Speaker 1: I have to say, I think we're very good about recycling.
Speaker 1: I like to compost. I've seen stasher bags. They did
Speaker 1: not have reusable zip lock bags like that when I
Speaker 1: was growing up.
Speaker 2: No, we were putting our peanut butter and jelly in
Speaker 2: that bag, coming home, putting it in a trash. That
Speaker 2: was it. We didn't think anything about it. But now,
Speaker 2: I mean, if you see somebody with a plastic grocery
Speaker 2: bag in a grocery store, everybody's kind of looking at them, like,
Speaker 2: my goodness, it's the thing of the past.
Speaker 1: I got a thousand canvas totes, okay, and I'm carrying
Speaker 1: them all out like the Hulk.
Speaker 2: Yes, now, a nice canvas tote. You're definitely keeping that.
Speaker 2: You used to keep all those plastic bags under the
Speaker 2: sync in another plastic bag thing of the past.
Speaker 1: And there might be a pretty good reason for that,
Speaker 1: according to a recent consumer report, right right. I'm glad
Speaker 1: you saw that, because that's exactly what I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about. This consumer report was talking about the chemicals
Speaker 1: that are found in some of these plastics and packaging
Speaker 1: that we use us for our food, and that made
Speaker 1: me kind of nervous because everything low key is packaged
Speaker 1: in something. Even the oranges coming in a net. You
Speaker 1: can't just buy a couple loose. I mean sometimes you can,
Speaker 1: but they want you to use those little thin green
Speaker 1: film bags. Usually those are compostable, but a lot of
Speaker 1: times it's not.
Speaker 2: And if you don't put it in the compost.
Speaker 1: Then what then what?
Speaker 2: I'm t T and I'm Zachiah and from Spotify. This
Speaker 2: is Dope Labs.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that makes it
Speaker 1: hardcore science, pop culture and a healthy delsa friendship. This
Speaker 1: week we're talking about the chemicals that are commonly found
Speaker 1: in food packaging and lots of consumer products. We want
Speaker 1: to know more about them and how they impact our
Speaker 1: health and environment.
Speaker 2: Let's get into the recitation, all right, CT.
Speaker 1: What do we know?
Speaker 2: Well, we know that there's a lot of single use
Speaker 2: packaging all around us. I mean we grew up during
Speaker 2: a time with you know, the ziplock bags, all the
Speaker 2: bags for fast food pizza boxes, everything like that, and
Speaker 2: so at this point it's almost unavoidable grocery bag. It's
Speaker 2: just a part of the world culture.
Speaker 1: And I think what we also know, well, I can
Speaker 1: speak for myself in many of my colleagues that we're
Speaker 1: doing a lot of takeout. We saw that, especially over
Speaker 1: the early stages of the pandemic, takeout and convenience food.
Speaker 1: There is a lot of packaging involved in that. If
Speaker 1: you're not going and picking a bell pepper, you know,
Speaker 1: or picking a tomato off the vine, it's coming in
Speaker 1: one of those little plastic containers. Those products are often
Speaker 1: wrapped for your convenience and safety, but they're made out
Speaker 1: of something. We also know that chemicals are everywhere, but
Speaker 1: not all chemicals are created equals. Some of the chemicals
Speaker 1: that we come in contact with, like water, which is
Speaker 1: a chemical. It's made up of molecules, and so water
Speaker 1: and you know, carbon monoxide are two very different things.
Speaker 1: Carbon dioxide you don't want that much of, but.
Speaker 2: Water we know that we need. We need some of
Speaker 2: that every single day.
Speaker 1: I think this is a very good example of the
Speaker 1: importance of moving past what you can see with your eyes.
Speaker 1: We talked about this in a previous episode when we
Speaker 1: spoke about oysters and seeing their health. But it's easy
Speaker 1: to look at something and say, huh, seems okay, just
Speaker 1: because you're looking at it and you don't see a
Speaker 1: lot happening with your eyeballs, But there's a lot past
Speaker 1: what these eyeballs can see. So what do we want
Speaker 1: to know? I want to know about some of these chemicals.
Speaker 1: What are they called? Are there different categories of them?
Speaker 1: Because the only two like bad guy can micals I
Speaker 1: know about our BPAs and then just styrofoam in general.
Speaker 1: I know you're not supposed to hit styrofoam in a microwave,
Speaker 1: but I know there's more to worry about than that.
Speaker 2: I want to know how these chemicals in the packaging,
Speaker 2: how they're affecting the environment. Because we know the landfill, honey,
Speaker 2: we talk about it all the time. Everything is going
Speaker 2: into a landfill and we know that once against the
Speaker 2: landfill that that means is becoming a part of our
Speaker 2: ecosystem es ecosystem, right, So how is it affecting our environment?
