Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central. Welcome back to the day Show.
Speaker 1: My guest tonight is a pro public.
Speaker 2: Reporter whose recent article, in collaboration with The New Yorker,
Speaker 2: investigates three M's use of forever chemicals.
Speaker 1: Please welcome Sharon Lerner.
Speaker 3: I'm Sharon.
Speaker 4: How are you.
Speaker 5: All right?
Speaker 2: Thank you for coming, Thank you for writing this piece.
Speaker 2: This is a testament to investigative journalism. How long does
Speaker 2: it take to write this piece?
Speaker 3: Well, it took about a year, a little more than
Speaker 3: a year, but I was doing other things in the middle.
Speaker 1: What exactly are forever chemicals? What did three M do?
Speaker 1: What were you uncovering in this piece?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I was writing about forever chemicals, which are
Speaker 3: p fasts is the name of the compounds, And basically
Speaker 3: they're called forever chemicals because they last forever in the
Speaker 3: environment and they accumulate in your body. And we all knew,
Speaker 3: we've known for a while that three M made these chemicals,
Speaker 3: and I have been reporting on them for a while.
Speaker 3: What was new with this story was that someone who
Speaker 3: had worked in the company came to me and offered
Speaker 3: to tell me her story, and it ended up shedding
Speaker 3: terrible light. Really on the company and on the delay,
Speaker 3: the decades of delay for them to reveal the truth
Speaker 3: of what was going on.
Speaker 1: She was testing blood and.
Speaker 2: Was finding that everyone's blood had forever chemicals in it,
Speaker 2: and how did three M respond to her research?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: So she ended up she was asked by her boss
Speaker 3: to test all these blood samples, and these were samples
Speaker 3: of blood from the general public. So she starts testing
Speaker 3: them and she keeps finding trace amounts of this chemical PFOS,
Speaker 3: which was made by her employer in everyone's blood. It's
Speaker 3: not supposed to be there, right, And then she tests
Speaker 3: different parts of the country, she tests animals, and she
Speaker 3: finally brings her results to her boss, and in response,
Speaker 3: her superiors were not happy with her work. She thought
Speaker 3: they would be happy, you found.
Speaker 1: This amazing thing. He's a scientist. Yeah, she'sist.
Speaker 5: She's in the environmental lab.
Speaker 3: That's her job, right, And in fact, what they ended
Speaker 3: up doing was questioning her and saying, this can't be right,
Speaker 3: and your equipment's probably messed up, and why don't you
Speaker 3: repeat the experiment? And eventually what she finds is that
Speaker 3: there is another chemist at the company who had discovered
Speaker 3: the same thing in nineteen seventy five, so decades.
Speaker 1: Earlier, and I what you talked about in the article.
Speaker 2: But part of what solidified her belief in her research
Speaker 2: was she actually tested old blood.
Speaker 1: What was that.
Speaker 3: So she's testing all these samples from around the country
Speaker 3: and they all contained pfos and her bosses start saying, oh,
Speaker 3: you think you.
Speaker 2: Get pfas you get pfo It's like we all got it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And they start saying, are you sure because maybe
Speaker 3: you just think it's everywhere right, You just are delusional basically.
Speaker 3: And then she ends up testing a sample from rural
Speaker 3: China and an old sample, right, and it was the
Speaker 3: first one she tested that didn't have any of the
Speaker 3: chemical in it.
Speaker 5: Wow, And she realized, here, it.
Speaker 2: Is someone in rule China who's probably dead at this point,
Speaker 2: doesn't have forever chemicals in their blood.
Speaker 3: And then she ended up testing someone a war veteran
Speaker 3: who the blood sample was from nineteen fifty seven before
Speaker 3: Scotch Guard entered the market.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that.
Speaker 2: What what are forever chemicals in You mentioned Scotch.
Speaker 3: Guard, right, So initially they were in Scotch Guard, which
Speaker 3: is this coating for fabrics, the carpets, yeap and carpet couches,
Speaker 3: and then they had also a product that was for
Speaker 3: food packaging and it was also in firefighting foam, and
Speaker 3: that was the beginning. Now I cannot name all the
Speaker 3: products that it's in thousands, really, and you know, the
Speaker 3: companies say they're in every car and cell phone, they're
Speaker 3: in makeup, they're in everything. And you know, three M
Speaker 3: put out a little spreadsheet in twenty twenty two of
Speaker 3: just their products that contain pfas and it had more
Speaker 3: than sixteen thousand.
