Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances, or “PFAS”, has been in the news a lot lately. From the EPA’s proposed drinking water regulations to the $10.3 billion settlement to be paid by 3M, PFAS is starting to be recognized as a significant threat to our public health. But what you may not have heard is that the presence of PFAS in our environment is a major environmental justice issue as well. That is what our guest, Jahred Liddie, helps us understand on this episode.
Jahred Liddie is a PhD candidate in the Department of Environmental Health in the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University. He specializes in PFAS contamination, particularly in community water systems, and the underlying environmental justice issues that result from exposure to PFAS. He stopped by the podcast to share his research on PFAS and to help us understand why PFAS exposure is an environmental justice concern.
Resources:
PFAS and Environmental Justice - J. Liddie et al., 2023
TIME Magazine: 3M's Historic $10 Billion 'Forever Chemical' Payout Is Just The Tip of the PFAS Iceberg
Proposed PFAS National Primary Drinking Water Regulation by US Environmental Protection Agency
Connect with our Environmental Justice Lab community:
Instagram: @envjusticelab
Facebook: www.facebook.com/EnvironmentalJusticeLab
Email: theenvironmentaljusticelab@gmail.com
Don’t forget to subscribe and rate the podcast wherever you listen!
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-environmental-justice-lab--5583745/support.
Connect with our Environmental Justice Lab community:
Instagram: @envjusticelab
YouTube: @envjusticelab
Email: theenvironmentaljusticelab@gmail.com
Don’t forget to subscribe and rate the podcast wherever you listen! Support our work by joining the Supporters Club: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-environmental-justice-lab--5583745/support
Jahred Liddie is a PhD candidate in the Department of Environmental Health in the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University. He specializes in PFAS contamination, particularly in community water systems, and the underlying environmental justice issues that result from exposure to PFAS. He stopped by the podcast to share his research on PFAS and to help us understand why PFAS exposure is an environmental justice concern.
Resources:
PFAS and Environmental Justice - J. Liddie et al., 2023
TIME Magazine: 3M's Historic $10 Billion 'Forever Chemical' Payout Is Just The Tip of the PFAS Iceberg
Proposed PFAS National Primary Drinking Water Regulation by US Environmental Protection Agency
Connect with our Environmental Justice Lab community:
Instagram: @envjusticelab
Facebook: www.facebook.com/EnvironmentalJusticeLab
Email: theenvironmentaljusticelab@gmail.com
Don’t forget to subscribe and rate the podcast wherever you listen!
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-environmental-justice-lab--5583745/support.
Connect with our Environmental Justice Lab community:
Instagram: @envjusticelab
YouTube: @envjusticelab
Email: theenvironmentaljusticelab@gmail.com
Don’t forget to subscribe and rate the podcast wherever you listen! Support our work by joining the Supporters Club: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-environmental-justice-lab--5583745/support
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to the Environmental Justice Lab.I'm your host, doctor Leslie Joseph.
Thank you so much for joining me. Well, I am so excited today
because I'm bringing you an interview withJared Lyddy. He is a PhD candidate
at the Department of Environmental Health inthe Harvard th Chan School of Public Health
at Harvard University, and he focuseson environmental justice issues related to pfast contamination.
(00:26):
It was a great conversation of anamazing interview, and it came at
the right time because pfast is allover the news. There is so much
happening with p fast. If you'vebeen reading, if you've been paying attention,
you know that the EPA has proposedregulations for p fast. They have
not passed yet, but they arein the proposal phase. And you will
(00:47):
also know that the big company threeM they make post it notes to make
all kinds of stuff, they justsettled a ten billion dollar lawsuit because of
p AS contamination that they've facilitated throughoutthe country. And so there's just a
lot going on around pfast, andI think it's good to have this interview
(01:07):
now because instead of just thinking aboutpfast in an abstract way, we're able
to think about it as an environmentaljustice issue. The person I'm speaking with
in this interview Jared. He hasfound that black communities and Hispanic communities are
disproportionately impacted by pfast contamination, andso when these regulations pass, when these
(01:29):
settlements get distributed, we need torecognize that there's a disproportionate impact that black
and brown communities face when it comesto past contamination. And I hope that
there's a disproportionate amount of input andresources sent to those communities to help them
deal with these issues, because it'svery important to recognize it's not a blanket
issue across the country. It isvery much an environmental justice concern. And
(01:55):
so coming up next we have myinterview with Jared Lyddy talking about Pfatt contamination
and environmental justice. I hope youenjoy it, Stay tuned. This is
the Environmental Justice Lab. Welcome tothe Environmental Justice Lab podcast. I am
(02:31):
your host, doctor Leslie Joseph.Thank you so much for joining me,
and today we have a very veryvery special guest with us. His name
is Jared Lyddy. He is aPhD candidate in the Department of Environmental Health
at the Harvard th Chan School ofPublic Health at Harvard University. Jared,
how are you. Th'm doing well? Thanks so much for having me.
