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 in which I A Great Lakes novice, ask people who are smarter and harder working than I am to teach me all about the Great Lakes. And we're here this month, live from the emerging contaminants conference, the famous, world famous emerging contaminants conference at the University of Illinois. My name is Stuart Carlton. I am Assistant Director of Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant, and I know a lot about the shockingly aggressive geese that are on the campus of the University of Illinois, and I know certain things about their mating rituals that would not be appropriate to share on this family podcast, but I do not know a lot about the Great Lakes, and that is the reason for this podcast. And I'm joined today by an extremely special guest host, guest co host, the original nurdle herself, Sarah Zach.

Unknown Speaker 0:55
Sarah, how's it going? It's going great. Stuart, how are you it's going great.

Stuart Carlton 0:58
Actually, let me double check that we're recording, and then I'll let you know how it's going. Oh, it's going so good. Oh, it's going. So good. It's going we boy. Now, fantastic. So tell us before we get started, tell us just a little bit about the emerging contaminants conference. This is something you do every year come hell, high water, pandemic or whatever. Why? Why did you start doing this? Oh, my God, why did we start doing this? You're probably asking yourself that this very week. Yes, we started

Sarah Zack 1:21
it in 2016 to provide a place for people to come and talk about pharmaceuticals. And it went so well that we decided that we were going to do it again, and we're going to make it bigger, and we're going to talk about all the contaminants everywhere, all the time, and the rest, as they say, is history. The

Stuart Carlton 1:40
rest is history. Well, fantastic. I'm really excited to be here, after wanting to come for many years, because this is, actually, this is something that we're really excited about. Then Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant, which we don't talk about too much about on this program, because mainly it's about, you know, making, like, fart jokes and stupid songs and talking to people are smart, but, but, you know, just bringing together all of these researchers is really, really awesome, so we're glad to do it, but we're not here to talk about how awesome we are. That's implicit. We're here instead to talk about all sorts of fun emerging contaminant related issues. And so with that, we have a special guest, but before we get there, I believe our guest is a researcher. Is he? Not? He? Is he? Is a research chemist. A research chemist. It's time for of course, everybody's favorite, the researcher feature theme song.

Researcher feature, a feature in which your research are going to teach us about the great Blaze. Our guest today. Is John Scott. He's a senior analytical chemist at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center. John, thank you so much for coming on. How are you today? I'm doing great. Thank you for having me. Yeah, it's really good to be here. So we're going to start big picture. What? What is an background? I changed majors to avoid chemistry. Okay, not just once, either. So what is an analytical chemistry? Was after I had dropped out of the chemistry deal, well, the chemistry and class deal. And so what? What is analytical chemistry? What an analytical chemist do? It's actually

John Scott 3:15
the science of measurement, and that's what we excel in is being able to measure things all over, and that's we're actually needed by all sorts of research. Everybody needs measurements. Everybody needs analytical chemists, and it really makes my job much more rewarding. You know, one day it's penguins, the next day it's sediments, the next day it's water samples. So we get involved in all different types of interesting, fascinating, wonderful research projects

Stuart Carlton 3:46
and so, so when you say measurements, I don't, I'm sorry for my ignorance. How do you measure something in chemistry? I feel like you're mixing acids and bases and making explosions, but that's probably not your day to day anyway. So so like you, are you? Is it like physical measurements, or what kind of just depends

John Scott 4:01
on what we want to look for. But a lot of times we do think we do like we employ light, or we look at, you know, atomic mass of something, how much it weighs, or potentially, you know, how it interacts with some type of media that we can measure. And, you know, we can look at things like temperature, we can look at light, we can look at vibration, we can look at it's just whatever you know, in the physical world that we can measure. We can apply to monitor these things in the environment or in a sample.

Stuart Carlton 4:34
That's really cool, okay? And so, so, so this is an applied field, I guess, then, right? And that you're not, is it really theoretical, or are there applications? What are you working on?

John Scott 4:44
The answer is yes. Okay, both, in fact, you know, then theoretical part, we have to develop methods to analyze things for things that nobody else has looked for. Oh, right. And then also we use it on the applied side, like in the environmental when we want to measure these things in the environment.

