Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Colorado anglers and their families should strictly limit fish consumption
from catches at popular lakes such as Chatfield Reservoir and
Bar Lake because of increased risk of ingesting PFUSS, forever chemicals,
and mercury. According to new state maps and health warnings
issued Thursday, the toxic chemicals, which never break down in
nature and can't be washed out, gather in the flesh
(00:21):
of common game fish like walleye and smallmouth bass.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
So we brought in our water purity expert, Richs res Gatis,
co founder and CEO of Flow Water. He joins us
now in studio and ras we appreciate you coming in
with us this morning. How did these chemicals, at least
originally get into the water supply.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
It's common that they run off, and so this unoff
can be from firefighting, foam bay product, it can be
from industrial waste other chemicals that are in use, and
eventually these make their way into the landfills. So, for example,
some of these PFAX chemicals from Forever chemicals are found
in things like receipts or your French fry container. Anything
that's got kind of a non sticky substance to it
(00:58):
ends up making its way into our water lakes, rivers,
and oceans as a result of concentrations and runoffs.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
So it starts with pollution of some of those items.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
It starts actually with a contamination that's used in manufacturing
process that is in everyday consumer households, and so for example,
this nonstick fabric on chairs, sofas, couches, those end up
making their way into the landfill, as well as things
like receipts and French FI containers and burger wrappers. And
then there's also a lot of industrial use of this
(01:28):
as well. So firefighting foam, for example, has it in
huge concentrations and then it ends up concentrating making its
way into the lakes. And then fish end up having
concentrations anywhere from two hundred to five hundred times more
than the water because they can't actually bioassimilate it, and
it concentrates in the fish, and then you reach high
levels of concentrations where you can't.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
Eat the fish.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
I've heard this is tangential, but I've heard that all
of us eat the equivalent of a credit card.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
In plastic each year or something l or consume that right.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
The quantity is right, the frequency is actually fifty two.
It's more frequent than that, so it's once a week.
So American eats and drinks one credit cards worth of
plastic every single week. So I think really the story
around Chafio Branyan bar and the p fast contamination that
are in fish, I think the much bigger story is
that we have a p fast crisis in the United States.
Two hundred million Americans have water with p fas in it.
(02:18):
There's no safe level of p fas. It has endocrine effects,
liver toxicity effects, cancer, reproductive harm, developmental issues. And then
you throw that into plastics, where the average American is eating, drinking,
or breathing one credit cards worth of plastic every week.
We've got one plastic spoon worth of plastic in our
brain alone just from the ingestion of that, and we're
(02:38):
turning into a chemical cocktail. So p FAS is really
just one of fifty thousand chemicals that are in use
in the United States today, and that's kind of the problem,
which is we're suffering the facts of many decades of
use of this of these chemicals and industrial manufacturing, agricultural application,
and now they're in our bodies.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
And you mentioned fire fighting foam. I mean that's interesting
because we are in a location that has fires and wildfires,
especially if they're going to do some air drops or
things like that. Does that end up running off? And
I mean do people here out west where there are
more fires, have more of those pifoss one hundred percent?
Speaker 3 (03:18):
I mean there's definitely pfast concentrations where it's closest to
the highest amount of utilization. And so because we're in
an area that's very arid and there's always a big
risk of fire danger, and then there's a lot more
drills that are associated with that. So even when there's
not fires that are actually being put out, you've got
a bunch of drills that are happening concurrent throughout the
course of the year where firefighting foam is being used.
(03:41):
And so certainly concentrations, I mean, if you look at
the chemicals that are in use across the United States,
where the application initiates is where you see the greatest
level of concentration. But the flip side of that is
life estate. Roundup used to be commonly regionalized in agricultural use,
of course, like commonly used with wheat, and now you
(04:02):
can find roundup or a glifas hatan about ninety percent
of drinking water across the United States. So this all
ends up in homeostasis eventually, and that's kind of where
we are with p fast being affecting two hundred million
Americans across the United States.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
This is such a downer conversation, but all seriously, just no,
I'm hearing this and I'm like, my mind is blown
away for that. So I know a lot of our
listeners and I have the question too, is there any
way that I'm sure that the major water systems probably
can't purify enough for all of it out there's still
stuff that remains in the water supply that we consume
and drink. But are there are there things?