(02:53):
Well, I appreciate you being here, and we're talking to you because you
put out this amazing nationwide study onp FAST and you're looking at PFAST from
advantage point of environmental justice, andso I want to talk to you about
your study, talk to you abouteven why you want to do it,
which you found, why you weredoing it, and just really pick your
(03:13):
brain as to how we should bethinking about these kind of issues, particularly
when you're thinking about water contamination,emerging contamination, all these different kinds of
issues that I think need more andmore research and more more work done.
And so your study is phenomenal.I'm so glad you're able to talk to
us. But before we get started, can you just tell us about yourself,
where you're from, your background,maybe upbringing, how'd you get to
(03:38):
Harvard, how'd you get to studypublic health? All those fun things.
Yeah, definitely be happy too.So I grew up in New Jersey,
in Central New Jersey, so kindof on the border between Howell and Free
Old New Jersey. Was always interestedin the natural world as a kid,
and I always have a pretty deepinterested environmental issues as well, because that
(04:00):
I always really enjoyed, you know, my science classes and throughout middle school,
throughout high school, and I wasalways really into chemistry and physics and
some of the math classes I took. And so after I left high school,
after I left New Jersey, Iwent to college at Harvard College,
I studied environmental engineering and I alsostudy environmental policy in college, so I
(04:21):
got to, you know, froman academic kind of standpoint, del moore
into some of those issues and someof those environmental issues specifically. I later
worked as a research assistant in myundergrad in actually my current advisor's lab,
and we did some research on pfs, and I was actually where I learned
about what pfs are and also reallylearned more about the kind of intersection between
(04:43):
you know, engineering, the classesI was taking men and public health and
particularly environmental health as well, becausethat really planted like that seed in my
brain about you know, bridging thesetwo topics together as kind of some backdrop,
like important backdrop of what was happeningat the time. So the Flint,
Michigan water crisis was actually kind ofat the same time as I was
in undergrad seeing that event happening,and you know, seeing how issues like
(05:09):
structural racism can cause disparities in environmentalhealth and outcomes for individuals in real time
really also was kind of underpinning someof my academic training as well, and
that also informs of my interests inenvironmental health. And so after I graduated
from undergrad, I've worked as asustainability consultant for a few years from really
(05:30):
doing life cycle assessments where we're kindof trying to understand the environmental footprint of
different kinds of products, and thatwas interesting for a few years. I
eventually grew a little bit tired andactually wanted to do some more public health
relevant kinds of work. So Ileft and I went back to grad school
and did my master's degree in environmentalhealth at the Harvard chan School, and
(05:56):
so then I really kind of delvedinto environmental health public did classes and epidemiology
and biostatistics and all sorts of fieldsto give me some more public health treating
and so I started my master withactually a few months before the pandemic began,
So that was another kind of youknow, current event in the world
that really shaped a lot of myresearch interest a lot of my academic kinds
(06:20):
of training as well. And afterI graduated from my master's degree and then
started my PhD in the same departmentat the same school. So now kind
of working on my research, it'sall focused on pfast and drinking water.
Definitely, we'll talk more about thatthroughout the podcast, but that's you know,
how I arrived here today. Okay, very cool. And so I'm
(06:43):
particularly excited because You're environment engineering backgroundled you to look at issues of public
health, look at environmental justice,and so I'm excited to see that that
engineering background is kind of what underpinnedthe way that you engage these issues and
these topics and these conversations. Andso for all the engineers listening, you
don't have to just graduate and bea consultant. There are other ways that
(07:05):
you can make a difference, tomake an impact. And we have an
example right here where Jared went fromenvironment engineering to public health to look at
environmental justice issues. And so I'mjust excited to know that that trajectory is
part of your story. And thenwhen I think about the Flint, Michigan
crisis, I know it made animprint in on a lot of our minds,
and those of us who've kind ofbeen in this environmental justice world.
(07:28):
We might have just read about it, seen some smaller kind of instances in
our communities, but to see thatinstant on a big national stage making worldwide
news, I mean, I knowfor me it made a big impact on
how I viewed environmental justice and particularlywater, because that's one of my passions
is dealing with water issues and watercontamination. From your advantage point, I'm
not sure if you were in schoolof the time, if you're working as
(07:51):
a consultant at that point, Butwas that crisis something that kind of shifted
your perspective and kind of moved youtowards where you are now, or kind
of we're already on that path andthis is just another event that confirmed the
need for you to go where youwere going. I was definitely aware of
environmental justice issues before the Flint,Michigan crisis happened. I think it did
(08:13):
shift me more into doing this kindof work, because you know, it
was happening in the whole time,and so I hadn't really witnessed an event
like that in my lifetime, andso it did, you know, take
it from being a set of issuesthat I was invested and interested in as
an individual to being something that Iwanted to work on and I wanted to
do my own research on as well. So that was definitely like a formative
(08:35):
event in terms of, you know, what was happening in the world that
informed my research as well. Yeah. Yeah, I mean definitely informed on
a lot. And I guess asa PhD candidate, how would you describe
your research interests? Are they broad? I Kin'm thinking about things like environmental
justice. We're talking about water,this is p fact, you could talk
about it, emerging contaminants. Iknow, for me when I was with
(08:58):
my PhD, I focused on morebroadly emerging contaminants, water treatment, environmental
justice. Like, how would youdescribe your research and interests? Yeah,
so my research interests are you know, right now, all on p fasts,
specifically in drinking water. I'm alsofocusing specifically on public water systems in
(09:22):
the US, and so my researchinvolves environmental justice issues, trying to understand
disparities in pfast contamination as well tryingto understand trends over time in pfast contamination,
particularly because they've been industrial shifts andproduction of pfasts over time, so
we don't necessarily know as much aboutwhat that means for contamination. And then
(09:46):
related to all that, I'm alsointerested in how we can think about this
in terms of human health outcomes aswell. So can we make some link
between PFAST contamination specifically of drinking waterand human health. So those are kinds
of the kinds of issues I'm interestedin, specifically for fast intriguing water.