Stuart Carlton 4:58
Okay, that makes sense. Oh, that's right. And some of your earlier work on micro plastics, in fact, was doing that right? Like our micro plastic measurements were too big, is that? Right? That's

John Scott 5:05
one thing. As we go down in size, we see these things occur more and more and more. So the size is so important.

Stuart Carlton 5:14
I'm all too aware. All too aware. Interesting. Okay, fantastic. And Sarah, how did you get started with John? Y'all have done some stuff together. How

Sarah Zack 5:22
did we get started? I mean, I feel like we just have always known each other for a very long time. I think probably I met John through the emerging contaminants conference, because it's always been co hosted by sea grant and the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center. And so there's always been a really great contingent of Sustainable Technology Center folks that would come and attend the conference and present at the conference, and so I'm sure that's how, how John and I met, and

John Scott 5:51
Sarah is a great person to work with. She's always open to new ideas, and she never says no, and yeah. But the other thing is, the relationships are important, because we believe that Sea Grant, what they do, is so important, public outreach is really the, the biggest, the one of the best ways to solve these problems. Yeah,

Sarah Zack 6:08
emerging contaminants and but John says that. I don't say no, but I think John is very much an ideas guy. John thinks big picture, and he's got a lot of he's always got a lot of new ways to look at problems brewing in his head. And you start, you sit down with John, and you start talking about it, and you come away with three, four or five ideas for research projects. Then you got to find the money. You got to find the money for him. You got to find the people for him. But John, you don't ever have any shortage of ideas, that's for sure. Well,

Stuart Carlton 6:39
fantastic, but we're not here just to talk about how amazing we are. We're here so at our live events, we like to do gains. And so everybody who's here can attest what we have here is a big box of ideas. This is bringing this box here was a significant challenge, enormous. You know, there are strap it to the roof. It was, it was And anyway, but I was able to do that in this box. We have some ideas. What we're going to do is we're going to rummage around in the box, and we're going to pick a topic out of the box in which we rummage, and then you can hear some rummaging. You hear a rummage, a good rum. And then John is going to go on that topic. All right, the first randomly picked topic. I picked this one. Sarah will pick the next one is micro plastics. John, I'm a little behind on my micro wells. First of all, micro plastics. Let's start with our very first episode, the most downloaded episode of the history of teaching about the Great Lakes. Episode One was Sarah Zack, the episode that was so good that we invited Carolyn to be on the show permanently, and Sarah to be back many times so, but it's been since about episode one, since we've really talked about micro plastics in detail. So short a version, what is a micro plastic? And why do we care? Well,

John Scott 7:49
first of all, it's the size. Micro plastics are typically considered synthetic materials that are in the size range of about one micron to five millimeters. So that's kind of our definition.

Stuart Carlton 8:04
Okay, so size basis, micro size. And so these are things that come from basically any plastic, right? Do they slough off of plastic? Or is it when they break down? Or we

John Scott 8:12
actually have two categories. You have primary micro plastics. And these are things that were made intentionally to be very small. That's similar to, like all the micro beads,

Stuart Carlton 8:21
micro beads and my skin care regimen,

John Scott 8:24
yes, thank you. And then also, so there's industrial embraces that are made to be very small. But then the second source of them is we call secondary, and it's probably the most common source of these is from breakdown of larger pieces of plastic. You know, plastic does, really doesn't degrade. It just breaks down to smaller and smaller pieces over time

Stuart Carlton 8:44
and like, so that's something bigger it just as, I don't know, like a truck runs over the plastic water bottle you threw out of your car, and then, like, another truck runs over the shards, or that kind of thing. Or even could be, like, is there an aquatic, like, wave action? Can that

John Scott 8:59
cause Absolutely, a mechanical and ultraviolet light makes these, these things break down faster over time. And there's a lot of factors, but the big ones are mechanical ultraviolet light. There's even some bio degradation. Some microbes will help assist the breakdown. Sure of micro plastics,

Stuart Carlton 9:16
that makes sense. And so what do you do with micro plastics? Exactly.

