This week’s topic: Avoiding Forever Chemicals and Other Toxins with Environmental Working Group President Ken Cook
Namaste, everyone, and welcome back to our Monday interview show. I am so excited to have Ken Cook back on our podcast today. It’s been a couple years. I am a huge fan of Ken of the Environmental Working Group, which he founded, and he is the president of the Environmental Working Group. If you don’t yet know, it’s widely recognized. It’s one of the environmental community’s most prominent and influential critics of industrial agriculture and U .S. Food and Farm Policy, the nation’s broken approach to protecting families and children from toxic substances. I’m so excited to have you back and to highlight some really important topics today which is…
Environmental Working Group Website
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background on the Environmental Working Group
02:59 The Farm Bill and Its Impact
08:47 How to Support Positive Change in the Farm Bill
12:04 Protecting Ourselves from Toxic Chemicals: Tap Water, Organic Produce, and Safer Products
25:50 Enhancing Fertility and Protecting Reproductive Health
31:17 The Impact of Toxic Chemicals on Fertility and Hormone Health
33:44 Addressing the Concerns of Microplastics and Forever Chemicals
45:55 Taking Action: Filtering Water and Reducing Plastic Use
48:38 Advocating for Policy Changes to Protect Reproductive Health
About Ken Cook
Ken Cook, president and co-founder of Environmental Working Group, is widely recognized as one of the environmental community’s most prominent and influential critics of industrial agriculture, U.S. food and farm policy and the nation’s broken approach to protecting families and children from toxic substances.
Under Cook’s leadership over the past 20 years, EWG has pioneered the use of digital technologies to expose the harms done by misconceived crop subsidies, crop insurance and runaway agricultural pollution. The organization has also empowered American families with easy-to-use, data-driven tools to help reduce their exposure to potentially harmful ingredients in foods, drinking water, cosmetics and other household products. These unique digital resources are searched hundreds of millions times by consumers, journalists and policy makers.
Cook is a widely sought public speaker on these and other environmental health issues and is frequently cited for the outsized impact that his and EWG’s work has had on policy debates in Washington and state and local governments across the country.
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Transcript:
Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
Kimberly Snyder (00:00.898)
Namaste, everyone, and welcome back to our Monday interview show. I am so excited to have Ken Cook back on our podcast today. It’s been a couple years. I am a huge fan of Ken of the Environmental Working Group, which he founded, and he is the president of the Environmental Working Group. If you don’t yet know, it’s widely recognized. It’s one of the environmental community’s most prominent and influential critics of industrial agriculture.
U .S. Food and Farm Policy, the nation’s broken approach. I love this. Broken approach to protecting families and children from toxic substances. Ken, we could go on and on about this incredible work. I’m so excited to have you back and to highlight some really important topics today. Thank you so much for being here and thank you for this amazing work that you are doing in the world.
Ken Cook (00:49.902)
you’re too kind. We were just trying to figure out before we before we went live here. It’s been a while since we’ve sat down, so I’ve got a lot of questions I’ll ask you, but that will have to wait for my podcast. You’re in charge today, so I’m really thrilled. And I’ve been, of course, following what you’ve been up to, so I’m not a stranger to it, but just your your nonstop crystal clear.
Kimberly Snyder (00:52.066)
Ha ha ha!
Ken Cook (01:18.35)
advocacy and public education work, human education work about healthy living and the importance of avoiding toxic chemicals and just putting it all together. You’re one of the people that I look to when I’m asking myself, okay, how does it all come together? Kimberly, that’s right.
Kimberly Snyder (01:39.746)
thank you so much, Ken. You are so kind. And this is so wonderful. I remember, first of all, you’ve been on the podcast before. It’s been a few years. And one of the things we talked about was how you were challenging the farm bill, which, you know, a couple of decades ago and how, you know, there’s just a lot of corrupt things happening and who is going to be our advocate, right? How are we going to look after ourselves? Because sometimes these policies and big
Ken Cook (01:42.318)
Sure.
Kimberly Snyder (02:09.25)
food industries and pharma and the government isn’t really looking out for us. So we have this history of talking about that. And then at one point, my juice shop in LA, we had these amazing, like these posters made of the Dirty Dozen, educating families about where to put their dollars, where it’s most effective, where organic really matters and where budgets are concerned. We can scale back a little bit in certain areas, which I wanna talk about today.
Ken Cook (02:23.726)
Yes.
Kimberly Snyder (02:37.122)
We’ve talked about sunscreen, we’ve talked about water, we’ve talked about, my gosh, so much Ken, and you are still showing up every day and challenging and educating. So, wow. Today, let’s talk about some of these really important topics while we have this precious time together, things that we really want people to know about.
Ken Cook (02:59.342)
Well, I’ll start with the first thing you brought up, which is something that probably most people don’t pay much attention to, but it has a huge impact on their lives, even if they don’t know it, which is this thing called the Farm Bill that Congress wrestles with every five years or so. And it’s an over trillion dollar piece of legislation. Over 10 years, it’s a lot of money.
Kimberly Snyder (03:26.338)
Mmm.
Ken Cook (03:29.262)
It goes to farm subsidies, including crop insurance, which I won’t burn out anybody’s brain cells explaining that, but it’s a multi, multi -billion dollar investment every year that shapes what farmers do, how they farm, what they grow that has an impact on all of us environmentally. Certainly has an impact because we’re, we’re still stuck supporting a lot of these commodity crops that we’re not eating.
Whereas, you know, processed foods gotten cheaper, even with inflation, healthy whole foods, in many cases, are still out of reach for too many people. So the farm bill, it’s up this year. My team is on Capitol Hill fighting it out. One of the top, two top priorities, one to make sure that we don’t slash the benefits for low income families that…
Kimberly Snyder (03:59.266)
right
Kimberly Snyder (04:17.986)
Wow.
