Episode 34

Dianne Kopec is a Research Fellow at the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability at the University of Maine. Her biological research documents toxic contaminants in wildlife, such as mercury in fish (and the animals that eat them, like birds and harbor seals). 

Because of mercury contamination in Maine's waters, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has a posted fish consumption health advisory. Since all 50 states have such advisories, the EPA also offers safe eating guidelines for fish consumption, especially for pregnant women, as exposure can cause behavioral problems and decreased cognitive performance.  

For decades, mercury contamination in Maine freshwater fish has denied members of the Penobscot Nation their legally protected sustenance fishing rights. Currently, Dr. Kopec's research is helping to minimize mercury exposure to tribal members. 

With an eye on the future, Dianne Kopec says, "We don't have to accept mercury pollution as a given."  She discusses how legislation today can protect all of us from toxic exposures tomorrow, so that we might be able to fish with our grandchildren...and eat the catch.  

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Episode 31

​Dr. Susan Smith talks us through her faculty art exhibit called Radical Gardening: practice-based research, 2022,  which is on display in Lord Hall at the University of Maine until March 17, 2023.  Her mobile lab display unit is focused on soils, water and plant matter gathered from known sites contaminated with PFAS or "forever chemicals," from Maine to Texas.  
Inspired to stop using toxics in her artwork, Dr. Smith strives to creating her art with sustainable materials from the earth, found, grown and recycled.  
Susan Smith, is an Associate Research Professor of Art and serves as the Coordinator for the Graduate Art Program in Intermedia at the University of Maine in Orono, ME.  Find her on Instagram@slsmithstudio.

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Episode 26

Frederica Perera, PhD founded Columbia's Center for Children's Environmental Health and is a professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health.  Recently, her book Children's Health and the Perils of Climate Change was published by Oxford University Press, (2022).  

Dr. Perera wrote this book as a wake up call, a call to action.  From her research, she knows that children are particularly at risk from air pollution, mostly caused by fossil fuels.  This book is timely because the cures for children's health are the same as the ones we can employ for climate health, which is considered to be in Code Red Alert, by the UN.  

This book is a resource and a reference for both children's ill health (eg: SIDS, Asthma, ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, anxiety/depression, loss of IQ, mental health) and the more hopeful solution-focused examples that have been demonstrated effective, around the globe. 

Governments have a large role to play in the fix, but Dr. Perera recognizes that individual choices influence others and make a real difference.  Organizations that she recommends:
Fridays for Future
Sunrise Movement
International Youth Climate Movement,
Zero Hour
Earth Uprising
Extinction Rebellion
Moms Clean Air Force
The Society of Fearless Grandmothers
The Elders

Dr. Perera says, "Now's the time" to act.  Our actions can alleviate suffering, costly medical treatments, and death.  Positive changes will benefit us by slowing climate change, making green jobs, recovering human potential  and a creating healthier population/planet, for all species. 

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Episode 21

Dr. David Kriebel is an epidemiologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell.  

Dr. Kriebel discusses the known and suspected health risks associated with tattoo inks, tattoos, and the tattoo removal process.  As an epidemiologist, he implores scientists to actually conduct a study so we can use that information to help protect people.  

"Although a number of color additives are approved for use in cosmetics, none are approved for injection into the skin." FDA.  Tattoo inks can include untested toxic ingredients in colored synthetic dyes and pigments such as: mercury, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, aluminum, cinnabar, nickel, manganese, acrylic, and more.  One question might be, why do consumers feel tattoos are safe? 

In January of 2022 the European Union banned toxic tattoo inks and investigators in some European countries have begun studying not only the unsafe inks, but also the possibility of long-term health risks of tattoos. 
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Dr. Kriebel is also the Director of the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, which collaborates with industries, government agencies, unions, and community organizations on the redesign of systems of production to make them healthier and more environmentally sound.

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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 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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