Okay, yeah, can you tellus more about p fast what those are.
(10:07):
I know it's been in the news, and obviously your study has been
in the news, but generally speaking, I've seen a lot of traffic about
pfast, what it is, wherewe can find it, what it does
to our health, how it impactsan environment, and so can you just
give us some background just to helpus understand what p fasts are. What
are we even talking about? Yeah, So p fasts are per and polyphloral
(10:28):
alkhal substances. That's what the abbreviationstands for. They're a really large group
of man made chemical compounds and areall characterized by carbon fluorine bonds. And
so if you remember from chemistry,that kind of bond is really strong and
for you know, industrial applications,for consumer product applications, that gives them
(10:50):
really useful properties. So they haveboth non stick, hydrophobic and hydrophilic or
like water resistant water loving kinds ofproperties. Also really resistant to break down
in the environment. What that meansfor human health and you know environmental health
is that they don't break down easily. So pfasts are pretty persistent in the
(11:11):
environment, also persistent in organisms,including humans. And we know from right
now a few decades of animal andhuman health studies that even at low levels
of exposure to p fast they canresult in advertise health outcomes for individuals.
And so that's what I'm really concernedabout them from a public health perspective.
Okay, perfect, And then Iknow, just from what I've learned just
(11:35):
over time reading articles and different typesof discussions, that past appears to be
and you can correct me if I'mwrong, appears to be very pervasive in
the environment, like it's everywhere youknow I here described as forever chemicals.
And my understanding is that all ofus, no matter who we are,
where we are, at some pointin time, we've probably been exposed to
(11:58):
P fast, we probably have somein our system. And it's funny when
I read the articles, I getthe sense that we're kind of all affected
by P fast, And so Iwonder for your research and for this study
in particular, how did you cometo the realization that you want to look
at P fast from an environmental justiceperspective, Because in my mind, environmental
(12:20):
justice suggests that there's one group that'smore disproportionately impacted than another. But when
I think about P FAST, Iget the sense that we're all impacted by
it, and we're all subject tobeing exposed to it. And so how
did you come to this research question, this topic that you kind of focused
in on for this study, andI guess for your research in general.
(12:43):
Yeah, that's a really great question. So you know, on one hand,
we know from surveys, many ofthem done in the US, that
you know, virtually everyone is exposedto P fast and has measurable levels of
P fast like in their blood andrelated that as well, there's many different
ways that an individual can get exposedto P fast, So confess our inprinking
(13:05):
water. As all discuss, there'sexposure for some individuals by food, by
dust, exposure by consumer products aswell, So there's many different ways to
be exposed as well. So formy specific study that we're going to talk
about today and focused on drinking wateras an exposure specifically. And we crafted
(13:26):
our idea for the study because weknow from previous research and from historical accounts
as well, that sources of industrialpollution hazardous waste facilities are distroportionately located near
marginalized communities, including community of colorand lower income communities as well. And
(13:46):
we know from chemistry that p fastsare man made substances and in many cases
can come from industrial origins. Andso we had this idea that and this
hypothesis that because of these two factorsthat p FAST in drinking water, we
may actually see certain socio demographic groupscould be more highly exposed to be FAST
(14:07):
by drinking water because drinking water canbe contaminated by some of those industrial sources.
And that's was our idea and ourhypothesis going into this work. Oh,
that's interesting. So you're thinking aboutthe sources, where those sources might
be located, and how those sourcesmight disproportionately impact those communities that surround them,
versus all of us kind of equallybeing exposed to p FAST. And
(14:31):
so when we talk about sources,I'm assuming you're talking about industry facilities,
things of that nature. And withthis being an emerging contaminant which I don't
think is regulated at the moment,it had to be pretty difficult to get
actual reliable data to do a studylike this because I can't imagine an industry
providing you the data. I don'tthink there's people monitoring it because it's not
(14:54):
federally or state requirements in place.Maybe there are definitely correct me. I
guess my question is how did youdo to study? Yeah? How did
you actually get information that could beuseful to make the fine that you had
in your study? Yep, sothat was that was a real challenge.
