Episode 8

Sarah Woodbury is the Director of Advocacy at Defend Our Health.   As a lobbyist, she works closely with legislators and coalition partners to advance Defend’s mission of fighting for safe products, food, and drinking water.  Her team has had some first-in-the-world success in a law to ban non-essential uses of PFAS by 2030. To read about Defend Our Health's accomplishments this legislative session, click here.  For more information on assistance for residential well water testing, click here. 

Sarah's  job is to get government to act, and she enjoyed a productive legislative session this spring, doing just that around firefighting foam, farmland biosolids ban, and  testing where sludge has already been spread, PFAS water standard at 20/ppt, water testing, and support on Penobscot and Passamaquoddy safe drinking water. 

Sarah has done similar lobbying and communications work, in DC, for the Anti-Defamation League and Planned Parenthood Federation of America, using her Master’s Degree in Applied Politics, from American University and her B.S. in Political Science, from Portland State University.  She was just born persuasive!

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Episode 7

Mark is the retired Bureau Director for Maine Department of Environmental Protection.  He worked to clean up  Superfund 
sites in Maine.  He speaks of many acronyms, CERCLA and the devoted and brilliant people he had the pleasure to work with through the EPA.  Since 1980, our government has been working to clean up toxic chemicals from air, water and soil in many different settings. 

Mark wants people to realize that they have the right to know if they are living near toxic chemicals so they can prepare and plan, as needed.   The Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) is a great resource.

Mark thinks Mama Earth would want us all to pay closer attention to what we are buying (such as PFAS products) and using, (including our water).  He recommends comprehensively testing residential well water every two years.  For information on financial assistance to test well water in Maine, click here. 

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Episode 6

Jeff Gearhart is the Research Director at the Ecology Center in Ann Arbor, MI.  He has product tested over 100,000 everyday items, including artificial turf.  

Artificial turf is an environmental health issue on a large scale, with around 13,000 artificial turf fields in use today, while we add about 1,500 more a year.  

Artificial Turf as a Public Health Concern:
Releases toxic chemicals including lead, PFAS, phthalates.
Causes environmental warming to air and waterways, crumb rubber infiltrates soil and water. 
Increases head and non-contact injuries.
Exposes children to toxic fumes and contacts and can cause endocrine disruption, metabolism, liver and thyroid issues, cancer, immune dysfunction. 

Jeff also underscores the expense of artificial turf (roughly 1M raised through community campaigns) for fields that require maintenance and only last 8-10 years.  And then they have to create toxic dumps for artificial turf waste (40,000 tires per field).   Jeff Gearhart says using organic grass fields is a matter of, "Reclaiming, our heritage of having natural, safer, healthy playing fields.  And I think it's about reclaiming the joy of sports and the joy of  the community."

Jeff Gearhart has co-authored many peer-reviewed articles on toxics in consumer products and suggests learning more about artificial turf from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Siani and the Toxic Use Reduction Institute.  

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Episode 5

​ Stoneridge Farm, in Arundel, ME, was the first farm in the state to learn it had high levels of PFAS "forever chemicals" in its water.  The toxic chemicals built up from spreading sludge, as a soil amendment, year after year.  The Maine Department of Environmental Protection assured the Stones that the practice was totally safe, so he helped to spread this form of fertilizer on many area farms, as well. But it was not safe.  The chemicals were in the water and feed given to their cows, who then produced milk with very high levels of PFAS.

Farmer Fred Stone, and his team, chose to notify their milk distributers as a matter of integrity and food safety, though it caused financial ruin, for them. 

Fred was recently quoted in the Beacon saying, "My moral compass so far has cost me $1.5 million.  That is what it costs to have a moral compass." It has also cost them their health and the ability to keep their family farm alive, with the value of the land now ruined by toxic chemicals left from years of sludge spreading. 

Fred Stone thinks telling his story is a lot like fishing, "you never know what you are going to catch."  And after the painful loss of their herd, their livelihood and their health, he wants to do what he can to spread the word on toxics in farming.  Telling his story has helped. Presently, the state of Maine is about to have the first law in the country banning the spreading of sludge on farmland (LD 1911, currently awaiting the governor's signature).  Likewise, a newly established $60 million dollar trust in Maine is intended to offer relief to farms like Stoneridge. 

"So God Made a Farmer" by Paul Harvey was played in this interview to highlight the powerful connection farmers have to the land and thus underscore the inconceivable loss farmers experience when their legacy is cut short by toxic ruin.

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Episode 4

Andrea Amico is an occupational therapist who also became a serious activist when she learned, in 2014, that her husband and young children were impacted by drinking highly contaminated PFAS water at the former Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth, NH. 
Andrea Amico is a co-founder of the community action group called Testing for Pease which is responsible for a blood testing program and two health studies.  Andrea is truly passionate about raising awareness about PFAS and has presented on the TED stage, before the US congress, at national and international conferences on PFAS.

For more information on Testing For Pease, click here for their Facebook page, and here for Twitter. Resources such as PFAS Exchange, the New Hampshire Safe Water Alliance,  and the National PFAS Contamination Coalition can be found here and on the Resources page of this website. 

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Episode 2
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​Cathy and Bruce live in Fairfield, ME where the recent discovery of PFAS has profoundly changed the lives of many people.  The couple became citizen activists to try to stop the continued spreading of PFAS on agricultural fields (LD 1911) after learning that their well water tested at 32,000 parts per trillion (when it should be under 20 ppt).  This is the very same well water that filled their swimming pool which was regularly used for years to entertain their 14 grandchildren and extended families.  

Cathy and Bruce's dismay has turned into deep personal concerns.  Is this why she has fibromyalgia?  Is this what is behind his rapid weight loss?  Together, they are fighting to stop the pollution, monitor their health, and figure out what to do with their contaminated property.  

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Episode 1
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Gail Carlson has a PhD in Biochemistry and teaches Environmental Public Health courses at Colby College, where she also directs the Buck Lab for Climate and Environment.  Her research focuses on characterizing local environmental contamination by hazardous pollutants such as arsenic and PFAS in things like pharmaceuticals, personal care products and ski wax. 
Dr. Carlson teaches her students to become advocates for policy change and practices advocacy, herself, at the state legislature and through board work with Defend Our Health.  During the pandemic Dr. Carlson wrote and published a textbook called Human Health and the Climate Crisis (2022). 

The story of ski wax is described in this interview while connecting this success story to what needs to happen, at the macro level, for a healthier planet.  

For more information on fluoro-free ski wax options click here.  And for general consumer product safety information Gail recommends information from the Environmental Working Group.  

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