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Is there?
Speaker 4 (04:34):
Can we teck our way out of it?
Speaker 3 (04:35):
There? We can't, actually, And so that's a great point
because it is a bit of a downer when you
start to see all this data and it's like, oh,
I'm eating credit cards with the plastic every week, and
there's pe fast in the fish, and I can eat
the fish.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
And out out of Lake Runyon. Here's the real positive thing.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
You can solve the vast majority of this by simply
watching what you eat as well as what you drink.
So let's use p fast as an example. Would I
go swim and Chatfield Absolutely no sweat. I mean there's
no advisory agains swimming and pfast really don't get absorbed
via the skin. It's more through an ingestion. Same thing
with microplastics and a lot of these chemicals that are
(05:10):
in use.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
The United States.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
I mean, what you really don't want to do is
be eating, drinking, and breathing them. And so I've focused
the last twelve years of my life is how do
we solve people from drinking these byproducts that have a
major health effect to them, both short and long term.
And so one things you can do is filter or
purify your water. And same thing with food, like when
you look at your food sources, looking at choosing organic ingredients,
(05:34):
that's one way that you can help solve some of
these problems from entering your body. Purifying your water is
another really important thing. So there's fifty thousand chemicals in
use in the United States today, Fewer than one hundred
of those are regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act.
That effectively means that when we're drinking out of our tap,
we're drinking a chemical cocktail. Single use plastic water bottles
aren't the answer because there's hundreds of thousands of microplastics
(05:57):
in those bottles. The solution is basically, take the best
municipal water can do and deliver to you wherever you work, rest,
in play, and then purify that with a device like
reverse osmosis.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
And so you can buy this.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
In fact, we don't do stuff for the home, so
I'm not here evangelizing that you go and get a
flow water product for your home. We focus on hotel, schools, gyms,
Corporation's retail, but for your home, get a reverse osmosis system.
You can find it in an Amazon, you can find
it at Target. That solves ninety nine percent of the
issues from entering your body and you drink more water
as a result of it. And so the real positive
(06:29):
thing is we can solve this really inexpensively, really quickly
while we work on things like policy reform.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
So what do I do when I'm getting water from
the water cooler at work?
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Well, the first thing I would do is I would
make sure that you're using make sure your company, your gym,
your hotel, your school is using a system that's got
reverse osmosis. So if a single stage filter water like
you find at the airport, I generally don't drink out
of those, not only because they don't do that much
to filter the water, but also if you don't change
the filters regularly, it turns into a Petri dish effectively, right,
(06:59):
and so you need to filter to be properly maintained.
So the first thing is I always am adamant about
reverse osmosa osmosis, which moves up to ninety nine point
nine percent of contaminants, and then applying that to your
home as well kind of solves the full.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
Circle of problems.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
People want to learn more about what you do, and
you can help with this problem because we have a
lot of business leaders business owners that listen to our show.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Where do they go Two things, One is you got
to drinkflowatter dot com you can learn more about our company.
But then there's also a way you can look at
the water in what's happening in your backyard. So if
you go to drinkflow at dor dot com, at the
top of the navigation you can see check your water.
You type in your zip code and out will pop
a report that's powered by.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
The EWG database.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
That's a nonprofit organization, and it'll literally list out what
contaminants you have and what the ratio is beyond the
EWG guideline.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
So drinkflow atter.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Dot com has both of those pieces of information there.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
That's water purity expert rich Rasgatis. Rich, thanks for joining us,
Thanks for having me on