Yeah. So first I want tosay, this study is a collaboration with
(15:16):
doctor A little Shader who's at theSilence bring In stut and my advisor,
Professor LC Sunderland. And so forour study, we have a bunch of
different data sources that we're compiling together. And so we in terms of the
drinking water data that we're using youryou know right now in the us pfasts
are not federally regulated and drinking water, although that could change even within the
(15:37):
next year. And so more recentlywe've had to rely on state monitoring for
pfasts for public water systems, andthat can come from a combination of some
states that have their own regulations ata state level that are doing monitoring to
understand whether public water systems are belowthat those specials that they're setting, or
(15:58):
other states that are doing monitoring tokind of understand if there is contamination in
their state at all. And soour approach to doing the study was to
combine a lot of that data together. So we specifically combined eighteen different monitoring
campaigns done around the US from differentstates to get our data set of community
water systems. And community water systemsare public water systems that just serve the
(16:22):
same population year round. So youcan think of the data that we're using
us coming from you something similar toyour utility if you're served by utility.
And alongside that, we combine allof this with census information to understand,
you know, what is the demographicprofile of those community water systems in terms
of the counties that they're serving.So that's all commuterment the census. We
(16:47):
combine that as well with these differentdatabases that the EPA has made for researchers
for individuals to understand where community watersystems are serving and also has some other
kinds of characteristics about them, likethe population that they serve and how many
people that they serve, and youknow, what kind of source water that
they use. And then they alsoincorporate data on the p FAST sources that
(17:10):
we were talking about and our paper, because there are actually also many,
many sources of p FAST contamination,we focus on kind of a narrow list
of ones that have been identified inthe past as being associated with contamination,
and so these include major industrial facilitiesthat have produced PFAST in the past.
These include military fire training areas thatmay have used firefighting homes or even currently
(17:34):
use firefighting homes that contain high concentrationsof pfasts, as well as airports that
may have also used those firefighting homes. And we also use a list of
which water treatment plants around the USand landfills, and both of these can
think of maybe in some cases beingyou know, the end of life kind
of place where PFAST may go,so either through disposal of consumer products or
(17:57):
other kinds of products that contain fast, and so we rely on the list
that is previously from another study.But there's many other sources of p fast
as well. So our study isn't, you know, looking at all of
them, just a kind of acondensed list. Yeah. No, that's
great, And I think I haveyour study with me, and so I
think you had eighteen states that youwent through and studied. Let's get to
(18:18):
the findings first. Let's get tothe findings. I think that's the really
big headline that we want to reallytalk about and dig deep into. I
saw your study on the Grist.I've seen it on other websites as well,
and the big headline is always thesame, Black and Hispanic communities most
likely to have drinking water with pefast. And so you have your Black
and Hispanic communities environmental justice issue,you have P fast emerging contaminant, also
(18:42):
a big issue. You have drinkingwater, which is always a concern because
when we see different issues in oursociety, it usually it revolves around drinking
water, the quality, the availability, and so I feel like your study
hit all of the big ticket issuesall at once, and so that's I
(19:02):
think why. And obviously it's verygood research, but it's also something that
people are really concerned about, andI think it's really resonating and people are
starting to see more about it.What was it in your study or what
did you find that legs to thatconclusion where you could say that with confidence
that blackness man communities are more likelyto have fast in your drinking water.
I wonder what you saw or whatthings that you identified that legs to that
(19:27):
conclusion. Yeah, So I'll kindof first talk about some of the three
main kind of components that our paperhas, and then I'll talk about,
you know, how we got tothat conclusion. So we took all these
data and we had three primary researchquestions in mind. The first is actually
(19:48):
not related to environmental justice or disparities, but it's kind of going back to
this earlier study that used nationwide dataon p fasts around the US. More
limited in terms some of the laboratorymethods, but it was one of the
first datas that's out there on pfasts interning water in the US, and
so we compared using the same methodsas that prior study. We analyzed weather
(20:11):
contamination sources. This group that Imentioned earlier were associated with pfast concentrations around
the US. And then we actuallyprepared directly with that study to see,
you know, dob se similar kindsof associations or their differences and you know
why there may be differences of well. Second, we analyze this association between
(20:33):
sociodemographic factors and contamination sources. Thoseare the same group of sources as the
first research question, and we specificallyfocus on for our main analysis. We
focus on sociodemographic factors that relate tocommunities that experience segregation, that experience in
structural racism and poverty. And sothat included the proportion of Hispanic residence,
(20:56):
portion of Black residents and residents inthe federal poverty line. Though we also
actually have analyzes that do other thingswith some other demographic factors as well,
and so that is kind of gettingto a citing question about you know,
our certain communities are they are therewater systems more in proximity to sources of
pfast contamination than others and do wesee differences or not? And then the
(21:18):
third we take our drinking water dataand we analyze whether the community is served
by community water systems that have detectablelevels of P fast contamination? Are they
more likely or not to detect Pfast? So that's kind of directly with
the drinking water data. And throughoutthat specific third analysis, we did simpler
(21:38):
statistical tests where we're just kind ofcomparing the demographics for systems that do and
don't exceed five nanograms per leader interms of the concentrations of P fast that
they detect or didn't detect. Andthen we went all the way to more
sophisticated, you know, statistical modelingwhere we're adjusting for differences that maybe between
(21:59):
states in terms of demographics or contamination, and we consider different kinds of community
water system characteristics like the source water, like whether they had potentially relevant technologies
for treatment of P fast, aswell as you know, the system size.