Ken Cook (04:29.038)
depend on food assistance, food stamps, they used to be called, now it’s called SNAP. And so that’s a priority for us. We wanna make sure that kids have enough to eat, families have enough to eat, and we’re one of the few environmental groups early on that stood up for that. We kind of reasoned, Kimberly, if you’re worried about kids eating food with toxic chemicals, you should also be worried about kids not eating.
And so this is a program that provides benefits. We hope we’ll do better over time educating parents to use these SNAP benefits for the healthiest food that doesn’t always happen. But that’s topic one. Topic two is about somewhere in the range of 16, 17 billion dollars that’s been set aside so far.
Kimberly Snyder (04:56.834)
Yes.
Ken Cook (05:22.382)
It’s a partisan divide here, unfortunately. Democrats want to spend that additional money over five years on climate smart farming, all the practices we want to encourage farmers and give them support to implement that will help deal with the crisis of climate change. And there’s pressure from the other side to take money out of that pot and put it into crop subsidies. So I think really all your listeners really need to know they can dive in as deep as they want.
at ewg .org. We have lots of blogs and fact sheets and analyses about this topic. But the basic question is, what do you want your taxpayer investment in agriculture to look like? And from our standpoint, we’d like to see more invested in protecting water quality, reducing pesticide use, cutting back on fertilizers where we can for the sake of the environment, including
Kimberly Snyder (06:05.346)
Right.
Ken Cook (06:20.43)
climate change and we want to we want to make sure that this big ticket item, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, formerly known as FoodSTEP, we want to make sure that’s intact. So just for your listeners out there, this is a little a little bit aside from some of our work, but it’s in the sense that, you know, we tend to focus on what you can do for yourself, how you can take charge of your health, avoid toxic chemicals. And I know we’ll get into all of that, everything from sunscreens to
Kimberly Snyder (06:28.578)
Yes.
Kimberly Snyder (06:47.234)
Yes.
Ken Cook (06:50.094)
to fruits and vegetables, forever chemical, all of that. But there are times when we definitely, we’re still a policy shop, we’re still an advocacy shop in Sacramento and in DC and other places. And we always encourage people, if you’re taking care of your personal health, don’t forget about your civic health, your ability to be a citizen. Civic engagement is a part of, develop those muscles so that we make sure that we…
Kimberly Snyder (06:50.242)
Forever chemicals, yes.
Kimberly Snyder (06:58.242)
Yes.
Ken Cook (07:20.174)
Don’t leave that playing field to corporations and pesticide companies and so forth. Exercise your voice as a citizen and we’re here to help people do that too.
Kimberly Snyder (07:24.738)
Yeah.
Kimberly Snyder (07:31.682)
Well, thank you for highlighting that Ken. A lot of us don’t know that the Farm Bill was up this year. So how can we support your efforts? How can we support positive change with the Farm Bill? Can we sign petitions? Can we write into the government? What can we do as individuals?
Ken Cook (07:48.718)
Yeah, there were two. I think wherever you are, if you if you know who your senator and representative, my senators, you have to every state and then your representative in the House, drop them a line and say, we want to emphasize protection of climate and and low income families in this farm bill. We don’t want to take support away from that. It’s already, you know, in place. We’re.
Kimberly Snyder (08:03.444)
Mm.
Ken Cook (08:15.566)
excited to see some of the proposals, but there are also proposals to just cut that those budgets and give it all to commodity crops. So I think it just a straightforward note. There are lots of places you can go on the Web to find out who represents me in Congress and you’ll get the emails and send them a note. Yeah. Or and check checkewg .org. If you’re not signed up for our email list, we often tell people on social media or through email about our farm bill battles. So we’ll.
Kimberly Snyder (08:33.41)
Great, great.
Ken Cook (08:45.454)
keep you up to date that way too.
Kimberly Snyder (08:47.619)
And I would also say to anyone watching this or listening this, please forward this show to your friends, to your family members, the message of Ken and the environmental working group, because it’s so important to have this awareness, right? Otherwise things are just happening. Decisions are being made. Bills are being passed and we aren’t even trying to advocate or trying to create change. So.
Ken Cook (09:08.494)
That’s right. If that’s right. If you’re you know, if you’re involved in the pesticide business or the fertilizer business or the grain business or what have you, you have lobbyists at your disposal representing you in Washington. But you sitting there at home now or maybe driving, listening to this in your car on a commute. You know, you don’t you don’t have enough money to hire your own lobbyist and represent you on the farm bill in Washington. But we’re here to help you. We.
We can be your voice and we certainly encourage people just to engage and say the farm bill’s important. I want to protect the environment. I don’t want to just spend money on corn and cotton and soybeans and these other crops. We have other priorities we need to address and they tend to get overlooked. Yeah, yeah, sure.
Kimberly Snyder (09:44.29)
Yes.
Kimberly Snyder (09:55.202)
Mm -hmm. So thank you so much for that Ken. It’s really powerful. We’ll put links in the show notes to the environmental working group to some of these areas of the website where we can educate ourselves further. So now switching Ken to as we spoke about this other part of your amazing work, which is self -advocacy, educating ourselves, seeing how we can protect ourselves. We get a lot of questions, Ken. I mean, sometimes it’s a little bit overwhelming and scary. We think the world is so toxic.
Ken Cook (10:15.502)
Yeah.
Ken Cook (10:20.942)
Yeah.
Kimberly Snyder (10:21.698)
We did a show recently about tap water and we actually cited some research from the environmental working group site just talking about some of these chemicals and heavy metals and things that are in tap water, right? And then so it’s, you know, some people just throw their hands up in the air and they say, what am I supposed to do? It’s everywhere. So we don’t want to, you know, make it feel like, it’s so bleak, we can’t do anything. And so from your perspective, can you have so much knowledge, so much information? What are some of…
Ken Cook (10:46.382)
Yeah.
Kimberly Snyder (10:51.65)
the top things you would encourage a family to do in this world today, knowing that there’s tap water, there’s air pollution, there’s pesticides in the food. What are some places where we can make the most impact?
