tants.

You don't need a PhD in chemistry to realize they are dangerous.

But today's guest does have a doctorate and he's been studying them for some time, as well as their danger to the environment and human beings.

He's Dr. Rainer Lehmann this week on "Story in the Public Square."

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) Hello and welcome to a "Story in the Public Square" where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller, also at Salve's Pell Center.

- And our guest this week is an acclaimed oceanographer and researcher.

Rainer Lohmann is with the University of Rhode Island and he joins us now from his home in Rhode Island.

Rainer, thank you so much for being with us.

- My pleasure.

- You know, so there's a lot that we wanna discuss with you, but I think maybe we start with one of the terms that as a historian I struggled with, persistent organic pollutants and their role in our environment.

Could you tell us first, what are persistent organic pollutants and why are they an issue of concern?

- Certainly.

So persistent organic pollutants basically is a group of chemicals that were produced by society, by industry, and it initially they were seen as very beneficial.

A good example might be DDT, which was a very powerful pesticide, but also things like polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs.

So they're all typically produced and introduced in the '60s, reached really high production volumes.

And then scientists realized that they, the compounds actually didn't break down.

They persisted in the environment, hence persisted organic pollutants.

And they're actually typically enriched in the food web, were present in humans and other predators at high levels, and caused basically toxic effects.

And so then they were banned.

But the problem is just banning them doesn't get rid of them.

So they remain in the environment.

- Do we know how, are they, so the stuff that was sprayed in the 1950s and '60s is that still persistent in the environment?

Is there still a risk associated with their use all these decades later?

- Unfortunately, for some chemicals that is indeed the case.

So I mean, there are success stories like the Ospreys have returned to Rhode Island, even though they were basically wiped out in the '70s.

But if you eat fish from certain locations, they will still have residues of PCBs, DDTs.

And in some instances, several waterways in the US are still under fish advisories, which basically says, "Do not eat."

- So are any of these substances still being produced or has the ban been successful and they're no longer being produced first in the US, are they being produced anywhere else in the world?

- That's a good question.

So the chemicals I started talking about have all been banned worldwide.

Exception is DDT, but that's a different story.

So everything else basically is not produced anymore.

And that's a success.

And concentration RD slowly going down.

We do however, still produce, sorry, acronym challenge per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS, they're still being produced.

We know they have very much the same harmful properties as in they're very, very, very persistent.

They do, they're present in every US American's blood, find them in basically any animal, they're present around the globe, so.

And those are still being produced, even though the worst chemicals within that class have been phased out.

- So they are found in so many places.

And your research, we're gonna get into that in a moment, verifies and confirms that they're found in the oceans, they're found in lakes, and they're found in the atmosphere.

Can you give us a little more detail?

Break that down, I mean, that sounds like they're found everywhere.

- Yes, we call them, yeah, everywhere chemicals, forever chemicals.

I think it took a while for scientists, regulators to realize that if we make specific chemicals that have wonderful properties, that we also have to look what happens to them after we've used them.

And I guess, but now we realize that chemicals that are very, very, very persistent, as in they don't naturally degrade, can't just disappear because they have to end up somewhere, right?

So they get flushed down with our toilets, end up in the treatment plants.

They get flushed out to the bay, which then of course gets into the ocean, so then they start moving around the ocean.

Some of the other similar chemicals are more volatile.

So they get into the atmosphere and now they can be transported to the Arctic region.

And by that means we basically find them everywhere.

- [G. Wayne] What about drinking water?

Are they found in anybody's drinking water?

- Yes, so those that have been following the news a little bit, several states, particularly on the northeast coast, but not only have started regulating these PFAS in drinking water.

And Rhode Island has just passed through the legislator, a regulation to basically restrict the concentration that is drinkable to 20 parts per trillion, which is not very much.

So as an outcome, several places have to upgrade their water treatment to comply with these limits.

- But some people have private wells, they're not on municipal water.

And that's true not only in Rhode Island, but really across the country.

Have you looked at that at all and what people who might be drinking contaminated water from their dug wells or their drilled wells might do about it?

- Yes, private wells is a tricky one.

Ideally, if you're concerned either for your own health, for your children, or maybe some, somebody with a compromised immune system, you would have to have your water tested.

Now, for PFAS, that is not cheap, talking about $300 a sample.

But at the same time, there's no other way of knowing.

So you would've, really have to do it.

There's some guidances.

We know the contamination is typically close to where industrial facilities are, military facilities, places where fire training has happened.

Close to those bases there's typically higher contamination and thus, there's a higher danger that the drinking water might be affected or the well water.

- You know, Rainer, you know, so obviously the concern with these materials is their threat to human biology, their threat to wildlife.

