Episode 13

Patrick MacRoy is the Deputy Director of Defend Our Health, a national non-profit, based in Maine, that builds a grassroots movement to drive toxics out of our food, water, homes and packaging.  
This past legislative session, Defend Our Health helped pass a first-in-the-nation ban on the spreading of sludge (Maine's inadvertent way of introducing PFAS and other chemicals into the soil of farmer's fields).  Patrick talks about this win, along with others.  He explains why Maine has been able to be so successful and highlights the courageous efforts of farmer Fred Stone, who was the first to speak up about the PFAS disaster in Maine farming.

Patrick, with his breadth of policy knowledge around all things PFAS, was able to also explain how the federal government (including the EPAand FDA) and the Chemical Industry (spearheaded by the American Chemistry Council) figure into our everyday realities around PFAS contaminated water and soil.

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Episode 12

Dr. Diana Cunningham, ND, practiced for 23 years as a Naturopath, with a special interest in environmental illness. Currently, she is Director of the Friends of Cathedral Trees Sanctuary and is a Conservation and Restoration Burial Advocate who is an expert on environmentally-responsible deathcare. She talks about Conservation and Restoration Burial cemeteries being simple, relatively inexpensive, and a mercury-responsible form of deathcare. 

Diana has written the 21st century answer to Jessica Mitford's formerly bestselling book of the last century; Cunningham's book is The New American Way of Death: Everybody’s Guide to the Revolution In Lifecare and Deathcare for the Millennium. (Available in 2023).

Diana's wisdom is steeped in a strong science background with an in-depth understanding  the “catch-22” of our deathcare choices: creating mercury air pollution from the cremation of our bodies. Although our bodies are heavily polluted, she states that our bodies can be managed most efficiently with environmentally-responsible burials which sequester mercury and other heavy metals, back to the depths of the earth.

Diana sounds the alarm, regarding mercury in our lives, but also offers some hope-filled solutions to this extremely toxic challenge. She speaks of a new chelating medicine called Emeramide (presently in FDA drug trials), which is designed to help people have access to safe removal of mercury, without the side effects of common chelators. This information is illustrated in the documentary film “Evidence of Harm” (2015), featuring Professor emeritus Dr. Boyd Haley and members of the International Academy of Oral and Medical Toxicology (IAOMT).

Mercury causes severe health effects including Alzheimer's and other neurological diseases; for more information from the IAOMT click here,  and the EPA, click here.  

Diana recommends Minamata, a film based on a true story about Japan's mercury pollution, and cover up. It helps viewers to understand the seven stages of methyl-mercury poisoning and the lasting effects on a culture.  

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Episode 11

Lee Webster is Funeral Reform Advocate who is an expert on palliative care, home funerals and green burials.  Green burials are a simple and non-toxic way to put human bodies directly into the earth--which also turns out to be community focused, earth-friendly, and sequesters carbon, as well. 

Embalming fluids and cremation expose industry workers to concerning toxics such as formaldehyde, methanol, and mercury.  And that doesn't account for the social and environmental justice concerns for cemetery lawn maintenance workers routinely exposed to pesticides and herbicides. 

Beyond being the Director of New Hampshire Funeral Resources, Education and Advocacy, on the board of the Conservation Burial Alliance and a co-founder of the National End-of-Life Doula Alliance, Lee is also part of a group of artists who locally hand-craft items used in green burials called the Funerary Artisans Collective.  
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​Lee Webster is the author of The After-Death Care Educator Handbook (2022), and Changing Landscapes: Exploring the growth of ethical, compassionate, and environmentally sustainable green funeral practices (2017). 

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Episode 10

Lori Gramlich represents Old Orchard Beach in the Maine Legislature, where she has introduced numerous bills to support the health of children and clean drinking water.  

Lori uses her skills as a social worker and advocate to protect Mainers from toxic harms that come from PFAS in firefighting foam and household products, arsenic in our residential well water, and keeping glyphosate away from developing children.  

Lori Gramlich shines as a champion of the environment on the Environment and Natural Resources committee. Her reverence for the natural world, and the health of the people who live here, is what motivates her actions and leadership.  
Some of Rep. Gramlich's sponsored bills have become laws, making Maine a national leader in the control of the spreading of PFAS products and holding corporate polluters responsible. 

Bonus: Before the Deluge -- A favorite Jackson Browne song that underscores the relationship between earth health and "the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power." 

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