John Scott 9:19
What do Yeah, oh, that's a lot. I started off in just measuring these things and finding ways to isolate them and then count them and size them, but we also look at what sticks to them in the environment, because it's a lot more than just micro plastics, right? They absorb pollutants from the environment. They harbor microbes and and the biodiversity of the of the biological materials that associate with them are much different than the surrounding environment. And we know that we actually add over 6000 chemicals to plastics as additives, and these are really high levels to give them the desirable properties and colors that we. Want. So it's a lot more complex than just plastic alone. Wow.

Stuart Carlton 10:03
So it's almost like our own little ecosystems, right? Exactly, right. Holy smokes, that's something else. And so last I heard, we spoke with Sarah about microplastics four years ago, or whatever it was. We knew that they were everywhere, but it's still early to know if they were doing anything. Like, are they bad? Other than it seems not good. But what do we know? Like, we think we know a lot, but what do we know for sure about the effects of microplastics, either on human health or the environment or whatever? I

Sarah Zack 10:30
mean, I think the jury's still out. In a lot of ways. I think there's definitely evidence that they take up space in the gut of animals, right? If you're eating plastic instead of eating nutritious food, clearly, that's not good for you, right? Yeah, no matter what animal you

Stuart Carlton 10:44
are, some of the food my

Sarah Zack 10:47
kids. But I think you know, a lot of the concern now might be shifting, and maybe John can attest to this or not, might be shifting towards looking more at what's stuck to the micro plastics, more so than the microplastics themselves. I'm seeing a lot more of that kind of research now.

Stuart Carlton 11:06
So do we know if our body breaks down microplastics? So, like, I eat a microplastic. And yes, you do, yeah, like it or not. And so does my body break that down or I just, let's be delicate. Do I just excrete it later? It

Sarah Zack 11:19
would be excreted later, which is okay, right? A lot of a lot of times we're seeing studies are being done looking at scat from animals to see if you can find micro plastics in the diet. But now a lot of research is finding that these micro plastics, which then break down to nano plastics, are actually being found in our blood and in our lungs, and are actually being more absorbed into our tissues. So it's not as simple as taking it in, swallowing it and excreting it.

Stuart Carlton 11:52
So now that nobody smokes or so, maybe they're going to start showing kids in seventh grade like the black lungs. It'll be the plastic lungs. Interesting. And so micro plastics, this seems like we're just in the beginning stages of this, then and and, and we got other topics, but briefly, like, is this just something that's going to happen forever, or are there things we're doing to try to, I mean, reduce the amount of micro I mean, I we, Sarah and I we talked about all these plastic you know, alternatives we use, right? And I still use the scrub brush, and I no longer use the micro beads, okay? And we try to use little plastic and but I mean, that's not doing anything, you know, relative to, like the industrial and all this stuff. And so is there anything we can do, or do we just study it and say this is a trade off? I think in society, I

John Scott 12:40
think we you really need to think twice about the materials that we use, right? I mean, a lot, I think single use plastic is a great place to start. I mean, it's insane that you have a material that's been designed to last forever but only intended to be used once. Do we need to this model? We need to get away from that. And that would really make a difference, right there. And, you know, it's not all gloom and doom. I mean, people, they're conscient, if they I believe I'm an optimist, if you tell somebody you know how their choices affect the environment and affect their health, that they'll make the right decisions and hopefully move away from these materials and start to make a difference. Yeah.

Sarah Zack 13:17
I mean, I think that on a on a personal scale, any changes that people can make to their habits are good things, right? But the fact of the matter is that the real root of the problem isn't you or I using plastic wrap, right? It's the large scale, you know, industrial pollution. That's really problematic. I think one one thing too, and I don't want to put you on the spot, John, but like, I think part of the thing with microplastics too is that we don't know where they're coming from, and so more research to find out. Like, if we have plastic in an area, can we find out what it is and where it came from? Because then maybe we can go back and we can prevent it from entering the environment in the first place, but unless we know what that plastic is or where it came from, that's a really difficult job. I

John Scott 14:08
believe a lot of it's tied to solid waste. I mean, we know that landfills is really the destination for the vast majority of plastic over there, but I don't believe the story ends at the land. Yeah, right. Over time they will break down to smaller and smaller, and smaller,

Sarah Zack 14:21
just kind of in the soils eventually, right aligned. Landfill only stays lined for so many years, I think. And

John Scott 14:27
then the leachate is sent to a wastewater treatment plant, which then is goes through the system, and then goes to the bio solids, which are then are landified, so that we're just kind of shifting it from one right.