And then we actually also take intoaccount sources of contamination as well,
and the same sources that we analyzeearlier. So do we even see a
(22:22):
difference, you know, beyond takinginto account differences in those contamination sourcess,
there are still kind of a residualassociation between those demographic factors and P fast
contamination. And for that third analysis, we saw these associations persisted throughout those
analyzes where we saw that system servinggreater Hispanic and Black populations were more likely
(22:45):
to detect PFAST and so that's whywe came to that conclusion because it was
consistent throughout all the analyses, consistentthroughout you know, a range of sensitivity
analysis as well, and so that'sultimately why we came to that conclusion.
Interesting, so very detail, verythorough. I guess that one quick question.
I forgot to ask this earlier,but I mentioned that you had eighteen
(23:06):
states in the study. You talkedabout getting data from each of the states,
and I guess compiling it to doyour analysis. You're looking at that
in relation to the communities that aresurrounding these sources that might be potentially producing
these contaminants, to see how thatrelates to exposure. And so can you
(23:27):
talk a little bit about what itwas like to compile this data and to
do the specific analysis that you did, because I would imagine that there's not
a national p FAST approach to collectingdata and that these states probably do things
differently. And then with time tolook at the sources, how did you
locate those sources? How did youcompile that information and correlate the two.
(23:49):
I would love to know more aboutthat process of doing that kind of data
collection and analysis. Yeah, yeah, it was not easy. Sort of
had several criteria that we were usingto include or exclude data from states in
order to kind of harmonize the dataacross all these different sources and be able
(24:10):
to have, you know, aconsistent kind of real data set to work
with, and so that included thingslike ensuring that all of the laboratory methods
for all of the data are similar. It's the standard laboratory approaches actually drafted
by the EPA, and so thatwas one of our criteria. So anything
not using those methods we didn't includein our analysis. We also specifically focused
(24:32):
on states that had done like astatewide monitoring campaign, So there's other states
that aren't included in our study thatmay have done sampling for a smaller group
of system maybe just a handful ofsystems that have decided to do some kind
of p pass monitoring. So we'rereally focusing on either states that did their
own kind of monitoring campaign to understandcontamination. So in many cases that includes
(24:55):
dozens or hundreds of systems or systemsthat actually are required to do monitoring because
their state has a regulation set forp FAST and drinking water, so that
would normally require that they do monitoringof some kind. So criteria like these
are kind of what enabled us toharmonize the data set across all of these
different sources. It's a lot ofcoding, it's a lot of you know,
(25:18):
kind of nitty gritty programming work toget everything together. Would ultimately be
after applying all this kind of criteria, we have a data set of system
that's around eight thousand community water systemsincluded a nurse study, and they serve
in total around seventy million people inthe US. Interesting, very interesting.
So the big fine that made thenews was that blackest man communities are more
(25:41):
likely to be exposed to p FAST. But as I was going through your
study, another finding really jumped outto me, and I want to just
read it to you and get yourthoughts and kind of help me understand why
it is this way. For yourstudy, it says that the results indicated
that is six to eighteen percent decreasein the odds of detecting pfasts above five
(26:03):
nunigrants per leader were observed for eachpercentage point higher proportion of residents under the
federal poverty lines served by community Watersystem. Each percentage point higher under the
poperty line was associated with thirteen pointeight eighteen percent lower odds of detection about
the state's level past MCL. Andso I read that, and what I
(26:29):
understood was for your study, atleast, the higher the poverty level in
a particular area, the lower theexposure to p FAST. Which was really
interesting because in most instances, weassume that poverty is one of those factors
that would lead to higher exposure todifferent contaminants, more issues relating to environmental
(26:49):
justice would be at present in thosekinds of communities. And even though we
know that race is the primary factorfor experiencing this proportion and impacts, collasses
usually close behind. But in thisstudy it seems like race is definitely one
and then actually poverty produces the oppositeresult. And so how would you explain
(27:10):
that to someone like me who's goingto automatically assume when I read the title
that you know it's gonna be race, It's gonna be poor people who are
more exposed to p FAST. You'resaying, no, Actually, in this
study, people who are in communitiesthat see more poverty are less exposed to
p FAST. Yeah, so thatI think there are many reasons why we
(27:30):
did find that. And we actuallyhave another analysis that I'll talk about as
well that complicates this picture a littlebit too. So in our main analysis,
yes, we did find that anincrease in residence under the poverty line
lowered likelihood that a system was detectingp FAST and that was a counterintuitive result
to us, and so we thentried to hypothesize some ways that, you
(27:52):
know, why why would this bethe case. So the first kind of
reason, just thinking about you know, counties, thinking about demographics, thinking
about the structure of the US,is that many of these PFAST sources we
saw are in more urban eras whereactually at a county level, the poverty
rate is lower than many rural areasof the US. So in some ways
(28:17):
you can see this inverse association,this negative association between these two variables as
indicative of the urban signature of PFASTand also isolation, economic isolation of some
of these rural areas from industry,some industry being industry that are contaminated with
PFAS or contaminated the environment with PFAS. So that's kind of our main hypothesis
(28:41):
as to why we see this association. The second association or the second reason
is that when you think about environmentaljustice studies as a whole, one kind
of issue that they deal with iskind of the unit of analysis that they