Ken Cook (11:00.046)
It goes on and on.
Ken Cook (11:05.454)
Well, the overall message is even compared to when we last spoke, I think, you know, some years, not not very many years ago, but a few years ago, so many more options to protect yourself and your family than there were then. And they’re coming on all the time because there’s an environmental health economy that’s growing out of this desire for people to avoid toxic chemicals, eat fresh, natural, wholesome foods that aren’t
Kimberly Snyder (11:12.098)
Yeah.
Ken Cook (11:34.958)
contaminated with pesticides have tap water that they can drink without causing concern, much less harm for long -term exposure to substances that might cause cancer. There are ways for each and every one of these things. We like to specialize in helping people find their way through this confusion and concern. Don’t get paralyzed. Grab hold of this. It’s not impossible. Let’s start with tap water. You can go to the…
Kimberly Snyder (12:03.202)
Yeah.
Ken Cook (12:04.302)
The EWG tap water database, just type in EWG and tap water database. It’ll take you right there. You’ll be able to type in your zip code and find out the latest information we have and we’re updating it right now. It’s a few years out of date, but you’ll find the kinds of contaminants that are in your tap water. We’ve pulled together that data from millions and millions of records that are submitted.
Kimberly Snyder (12:32.066)
Wow.
Ken Cook (12:32.11)
to state agencies by tap water utilities and see what’s in your water or what was in it in recent years. We’ll update it next year. And then we give recommendations for filters to take it out. Now, yeah, different budgets and different contaminants. And so sometimes, you know, the contamination requires something more significant, but you can always knock it down. Even just, you know, a countertop filter.
Kimberly Snyder (12:47.234)
Different budgets. Nice.
Yeah.
Kimberly Snyder (12:58.498)
Yes.
Ken Cook (13:01.614)
for a lot of these substances will do an awful lot. We recommend people drink filtered tap water. If you’ve got a kid going to school, have that pitcher nearby, filter the water, fill up their stainless steel bottle, not their plastic bottle, and send them off. It’s straightforward. It’s obviously a big challenge to get water utilities to do more because they have to spend a lot of money. But…
You can do a lot of this at home and we encourage people to do that. Food, start with a few things. We’re all about small wins, right, Kimberly? You and I’ve talked about this before. Give yourself some victories and build on it. Don’t assume you have to have a completely organic diet to be healthy. You don’t. You can get by. These are mostly chronic risks, long -term. You don’t have to make sudden changes for the most part.
Kimberly Snyder (13:36.994)
Yes, it’s accessible.
Ken Cook (13:57.198)
If you’re eating a lot of fish that’s high in mercury, like you’re eating some of the mid -Atlantic, mid -ocean fish, tuna and so forth, you want to be careful about that because of mercury, so cut down on that. But for the most part, you can begin to change your diet slowly. We have the dirty dozen and the clean 15, right? Yeah.
Kimberly Snyder (14:18.306)
Yes, which I’ve always loved. Just taking a look at the list, Ken, I find great comfort in it because you can say, okay, you know, I’m gonna get the celery, but the avocados are often on the Clean 15. I don’t have to spend an extra dollar, which again is out of reach for a lot of families. So it’s just a general knowledge. You can save it on your phone, which is really great next time you’re at the supermarket and reference it.
Ken Cook (14:34.606)
Yeah. Yeah.
Ken Cook (14:42.478)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for us, and, you know, I know we talked about this long, you know, long ago. You know, if if we’re not democratizing these opportunities, these ways of living healthier and avoiding toxic, if we’re not making it accessible to people, then we’re kind of not into doing it at EWG. We feel like it has to have that capability. So.
Kimberly Snyder (14:49.378)
Yeah.
Kimberly Snyder (15:05.506)
Yeah.
Ken Cook (15:09.166)
Here’s how we came up with the dirty dozen. These are the fruits and vegetables that USDA’s own testing shows tend to have a lot of pesticides in them. It’s a complicated scoring system, but we list the top 12 and we simply say, look, try and find organic versions of these if you can find them and afford them. Organic has gotten more affordable relative to regular food, but it’s still pricier.
We think there’s some value in that if you’re concerned about pesticides, especially for those dozen or so by organic. But then we also we looked at the same set of data and we asked ourselves years ago. Which fruits and vegetables that are grown conventionally. Just don’t have money pesticides on on them because of how the foods were grown, when they the crop was sprayed and so forth. And so you come up with things like bananas and avocados and other things that.
Kimberly Snyder (15:43.618)
Yeah.
Kimberly Snyder (16:00.418)
Yeah.
Ken Cook (16:07.086)
that don’t have many pesticides. Now that’s not to say farm workers weren’t exposed when they were being grown and that’s an issue. We always want to mention that. But at least for the consumer, there are conventional items that you can put in your shopping cart that are affordable, it’s regular price, and you can knock down thousands and thousands of exposure events of pesticides with your family every year. Just like if you look at your tap water,
Kimberly Snyder (16:31.714)
Mm.
Ken Cook (16:36.782)
put on a filter, you can knock down many thousands of exposure events there too. And that’s really the game here. You just want to try and avoid these exposures when you can. You don’t want to wait for the government to ban these chemicals. Lord knows when some of those are going to happen. We’ve been fighting for regulation on some chemicals literally for decades and not much progress. So take care of yourself.
Kimberly Snyder (16:49.442)
Yes.
Ken Cook (17:03.694)
personal care products, sunscreen, cleaning products. There are guides just like the Dirty Dozen and thematically, just like the Pest, I’m sorry, the Tapwater database. We have guides that can help people in all of those areas. And the answer to the question, you know, where should I start? Start in one place. Don’t try and start everywhere at once. You can start under your sink if you want.
Kimberly Snyder (17:26.914)
Mm -hmm.