Sarah Zack 14:37
And the wastewater, all their micro plastics aren't removed from the wastewater, and the fibers aren't removed from the wastewater, and even, even though they do a very good job, they still can't get everything. Yeah, that's

John Scott 14:47
true, and they're not designed to handle that, and it's not fair to point the finger at them, no,

Sarah Zack 14:52
because they're actually trying to solve the problem that they're incapable of. Their equipment is incapable of solving. That

Stuart Carlton 14:59
makes sense. Okay? Okay. Now I have hooked up. I'm solving, I'm solving our headphone problem one bit at a time, which you don't have to do it, but for future, teach me about the Great Lakes. Live from. I angler. You should come Tuesday by angler. So I'm working on the headphone problem. So what I have also done is you can see those you live. I've hooked up, I've gotten rid of the box, and now we have a huge wheel that we're going to spin. Price is Right style and see what we land on. Sarah, why don't you give that wheel a spin right now? Oh, look at that. What did it land on? P FAS and P Fauci, another big topic. What do you know? All right, so my main question with these is always one, how hosed are we? John, that is my question. First of all, what are they and second of all, how hosed are we, in your professional opinion, as an analytical chemist?

John Scott 15:50
So these are a classic compounds that are unique, that they contain fluorine, carving bonds. We also we classify them as PFAs, but there's really over 10,000 of these compounds known to exist, so it's pretty complex. They're commonly used for non stick coatings. Teflon is kind of related to these PFAs, so they're used in firefighting foams. So they're quite ubiquitous, and they're all over the place. I think we have to be a little careful, though, when we talk about PFAs, because, you know, when we talk about concentrations in the environment, it's really part per trillion. Yeah, there which was, which is, that's not

Stuart Carlton 16:32
imaginable. Like, how many, how many drops in the swimming pool? Is a part per trillion?

Sarah Zack 16:36
It's good. Not many drops in lots of swimming pools, not many

Stuart Carlton 16:39
drops and lots of swimming pools. And there's your title. There it is, nailed it. It would be

John Scott 16:44
like trying to find a cup of mercury in Lake Michigan. I mean, it would be, it just be, it's a very, very, very minute concentration we talk about. I mean, Now, granted, there are hot spots, there are places that are really high, but for the most part, when we look at the environment, we're talking very, very low levels. And so

Stuart Carlton 16:59
this comes from, like, flavor, tartans and stuff. But I mean, if it's such but I mean, if it's such a low level where, like, a cup in Lake Michigan can be potentially, I mean, what do you do about that?

John Scott 17:07
I don't. I not convinced that at environmental levels there, I'm not, haven't been shown the data yet that they would incur adverse effects in wildlife and humans health. Yeah, I'm not convinced, from what I've seen so far, at high level levels, yes, we see cancer, we see endocrine disruption, but in the part per trillion levels, I

Sarah Zack 17:28
think, I mean, I can't disagree with that, especially since what you're seeing from different states is that some states are seeing high enough levels where they feel the need to have fish advisory or consumption advisories, but other states simply aren't seeing that. And so the same species of fish you can eat in one lake, but not in another, I think it's very location specific. It tends to be very location specific. And we saw some talks today where folks were doing sampling. I saw one. It was outside of an office, an Air Force Base, or an airport, or maybe both, and the levels were very, very high while you have historical use of firefighting foams there, so you expect that to be high. So maybe some of these larger point sources can be contained. That low level that we're finding throughout the environment will ultimately end up being less of an issue. She said, with the question mark at the end, it's really difficult to say, Yeah. And there's just, this