Speaker 2: I love that they put out a spreadsheet in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two. And they've known about this since nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 2: so fifty years later, super helpful. Do you when you
Speaker 2: start digging into this, when you start digging into this,
Speaker 2: do you ever just want to go.
Speaker 1: I don't want to hear about this shit?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, when I dig into this, what I
Speaker 3: want to do is tell people.
Speaker 5: And that's why I'm here, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it is utterly depressing, but I think
Speaker 3: it would be slightly more depressing not to report on it.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean your article triggered my awareness and
Speaker 2: then I remember the Mark Ruffalo movie Dark Water, and
Speaker 2: then I remembered.
Speaker 1: I looked you up and you had written about this even.
Speaker 2: Before that, and it's like, holy shit, we got to
Speaker 2: pay attention to this stuff. You know, I have a
Speaker 2: four year old daughter, and I often am trying to
Speaker 2: tell her to stop being so pushy, right, hey, chill,
Speaker 2: you can't keep pushing back, pushing back. But then I
Speaker 2: meet you and I read this, and I heard you
Speaker 2: say that you've got to be pushy to dig in
Speaker 2: and fight against three M that made fourteen billion dollars
Speaker 2: last year a shitty parent.
Speaker 3: Well, to be an investigative journalist, you do have to
Speaker 3: be kind of pushy. So it depends on whether your
Speaker 3: daughter wants to be an investigative journalist or not.
Speaker 2: I mean, you're you're We're not just putting your pants
Speaker 2: out at this point.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean you have to find out things
Speaker 3: that people don't want you to know. And so, you know,
Speaker 3: so with this story, you know, the response I got
Speaker 3: from three AM when I was writing about this in
Speaker 3: twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen, you know, it's this is
Speaker 3: you know, yeah, you know, it's totally different from the
Speaker 3: story I got from someone who is on the inside.
Speaker 3: And it only took me nine years.
Speaker 1: You know, right, right? Is there something that you do
Speaker 1: now differently in your life? A habit knowing what you know?
Speaker 2: Are you not drinking water out of the hose like
Speaker 2: we did in Michigan growing? I mean, is there just
Speaker 2: something beside because look, a single American citizen taking on
Speaker 2: three M or DuPont because.
Speaker 1: Three AM is not the only company with these reps.
Speaker 2: You know, what, what can what can you tell me
Speaker 2: that that that I can do or you can do
Speaker 2: besides being aware, which is a positive step.
Speaker 3: It is, and you know, it is so widespread now,
Speaker 3: as you said, it's some tons of products and some
Speaker 3: water all over the place. So I don't actually I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't use nonstick pants and that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: That's easy, or microwave popcorn.
Speaker 1: That's easy. Don't use microwave popcorn, you know.
Speaker 3: And I have to say, I don't know how it's
Speaker 3: been if it's been reformulated recently, but that was one
Speaker 3: of the original things that it was in.
Speaker 1: I'm sticking by what I said earlier.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, honestly, as
Speaker 3: an environmental reporter, a lot of things, you know, horrify me.
Speaker 3: I would say, actually, the my reporting on plastics maybe
Speaker 3: left me with more of a you know chain my habits,
Speaker 3: so like I don't use single use plastic because you cannot.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, well, and my question is flawed to you because
Speaker 2: it always find I always find a capitalism the onus
Speaker 2: goes on us. Yeah, right, like, hey Sharon, why are
Speaker 2: you using that plastic bottle? And it's like, well, I
Speaker 2: assume what's on the shelf is safe for me, and
Speaker 2: that's not a safe assumption.
Speaker 1: And does does our government step.
Speaker 5: In on this?
Speaker 1: Where? Where?
Speaker 5: Where?