Ken Cook (17:31.598)
healthier cleaning products and go to EWG. Don’t throw out everything that’s under your sink and overnight, use it and then gradually switch and try things that rate better. Same with personal care. I’ve run into, I don’t know how many people, they tend to be women who they’re more concerned about this. They get it. My team doesn’t necessarily…
Kimberly Snyder (17:43.746)
Yes.
Ken Cook (17:59.47)
put it together with toxic chemicals and health. But women get it. 80 plus percent of the people who come to our website, and it’s like 33 million sessions a year, they’re women. And they’re coming because they want an answer. Just tell me what I should buy or what I should use. And when you do that, you have more and more options now than ever because people keep coming to our website and following advice like they get from
Kimberly Snyder (18:09.666)
Wow.
Kimberly Snyder (18:18.306)
Yes.
Ken Cook (18:29.518)
from Kimberly Snyder and over time you’re building out this set of options. We call it the environmental health economy. It’s happening across all of these sectors. So we try and provide that advice. You can go to our skin deep website. That’ll tell you personal care. Yeah, so don’t throw out all your makeup or your skin care or whatever right away. I mean, use it, but then work into healthier,
Kimberly Snyder (18:40.514)
Mm.
Kimberly Snyder (18:44.802)
Yes, I spent a lot of time on there. It’s so helpful.
Ken Cook (18:59.47)
safer products based on our ratings is, you know, it sounds immodest, but we take this seriously. There are chemicals in these personal care products that we think you should avoid, and you can without having to, you know, line up at Neiman Marcus and buy the most expensive stuff, right? You can find it at CVS. You can find it at Target. You can find it lots of places. That’s the name of the game, right? If it’s not accessible,
Kimberly Snyder (19:07.65)
Ugh.
Kimberly Snyder (19:24.514)
Yes.
Ken Cook (19:30.318)
broadly accessible to people. It’s not a win for the environmental working group. We want to move the whole economy in that direction. We want our list to eventually become unnecessary because you’ll just go into a store and the market will have moved. Maybe we’ll get some regulation to help. And when that happens, when you go to the store, whatever you buy will be okay. But that’s not the case now.
Kimberly Snyder (19:54.818)
It’s not the case now, Ken, and I know there’s thousands of chemicals that are allowed in cosmetics and beauty products that are not allowed in Europe, for example. So again, you say your women are really aware of this. We’re touching our skin. We tend to use a lot more skin products. We’re cleaning. I mean, everybody’s cleaning, but there’s just this connection that I started, you know, to feel many years ago about what’s really in this. It’s going on every day. We start to wake up. And what I love about your approach, Ken, like you keep using this word accessible.
Ken Cook (20:01.55)
Yep, yep.
Ken Cook (20:09.294)
Yeah.
Ken Cook (20:19.566)
Yeah.
Kimberly Snyder (20:24.674)
So it’s gentle, we start to make shifts. Sometimes I feel like people are focusing on the wrong thing. And like I said, people can get overwhelmed. So for instance, people may point out the soil isn’t the same quality as it was. And so don’t buy anything, grow all your own stuff, which really isn’t a viable solution for a lot of people living in apartments, living in cities, living busy lives, right? So then it’s like, what is the message you’re trying to say? Don’t eat any vegetables, we need the fiber, we need it. You know, maybe.
Ken Cook (20:53.934)
Yeah.
Kimberly Snyder (20:54.306)
There’s some shifts in the soil, but the message is do your best, buy as much organic as you can with your budget, be educated, still eat the plants, still eat the vegetables.
Ken Cook (21:05.166)
Yeah, that’s exactly right. And we have seen surveys where people are confused about some of this, where they think, well, if I’m not completely organic in my diet, it doesn’t do any good. That’s not the case. Or in the case of personal care products, once again, your skin is your largest organ. We have focused on the fact that a lot of these chemicals do penetrate.
Kimberly Snyder (21:13.666)
Yes.
Kimberly Snyder (21:20.706)
Right.
Ken Cook (21:34.318)
and get into your body. We’ve conducted some tests of people’s blood and urine and found some of these cosmetic chemicals that are of concern and so have federal scientists. So it’s not an idle concern, but it’s also something you can over time, you know, incorporate into your everyday life. You don’t have to panic about it. And there are more and more companies coming out now. We have a licensing program, a certification program we started a few years ago called EWG verified.
Kimberly Snyder (21:53.442)
Yes.
Ken Cook (22:04.302)
And it’s really grown now. There’s thousands of products and hundreds of companies in the program. That’s where we went the extra mile and said, OK, we’re going to we want to look beyond ingredients. We want to know the exact formula. We want to know everything that’s in your product. That’s not obvious on the label. And the other thing is we want full transparency. And I’ll give the example of my friend, Michelle Pfeiffer, who’s on our on our board. Michelle decided to start a fragrance company.
Kimberly Snyder (22:04.738)
Yes.
Ken Cook (22:32.942)
And she insisted that the word fragrance be completely changed for purposes of her company. What fragrance means on consumer products generally, it can be cleaning products, it can be personal care. If you see the word fragrance, that can stand for literally hundreds of chemicals hidden behind that word because it’s a loophole in federal regulation. So you say, you’ll see all these ingredients, then you’ll see fragrance.
What Michelle said was, no, no, no, I’m not going to list fragrance. I’m going to list all the ingredients that are in the fragrance I make. And then I’m going to make sure that EWG reviews them all to make sure they meet their verified standard. That kind of leadership, that kind of thinking, like, let’s break away from this non -transparency, from this secrecy. That is happening across many sectors now. There are a lot of companies out there that are saying, you know what?
Kimberly Snyder (23:08.162)
Mmm.
Kimberly Snyder (23:12.674)
Mmm.
Kimberly Snyder (23:28.61)
Yes.