Stuart Carlton 18:31
is really early stage, right? There's, are we still doing a lot of the sort of basic research to even understand this? Is my understanding, is that right? That's

John Scott 18:37
right. And one of the big problems is it's because of us analytical chemists, we've done such a good job at measuring things at such a low level, and it's a good thing. It's almost like we the early warning system, and we're to tell you, hey, and we've seen this in the past with other pollutants like PCBs and flame retardants, and we're able to catch it sooner so, and I think, you know, we really have to, we need convincing data that shows that it's that they're talks, that they have toxicological response at these low levels, but I really think the solution is to turn the tap off. I think we need to stop making these fluorinated compounds. We need to find alternatives that are, that are that do not have as much environmental impacts. Yes,

Stuart Carlton 19:19
right. I agree. But so right before we had kids, we found out about BPA, and it was like, get rid of the BPA. And they did. I mean, that stuff disappeared overnight, but now we're finding out, I don't know. Maybe this other stuff isn't good either, right? And the

Sarah Zack 19:33
same thing happened with PFAs, right? They quit making the long chain PFAs, because, I mean, we've known that those were dangerous since, what the 60s, and so they started making these shorter chain PFAs, like Gen X, and now we're finding that they're causing very similar problems. So I don't know what the Yes, I don't know,

Stuart Carlton 19:53
though, right? So I mean, part of your job is we to say this is the best we can do, and then to later find out that you. We need to do better, I don't know. Is that? Is that the feels distressing in some ways, I think,

John Scott 20:05
well, I guess it's you have to just consider, you know, where these kids are being used as are they absolutely necessary? Does it matter that the cheese sticks to your pizza box? Can you live without that? I mean, you know, that's and

Sarah Zack 20:16
I think, just like micro plastics too, I think a lot of times we don't have a lot of choice in what we can buy, but if we put pressure on these companies at the larger scale to make their products without these things, right? Like, maybe you don't package your toilet paper in plastic, you package it in paper. Maybe you don't line your boots in Gore Tex, you line them in something different, right? And if, if we vote with our wallets, then the pressure gets put on, and then I think that can affect real change. Wow,

John Scott 20:50
that's spot on. And along those lines, it's, again, I'm an optimist. I believe, if you tell people, and that's one of the things, is people buy these products, and they have no idea we need better? Totally true. We need we need to. We need industry to label these things so people know that they're in are these materials and they can make the right choice.

Sarah Zack 21:08
I mean, in an ideal world, we in the United States would do things like they do in Europe, and we would prove that something safe before it goes out into the marketplace, rather than putting it out in the marketplace and then figuring out that it's toxic. But this is the United States, and we don't do things, we make

Stuart Carlton 21:22
a different set of trade offs, right? Yeah, this is a publicly funded

Speaker 1 21:27
I make no my views do not necessarily represent

Stuart Carlton 21:30
views. Well, they don't. And this is a partnership with Goby dog media. We would like to point out, okay, it's a precautionary

Sarah Zack 21:35
principle, though. This is a widely regarded right, like you find out something safe, and then you let people use it. It makes it makes a lot of sense. No,

Stuart Carlton 21:42
it does, it does, but it's complicated. And there are other sets of trade offs you can make. Absolutely we understand that. But no, I think that your view is a very, very understandable one, right, where it's like. So the downside of the choice that we make is that sometimes we wind up in these situations where people like John Scott tell us that we've been hosing ourselves the whole time. Okay, good. Now, John, this time I want you to step up to the wheel and give it a really good spin.

All right, and the wheel landed on sea, seas, in Great Lakes, fishes. Do we know anything about that?

Unknown Speaker 22:16
I know it's a problem. Okay,

Stuart Carlton 22:22
ask. And Sandy, insert, so, yeah, so, so what? What's, what chemicals, contaminants we need to be worried about? Great. I mean, the classic one I think about is mercury, which is what? That's not really emerging at this point, right? That's, that's just a cc. Neither

John Scott 22:33
is PFAs, if you think about it, these, we've known about these things forever, but Mercury is definitely a concern. And that's we, could we find mercury in every fish we look at? Yeah, it's just interesting.