Speaker 1: Well, when you know better, you do better. Over the
Speaker 1: past couple of decades, there's been a greater understanding of
Speaker 1: things that are around and just in the environment, and
Speaker 1: how long it takes for things to degrade, and some
Speaker 1: things don't ever go away. So what's the plan? Is
Speaker 1: there any policy around this stuff? How has the packaging
Speaker 1: industry responded to these things like what's the tea? What's
Speaker 1: going on?
Speaker 2: And I want to know what we can do in
Speaker 2: our day to day lives to not only protect ourselves
Speaker 2: but protect the environment. How can we consume more responsibly?
Speaker 2: Because I'm gonna be going to Burger King That's one
Speaker 2: thing that I know for sure.
Speaker 1: You love a wopper.
Speaker 2: I love a whopper, I do, and I am going
Speaker 2: to be going to Popey's, Popeyes Burger King. Hear me up?
Speaker 2: I mean for real.
Speaker 1: So let's jump into the dissection.
Speaker 2: Our guest for today's lab is Justin Fouchet.
Speaker 3: My name is Justin Fouchet. I'm the operations director at
Speaker 3: a nonprofit science, research and communication organization called the Food
Speaker 3: Packaging Forum Foundation.
Speaker 1: The Food Packaging Forum Foundation research is the chemicals found
Speaker 1: in food packaging and its environmental impacts.
Speaker 2: So you've been hearing Zaki and I say this term
Speaker 2: forever chemicals, and a forever chemical is defined as a
Speaker 2: p FOSS, which is p fa s and we ask
Speaker 2: Justin to explain at a basic level what p fos
Speaker 2: are and where we can find them.
Speaker 3: We use the term pfos pafas, and it classically sustains
Speaker 3: for per and polyfluoro aalcool substances, and the current definition
Speaker 3: according to the OECD the Organization of Economic Cooperation Development,
Speaker 3: is that pfos are any fluorinated substances with at least
Speaker 3: one fully fluorinated methyl or methylene carbon atom. And the
Speaker 3: main thing to know about these very simply is that
Speaker 3: these are molecules characterized by having carbon atoms attached to
Speaker 3: fluorine atoms.
Speaker 2: And this bond that Justin is talking about is the
Speaker 2: strongest known bond that exists. You'd think the bond between
Speaker 2: JT and young Miami is strong. Well, this is stronger
Speaker 2: than that. This means that it's virtually impossible for this
Speaker 2: chemical to break down.
Speaker 1: The chemical properties of p fos make them very useful
Speaker 1: for many consumer products.
Speaker 3: The chemical structure this carbon fluorine bond makes them have
Speaker 3: a high water and oil repellency as well as being
Speaker 3: very thermaline chemically stable, and research recently over the past
Speaker 3: few years has shown that they're used across many many
Speaker 3: products and really practically all industries. There was a study
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty published by a research group that found
Speaker 3: over the four thy seven hundred different pfos chemicals identified
Speaker 3: by the oecd that are known to be on the
Speaker 3: market or have been developed somewhere at use sometime.
Speaker 2: Justin says that p FOSS has been found in some
Speaker 2: climbing rope, guitar strings, ski wax, artificial turf, and.
Speaker 1: Some cosmetics cosmetics not my skincare, not my foundation, All
Speaker 1: of those things. Basically p foss are there.
Speaker 2: PFIs are found in lots of food packaging materials. But
Speaker 2: p fos are man made chemicals, and the problem is
Speaker 2: exactly what we just talk about. They don't degrade, so
Speaker 2: they stay around essentially forever, which is why they're called
Speaker 2: forever chemicals.
Speaker 3: Many of them can start to break down in the
Speaker 3: environment a bit, some of them break down more than others,
Speaker 3: but none of them really break down completely.
Speaker 1: So we ask Justin to explain what makes p foss
Speaker 1: stick around so long.
Speaker 3: And it all goes back to this carbon fluorine bond. So,
Speaker 3: in organic chemistry, carbon fluorine is the single bond and
Speaker 3: it has the greatest strength that exists within organic chemistry.
Speaker 3: It's very, very difficult to break this carbon fluorine bond.
Speaker 3: So normally man made chemicals in the environment that are
Speaker 3: made up of different types of elements connected together with
Speaker 3: different ways and different bonds. They can be broken down,
Speaker 3: maybe by bacteria, maybe by environmental processes. Maybe they react
Speaker 3: with their chemicals and eventually they turn back into whatever
Speaker 3: they started with, just carbon molecules water. But this carbon
Speaker 3: fluorine bond does not break down easily in the environment
Speaker 3: like everything else does.
Speaker 1: And when we say break down easily, that still takes
Speaker 1: quite a bit of time. Paper takes two to six
Speaker 1: weeks to completely decompose, and apple core takes two months.