What are some of the risks?

What are some of the outcomes of exposure to these chemicals?

- Sure.

It depends a little bit on your exposure.

So as I said, all of us have it in our blood with no exception, unfortunately.

So those, the first studies that have been performed were done with basically people who live surrounding the manufacturing of some of these chemicals, and particularly in West Virginia.

And so at the high end exposure that these communities experience, you're looking into testicular cancer, kidney cancer, high cholesterol, so those kinds of effects.

Now for us, because we're exposed at a much different level and our concentrations are lower, we are more worried about effects on the immune system and effects on the metabolism.

So potential links to obesity or resistance to insulin, so more subtle effects.

- Yeah, do we understand the mechanism, what these chemicals do to the human immune system, or the human body to actually produce the cancers, and the diseases, and the outcomes that you're describing?

- Yes and no.

So to some degree, a lot of the findings of toxicity are inferred from epidemiology, which is typically a correlation.

So higher exposure leads to more cancer, that kind of correlation.

But of course you have plenty of animal studies in the laboratory where you can follow pathways.

And so there is some congruence of findings that basically suggest, yes, there is endpoints are cancer and the immune system.

- So these substances do not degrade.

Does that mean they're around forever?

I guess it does.

You know, the other term that's sometimes used is forever chemicals.

And why don't they degrade?

What is it about them that they're forever?

- So it turns out in nature there are very little molecules that have a carbon bond to fluorine.

It's just nothing that really happens in nature very much.

We mobilized this chemistry to make particular products.

Teflon is one of the famous examples, but also other products.

And they're very unique properties.

They repel water, they repel dirt.

But they also, the bond is very, very strong.

So there is no efficient, natural way of degrading it.

We can get rid of them through technical means, typically high temperature, strong chemistry, but they are very expensive, and you need to have something that's very concentrated.

So that basically means once they're out in the, wanting to escape, it's very difficult to remove them, hence the cost of drinking water treatment 'cause you have to put in huge carbon fitters to remove those trace chemicals.

- Yeah, Ryan, I think about, I think we've had a guest on actually to talk about the role of DDT, for example, and how it came to play such a prominent role across the planet.

But there's a part of me as a consumer who wants to think, "Well, if they're selling it, it's safe," right?

Are there measures in place now to prevent the introduction of new chemicals into the consumer marketplace that maybe we're gonna regret at the end of the day?

- I wish.

So your point is well taken.

So far, most of the regulatory response to chemicals has been very retroactive.

As in we realized there's a problem and then we try to fix it.

And within my field it's called the regrettable substitution problem.

As in we realized, "Oh, these chemicals are bad, so we finally banned them."

But then a slight variety of the same chemical is used instead.

And we realized 10 years later, "Oh, they also have a problem."

So it's been frustrating for those in the field.

For these per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, at least in Europe there's an approach underway to ban the whole class.

It's unclear whether that will succeed.

And the state of Maine has put something similar on the books.

So they're basically trying to say, we don't not want any of these chemistry in the state, unless it is really necessary for some very important function.

- So if these can't really be removed from the environment, that sounds a bit hopeless.

Talk about that.

I mean, you've mentioned there are some ways that are very expensive, and that would vary, you know, whether a state, or region, or a country had the means to do that.

But is there any hope here in that regard?

And then we're gonna get into maybe some of the things health-wise you could do to protect yourself?

- Yes, so the question of hope is, I guess we see a lot of action often at state levels, but also by the EPA, taking some steps, maybe timid, but steps in the right direction to reduce exposure, reduce the use of chemicals where they really don't, where they're not necessary.

And that's certainly steps in the right direction.

To some degree we can rely on the fact that the earth is pretty big.

So there's some amount of dilution happening and certainly in the oceans they become very dilute.

And over time, geologically speaking, they will eventually reach the sediment and become part of the sedimentary record.

So on really big timescales, they will slowly get out of the system we are in, we as human interface with.

But on short timescales, there's not really much we can do.

- You know, so something that I was not super familiar with in your research is something called black carbon.

Can you explain to us what that is?

- Yes, that's, if you ever have dropped somebody off at a school bus, and the bus leaves, and leaves this big cloud of black smoke behind, these are all the tiny particles, black particles typically, and they're carbon based.

They basically a sign that the engine isn't working well because it is a combustion byproduct.

It's not a perfect combustion.

Black carbon unfortunately has numerous bad effects, health effects.

It's a bit like secondhand smoke.

It also contributes to global warming.

So it's not the best thing to have.

That's one of the benefits if we manage to switch over to an electric cars, electric trucks, electric buses, you get rid of this particular atmospheric pollution problem.