Ken Cook (23:31.246)
It’s no problem to meet government standards because they’re so minimal. We want to meet the standards that complete our mission of delivering the most healthful ingredients and products we can possibly do. A lot of them are working with us. A lot of them are doing it on their own. It’s sometimes hard to interpret all of the conflicting information. There is some greenwashing out there, so you want to be studious. But if…
But if you really give it just a little bit of effort, these options are out there. I’ve been telling people, you know, we’re at a stalemate in many ways with respect to passing environmental laws and regulation. We have been for quite some time. We’re not making the progress federally that we used to make. Here in California, we’re still doing amazing things. But the national system is kind of in the grip of the regulated industries. Their immune system kicked in and slowed down.
Kimberly Snyder (24:14.786)
Mmm.
Ken Cook (24:29.806)
law and regulation. But in the private sector, people are moving ahead on the strength of consumer interest. So, you know, we like to say you can go faster and deeper with your health regimen if you pay attention to the companies that are doing the right thing. And don’t worry about the government regulations if they’re not catching up because they’re not catching up.
Kimberly Snyder (24:37.378)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Kimberly Snyder (24:47.522)
Mm.
Kimberly Snyder (24:52.45)
Right, so we can make our own choices day to day, because there’s so many choices that we’re making from in the kitchen to the bathroom to the household. So speaking of which, Ken, I want to ask you a question that’s very relevant for our particular community. And this comes up a lot in questions. It comes up a lot in my social media accounts, fertility. So we’re seeing a lot of concerns these days around issues with fertility. We’re seeing reports about sperm motility going down.
Ken Cook (24:54.03)
Yeah.
Ken Cook (25:00.238)
Totally.
Ken Cook (25:11.438)
Yeah.
Kimberly Snyder (25:22.114)
We hear about microplastics. We hear about forever chemicals. There are some disturbing trends with even younger and younger couples starting to struggle. And I’m sure you have some opinions, ideas around this we’d love to hear. First of all, what’s going on? And second of all, what can we do if you fall in this category, if you’re not yet thinking about having a child, but maybe down the road, five, 10 years you would like to, or maybe you are currently struggling and you know someone who’s struggling.
Ken Cook (25:32.206)
Yeah.
Kimberly Snyder (25:50.242)
What are some of the ways in which we can enhance male and female fertility and protect ourselves?
Ken Cook (25:56.686)
Well, you know, to step back, there is an increase in these problems of reduced fertility, greater difficulty carrying babies to term, healthy babies to term and delivering sperm counts going down, motility, the activity of the sperm, not what it used to be. And, you know, this is not because of evolution.
Kimberly Snyder (26:26.946)
Right.
Ken Cook (26:27.213)
This is not something that has happened over the course of a few decades because the human species has evolved. It’s something that’s in the environment. Now, what is it? Is it nutrition? Is it something to do with our, you know, BMI? What is it? And toxic chemicals, including pesticides, come to the forefront. I mean, study after study.
Kimberly Snyder (26:50.21)
Pesticides. Yes.
Ken Cook (26:55.662)
raises concerns about it. And the most telling thing that’s changed, I would say certainly over the past 10 to 15 years, so many medical professional associations have come out and said, there’s a concern, this is real. One I would offer to people, because I know everyone’s heard of endocrine disrupting chemicals. Well, if you wanted to read sort of…
confirming information that you should try and avoid chemical exposures. If you wanted to have some backup for that and you were especially aware of chemicals that mess with our hormones, the endocrine system that produces our hormones, if you’re worried about that, if you’re worried about endocrine disrupting chemicals, my advice is find out what endocrinologists are saying. The Endocrine Society, about 20 ,000 members,
These are the scientists and practitioners, the medical professionals and researchers who specialize in looking at our hormones. And there are an awful lot of hormonal aspects, obviously, to many of these chronic conditions, including the concerns about being able to get pregnant, carry a baby to term and so forth. The Endocrine Society has made very strong statements that this is real. These…
Kimberly Snyder (28:01.026)
Mm.
Ken Cook (28:20.494)
Outside artificial chemicals are coming into our bodies, sometimes by food, sometimes by pollution, sometimes by contamination of products, whatever the case may be, there are lots of them. And the science is increasingly showing that they affect our hormone system in adverse ways. So my advice for people who are concerned about this is, and especially for women, start early.
Kimberly Snyder (28:24.45)
Mm.
Kimberly Snyder (28:40.802)
Right.
Ken Cook (28:50.126)
Start, you know, what, start leading your healthy life now. It will pay dividends when it comes time, whenever you choose, if you choose to start having kids. You’ll already have the foundation, the behavioral foundation, the life patterns, the, you know, the lifestyle preferences and habits that will dramatically reduce these toxic chemical exposures and just…
Kimberly Snyder (28:54.466)
Yes.
Kimberly Snyder (29:18.946)
Yes.
Ken Cook (29:20.27)
in that way, reduce the chances that something you might be exposed to in your home through your everyday habits are not going to be causing these problems. You can rule out those factors. There may be other factors, but you can rule those out. And we recommend that people do that. For men, it’s a tougher sell. Guys are kind of stubborn when it comes to thinking about toxic chemicals affecting their health.
Kimberly Snyder (29:32.258)
Right.
Kimberly Snyder (29:36.162)
Mm -hmm.
Ken Cook (29:48.942)
but the fact of the matter is it’s real. And we strongly recommend that, you know, they take a look at their diet, at their personal care habits, at, you know, how they, and then you’ve been preaching this for a long time. You know, mental wellness, physical activity, these are all critical parts. We don’t tend to talk about that too much at EWG, but I always try and throw it in obviously, because if you’re,
Kimberly Snyder (30:07.522)
Yes.
Ken Cook (30:18.062)
Taking care of yourself, you have to do it in a holistic way.
Kimberly Snyder (30:21.826)
That’s right. Thank you, Ken. Thank you so much for bringing that up. And this is what.
Ken Cook (30:24.27)
Well, thank you. You’re the one whose lead I follow. Again, if I’m feeling a little sluggish, I’m like, well, you know, Kimberly’s probably on the yoga mat and here I am at my desk. So.