Speaker 1: Now contrast that with a plastic bag. We're talking to
Speaker 1: to twenty years to decompose.
Speaker 2: Right, And if that plastic bag has pfos in it,
Speaker 2: those chemicals don't decompose with the plastic, They stay around
Speaker 2: for hundreds and hundreds of years. Over the past couple
Speaker 2: of years, p FOSS has been found in paper and cardboard,
Speaker 2: food packaging, plastics, and in some metal coatings. P Foss
Speaker 2: coatings are applied to these packagings to create a water
Speaker 2: in grease resistant food packaging, like with burger wrappers or
Speaker 2: pizza boxes, and that's the reason why your pizza stays
Speaker 2: in the box and doesn't fall through the bottom by
Speaker 2: the time it gets to you, And unfortunately it's not
Speaker 2: as simple as avoiding one type of packaging or food company.
Speaker 3: Every food packaging material is different. Right, Because your food
Speaker 3: packaging doesn't come with a list of ingredients like your
Speaker 3: food does. You don't know necessarily what's in there. So
Speaker 3: you might have one plastic or paper plate that is
Speaker 3: comparatively fairly clean, so to say, right, compared to one
Speaker 3: from a different manufacturer that uses their own formula. We
Speaker 3: can't point the finger and say this one packaging is
Speaker 3: different or better from this packaging because we don't have
Speaker 3: the data. But all we can say is that, generally right,
Speaker 3: non inert materials migrate chemicals. We know that there are
Speaker 3: thousands of chemicals that could be used in this type
Speaker 3: of food packaging, but because we don't know what's there,
Speaker 3: we take a precautionary approach with how we use it
Speaker 3: to avoid potential chemical exposures that we don't want to have.
Speaker 2: A non inert material is a material that will change
Speaker 2: over time or decompose. An inert material won't change at all,
Speaker 2: so there's no chemical reaction that occurs in its lifetime.
Speaker 2: It may seem intuitive to avoid those chemical exposures. You
Speaker 2: can say well, I'm not eating the wrapper, So I
Speaker 2: have accidentally done that, haven't we all? You know when
Speaker 2: you've eating a burger and the cheese is on the
Speaker 2: wrapper and you want to get that little bit, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I've eaten it.
Speaker 1: You should have left it behind, friend, it's too hard.
Speaker 1: Justin says we should be concerned about how these chemicals
Speaker 1: might migrate in to our food.
Speaker 3: It's one thing for the chemical to be in the packaging.
Speaker 3: It's another thing for it to then actually move into
Speaker 3: your food, a process called migration, and then expose people
Speaker 3: who are eating that food.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: There was a recent study that came out that showed
Speaker 3: that pithos migration increased when the food had a high
Speaker 3: fat content, when it had a high salt content, when
Speaker 3: it was acidic, and during higher temperatures.
Speaker 1: I think I saw something on Netflix that told me
Speaker 1: that those were all the components of good food. There's
Speaker 1: a whole cookbook about that.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that sounds like all of my favorite favorite treats.
Speaker 2: I fat, I salt, and hot okay. And I think
Speaker 2: a lot of us microwave our food when we get home,
Speaker 2: and a lot of time it's in the packaging. So yeah,
Speaker 2: that's not good.
Speaker 3: And the reason for that is because plastics and also
Speaker 3: paper and board are what we call non inert materials,
Speaker 3: which means that the chemical structure of these materials is
Speaker 3: not fixed. The chemicals inside the material are not bound
Speaker 3: and they don't stay in the material. They're kind of
Speaker 3: able to float and move and migrate into the food. Right.
Speaker 3: So when you expose these not in their materials to
Speaker 3: lots of heat, the molecules move more.
Speaker 1: Those molecules are cupis shuffling right on out of the
Speaker 1: paper and into your meal. That's wild to me. One
Speaker 1: of my friends told me that she got rid of
Speaker 1: all her plasti tupperware and only uses glass. Hmmm, she
Speaker 1: might be on the something.
Speaker 2: She's ahead of her time, and Justin agrees.
Speaker 3: A really simple thing to do to avoid exposure to
Speaker 3: chemicals and food packaging in general is to instead use
Speaker 3: what we call inert food packaging materials, and the most
Speaker 3: common examples of this are standless steel, glass, and many
Speaker 3: kinds of ceramics.
Speaker 2: We wanted to learn more about some of the environmental
Speaker 2: and health impacts of pi fas. According to Justin, there
Speaker 2: are two factors that go into a risk assessment. One
Speaker 2: isposure to our chemicals, so how likely are we to
Speaker 2: come into contact with it? And number two is the
Speaker 2: hazard of the chemical, so is it going to cause
Speaker 2: an adverse effect on my body or the environment?
Speaker 3: First of all, the exposure part. The fact that pifos
Speaker 3: are so stable in the environment and they don't necessarily disappear,
Speaker 3: means that the exposure to them is potentially very long term.