analyze. So for our demographic data, we're using county level data because that
is right now the most available thatyou can link with water systems around the
(29:02):
US. It gets a little bitmore complicated, for example, if you
were using finer green kinds of spatialunit for the analysis. So if we
instead looked at you know, citiesor census blox or census tracks, you
may see something a little bit different, especially in some of the urban areas
of the US, where you know, at a county scale we can see
(29:22):
poverty is lower than in rural areas. But if you dug in a little
bit more, you could actually seea lot of variation in terms of income
across census box or census tracks,even in the same city. And so
in some ways that maybe washed outat a county scale when you're doing an
analysis like ours. And so withthat first hypothesis, we actually then,
as I was mentioning, we didanother analysis to understand this a little bit
(29:47):
better, and so we took someother information on the percent of residents in
an area that live in a morerural area versus more urban areas around the
US, and so we then splitour data by area US that are more
rural cursus areas that are more urban, and then we redid our analysis where
we're looking at demographic factors and pfastcontamination of water systems, and in that
(30:11):
analysis, we actually found that inmore of the rural areas, pfast contamination
is actually positively associated with residents underthe federal poverty line, although in urban
areas that negative association is still shown. So that was also confusing for us
that you see these opposite relationships inthese areas, and so we kind of
think this may reflect some of thedifferences in poverty between more urban and rural
(30:36):
counties that in some of these morerural areas, poverty may actually be a
more important factor to consider when you'rethinking about environmental justice for pfast contamination,
although in more urban areas of theUS it seems negatively associated, and you
see race and ethnically being one ofthe important factors. So it's kind of
a complicated picture, although that's kindof the trajectory of our study in terms
(31:00):
that specific finding. Wow, that'sinteresting. So there's definitely at least in
this study. And I would imaginethe others differences that we can see when
we think about rural populations, ruralcommunities versus urban ones, and then even
thinking about the residents in those communitiesracially ethnically would be different as well.
And so it sounds like we reallydo need to think about all those different
(31:23):
layers as we engage this kind ofresearch. We can't just be too broad
when we talk about how these issuesare affecting one population over another. It
pays to get granular. So Ilearned that would you say, when you
think about more broadly, p fastyou think about water contamination, do you
think that these types of patterns,these types of findings would be consistent with
(31:47):
other types of contaminants. I'm thinkingin my mind thinking about things like lead,
I'm thinking about arsenic and sometimes Iread a lot about radiological contamination like
radar and uranium. I know thatin different parts of the country these contaminants
or issues. I wonder if wewould see these tame kind of disparities associate
with those contaminants, like we've seenwith pfast. Yeah. Yeah, that
(32:09):
is another great question. So thereare I think two ways to approach it.
So the first that other researchers havetalked about in the past is that
when you're thinking about these connections betweendisparities environmental justice disparities and drinking water quality,
it's that different drinking water contaminants havedifferent origins in terms of how they
(32:32):
end up in our water. Sosome contaminants come from the natural environment so
or even in some cases you know, natural environment plus human sources, and
then others come from you know,human sources alone, and so past are
more in that group. And sowhenever you're thinking about the mechanism that a
particular contaminant, how it arise inthe water, and how that is disparate
(32:53):
for different groups, you have tothink about is this mechanism that's driving this
relationship, is that you know,different between demographic groups or not, And
so that matters when you think aboutmore continants of natural origin versus man made
contentants. Although even with that said, you do see differences and you do
see disparities and contamination for a wholerange of drinking water contentants. So you
(33:16):
know, as you mentioned lad beingone of the kind of the case study
examples arsenic. There studies on arsenicdifferences in drinking water quality between demographic groups.
We also have today is on nitrate. My co author Ryal Shader has
a people on nitrates specifically where shefound similar associations specifically for Hispanic communities as
(33:37):
our study. And then you alsosee this for things like uranium as you
mentioned, and several other heavy metals, chromium, barium, all sorts of
compounds, and even more broadly,there's studies also just looking at violations of
drinking water quality standards where they foundcommunities serving more people of color were more
likely to violate those regulations. Soyou know, even though there are a
(34:00):
host of built environment differences, naturalenvironment differences, community level differences, you
do see throughout several contaminants at leastthat there are disparities that have been found
in private literature. Interesting, that'sinteresting. I don't want to take up
your whole afternoon, and so Iwant to keep pushing just because I want
to get to how your findings shouldinform the way we move forward. And
(34:22):
so think about some of the implicationsof what you've learned from your research in
which you understand about these issues.You had an interesting statement in your study
I want to read. It says, the results of this work should suggest
that addressing environmental justice concerns should bea component of risk mitigation planning for areas
affected by drinking water pfast contamination.And so, I guess my final question
(34:45):
would be, what does that looklike? What are you thinking and what
are you seeing when you suggest thatwe should incorporate environmental justice concerns when we
deal with pfast contamination, maybe evenany contamination at all. What would that
actually look like on the ground orthe community that you're thinking about. So,
I guess i'll talk about, youknow, specifically for p fast.