Stuart Carlton 22:44
And, and that's one that we know, that we know there's a connection, right? Um, and same with PCBs, we know there's connection with,

John Scott 22:50
oh yeah, PCBs, they are going down. We are seeing there's bonding programs that have been tracking them over time, and since we phase them out, we definitely see them going down. But there's still any even DDT, we still find them. But we saw a great talk this morning about endocrine disrupting and estrogen and how it affects the reproducing. I mean, it was a great talk this morning, which is a perfect example of seas and fish. But there's just so many things we can't measure them all.

Sarah Zack 23:17
No. I mean, I think pharmaceuticals are the are like that generic class of things that we go, oh, CEC pharmaceuticals. We know that they're bad, but there are so many, and there's so many degradation products of all of them that, you know, it's like PFAs. It's just, there's just, there's too many to address one by one. You

John Scott 23:37
probably interact too mercury. You know, all you have mercury, there you have estrogen pharmaceuticals, and they all could be synergistically Delicious,

Unknown Speaker 23:45
delicious cocktails of contaminants. Look at you. You're

Stuart Carlton 23:48
just trying to hit the title, right? I know what's happening. That's fine. I've seen this behavior before, but, but yeah. And meanwhile, you find out your endocrine is being disrupted, right? And that's it's no good. So what about with all this? So I don't know how many contextualize this, because I don't, I'm going to walk out of here and just start sweating and being nervous and but then the other thing is, like, I know that my life expectancy is, you know, it's actually, I don't know what it is. We're going to call it 80 years ish, right? And so, so is this stuff that could we think I'll have, like, a life expectancy effect, or is it just, like at least a lot of health things, or how do we balance this with all the benefits we get from these different things? You know, not, not so much the microbeads my complexion can do without them. But, you know, with all of the other you know, we we gained a lot of benefit from this. Do you have thoughts on how to balance all that, or how to balance our concern with the benefits? I

Sarah Zack 24:37
mean, it is a really great question. I mean, I Yeah, it's tough because, I mean, I I do a lot of this outreach, and I read a lot of these papers, and so I know, like, what drugs end up I know what drugs go right through us and end up in the water, right? And a personal story, I was prescribed a drug for an illness that I had, and I knew that this was the type of drug that does not transform, and I know it's you. Antiquities and the environment, and I felt super weird about taking it, but it helped me live a better life. And so I took it and so, and I don't regret it. And so I, you know, I think, I think that there's those, there's always going to be those trade offs, but, yeah, I think that's really tricky. I mean, undoubtedly, these pharmaceuticals have made our lives better,

John Scott 25:22
but sometimes it's just handling of them. For instance, remember the old days when you had extra pharmaceuticals and the doctors and the vets would tell you to flush on the toilet? Yeah? That is something that you could address. Yeah. That's a problem. That's right, yeah, solve that problem.

Sarah Zack 25:37
Yep. And I mean, and I think too, that like, as we learn, we change and we adapt and try to, maybe we can't solve the problem, but we can stop contributing to the problem, right in certain ways. That's a perfect example,

Stuart Carlton 25:52
I think, and not letting the perfect be the enemy. The good, yeah, it's like, yeah, you're right. We're we're trying real hard to be the shepherd Ringo, right? And, and it's hard to do sometimes, but it doesn't mean you give up, right?

Sarah Zack 26:03
And sometimes people, people can do certain things, but they can't do others. And so if you tell them you have to do X, Y and Z, or you're not doing good, then people are just going to shut down. So if you give them a suite of options, and they can pick and choose what works with their life and what they're comfortable with, then they can feel like they're making a real difference. And I think that's

Stuart Carlton 26:23
good. One more. One more spin of our wheel here, Sarah, why don't you give it a spin?