Speaker 1: Where are they on this?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are a lot of government failures here in
Speaker 3: this story. One is that when the three m ended
Speaker 3: up giving in studies that they had done in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy five, nineteen eighty, they finally gave them all to
Speaker 3: the EPA in the late nineties and two thousand, So
Speaker 3: that's you know, two two and a half decades after
Speaker 3: they did them. You're supposed to have had this, give
Speaker 3: it in immediately if you see that there's evidence of
Speaker 3: it real harm. So they were fined one and a
Speaker 3: half million dollars and what they made.
Speaker 1: On that I met that. I make that a week.
Speaker 3: But like in the in the year that they phased out,
Speaker 3: the chemical they made three hundred million dollars, was on
Speaker 3: the you know market, So it makes no sense, so
Speaker 3: we have to make it. Actually, there have to be
Speaker 3: consequences for companies that do this kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Well, you mentioned the E p A and there was
Speaker 2: a you know, there was a new I Forget guideline
Speaker 2: that they've set up recently. And this has to do
Speaker 2: with forever chemicals, and we're using that you in the
Speaker 2: in the article use.
Speaker 1: The term p FOSS, right, but that can mean a
Speaker 1: lot of different.
Speaker 3: Well, p fas is the class of compounds. So and
Speaker 3: and the one chemical that Chris who was talking about
Speaker 3: was discovering was PFOS. That's one chemical in this class
Speaker 3: that's called p fas. The class there thousands, right, So
Speaker 3: p fos is not made anymore, but it's still in
Speaker 3: the drinking water. And E p A recently said drinking
Speaker 3: water limit it's for pfos and PFOA fabulous, great, very great.
Speaker 3: The only problem is one they're no longer made. But
Speaker 3: there are thousands of chemicals in this class and we've
Speaker 3: only gotten a couple.
Speaker 1: So, and it's in New York City drinking water.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's in everyone's drinking water, you know, And
Speaker 2: now the challenges local cities are going to have to
Speaker 2: find a way to pay for filtering this out right, right.
Speaker 3: And there is just a big suit, a big settlement
Speaker 3: with three M where they're going to pay twelve and
Speaker 3: a half billion dollars. And you think, oh, that's a
Speaker 3: lot of money, and it's not when you have to
Speaker 3: actually remove these chemicals from water everywhere.
Speaker 2: Environmental crime. That's a new term that I recently heard.
Speaker 2: And when I read your piece, I said, this is
Speaker 2: environmental crime. Three M has committed assault in US, maybe
Speaker 2: murder depending on the classification.
Speaker 1: Has anyone at three M? And are there anybody in trouble?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: No criminal? Love this story, you know, it's.
Speaker 3: Just yeah, yeah, not in a criminal way. But I
Speaker 3: like the way you put that. It is it is
Speaker 3: a crime, right, And I mean part of the reason
Speaker 3: I think it's a crime is because we weren't given
Speaker 3: any choice in the matter. Right, So nobody said, in
Speaker 3: exchange for this beautiful, stained free couch, we're going to
Speaker 3: put a toxic chemical in your body and leave it
Speaker 3: there forever.
Speaker 5: It wasn't like that.
Speaker 3: It was here's this product and we know this thing
Speaker 3: we're not telling you. So it's like bodily trespass really
Speaker 3: like there, I mean, these chemicals are in infants when
Speaker 3: they're born, before they're born.
Speaker 2: Right. One of the saddest and scariest parts was when
Speaker 2: in the article you talk about and this is going
Speaker 2: to be really sad, but how women actually finally showed
Speaker 2: that they had less forever chemicals in their body.
Speaker 1: But that was after they gave birth, because they passed
Speaker 1: it on to their child.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Right, so this is this is a problem. What can
Speaker 2: you leave us with Everybody here is now newly aware.
Speaker 2: Should we call all our congress people? Should we stop
Speaker 2: buying plastics? Should we Well, I.
Speaker 3: Mean here's something, here's something really focused I could do,
Speaker 3: like fans, the entire audience. I mean, so one of
Speaker 3: the crazy things is that pfas are still being new
Speaker 3: ones are still being introduced, So we still have dozens
Speaker 3: that are being used, but they're still introducing new ones.
Speaker 3: That is like that seems bananas to me, And that
Speaker 3: seems like a very focused point that we could you know,
Speaker 3: do something about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you very much for writing this article. Thank
Speaker 2: you for coming on the Daily Show and talking with us,
Speaker 2: You make me sick. It is available online at The
Speaker 2: New Yorker and Pro Publica.