Kimberly Snyder (30:39.522)
Well, emotional wellbeing is one of our cornerstones, Ken, and a lot of my work now is around heart coherence, heart -brain communication. And what we’re seeing is this ability to regulate, because the heart is the main biological oscillator. So it starts to change your perceptions and thoughts and bypass stress responses. So there was a research study, there’s so much research around this, but starting to come more into this regulation through your heart, cortisol went down 23 % and DHEA went up 100 % in one month.
So we can start to create this hormonal balance and changes from the inside. And again, in conjunction with everything that we’re talking about here, because it can feel stressful to think about the world we live in, can feel very stressful if you’re struggling to conceive or any of these other aspects. So wanna make sensible, take these sensible steps, Ken, as you mentioned, and there’s so many resources and directions we can go in. Let’s pinpoint for a moment microplastics.
Ken Cook (31:17.902)
Right.
Ken Cook (31:34.126)
Yeah.
Kimberly Snyder (31:34.658)
because some people are asking, okay, you mentioned certain types of fish, but now we hear reports that all, pretty much all waterways are so polluted. Is there any such thing as, you know, it’s hard to say the word safe, but seafood these days when there’s so much pollution.
Ken Cook (31:50.574)
Well, you know, with microplastics, we’ve got a mess on our hands. And it even starts, my team has been looking into, you know, the very basic questions like, how do you measure microplastics? How do you identify them, for example, in human tissue? And it turns out that, ultimate irony, the world is so contaminated.
Kimberly Snyder (31:56.066)
Yeah.
Kimberly Snyder (32:09.986)
Mmm.
Ken Cook (32:18.19)
with microplastics that it’s hard to get reliable results when you try and measure contamination with microplastics because they’re everywhere. They’re on lab coats. You have to be careful what lab coat you wear. You have to make sure you use certain vessels to collect samples. If you’re looking at a specimen of any kind or if you’re just trying even even if it’s water or maybe studying a fish, you can’t just put it into the normal collection equipment because it has microplastics in it.
Kimberly Snyder (32:27.522)
Mmm.
Ken Cook (32:48.494)
And you have to basically have a clean room as opposed to just a regular laboratory to make sure that contamination doesn’t enter in. And there are all kinds of other. So the long and the short of it is we’re just on the edge, Kimberly, of really understanding what this phenomenon is. Several studies I’ve seen are raising concerns that any microplastics can be neurotoxic. Well, that
Kimberly Snyder (32:48.674)
My goodness.
Ken Cook (33:17.07)
That’s bad news because we know that they’re likely to be in people. They’re likely to be in food we eat, water we drink. We have to develop the science to even measure it. But unfortunately, here we are again, dealing with the consequences of what is now a gigantic industry that should be taking care of its own mess, should have known about it long ago.
Kimberly Snyder (33:25.442)
Yeah.
Kimberly Snyder (33:41.41)
Mm.
Right.
Ken Cook (33:46.094)
ago and probably did just didn’t tell us because there was too much money in it. We’re trying to deal with that. So my my advice on microplastics at this point is, you know, look, it it seems as if it’s fairly ubiquitous. We have some questions about measurement. We know it’s in water. We know it’s in fish species. We we’ve we’ve seen evidence of that identifying the plastic is a problem.
Kimberly Snyder (33:51.042)
Ugh.
Ken Cook (34:13.55)
being able to measure how much is there is a problem. I don’t say any of that with the sense that, well, we don’t have to worry about that until we get the science in. For me, it’s the exact opposite. It’s like, no, this is a mess. Once again, the human footprint all over the planet is way too heavy. And my feeling is we’ll know a lot more in the next…
Kimberly Snyder (34:37.089)
Right.
Ken Cook (34:41.518)
two to three to five years. My guess is we’ll learn that we’re all exposed. My guess is we’ll learn that the exposures are not without consequences. We don’t know what they are yet because all of these plastics are legal. You can make as much plastic as you want. You can use it for almost any product you want, how it ends up in the environment, except for minimal recycling programs that mostly don’t work.
We know it ends up circulating into the biosphere, and that’s a problem.
Kimberly Snyder (35:15.234)
Right? Or would you say, Ken, would you recommend to people to reduce their consumption of seafood these days? It’s hard to make that statement. Yeah, that’s true.
Ken Cook (35:23.246)
You know, I’m not in a position to say that because seafood is so important to so many people. Myself, you know, I’ve been vegetarian for the most part for years now, and except I do eat fish. And I do worry about that. We don’t have a complete picture of how contaminated fish are with microplastics. We know that they’re contaminated with these forever chemicals because we’ve published multiple peer reviewed studies.
Kimberly Snyder (35:49.186)
Right.
Ken Cook (35:52.878)
by EWG scientists documenting it, fish and wildlife all over the world. So again, look, I don’t want to sugarcoat it. I want people to get paralyzed, but I also don’t want people to think that just because we have some great new product options out there that are safer, that we don’t have still have a mess to clean up. And that’s where your engagement as an environmentalist is so important. And environmentalists are not…
there to wag their fingers at you and tell you what you should do and not do. Environmentalists, our job is to make connections and to tell people that how we live our lives, how we, the materials we use, that we buy, we bring into our home, they have an impact. And so be conscious of it. If you can cut back on plastics, certainly single use plastics, we try and do that here at home and at work. Please, please try and do that. Don’t add to the load.
But we also. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, or even a glass container that you can reuse again, you know, you don’t always want to set you don’t want to set a kid off to grade school with a glass container. So right there, there are issues. But but I do think that the big lesson for us is we have not paid attention.
Kimberly Snyder (36:49.186)
Right, you mean like Ziploc bags, things that are Saran wraps.