- You know, so there are people, I hear critics who say "Yes, but if we are," to your point about sort of the unfortunate substitution, "If we switch to electric vehicles, there's a whole host of environmental issues and other concerns with the chemicals and processes used to manufacture batteries, for example."

How do we navigate those sets of trade-offs when we're grappling with issues that I think probably most of the public can sometimes feel overwhelmed by?

- It's a good point.

I mean, the answer from me, of course is easy 'cause I would say, you know, look in the science.

And I think at this point the science overwhelmingly suggest that the switch to the electric cars will eventually be good ecologically, reducing greenhouse gas emission, but also reducing that pollution at ground level, particularly in communities where there's a lot of traffic.

- Yeah.

- So in the long game it'll probably do some good.

But yeah, the transition is not easy and of course it's costly.

So it depends on the right political incentives, I guess.

- So one of the questions that we've asked guests who are discussing big and important issues like this is what can individuals themselves do to try to affect change?

And again, we're gonna get into what you might do as an individual regarding your own health, but in terms of changing the larger picture, in terms of production, in terms of these chemicals persisting, in terms of where they are now, what would you recommend to just, you know, an ordinary individual, just a resident of one state or any of the states?

- Yeah, it's a good question.

And it's particularly difficult in my field because the chemicals that I work with and study are basically invisible.

You can't really see them, touch them, feel them.

So it makes it very difficult to discuss about something that is really for us, not visible, not touchable, not identifiable.

Even if I go to this store, I cannot tell whether a given product has these fluorinated chemicals or does not 'cause there's nowhere that claims one way or the other.

So it is challenging, but a lot of the progress in the US particularly on, in dealing with these fluorinated chemicals, has come from community groups.

Often, of course community groups in areas where they had high exposure to these contaminants through their drinking water, often close to military bases, industrial production facilities.

And that has really changed the whole dynamics.

Suddenly, we have legislation, we have state level actions.

So it is actually, to some degree, it's the success story of individuals coming together, non-scientists and basically saying, "We shouldn't be exposed to these chemicals full stop."

- You know, I think sometimes one of the great challenges that folks from the scientific community face is communicating with the broader general public.

When you think about sort of your engagements with the public is there a different approach that you take when you're trying to explain some of these highly technical issues to a general audience?

- As you can tell from the discussion right now, it's always a challenge.

And I think it's particularly a challenge because on the one hand we want to convey that as a concern.

On the other hand, we don't want alarm, right?

So it doesn't help anybody if everybody freaks out about what might be in the household.

But at the same time, there are categories of products where we can say the chemicals are more likely to be in.

And so if you're concerned because of preexisting conditions, because of you having lived in an area where you, were drinking water is contaminated, then of course there are things we can suggest that can probably minimize your exposure.

And I think that's what we're trying to get across.

There are things you can do and some instances it really depends on the state, or the federal government taking action.

But there's also smaller steps you could probably do within your own home.

- Can you get into a little more detail about the health risks to individuals, to human beings from cradle to the end of your life?

And it varies I'm sure by where you live, what your health is over overall.

But just get into a little more detail about what the risks are here, what the research is showing, and what might be promising in the research, and the remedies coming.

- Well, I'll try.

So the thing we have to correct is unfortunately the exposure begins in utero, so in the womb.

- Oh.

- 'Cause everything that the mother has to some degree gets shared with the fetus or the baby that's developing.

So we know every baby that is born comes already with a chemical footprint, if you want to use that word.

So they're basically pre contaminated upon birth.

And then, of course, initially most of the nutrition, but also some of the chemicals then come through breast milk.

Then, of course, then you switch over to a regular diet and then everything changes depending on what you eat.

And then it's just a matter of where you live and what your dietary preferences are.

For many chemicals, you can minimize them by choosing a vegan, vegetarian diet, just because a lot of the chemicals are of concern because of their enrichment in the food, where that means fish, mammals, so on.

So food choices can play a role, but of course also where you live, which is kind of a bit of a luck or not luck situation, because typically we don't choose where we grow up.

- You know, so Rainer, I believe you grew up in Germany.

How did you come to find yourself at the University of Rhode Island?

- Well, it's a long story.

The short one I was here for a postdoc in the US and I worked with colleagues at the EPA Narragansett lab, and they basically alerted me to a position opening up at URI, and I applied, and the rest is history as they say.

- So you work with a lot of different scientists, both in your lab and around the world, really.

I want, if you could have you talk a little bit about Philippe Grandjean.

He's an adjunct at URI, but he is also a professor at the University of Southern Denmark.

And a lot of his work involves the Faroe Islands, which, I have read about some of his work, I've forgotten where I read it, but that really intrigued me.