Speaker 5: Sharon Lerner, What about the Daily Show?
Speaker 6: Now now.
Speaker 4: My guests tonight in incredibly prescient booking by our talent people.
Speaker 4: Is a psychotherapist fancy that best selling author of Maybe
Speaker 4: You Should Talk to Someone, A dear therapist columnist for
Speaker 4: The Atlantic. Please welcome to the program, Lori Gottlieb. Please, doctor,
Speaker 4: you're probably wondering why I've called you here tonight.
Speaker 7: Yes, well, my therapist clearly turned off his phone, so
Speaker 7: I'm sure.
Speaker 4: Now are you expecting as a therapist on occasions like this,
Speaker 4: they always say, you know the Super Bowl, Uh, people
Speaker 4: get so angry and they're rooting for their teams and
Speaker 4: there's a huge uptick in arguments and violence and all
Speaker 4: kinds of other things. Do you expect something similar for
Speaker 4: an event like this.
Speaker 7: Well, I think that a lot of people are going
Speaker 7: to be having arguments. They don't know there's going to
Speaker 7: be domestic violence, but I think there's definitely going to
Speaker 7: be a lot of arguments happening with friends, families, workplaces,
Speaker 7: all of it.
Speaker 4: And you think, because this is a time when the
Speaker 4: country is really focused on this and there's really no
Speaker 4: way to escape it, and so whatever schisms are there
Speaker 4: are going to be exacerbated.
Speaker 5: I think they are.
Speaker 7: And also just because we're so polarized, and I think
Speaker 7: that people don't know how to have conversations about the issues.
Speaker 7: It doesn't even become about the issues anymore, as we
Speaker 7: just saw.
Speaker 1: But we are siloed.
Speaker 4: Isn't the siloing of the nation keep us from having
Speaker 4: to have those conversations because you don't really run into
Speaker 4: those people that you disagree with too much except on Thanksgiving.
Speaker 7: Well, I think you run into them on social media,
Speaker 7: and I think that that's where a lot of this
Speaker 7: is happening. And then people's people get very upset by
Speaker 7: what they're seeing on social media. And I can understand
Speaker 7: when we look at the rates of anxiety and depression.
Speaker 7: You know, we say therapy before diagnosing someone with depression,
Speaker 7: make sure they aren't surrounded by assholes. Right, So I'm
Speaker 7: not going to name who those assholes?
Speaker 4: Is that really a thing? Like I have depression and
Speaker 4: you're like, wow.
Speaker 5: Well, sometimes it's like I understand, OKT, who drove you here?
Speaker 1: Look at who sent you here?
Speaker 7: Because the people who come to therapy are are the
Speaker 7: people who are coming to therapy because the people who
Speaker 7: should be in therapy are not coming to therapy.
Speaker 4: That just blew my mind. So this is people are
Speaker 4: coming because they feel they don't have an outlet for
Speaker 4: their frustrations and the only outlet they might have social
Speaker 4: media is toxic.
Speaker 7: Well, I think that what you see on social media
Speaker 7: again is a lot of this sort of you know,
Speaker 7: name calling and uh and again there's not a lot
Speaker 7: of nuance, There's not a lot of complexity. It's a
Speaker 7: lot of just people fighting. It was like that golf
Speaker 7: exchange on the you know, on the debate. It's those
Speaker 7: kinds of things where people are talking about completely irrelevant
Speaker 7: things or they're just uninformed, and I think that people uninformed.
Speaker 4: And relevant a presidential debate. How do you deal with
Speaker 4: there is an existential fear to this. I mean, for
Speaker 4: social media to keep people engaged, for news organizations to
Speaker 4: keep people watching, they have to ramp up the urgency
Speaker 4: and the existential nature of the crisis. So you're sort
Speaker 4: of torn between these two impulses. One is to not participate,
Speaker 4: which would be addicating civic responsibility, but the other would
Speaker 4: be to bathe yourself in this existential crisis. What choice
Speaker 4: do you have?
Speaker 7: Well, we do have a choice because so look at anxiety.