Speaker 3: And there's been multiple what are called biomonitoring studies, which
Speaker 3: measure fluids in our bodies. Usually it's blood or breast milk.
Speaker 3: There was a study from the German government just a
Speaker 3: few years ago and they measured twelve different types of
Speaker 3: pifos in the blood of over one thousand children that
Speaker 3: were aged three to age eighteen during the second half
Speaker 3: of the twenty tens dozen fifteen, twenty seventeen, and they
Speaker 3: found that one hundred percent of those thousand children all
Speaker 3: had detectable levels of piphos. Right, this very classic pifos
Speaker 3: in their blood, and the other pifos they looked for
Speaker 3: were also detected as well, all lower levels.
Speaker 1: You know, this reminds me of a movie that talked
Speaker 1: about some of this stuff. What it's The Hulk, Mark
Speaker 1: Ruffalo he's in this movie that talks about p foss basically.
Speaker 2: Exactly Dark Waters. It was about DuPont and their production
Speaker 2: of non stick coatings, and those nonstick coatings had p
Speaker 2: foss in it. And what happened to a town that
Speaker 2: was located near that factory. So they experienced a lot
Speaker 2: of runoff into their water and a lot of people
Speaker 2: got sick, and there was some folks that also died
Speaker 2: because of their exposure to these chemicals. This is a
Speaker 2: true story that was not fiction, that was real, and.
Speaker 1: It had me looking at my nonstick skillet like at
Speaker 1: two brute and it seems like we need to look
Speaker 1: at everything, your zip lock bag, the rapper like rope,
Speaker 1: I mean, just everything. Justin told us there are lots
Speaker 1: of studies measuring p FOS exposure in the environment.
Speaker 3: Most commonly, they measured groundwater. They measured ocean water around
Speaker 3: the world. Big ships went around, took water samples off
Speaker 3: the side of the boat, checked for PFOSS concentrations.
Speaker 1: And these studies are measuring PFOS in groundwater, ocean water.
Speaker 1: One study even measured p FOSS in the blood of
Speaker 1: Arctic seals. I hate to tell you, but the results
Speaker 1: showed that there were pipots in both the ocean water
Speaker 1: and in the blood.
Speaker 3: And the concentrations change over time, so we can see
Speaker 3: when a chemical has been phased out. We can watch
Speaker 3: the concentrations in ocean water slowly decrease.
Speaker 1: So it's not all bad news. What we can see
Speaker 1: is when a chemical has been phased out, you can measure,
Speaker 1: you can detect the concentrations decreasing over time, slowly but surely,
Speaker 1: and scientists saw this by measuring ocean water in the
Speaker 1: pfos in it.
Speaker 2: Justin told us about another study from just last year,
Speaker 2: so twenty twenty one, where they tested the breast milk
Speaker 2: of fifty mothers and they were able to detect p
Speaker 2: FOSS in every single one of their breast milk and
Speaker 2: overall they found sixteen different p FOSS chemicals.
Speaker 3: This included what are known as shorter chain compounds that
Speaker 3: were used or created to replace kind of these legacy
Speaker 3: older p FOSS chemicals like pfos and P four. So
Speaker 3: it's not only just these older ones we've phased out
Speaker 3: that are being detected. There's also the newer generation. And
Speaker 3: that's exactly what everyone should and wants to avoid. You
Speaker 3: don't want to replace a hazardous chemical with another one
Speaker 3: that's also hazardous.
Speaker 2: Yes, you heard that right. Folks are in the lab
Speaker 2: making new p FOSS materials that might not be able
Speaker 2: to be detected by the technology that's currently available. But
Speaker 2: there are some good guys out there that are working
Speaker 2: really hard in the lab to develop alternative materials that
Speaker 2: aren't hazardous.
Speaker 1: So it's clear that humans and our environment are being
Speaker 1: exposed to p FOSS regularly.
Speaker 2: We've found it in our blood, it's in breast milk,
Speaker 2: it's everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's even in the Arctic Circle. What come are we
Speaker 1: doing with pfos up there? So now that we've covered
Speaker 1: the exposure factor, let's get into the hazard factor. Justin
Speaker 1: told us that studying the hazards is a bit complicated.
Speaker 1: It requires a lot of testing and there are many
Speaker 1: endpoints that indicate impact.
Speaker 3: Over the years, various pfos have been reported assigns of
Speaker 3: literature to be associated with various different health effects that
Speaker 3: were adverse. It doesn't apply to all chemical or one chemical,
Speaker 3: but there's been reports of associated metabolic and cardiovascular disease
Speaker 3: and verse developmental effects and fetuses and children, and there
Speaker 3: was a more recent study that looked into PFOS exposure
Speaker 3: and the effects on the immune system function, especially in
Speaker 3: the context of antibody responses to vaccines. This became a
Speaker 3: topic with the COVID vaccine, and there was some evidence
Speaker 3: to show concern that PFOS exposure, at least some of them,
Speaker 3: may contribute to reducing our ability for immune systems to function.