Ken Cook (37:15.694)
to this beautiful blue marble we live on that is one big integrated system over time. Pollution that’s released in China ends up over here. Contaminants that we release here end up in Europe. European trash ends up in Asia. On and on, right? There’s no planet B. This is it. And so I…
Kimberly Snyder (37:40.578)
Right.
Ken Cook (37:42.606)
I urge people to, you know, as you’re thinking through your own personal commitment to your own personal health, recognize that as you do that, you’re benefiting the environment and then ask yourself, okay, if this is something I’m kind of into, kind of excited about, advancing my personal health, my family’s health, what can I do to sort of advance, you know, through policy, through support for good companies?
Whatever it may be, advanced the broader cause of reducing this toxic load. Microplastics, PFAS, all the rest.
Kimberly Snyder (38:13.154)
Yes. Well, remember, well, we’re all in this, aren’t we, Ken? We’re all in this. Like you said, it’s integrated. There is no hard line between this country’s pollution and that country’s pollution.
Ken Cook (38:19.566)
Yeah, until we’re not. Yeah. Yeah.
Ken Cook (38:29.006)
No, no, there’s no, you know, when when when air drifts, you know, from California eastward, there’s it doesn’t hit the the map boundary and stop there.
Kimberly Snyder (38:41.41)
Yeah, or the oceans for that case or any of it.
Ken Cook (38:44.014)
Yeah, we’re all connected in that way. That’s the beauty of life when it’s respected. And when it’s not respected, that’s the risk we impose on one another.
Kimberly Snyder (38:56.778)
Can we talk about forever chemicals for a moment because it’s such a scary term and it’s been thrown out there. And so what, first of all, what are they briefly? And second of all, what are some of the top ways in which we can avoid them? Because they’re in water, they’re in certain foods, environments.
Ken Cook (39:00.398)
Yeah.
Ken Cook (39:11.438)
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure. So these forever chemicals are sometimes called PFAS, P F A S. You’ll see that abbreviation. That’s for per and polyfluoroalkyl substances. So just stick with PFAS. Right. Our forever chemicals. These came about, you know, after World War Two, the 3M Corporation, DuPont Corporation, companies later in in.
Kimberly Snyder (39:30.562)
Yeah.
Ken Cook (39:43.118)
other parts of the world found this way of binding fluorine atoms to carbon chains that made these distinctive molecules that shed water, shed grease, were very good as agents in some cases to use to put out fuel fires because the nature of the compound was that they would
They would be effective in those circumstances. They’re used in semiconductors. They’re used in all kinds of things, whether it’s high temperature or need for long -term stability. They’re very stable. They don’t break down from air or water or light. Once you’re exposed in your body, and you can be exposed in any number of ways, I’ll tell you some of them, but some of these chemicals are in your body for
Kimberly Snyder (40:23.714)
Mm.
Ken Cook (40:40.43)
six or seven years, half of it is still left. If you have five units when you start, seven years from now, you’ll have two and a half units unless you’ve been exposed further. So it stays with you and doesn’t break down. And they have all these toxic properties. So they were used in the manufacture of Teflon. They were used in the manufacture of Scotchgard and lots of other Gore -Tex and lots of other sub brand names. And over time,
Kimberly Snyder (40:48.706)
Wow, we’re not fully metabolizing. Yeah.
Kimberly Snyder (41:03.714)
Ugh.
Ken Cook (41:10.542)
emissions from the factories where these products were made and the breakdown of the products in landfills or even in your home, shedding dust and so forth. You know, when your waterproof jacket suddenly is no longer waterproof, well, that stuff is somewhere and it might be might be on your couch, might be on your rug. The floor wax that’s used in many institutional settings has this stuff in it. So next time you’re in an airport and you see somebody blocking off an area and using that that.
Kimberly Snyder (41:39.874)
Ugh. Get away.
Ken Cook (41:40.206)
Floor waxer, they’re right. It’s everywhere again, just like the microplastics. And the problem is that it gets in food, definitely gets in drinking water. And we’ve got some good news emerging there. Drinking water for decades was completely unregulated. We didn’t really know how widely it…
Kimberly Snyder (42:04.898)
Mm.
Ken Cook (42:05.87)
PFAS contaminated our tap water. EWG has summarized data that was collected finally by EPA, really just starting in about 2014. It’s in the water of maybe 200 million Americans at a level that we don’t think is okay. But EPA has come out recently with the toughest standards we imagine they could have come out with to regulate six of these different PFAS chemicals. And by the way, there are thousands of them. We don’t even know how many are in use in commerce.
Kimberly Snyder (42:19.554)
Ugh.
Ken Cook (42:35.15)
But EPA has come in and has cracked down and said, you have to put these half a dozen or so PFAS chemicals, you have to control them down to the level of four parts per trillion, per trillion. So it’s a very, very small amount. But EPA basically says, look, there’s no safe level of these chemicals in tap water. So those regulations were proposed in April. And.
Kimberly Snyder (42:35.266)
Wow.
Ken Cook (43:02.606)
We supported it. I was there for the release of the, for the announcement of the regulations. I was proud to be there. We’ve worked on this topic for 24 years.
Kimberly Snyder (43:12.642)
My goodness. Congratulations kids, it sounds like a big win. Yeah.
Ken Cook (43:13.838)
And so, yeah, it was a win, but the water utilities and chemical companies are already suing to block this regulation. Right. Speaking of water.
Kimberly Snyder (43:24.194)
come on.
Wait, so how does it get into the food supply? Processed foods, yeah.
Ken Cook (43:31.502)
We’re not entirely sure we know all the ways. Sometimes this is one of the ways that upsets me the most. Suits sludge sometimes is applied on farmland and there are instances where, you know, dairy farm or vegetable farm, the animals consume it or get sprayed on fruits and vegetables and it can contaminate in that way. We think it gets into fish through the water going up the food chain.
Kimberly Snyder (44:00.482)
Wait.