(35:06):
One of the things that our paper, you know, in some ways coming
at a good time because there aresome proposed regulations for p fasts and drinking
water, actually a few p fastand drinking water that the EPA is currently
working on, and there's some expectationsthat that will be finalized by the end
of the year. Inter paper iscoming out a good time because of that,
and actually the levels that they're proposingare actually pretty similar to the ones
(35:29):
that we analyze in our paper aswell. And so alongside this, Biden
administration has recently made environmental justice likeone of their focuses for the EPA and
in terms of the regulations that they'regoing to set in the kind of the
programs that they're looking to fund.And so one option that they highlighted so
far for p FASS is actually containedin the Infrastructure Bill, which is set
(35:52):
to address some of these contamination concernsfor p FAST. And so we think,
based on our study that if thereis some kind of lending allocation that's
going to be done in the nextfew years, that that should keep disparities
in mind in order broadly speaking,not to perpetuate disparities, you know,
going into the future and the onesthat we piloated in those papers specifically,
(36:13):
and so our study would suggest,you know, they shouldn't just think about
socio economic status, They shouldn't justthink about racimusically. They should think about
both things together in order to addressthese environmental justice concerns. And so actually
several organizations have incorporated details from ourstudy in public comments that they've made on
these proposed regulations. They've said thingslike that the infrastructure bill should be and
(36:37):
you know, ways to apply forgrants should be easily accessible to water systems,
whether that's in you know, providingthings in different languages or community members
to understand and or you know,approaching community water systems specifically to think about
applying for grants and also to youknow, let the public know that these
things are coming down the pipeline.And so, I think the bottom line
(36:59):
when you think about environmental justice,when you think about drinking water quality and
specifically pfast that are coming from theseman made sources, is that you want
communities to be equitively protected from contamination. And because of that, you also
should keep in mind and kind ofkeep top of mind that those who are
(37:19):
disproportunately suffering from past contaminations shouldn't bearthe brunt of cleaning it up either.
So, whether that is through someof this grant allocation that is targeted towards
environmental justice communities, or whether thatis you know, offering methods for remediation
of contamination at the source or treatmentin a water system that it is meant
(37:40):
to alleviate some of these disparities.And so that's kind of my thoughts right
now on this kind of topic.Nice. Nice, So communication, funding,
awareness, being able to target theefforts to the communities that are experiencing
this in proportionate way, I thinkis the way forward in your right.
(38:01):
I know, the Infrastructure Bill,the Inflation Reduction Act, the new Office
of Environmental Justice, they're all kindof tuned in and dialed into specifically confronting
these types of issues. And soI think your study is timely in that
way too, because it puts thison their radar in terms of understanding what
the issues actually are and what needsto be confronted and address. If they
(38:22):
approve this regulation, then it's goingto be important to know that there are
environmental justice concerns associated with this kindof contamination, so they can actually have
that targeted approach to addressing it.So I think it's great. So what's
next? What's coming on after this? So we now we know because of
your study that p FAST is outthere, it's a problem. We know
(38:45):
that black and brown communities are disproportionatelyimpacted by it. We know that you
have suggestions in your study about howit could be confronted addressed in an equitable
way. I mean, for me, I would be done thank you and
get my degree. But obviously you'reworking on some more things because you're always
making sure that you advance our understandingthese issues. So what's the next thing
(39:07):
that we can see coming from you, come from your lab, from from
your research group in this area.Yeah. Actually, one thing I'll add
to the previous question as well,and that's relevant for some of my work
and I'm planning to do, isthat, you know, one of the
nice things of other paper as well, I think, is that you know,
previously a lot of these the statedata on the fast monitoring was not
(39:30):
available publicly for individuals and researchers toto use or on look at. And
so along with the data which isopen access and our studies open access as
well, we want you know,other researchers to be able to use some
of these data for their projects andso for me personally going forward. So
I am still deep in my dissertationphase. I am looking to use some
(39:52):
of these data to you know,see, you know, do we along
with some of these shifts in productionover times and kind of shifted from UM
something fats that are actually called legacypfast into replacement compounds? Interested in seeing
do we see shifts in the contaminationover time as well. So that's another
project that I'm working on over thesummer and throughout the next few years on
(40:15):
community water systems. Again, alsoreally interested in leveraging some of these data
to investigate health outcomes, So movingyou know, just from the exposure aside,
where we're analytic disparities, where we'reseeing trends over time, into how
do we then connect us with publichealth and health outcomes for individuals and communities.
So that's you know, what I'mplanning to do for the rest of
(40:37):
my dissertation research or research for otherindividuals in our groups. So we're doing
research on related to this environmental justicequestion research on disparities and heavy metal contamination
in drinking water as well. Sothat's another research project that several individuals in
the lab group that I'm are workingon. And we're also interested in other
(40:58):
sources of environmental justice questions and somoving even just from drinking water into contamination
from mercury around the US. Sowe've actually recently released the paper on map
as well, and thinking even abouttreatment technologies and disparities and use of these
different kinds of treatment technologies that arein some cases relevant for treating pfast.
