm my health. And there are alternatives. There in every single case that we've been thinking, there are safe alternatives. For example, in the case of sofas, the way we got away without chemicals was to put a barrier between the foam and the fabric that will isolate the foam from the fabric, which is the first thing that catches fire, so that manufacturers can still meet the flammability standards without adding chemicals. So there's always alternatives. It's just a matter of going the extra mile to find the safer alternatives.

Carolyn Foley 27:43
That's great. Thank you for saying that. I really, really appreciate it

Stuart Carlton 27:48
that yeah, actually, this whole thing has been really interesting learning about P Foss and PFOs and PD bees and all of this whole alphabet Val free alphabet soup I suppose. That's actually not why we invited you here on teach me about the Great Lakes this week. The reason that we invited you here on teach me about the Great Lakes. This has two questions. The first one is this. If you could choose to have a great donut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch, which would you choose?

Dr. Marta Venier 28:13
That would be a very easy choice doughnut for breakfast.

Stuart Carlton 28:20
I feel like the donor choosers, like it's less less gray and the choice of donor than in any other choice. So Okay. All right. Don't know what it is. So I have two family members who are at IU and one day I will go to visit them their students. They're neither chemist, but I will go to get a doughnut in the morning. And so when I'm in Bloomington, where should I go to get a delicious doughnut?

Dr. Marta Venier 28:42
Oh, I don't know. My even though I would choose a doughnut, we are not necessarily eating donuts all that often. And when we do I admit that we go to Dunkin Donuts which you can you can do anywhere. So you don't need to come down here.

Stuart Carlton 29:05
Just for Dunkin Donuts. I'll be honest. But that's great. All right, well, that's great. Sandwich person picks up lay, it's all fine. All answers are all good. Great. Okay, Dunkin Donuts it is. And the other thing we'd like to do is you talked about how you become passionate about the Great Lakes. And that's something I find with myself too, as I'm learning more about them and realizing one of the amazing and just irreplaceable resources is you know, defined in so many different ways. Instead of like a special place in the Great Lakes to you that you would like to share with our audience and what makes it special.

Dr. Marta Venier 29:36
So as I mentioned, I became familiar with the Great Lakes when I moved here almost 20 years ago. And my one of my favorite place places is Lake Michigan. The Chicago is the first place I've seen on on the lakes and I still love Chicago a lot. But I would say that because Lake Michigan is huge. I particularly love the Indiana Dunes State Park. It's an amazing place where we went there. By the beach by the lake, it almost made me feel that this was the ocean, the sea that I miss so much. And that place is just special. It's really unbelievable.

Stuart Carlton 30:23
And it's amazing. Yeah, so we'll put a link to that. In our end all the other things we mentioned in our show notes at teach me about the great lakes.com/ 52 And number five, two, because this is episode 52. Carolyn, gosh. Well, Dr. Marta venir, an assistant professor in the School of Public and Environmental fair affairs, Environmental Affairs is a different school I suppose. More fun, in some ways, but anyway, at Indiana University, thank you so much for coming on and teaching us all about the Great Lakes.

Dr. Marta Venier 30:53
Thank you so much for having me. This was really fun.

Stuart Carlton 31:20
Man, PFAs.

Carolyn Foley 31:22
Yeah, that was a great conversation. I mean, you hear so many acronyms, so many acronyms. And it was really good at, you know, kind of splitting out. Okay, here's why people are concerned about PFAs right now and why it's not a huge deal. And you know, different things like that. So, yeah,

Stuart Carlton 31:38
yeah, no, it is good. And she, I thought did a really nice job. I guess when you're in the school of public environment affairs, you're used to thinking bigger picture, right, as opposed to like a hardcore chemistry kind of department. Potential. Also, I would say potential potential

Carolyn Foley 31:51
loss. And hardcore chemistry. There's a little bit of me that I'm like, oh, like, I took physical chemistry for fun, like as an elective in undergrad. And there were like, seven people in the class. And they kind of went around and they were like, Why are you here? I, it's, I have to take it. Because I want to go to med school, I have to take it because I'm an engineer. And I was like, I needed an elective. And everyone just looked at me like, what's, and so it was, it's, it's nice to think back on because chemistry is really

Stuart Carlton 32:18
cool. Because you needed an elective. There we go. Yep. And they were like, What

Carolyn Foley 32:23
is wrong with you? I like chemistry. So anyway, so what did we learn today, Stuart?

Stuart Carlton 32:30
Chemistry is literally it was more organic chemistry. But that's the reason I was not an environmental studies major was I found out you had to do organic chemistry, which at my university was a med school, you know, class, and I was like, you know, we're not, that's the thing, or you can not take chemistry. And so I did that. And look how far it's taken me. So it's all good. Anyway, what did I learn? Well, I mean, the number one thing I think everybody learned is the cats have unusually high levels of flame retardants in them, which is good. We could have like, set up just a cat line right now this is maybe if we could do this in the next wildfire season. You just stack a bunch of cats. On top of

Carolyn Foley 33:05
goodness, come on. Oh, do you have a booth sound?