Speaker 1: This is wild.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would have never guessed that PFOS and the
Speaker 2: OVA vaccine would overlap in any way.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I don't like it.
Speaker 2: It's scary, it really is.
Speaker 1: When we consider the body of research on p fos.
Speaker 1: Remember Justin told us there are over forty seven hundred
Speaker 1: types of known p fos, and they're kind of different.
Speaker 1: They're really different, actually. But when we consider where the
Speaker 1: most research is on pfos, there are two most popular ones,
Speaker 1: and they are p FOA and p FOS.
Speaker 3: They've been investigated for decades and after lots of lots
Speaker 3: of research, they were found to be persistent and harmful,
Speaker 3: and they were banned globally under the United Nations Stockholm
Speaker 3: Convention for almost all uses worldwide, So except for very
Speaker 3: very few uses that are limited, they're just not allowed
Speaker 3: to be used everywhere.
Speaker 2: The United States signed the treaty but has yet to
Speaker 2: ratify it, so legally nothing has to be enforced.
Speaker 3: It's really difficult to study sometimes the effect of these
Speaker 3: chemicals because it's not possible or even ethical to do
Speaker 3: science experiments on people. Right. We can't just expose someone
Speaker 3: to a chemical and see if they get sick or
Speaker 3: have some disease in twenty years, So instead scientists have
Speaker 3: to rely on doing animal studies, often with mice or rodents,
Speaker 3: to really understand what the effects could be. We also
Speaker 3: use what we call in vitro studies, so in petri
Speaker 3: dishes looking at bacteria, or using computer models comparing the
Speaker 3: properties of a chemical to other chemicals to see if
Speaker 3: we expect the effects to be similar. And there are
Speaker 3: recent studies looking at various pfos that link them to
Speaker 3: different endpoints, including more developmental effects in these rodents, reducing
Speaker 3: their birth weight, reduced survival rate of some of the
Speaker 3: rodents that we're exposed. There's kind of an increasing level
Speaker 3: of concern for this group of chemicals, has more and
Speaker 3: more people look into all these different endpoints.
Speaker 1: So this is wild because multiple things are happening here
Speaker 1: as soon as somebody says, Okay, we've identified this type
Speaker 1: of PFOS that is harmful, the company says, all right,
Speaker 1: slight change new chemical. So if you're still looking for
Speaker 1: old chemical X, people are now using chemical Y. And
Speaker 1: does that even matter anyway because that treaty hasn't been ratified.
Speaker 1: I have questions exactly.
Speaker 2: So these companies are doing whatever they got to do
Speaker 2: to a skirt skirt the regulations and still get what
Speaker 2: they want, which is us consuming their products at a
Speaker 2: high rate so they can get those dollar dollar bills.
Speaker 1: So if we know this, I mean somebody has to care, right,
Speaker 1: Are there any policies or industries that are responding to this?
Speaker 1: What are folks doing to address these issues?
Speaker 3: So in the EU, at least, there's a law that
Speaker 3: the manufacturers of food packaging are legally responsible that their
Speaker 3: food packaging is safe. Now, the exact way that they
Speaker 3: ensure that they're safe isn't always exactly clearly prescribed based
Speaker 3: on the food packaging material type, and for paper and
Speaker 3: board food packaging in the European Union there's not currently
Speaker 3: what's called harmonized regulation. Plastics, for example, have a much
Speaker 3: more detailed regulation with a very specific list of chemicals
Speaker 3: that can and cannot be used. Paper and board does
Speaker 3: not yet have harmonized regulation for this that gives exact guidance.
Speaker 3: But it is the legal responsibility of the food packaging
Speaker 3: manufacturer that the product that they put on the market
Speaker 3: is safe.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know if I trust these big
Speaker 2: businesses to do us right, you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 2: that's a lot of responsibility and what that responsibility means
Speaker 2: changing your processes, which means you might be spending more
Speaker 2: money on packaging. So if you're spending you know, a
Speaker 2: dollar on food per packaging and now you have to
Speaker 2: go up to a dollar fifty, that's a big change
Speaker 2: if you're selling you know, millions of burgers wrapped in
Speaker 2: that packaging.
Speaker 1: They're saying, it feels like some competing interests there, you know.
Speaker 2: Yes, and if it's not enforced or it's not regulated
Speaker 2: like that, just as talk about the European Union. I
Speaker 2: don't know what they're doing in the United States, but
Speaker 2: I have a feeling it's not always the right thing.
Speaker 1: Mm Because there are just so many of these pifos.