No, we're gonna go, okay, yeah, we'll do this one. Can we buy a vowel? Here is what the wheel landed on. That's what I meant by we're going to do this one. So this is a shout out to march of veneer of the universe, Indiana University of Bloomington, who's on teach me about the Great Lakes episode 52 where we learned what was the lake Award winner for Great Lakes, fact of the year last year, which is that your cat is loaded with micro or with a PFAs. Turns out your your cat has a lot of PFAs. Sarah, I just heard that. Yeah. You heard it. Yeah. You were listening to the Lakey Awards, which we do every year. And he said the teaching about the Great Lakes fact of the year was that your cat is full of PFAs. But name of her episode was, can we buy a vowel here, or something like that? And so here, we want to know what is a contaminant that is so emerging that we aren't yet giving it appropriate concern, right? That is the question here. What is one that in the ECEC 2027, we're going to be talking about a lot.

Sarah Zack 27:33
I just like to state for the record that our fearless leader, Thomas hook, asked me that question in my annual review, and I did not have an answer,

Stuart Carlton 27:42
but the good news is you went and researched it so they would have an answer for him next week. Nope,

Sarah Zack 27:46
so that I would punt it to John Scott, research chemist extraordinaire. Well,

John Scott 27:52
let me get my crystal ball. One thing I am thinking it might come up is compound called soloxanes. What is that they are? The inside of your soda can is coated with PDMS, and the PDMS is also turning out to be one of the in the siloxanes are being used as alternatives for PFAs. Oh, interesting. So they have very similar properties to PFAs, so I definitely think that's one that's on my radar. So what

Stuart Carlton 28:21
is this? PDM, because I drink two, 50 million these little fizzy pops a day, like fizzy

John Scott 28:25
pops, yeah, they coat the inside of the can to help the taste, to help

Stuart Carlton 28:29
the taste I do, like a good little PD What does PDMS stand for? Is that one of

John Scott 28:32
these? Yeah, that's a tough poly dimethyl siloxane. Great. And

Stuart Carlton 28:36
so it's helping my taste. But also, meanwhile, my endocrine, like we talked about earlier, totally disrupted.

John Scott 28:41
I think musks and fragrances too are going to be another one that we we see them at very high concentrations in wastewater.

Stuart Carlton 28:48
I produce that naturally, so that's not a concern about me getting them elsewhere, okay, but those

John Scott 28:52
are two that have been on my radar right now that I'm keeping an eye on, yeah.

Sarah Zack 28:56
I mean, I think, I think in terms of, I think as a chemist, your worldview on these things is a little different than mine, and I think so. I think one of the things that I'm seeing, or that I have seen bits and pieces of, but I'm starting to see a lot more of now, is road salt too. So I think chlorides in particular. I mean chlorides, know, a teaspoon of of salt can pollute gallons of water, and you can't really get it out. And we apply so much salt in the way. I mean, it's the Midwest, right? It's like microplastics. The fleece is to microplastics as road salt is, you know, to to chlorides. And so I think that's one that I'm now starting to see a lot of communities be worried about I'm seeing a lot more legislate, not legislation, but ordinances about how you can can apply road salt or not apply road salt, or beet juice alternatives and things like that. Yeah. And then sunscreens, I think too, is another one, because here,

Stuart Carlton 29:58
speaking, the difference between Europe and. America, right? Europe tend to use those physical blockers,

Sarah Zack 30:02
right? Zinc Oxide, zinc oxide, I think that's what it is. Zinc Oxide, I

Stuart Carlton 30:06
bet. What's the Come on, John, what's the chemical? Z what is Z N O 2z? N o2

Sarah Zack 30:11
zinc oxide, or titanium dioxide? Oh,

Stuart Carlton 30:15
that's t i o2 okay,

John Scott 30:18
I was getting there when we talk about what's the next emerging contaminant, too, a lot of times we have to look at the production of what they're what people are making, like plastic is one of the things I'm focused on, because we make more plastic than anything else. So anytime you make something in such large amounts, you really have to ask yourself, Well, where is it going? And that's a good indicator of what's the next emerging contaminant. What are we making in large quantities. And

Sarah Zack 30:41
maybe it's not the contaminant, but maybe it's a method. Maybe it goes from we're worried about plastics to we're worried about what's on the plastics, or we're worried about the vectors, rather than vectors, of existing contaminants, rather than new contaminants. And

John Scott 30:55
don't forget, all the other pollutants that we were talking about in the past haven't gone away. No, they're still there.