Stuart Carlton 33:11
I do. But why am I played there after a really?

Carolyn Foley 33:14
Awful? Yeah. Okay. Well, I enjoyed learning about how there's a panel at the UN, who's going to be addressing this PFAs. So part of my job is running research competitions. And in recent years, we have supported a couple of different projects. And you know, different people are supporting projects around the Great Lakes to understand, where are the PFAs? What kind of effects are there things like that. So it's cool to see, it's, it's alarming to know that it's concerning enough for the UN to be doing a global effort. But it's also comforting to know that there's a global effort to try to address

Stuart Carlton 33:52
this. So right to where we need a global effort. Yeah, we shouldn't well, we'll go into more detail on that, once we I'm sure they'll have some products and stuff like that. So I think that'll be interesting to talk about kind of in future episodes. With with Marta. Well, probably smarter. Yeah, I agree. That was great. It was interesting to learn about it and how it's everywhere. I didn't realize that was in 1970s, when all this came about, I just I just don't have a good sense of the history. Something we kind of got out a lot in this show is thinking about the way that our relationship with the environment changes over times and has evolved. And, you know, a lot of it from like this more command and control that we can fix things through science and technology to now I feel like we're in a little bit more of an era where we try to integrate some of what nature does really well into our solution not always felt like she says, you know, one chemical goes away, and then another one comes back or one technology we find out is bad for some reason and gets filled up, you know, and that's true. But but it is interesting to see how that shifts or you think about like management, wildlife management and those sorts of structures and things like that. Yeah.

Carolyn Foley 34:49
Or I was spinning like in my head neonicotinoids were sparking, right because that's something that people used on agricultural fields and they found And note that they were problematic for bees, which is a huge issue. But then the same kind of thing like what she said, the whack a mole game where it's like, well, but if you get rid of that one, what replaces it? And what will the effects there be? That's yeah, it's a very interesting way to think about stuff.

Stuart Carlton 35:15
Yeah, it's a different, it's a different thing to talk about. But I worry about that a lot in terms of like, how public attention goes with this stuff, like I remember BPA. So we found out about BPA, and it disappeared overnight. I mean, I mean, you know, they found out that it had problem and can liners and very quickly that was gone and it was replaced by this other thing, which may be just and you know, there isn't the same sustained it's a very broad thing I wonder about is our sustained her ability as a populace to sustain attention on something and not get distracted by silliness? But I don't want to talk about that too much, mainly because we are fundamentally silly and I'm worried about our listenership if people dial back on

Carolyn Foley 35:51
so you can see the picture of my cat that we're going to stack on top of each other. It's like the end of Inside Out where it's I would die for Riley I would die for right yeah, but anyway, if

Stuart Carlton 36:00
I will. I will see you inside out at some point. But as you know, my kids can handle narrative. We'll get there. We'll get there. All right, you want to do a thing or two I'm going to

Carolyn Foley 36:18
teach me about the Great Lakes is brought to you by the fine people Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, encourage you to check out the great work we do including work in pollution prevention, at IllSea Grant.org, and that IllSea Grant on Facebook, Twitter and social media. To me about the Great Lakes is produced by hope charters, fully making gun and reading miles. Ethan Chitty is our associate producer and fixer are super fun podcast artwork is by Jill Davenport. Don't do this show is edited by the absolutely awesome clean rows and we encourage you to check her workout aspiring robots.com If you have a question or comment about the show, please email it to me about the great lakes@gmail.com Leave a message on our hotline at 7650496 i i s g, you can also follow the show at Twitter at Teach Great Lakes. Thanks for listening and keep breeding those legs

Stuart Carlton 37:39
but so grackles you know these grackles? You know about these things? Like, birds? Yes. And they sound good. Have you ever noticed that? Yeah, they sound like evil like they are the birds aren't real people. Like I think Rachael is probably started because they sound like robots. Have you ever noticed that?

Carolyn Foley 37:54
Yeah. We had a cat when I was in like high school, who was just he he was hilarious. He would like lie under I know you were going somewhere with the birds aren't real thing. But like, the cat was just would just lie underneath this grackle nest, and they would just like, berate him, and he did not care. He's like, Yeah, whatever, because he would go hot. He was really good at going up and stealing their babies. And so yes, we were serenaded with Krakow stuff all the time. And they were just like so ticked at him. He was just like, what his name was Lambert. He was a funny cat anyway.

Stuart Carlton 38:29
stealing their babies. Oh my god. Um, so what I was gonna say so I was out there and they were coming to our house and annoying me or whatever. And I realized the appropriate name for them. Cuz I find their noise to be like disquieting like I'm it's like yeah, so I really it's a Decepticon of crackles. That's what it is.