Speaker 1: It takes a lot of time and resources to test
Speaker 1: every one of the.
Speaker 3: Chemicals that can take years to complete the test needed
Speaker 3: on one end point or multiple endpoints. So there's a
Speaker 3: growing call from lots of different stakeholders and consumer health
Speaker 3: organizations especially to look at pfos as a group and
Speaker 3: apply what's called the precautionary principle, which means, if we
Speaker 3: don't have data yet to absolutely determine that a chemical
Speaker 3: is safe or is not safe, we don't just assume
Speaker 3: it is. We need to err on the side of
Speaker 3: safety and rather be precautionary and not take unnecessary risks
Speaker 3: with chemicals we don't understand enough about.
Speaker 2: That makes a lot of sense. I would rather err
Speaker 2: on the side of safety when it comes to these
Speaker 2: chemicals that are essentially going to end up inside of
Speaker 2: my body and bloodstream and everything.
Speaker 1: In the EU, there's a political initiative gaining traction called
Speaker 1: the Chemical Strategy for Sustainability. It outlines goals for improving
Speaker 1: chemical safety in the next few years, and that includes
Speaker 1: p fos.
Speaker 3: There's a group of five member countries in the EU
Speaker 3: that are developing a restriction proposal that's going to try
Speaker 3: and propose to restrict or ban pfos as an entire
Speaker 3: group from entire uses without having to spend the time
Speaker 3: to locate chemical individually. And there's a lot of people
Speaker 3: who are really big proponents of this because they see
Speaker 3: it as being precautionary and also much more effective than
Speaker 3: playing what some scientists like to call whack a mole.
Speaker 2: And there's been similar movements on p FOS concerns in
Speaker 2: the US too. The federal government is starting to look
Speaker 2: at p fos and drinking water, but on a state level,
Speaker 2: individual states like New York, Maryland, Washington, Connecticut, Vermont, Minnesota,
Speaker 2: and a few others are addressing p fos, including those
Speaker 2: found in food packaging, through legislation.
Speaker 3: This has been seen as good from a lot of
Speaker 3: consumer health organizations. It's led to a bit of confusion
Speaker 3: and a bit of chaos, unfortunately, of course, because each
Speaker 3: of these states, they're not necessarily coordinating with each other.
Speaker 3: They're all setting different requirements for which chemicals are allowed,
Speaker 3: what kind of reporting manufacturers have to give them to
Speaker 3: be able to sell food packaging in their state. The
Speaker 3: timelines are different when these new laws come into force,
Speaker 3: and this has really created a headache for a lot
Speaker 3: of the food packaging manufacturers we've spoken to who really
Speaker 3: don't know what to expect.
Speaker 1: This is a great point. You know, nothing's going to
Speaker 1: happen overnight, so it could take a long time for
Speaker 1: us to see the effects of these new laws because
Speaker 1: a lot has to change. So let's take a break
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we'll get into how companies
Speaker 1: are responding to p fosts concerns. We're back before we
Speaker 1: jump into today's lab, let's talk about next week's lab.
Speaker 1: Next week we're talking about how minds Change. We're talking
Speaker 1: to David mcrainey his book How Minds Change, Blew My
Speaker 1: Mind and also totalus Dopamine isn't what we think it
Speaker 1: is and it's actually involved in changing your mind. Make
Speaker 1: sure you check this lab out next week.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get back to the lab. We've been
Speaker 2: talking with Justin Bouchet all about pfos, what they are,
Speaker 2: how they impact the environment and our bodies, and the
Speaker 2: policy response. But what about the food industry. How are
Speaker 2: companies addressing pifos. There's still a lot of unknowns when
Speaker 2: it comes to PFOS research, and there are a few
Speaker 2: reasons why that is. One is that many companies want
Speaker 2: to protect their intellectual property and are reluctant to share
Speaker 2: the exact chemicals that they're using to come up with
Speaker 2: their products. And like we learned in our episode on nails,
Speaker 2: regulations on disclosing chemical use and safety vary widely across
Speaker 2: industries and regions.
Speaker 1: Said earlier, there are a lot of different laws that
Speaker 1: are in progress in different states, So like, what should
Speaker 1: we be expecting, How are companies adjusting?
Speaker 3: It's going to take these companies time. They serve millions
Speaker 3: and millions of pieces of food packaging a day around
Speaker 3: the world, so to change their whole supply chain, work
Speaker 3: with their suppliers and make that switch to non p
Speaker 3: FoST food packaging is a big effort for them.
Speaker 2: Justin told us it's also important to look at the
Speaker 2: fine print to see if companies are addressing PFOS in
Speaker 2: all stages of the supply chain, not just the consumer
Speaker 2: facing packaging.
Speaker 1: Right, your food has to go through multiple steps or
Speaker 1: it ends up at the pickup window.