Tell me about him, his work, and why the Faroe Islands are important 'cause they're a very remote archipelago of islands between Iceland and Norway, way out there in the North Atlantic, but it's a critical place for study.

So a lot of questions there.

Let's have that.

- Yeah, my pleasure.

So Philippe Grandjean is a dear colleague, he's a medical doctor, but he's also a scientist.

And he is actually part Danish and the Faroe Islands are part of the kingdom of Denmark.

So just for setting.

He started working with a colleague of his on the Faroe Islands looking into the potential transfer of mercury from the mothers to the children on the Faroe Islands because the Faroe Island population traditionally has eaten whale meat.

And we know mercury is high in whales and other marine mammals.

Excuse me.

(Rainer coughing) So they've established six successive cohorts where mothers basically enrolled before they gave birth.

And then both the mothers and the children were basically tracked over time, looking into how they develop mentally, physically, to different tests, test their blood.

And so these cores have become very, very influential because some of the current regulation of Mercury are basically based on the Faroe Islands children's development, and the same for the PFAS.

Some of the strict limits that we basically have adopted in Rhode Island are based on the findings that if a child has very high PFAS levels in their blood, their immune system seems compromised.

- So a related question.

You work with a lot of other institutions and individuals.

Why is that kind of collaboration on big picture research, I'll call it, why is that so important as opposed to, you know, the lone ranger thing where you and your lab, you're just gonna go it alone?

There's a lot of cooperation here.

Why is that important?

Not just in your work, but in any kind of significant, important scientific research?

- Probably partially driven by A, that I was born in Europe, so of course I have a tendency to also wanna be back every now and again.

But basically the chemicals I work with are a global problem.

So the US is part of it.

We produce them, we use them, but they're not restricted to the US, they're not even restricted to North America.

And so some of the answers to these problems have to be global.

And there are indeed international treaties in place that restrict certain legacy chemicals because of the global impact.

And I guess ultimately we all realize if we want to or not, that the Earth is a pretty small place, and we have to accept that whatever we do impacts basically a lot of people, not just within our country.

- So tell us a little bit more about your lab.

You have a lot of people who work there.

You have trainees, a lot of trainees.

I've spent a lot of time actually on the site prior to doing the show.

It's a lot of people involved.

Just give an overview of what they do and talk about the trainees part 'cause that seems also so important, passing on the knowledge, the wisdom, and the desire to research what you're doing.

- I don't know about the wisdom part, but- (laughing) - Well, that was my word and we're gonna stick with it.

(both chuckle) - So I work at the Graduate School of Oceanography at URI and by design it's the graduate school.

So we take in students who wanna get a master's or a PhD.

And so my group has, I think seven graduate students, but also two senior staff who basically help with overseeing the analytical instrumentation, make sure that the sample that we collect are properly treated, analyzed, interpreted.

So it's, training a PhD student takes roughly five years.

So it's a lot of people involved to make sure that they have the right technical skills, but equally importantly, that they also have skills in talking to lay audience, that they can present their science, that they find a place in the workforce.

So all these things come together to have the trainees be successful.

- Yeah, Rainer, we've got just a couple of minutes left here though.

I'm curious, what drew you to this work in the first place?

- I guess when I was in my teens, there was a lot of scare about dioxins and this probably was the same in the US.

Suddenly they were found, they were realized to come from incineration, and as a consequence, incinerators, waste incinerators either had to be upgraded or shut down.

I think in the US they were mostly shut down, in Europe a lot of them were upgraded.

And so this notion that suddenly we have these unintended byproducts, unintended consequences, just intrigued me and I thought, "I wanna study this."

And luckily, dioxins are not a problem anymore in most places.

But as we discussed, there's plenty of other chemicals that can keep me busy.

- Yeah, yeah.

Is there a good next generation of researchers and scientists coming on to, and we talk about STEM education in the United States all the time.

Is there a next generation of researchers ready to sustain this work?

- Oh, yeah.

Ever since COVID we get a lot more people interested in applying to oceanography.

And, well, that's what I can see.

So there's a lot of interest.

I think people always realize that we're in a critical state right now of the environment.

Obviously, it's difficult to ignore that climate change impacts are impacting us more frequently, even in our small ocean state.

So yes, I think there's a lot of interest and they're certainly better trained than I was at their age.

- Well, it's hugely important work and we're so grateful to you for sharing some of it with us.

He's Rainer Lehmann from the University of Rhode Island, and that is all the time we have this week.

But if you wanna know more about "Story in the Public Square," you can find us on social media or visit pellcenter.org where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

For G. Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes, asking you to join us again next time for more "Story in the Public Square."

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (upbeat music) (no audio)