Speaker 7: There's productive anxiety and unproductive anxiety.
Speaker 5: Well think about it.
Speaker 7: If you didn't have anxiety, you wouldn't be able to
Speaker 7: be safe. That's why we have anxiety. It was like,
Speaker 7: there's a bear, you better have anxiety. Your unproductive anxiety
Speaker 7: is I'm just going to stand here. Productive anxiety is
Speaker 7: I'm going to do something about this.
Speaker 4: See that's so weird because my anxiety has never saved
Speaker 4: me from bears, but it often convinces me I'm not lovable.
Speaker 5: So how how I shared too much? How do you
Speaker 5: just gonna say? How do you?
Speaker 1: I watch it?
Speaker 4: I didn't want to watch the debates tonight, but I
Speaker 4: do work once a week now, so I have to
Speaker 4: because that it's it's toxic to me. I know that
Speaker 4: I have to participate. But how does that anxiety of
Speaker 4: watching it? How is that a relic of something.
Speaker 1: That's good for me?
Speaker 7: It's good for you because then you can take action.
Speaker 7: By the way, I hope you're taking action on the
Speaker 7: unlovable thing. I hope you're getting some.
Speaker 1: Help with that little thing called mushrooms.
Speaker 4: Baby, micro doos away.
Speaker 7: Sorry, but it's helpful because you say, Okay, there are
Speaker 7: two ways you can respond to this. You can say
Speaker 7: I'm gonna put my head in the state and not engage,
Speaker 7: which is I hope not the option that people here
Speaker 7: are taking. And you can also say, oh, I'm just
Speaker 7: spinning an anxiety, I'm doom scrolling, I'm just you know,
Speaker 7: getting all worked up. Yes, that's not helpful, that's unproductive anxiety.
Speaker 7: And then there's productive anxiety, where you say what can
Speaker 7: I do?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 7: You can you can get involved in a campaign, you
Speaker 7: can volunteer, you can please vote, you can get the
Speaker 7: people around you to vote. There are things that you
Speaker 7: can do. The thing that you want to do is
Speaker 7: you want to say what can I control here? And
Speaker 7: that's where you take your anxiety and you say it's
Speaker 7: going to motivate me to do something productive.
Speaker 4: Does sitting in your underwear screaming at the TV account
Speaker 4: as action?
Speaker 5: No, doc, You're losing me here.
Speaker 4: Have you seen an effect of this on relationships, on marriages,
Speaker 4: on families?
Speaker 1: Have you want?
Speaker 4: Is this separating people at a much deeper, more emotional
Speaker 4: level than what we're understanding.
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 7: Absolutely, you know I when I see couples in therapy
Speaker 7: often when they come in the person, you know, you
Speaker 7: say what's going on, and the person wants something to change,
Speaker 7: But what they want to change is the other person,
Speaker 7: the person sitting right there. Sure they don't think I
Speaker 7: want to change myself or I have a role in this.
Speaker 7: And I see that in what happens around these political
Speaker 7: conversations is that people don't say, oh, maybe I am
Speaker 7: not being curious about why they think what they think,
Speaker 7: or I'm not really getting to the bottom of it,
Speaker 7: and I'm just you know, we're just yelling at each
Speaker 7: other about this.
Speaker 4: Are you seeing this in couple in married couples where
Speaker 4: politics has driven a wedge to them that is that
Speaker 4: they can't overcome.
Speaker 5: Or absolutely, how do you traverse.
Speaker 4: A political conversation with a couple?
Speaker 7: Yeah, Well, there's this great phrase in therapy. It's saying,
Speaker 7: I wonder. So it starts with I wonder, I got it,
Speaker 7: I wonder. You know, it's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 7: I wonder if instead of taking another drink, maybe you
Speaker 7: should take a walk when you're feeling sad.
Speaker 4: Right as we unfortunately it's a live show, we're out
Speaker 4: of time. I always say I use that all the time.
Speaker 4: I wonder why you're searching an asshole that usually work.
Speaker 5: Check out Laurie's book.
Speaker 2: Maybe he just talk to someone for calling in me Atlantic.
Speaker 6: I sorry, hurry got Explore more shows from the Daily
Speaker 6: Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show wherever you
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