Speaker 3: Is there packaging or material with PFOS in it during
Speaker 3: the processing of the meat or cutting of the potatoes
Speaker 3: and shipping it? Betwe manufacturers, and so far we haven't
Speaker 3: seen so much discussion about those upstream uses of food
Speaker 3: contact materials and I think that's really a next step
Speaker 3: that these big players are going to have to start
Speaker 3: talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a very good point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we've been focusing on food packaging, but there's
Speaker 2: a lot of that happens before it gets into that rapper.
Speaker 1: Honey, you know what I'm thinking about. You ever bought
Speaker 1: like a sleeve of burger patties and there's like that
Speaker 1: little thin piece of paper with something, Yeah, what's on that?
Speaker 2: And we said earlier on in the episode that you
Speaker 2: can also find it in metals. And so when we're
Speaker 2: thinking about any of the machines that are used to
Speaker 2: grind up meat, to cut up slices, to do anything,
Speaker 2: there potentially could be pifass in those metals.
Speaker 1: Nobody been saying nothing. Yeah, conveyor belts, oh Ben, I
Speaker 1: don't want to think about my food on the conveyed
Speaker 1: I don't want my.
Speaker 2: Back, big big vats. All of these things are coming
Speaker 2: in contact with your food, and you have to think
Speaker 2: about that.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna know my next chicken's name.
Speaker 2: Ah, Henry, you've been good to me. This has been
Speaker 2: a lot. Okay, to be fair, and you might be
Speaker 2: tempted to panic because it's very overwhelming, and it feels
Speaker 2: like there's literally nothing we can do. PIFAs are everywhere,
Speaker 2: They're all over us, They're all up in our business,
Speaker 2: and we can't escape. But Justin says that we shouldn't
Speaker 2: panic and it's not totally on us to manage pfas.
Speaker 3: I really want to avoid people from panicking and feeling
Speaker 3: hopeless and thinking that this is their responsibility. It's not
Speaker 3: something that the consumer should feel like they have to
Speaker 3: take on and be responsible for controlling. This is something
Speaker 3: that the manufacturers of the products that are sold to us,
Speaker 3: and our governments that have mandates to protect public health
Speaker 3: are responsible for ensuring.
Speaker 1: Justin says that the solution to PIFAs might be bigger
Speaker 1: than simply trying to replace pfos with less harmful chemicals
Speaker 1: and instead considering a completely different food packaging system.
Speaker 3: I think it's time that we start to think about
Speaker 3: ways that we can improve the system at its core,
Speaker 3: rather than trying to play catch up and design new
Speaker 3: chemicals just to stick with the same kind of life lifestyle.
Speaker 3: If you think about single use products like paper and
Speaker 3: plastic wrappers and plates and cups, fifty years ago, we
Speaker 3: were relying on reusable materials. We were relying on reuse,
Speaker 3: you know, we were using ceramic plates and restaurants and
Speaker 3: glass containers. And this change towards this convenience, throwaway lifestyle
Speaker 3: is really when we started to see this environmental pollution
Speaker 3: start to begin. And then now we're also discussing all
Speaker 3: these issues with chemical exposures.
Speaker 2: This is such a great point that Justin is making
Speaker 2: reusable containers is nothing new. I mean, when we were kids, reduced, reuse, recycle,
Speaker 2: you know the thing, and it's the original way that
Speaker 2: things were done. I mean, for real, plastics only really
Speaker 2: started becoming really popular in the nineteen sixties. It had
Speaker 2: been around for a lot longer, but not a part
Speaker 2: of every single person's everyday lives. Do we really need
Speaker 2: to rely on single use packaging for every meal and
Speaker 2: every delicious treat?
Speaker 1: You better pour that juice into a glass, get that
Speaker 1: capri sun out of here. But there's also trade off
Speaker 1: with all of this stuff, you know, packaging. Some things
Speaker 1: that we may consider convenience are often really useful for
Speaker 1: folks to prevent waste. On the other hand, right, so
Speaker 1: you may want only one bell pepper or one avocado.
Speaker 1: You brought something to my attention. TT this new technology
Speaker 1: that really puts p FoST to shame.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I recently saw an article in Scientific American that
Speaker 2: talked about a spray on wrapper that is completely biodegradable, antimicrobial,
Speaker 2: and it should help with reducing the amount of plastic
Speaker 2: waste that we have. So the research was out of
Speaker 2: Harvard and they created this device that sort of acts
Speaker 2: like a cotton candy machine and it covers the food
Speaker 2: and this fiber that washes away when you're ready to
Speaker 2: eat the food. Probably won't work for a sandwich, but
Speaker 2: it will work for your fruit.
Speaker 1: That is very very cool.