Stuart Carlton 31:00
That's the problem, right? They rarely have contaminants of unemerging Whatever. The opposite they got those two, but they're never going away, or at least rarely. So what I'm hearing is there's always going to be work to do, which means we will always be having the emerging contaminants conference, job security, job security, and maybe more live podcasts. Who knows? But John Scott, thank you. This is interesting to hear about the different contaminants emerging concern, trying to figure out what analytical chemistry is exactly, and discussing why we dropped out of different parts of our schooling and how hosts we may or may not be. But that's actually not why we invited you on, teach me about the Great Lakes this week. The reason that we invited you on, teach me about the Great Lakes is ask you two questions. And the first one is this, if you could choose to have a great donut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch, which one would you

John Scott 31:48
choose? Oh, the sand Mitch sandwich. Okay, sand Mitch sandmich sandwich.

Stuart Carlton 31:52
Alright? And where so I am right now at the emerging contaminants conference in Urbana. Champaign tomorrow, I'm skipping out on lunch. I'm going to get a sandwich. Where am I going? John,

John Scott 32:01
for a sand Mitch, yes, I drive to Chicago. That's what I'm talking about. Augustino

Stuart Carlton 32:12
fair enough, we're going to have a meeting for a Sea Grant in Chicago soon. I will be augustinos. That sounds good. We're doing meeting there anyway. So perfect. Augustinois, it is all right, great. Now the other thing is, we like to share. So we are a great lakes focus podcast. Is there a special place in other augustinos in the Great Lakes that you'd like to share with our audience? And what makes it special in your mind?

John Scott 32:34
I guess where the Coastal Management Program is at is Waukegan harbor. I mean, it's, but it's not really, is it really pretty? I mean, the lake kind of a beautiful industrial but yeah, it's, yeah, yeah, the Dunes is a pretty area. That's, yeah, that's, that's good,

Unknown Speaker 32:48
the National Park, right?

Stuart Carlton 32:50
Fantastic. Well, John Scott, senior analytical chemist at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center, thank you so much for coming on and teaching us all about the Great Lakes. Pleasure. Sir.

Where can people find out more about the emerging contaminants work you're doing, either the conference or the work that you do with Sea Grant, or what have you.

Sarah Zack 33:13
So we have quite a bit of information on our Sea Grant website about different emerging contaminants, including a new PFAs RFP that we're going to be releasing pretty soon. Tell me about this. Yeah, so we're we got a prod. We got funded to do a project in the Great Lakes looking at social and economic impacts of PFAs. So there's a lot of money out there for monitoring projects and fate and transport and remediation, but there hasn't been a lot of work done on how it's impacting communities. And so we're going to have an RFP that we'll be releasing in May that will hopefully fund four projects looking at that. And then if you're interested in more about the emerging contaminants conference, you can visit the contaminants Conference website, which is at go.illinois.edu/e C, E, C,

Stuart Carlton 34:10
teach me about the Great Lakes. Is brought to you by the fine people at Illinois, Indiana. Sea Grant, we encourage you to check out the great work we do. At i i Sea grant.org, and at i L, I N, Sea Grant on Facebook, Twitter and other social media, not Tiktok, not legal at Purdue, our senior producer is Carolyn Foley and our producers, our hope charter is Megan Gunn and Renee miles. Ethan Chitty is our associate producer and our fixer. Our super fun podcast artwork is by Joel Davenport, and the show is edited by the awesome Quinn rose. Quinn, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. If you have a question or comment about the show, please email it to teach me about the Great lakes@gmail.com or leave a message on our hotline. We have a hotline, 765, 496, iisg, that's 4474, I think. Iisg, you can also follow the show on Twitter, at. Teach Grade legs, but unlike microplastics in the environment, the tweets are pretty scarce these days. Hey everybody, thank you so much for listening and keep grading those legs.

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