Ken Cook (44:01.166)
And some of it may migrate from various packaging materials that have PFAS in them that you find in the grocery store. It’s just, you know, it’s just so ubiquitous. When we sat down again, it was twenty four years ago, probably. DuPont scientists came to see us because we were raising a lot of concerns. We were making trouble for them. And when they came to see us, we I asked them.
Kimberly Snyder (44:07.81)
Right.
Ken Cook (44:30.318)
And my scientists asked them, well, what do you think the main sources are that have resulted in the fact that 98 % of Americans have these chemicals in their blood? Where’s it coming from? And they didn’t really know for sure. They had some ideas, some of, again, pollution dumping the waste into rivers. Well, that’s going to be a problem. Air pollution coming out of the plants that made or use these PFAS chemicals.
another source of contamination, obviously, but putting them in products, the decay of the products in landfills and again, around your home, in automobiles, it was everywhere. And so I think over time, what we’re seeing is a push to find alternatives to these chemicals, knowing that we’ll probably never pin down all of the exposure routes. We’re having a special problem getting detection limits low enough to find it in
Kimberly Snyder (45:13.346)
My gosh.
Ken Cook (45:29.454)
a lot of different foods. So FDA is still saying we’re not finding it in food. We’re concerned that they don’t have the low enough analytical detection limits, so they’re missing it. But that’s just our allegation. So this is one where filter your water, go to our website. We have recommendations. Don’t wait for the government if you can afford it. Certain forms of
Kimberly Snyder (45:48.61)
There we go. Yes. Yes, I love it.
Ken Cook (45:55.982)
PFAS, if they’re in your water, and you can go to our website and find out. You can use a countertop filter and that will take out a lot of the PFOA and PFOS, two of the PFAS chemicals. It’s such an alphabet soup. So you can do some things yourself that are affordable right off the bat with simple carbon filtration. But it’s a global disaster. Governments all around the world now, Kimberly, are trying to find out.
what can we do about these PFAS chemicals? It’s the same with microplastics. I would say those two are probably the two most notorious problems that government regulators, independent scientists around the world are trying to solve and that industry is pushing back and saying, what’s the hurry?
Kimberly Snyder (46:29.282)
Mm.
Kimberly Snyder (46:47.874)
Well, thank God for your work, Ken. Thank you so much for highlighting these issues. If not you, who is creating all these incredible teams and lobbyists for the good and bringing this amazing attention, Ken? I can’t say how much we, all of us appreciate your amazing work. These databases, as you mentioned, the Skin Deep Database is one that I’ve used for years. The information on the environmental work.
Ken Cook (46:53.422)
Proud to do it.
Kimberly Snyder (47:17.634)
The Dirty Dozen, The Clean 15. These are resources that have benefited me and my family so much. I’ve been sharing them in the community. Year after year, they continue to be so practical, so helpful for individual health. And like you said, these global issues. So everything that we can check out, everything that we talked about today, Ken, is ewg .org. And there’s many subsets within the website. Is there anything we didn’t?
Ken Cook (47:41.166)
And we can send you some we can send you some specific links if you want to put it in the show notes. So if someone wants to get right to the dirty dozen or whatever, we’ll we’ll do that for you. But I want to I want to throw one other idea out there, which is because I think you, Kimberly Snyder, could be especially effective. We’re doing a lot of work now in Sacramento. We have been for years. We passed 25 bills over the past 10 years to protect public health here in California from lead.
Kimberly Snyder (47:46.818)
Yes.
Kimberly Snyder (47:53.026)
Please.
Ken Cook (48:10.062)
toxic chemicals and cosmetics, sketchy additives that are in our food. And you can still get things done here in California. So my invitation is come with me to Sacramento someday. Let’s let’s let’s turn some of that, you know, megawatt Kimberly Snyder. Charisma loose on Sacramento and let’s pass some let’s pass some laws, let’s get some stuff done.
Kimberly Snyder (48:25.09)
I would love to.
Kimberly Snyder (48:34.722)
I’m there.
Ken Cook (48:38.894)
Let’s go to Governor Newsom and say, help us out, because that’s the kind of thing that can really make a difference. Again, that’s those civic habits, those civic muscles we want people to develop. And you’re a natural. So I’m going to hold you to it.
Kimberly Snyder (48:39.714)
I’m getting goosebumps.
Yes.
Kimberly Snyder (48:54.69)
can help hit me up and also coming at it from the places I’m a mom. I have two young kids. This is our future. These are families. Don’t ignore us. We’re not statistics. You know, sometimes the emails, whatever they’re important, but they can be black and white. So I am there with you, Ken. Thank you for inviting me. I will do everything I can to help. I love the environmental group working group. I love you so much. I love this work. It is essential.
Ken Cook (49:00.27)
Of course.
Ken Cook (49:05.23)
Yeah.
Ken Cook (49:20.91)
Thank you.
Kimberly Snyder (49:23.074)
This is part of our health and wellness. We can try our best to be fit and exercise, but what if these chemicals, we’re being doused in chemicals every day.
Ken Cook (49:30.126)
Yeah, yeah, no, no question. So I think it’s the whole package. You’re one of the people who gets that. And I love you for it. I love the work you’ve been doing, dedicating your life to it. And so let’s let’s let’s let’s let’s connect in Sacramento and make make some hay up here.
Kimberly Snyder (49:44.322)
I’m set it up.
Kimberly Snyder (49:50.53)
I am there Ken, I cannot wait to see you in person. Thank you so much for all of your wisdom. And for all you listeners, please check out these links. We’re going to add more of the links that Ken mentioned, specific links to ewg .org. If you haven’t been on there yet, please spend some time, look around. There’s amazing resources for families for all of us. So thank you once again, Ken, so much. I look forward to seeing you and…
Ken Cook (49:53.454)
Likewise, hon.
Kimberly Snyder (50:16.386)
Thank you so much everyone for tuning in. We’ll be back here as always Thursday for our next Q &A show. Take care of your amazing self.
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