Speaker 2: And we've also started seeing a lot of food brands
Speaker 2: that are making the switch to other non pfoss chemical alternatives,
Speaker 2: and that includes the company that owns Burger King called
Speaker 2: Restaurant Brands International. They have promised to remove all pifos
Speaker 2: from their guest facing packaging by twenty twenty five. So
Speaker 2: there's a lot of efforts that are being made in
Speaker 2: the food industry to help decrease our exposure to pfos.
Speaker 3: We are only here because we are chemicals, right. Chemicals
Speaker 3: themselves are not the problem. Chemicals make our health and
Speaker 3: our world possible, but we have to develop and manage
Speaker 3: and think about how to use them responsibly and not
Speaker 3: just short sighted. You know, we need to think long
Speaker 3: term about how do we develop, create, and use chemicals
Speaker 3: and when are new types of chemicals really essential?
Speaker 1: Well, you heard the call. It sounds like we need
Speaker 1: more chemists, more engineers, more smart folks to think about
Speaker 1: how to solve these problems.
Speaker 2: And we also need to make sure that the folks
Speaker 2: that are making the decisions about what is going into
Speaker 2: this packaging that they know that we know. Okay, we
Speaker 2: see you, and now we're not going to let them
Speaker 2: off the hook that easy. We as consumers are going
Speaker 2: to be checking in and making sure that they're very
Speaker 2: transparent with the chemicals that they're using in our food packaging.
Speaker 2: It's time for one thing.
Speaker 1: I gotta admit, this lab made me think about things differently,
Speaker 1: and my one thing is going to focus on this
Speaker 1: new device that I got as a gift, and it's
Speaker 1: called the low Meat. The low Meat allows you to
Speaker 1: put your food scraps and waste into this little bucket
Speaker 1: and it basically simulates decomposition. You can add these little
Speaker 1: microbial tablets to it if you want to, but it
Speaker 1: just breaks down your food with heat and grinding into
Speaker 1: basically soil. And every time I am stunned. Wow, and
Speaker 1: the soil even changes based on what I put in.
Speaker 1: I put a lot of leftover fried rice and orange
Speaker 1: chicken in recently, and I said, ooh, that was greasier
Speaker 1: than our thought.
Speaker 2: So you can use that soil to then put it
Speaker 2: in my plate. I guess that's what compost is. But
Speaker 2: every time I'm like, no, you can't do this is alchemy.
Speaker 2: My one thing this week is for everyone to kind
Speaker 2: of look up what they have locally to be able
Speaker 2: to start composting if it's something that sounds interesting to you.
Speaker 2: So locally for me, there's Compost Crew also another organization
Speaker 2: called Apex Organics. So I really encourage everyone to just
Speaker 2: do a quick Google. If you're thinking about composting or
Speaker 2: wanting to reduce the amount of waste that you have
Speaker 2: coming out of your home, do a quick Google search
Speaker 2: and find your local compost company.
Speaker 1: That's it for Lab seventy four. Call us at two
Speaker 1: zero two five six seven seven zero two eight and
Speaker 1: tell us what you thought, or give us an idea
Speaker 1: for a lab. We should do this semester. We'd like
Speaker 1: hearing from you, and I especially want to hear what
Speaker 1: kind of reduce, reuse, recycled strategies you're using in your home.
Speaker 1: That's two zero two five six seven seven zero two.
Speaker 2: Eight special thanks to today's guest expert, Justin Bouche.
Speaker 1: You can find Justin on LinkedIn, and you can learn
Speaker 1: more about the Food Packaging Forum at Food Packagingforum dot
Speaker 1: org or on Twitter at FPF Foundation.
Speaker 2: And don't forget that there is so much more to
Speaker 2: dig into on our website. There'll be a cheap cheat
Speaker 2: for today's lab, additional links and resources in the show notes.
Speaker 2: Plus you can sign up for our newsletter. Check it
Speaker 2: out at Dope Labs podcast dot com, and you can
Speaker 2: find us on Twitter and Instagram at Dope Labs Podcast.
Speaker 1: TT's on Twitter and Instagram at dr Underscore t Sho.
Speaker 2: And you can find Zakia at z said So. Dope
Speaker 2: Labs is a Spotify original production from Mega Ownmedia Group.
Speaker 1: Our producers are Jenny Ratleitmask and Lydia Smith of WaveRunner Studios.
Speaker 2: Editing and scoring by Rob Smerciak and Griffin Jennings, be
Speaker 2: mixing by Hannes Brown original music composed and produced by
Speaker 2: Taka Yasuzu and Alex Sugier from Spotify. Creative producer Miguel Contreras.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Shirley Ramos, Jess Borrison, Yasmine, afifikmu Ilolia,
Speaker 1: Till crack Key, and Brian Marquis. Executive producers from Mega
Speaker 1: Own Media Group are us T, T Show Dia and
Speaker 1: Zakiah Wattley.