(41:19):
So we have a whole range ofprojects. I'm excited, you know,
for the next few years to seeall kinds of research that we're able to
do as well. Oh, that'sexciting. That's exciting. So and I
know it's going to go well.You're going to knock out the part that
you did with this one. AllI ask is that when you publish again,
when you get that research out,make sure if you get a chance,
give us a call. We'd loveto talk more about whatever else you
(41:39):
learn. Continue to educate us onthese issues, and continue to show us
the connections between these issues and environmentaljustice, because that's what this podcast is
all about. We would love tocontinue to highlight the great word that you're
doing your research group. This dayis amazing. I know your work is
amazing, going to continue to beamazing, and so I just want to
thank you for taking the time totell us more about your study that help
(42:01):
us understands issue better and to continueto highlight why it's important for us to
know these things. Thank you somuch for joining us, Thanks so much
for having met. Thank you,and that is our episode. Thank you
so much for listening to the EnvironmentalJustice Lab, where we are for the
people and for the planet. Seeyou next time.
Welcome to the Environmental Justice Lab.I'm your host, doctor Leslie Joseph.
Thank you so much for joining me. Well, I am so excited today
because I'm bringing you an interview withJared Lyddy. He is a PhD candidate
at the Department of Environmental Health inthe Harvard th Chan School of Public Health
at Harvard University, and he focuseson environmental justice issues related to pfast contamination.
(00:26):
It was a great conversation of anamazing interview, and it came at
the right time because pfast is allover the news. There is so much
happening with p fast. If you'vebeen reading, if you've been paying attention,
you know that the EPA has proposedregulations for p fast. They have
not passed yet, but they arein the proposal phase. And you will
(00:47):
also know that the big company threeM they make post it notes to make
all kinds of stuff, they justsettled a ten billion dollar lawsuit because of
p AS contamination that they've facilitated throughoutthe country. And so there's just a
lot going on around pfast, andI think it's good to have this interview
(01:07):
now because instead of just thinking aboutpfast in an abstract way, we're able
to think about it as an environmentaljustice issue. The person I'm speaking with
in this interview Jared. He hasfound that black communities and Hispanic communities are
disproportionately impacted by pfast contamination, andso when these regulations pass, when these
(01:29):
settlements get distributed, we need torecognize that there's a disproportionate impact that black
and brown communities face when it comesto past contamination. And I hope that
there's a disproportionate amount of input andresources sent to those communities to help them
deal with these issues, because it'svery important to recognize it's not a blanket
issue across the country. It isvery much an environmental justice concern. And
(01:55):
so coming up next we have myinterview with Jared Lyddy talking about Pfatt contamination
and environmental justice. I hope youenjoy it, Stay tuned. This is
the Environmental Justice Lab. Welcome tothe Environmental Justice Lab podcast. I am
(02:31):
your host, doctor Leslie Joseph.Thank you so much for joining me,
and today we have a very veryvery special guest with us. His name
is Jared Lyddy. He is aPhD candidate in the Department of Environmental Health
at the Harvard th Chan School ofPublic Health at Harvard University. Jared,
how are you. Th'm doing well? Thanks so much for having me.
(02:53):
Well, I appreciate you being here, and we're talking to you because you
put out this amazing nationwide study onp FAST and you're looking at PFAST from
advantage point of environmental justice, andso I want to talk to you about
your study, talk to you abouteven why you want to do it,
which you found, why you weredoing it, and just really pick your
(03:13):
brain as to how we should bethinking about these kind of issues, particularly
when you're thinking about water contamination,emerging contamination, all these different kinds of
issues that I think need more andmore research and more more work done.
And so your study is phenomenal.I'm so glad you're able to talk to
us. But before we get started, can you just tell us about yourself,
where you're from, your background,maybe upbringing, how'd you get to
(03:38):
Harvard, how'd you get to studypublic health? All those fun things.
Yeah, definitely be happy too.So I grew up in New Jersey,
in Central New Jersey, so kindof on the border between Howell and Free
Old New Jersey. Was always interestedin the natural world as a kid,
and I always have a pretty deepinterested environmental issues as well, because that
(04:00):
I always really enjoyed, you know, my science classes and throughout middle school,
throughout high school, and I wasalways really into chemistry and physics and
some of the math classes I took. And so after I left high school,
after I left New Jersey, Iwent to college at Harvard College,
I studied environmental engineering and I alsostudy environmental policy in college, so I
(04:21):
got to, you know, froman academic kind of standpoint, del moore
into some of those issues and someof those environmental issues specifically. I later
worked as a research assistant in myundergrad in actually my current advisor's lab,
and we did some research on pfs, and I was actually where I learned
about what pfs are and also reallylearned more about the kind of intersection between
(04:43):
you know, engineering, the classesI was taking men and public health and
particularly environmental health as well, becausethat really planted like that seed in my
brain about you know, bridging thesetwo topics together as kind of some backdrop,
like important backdrop of what was happeningat the time. So the Flint,
Michigan water crisis was actually kind ofat the same time as I was
in undergrad seeing that event happening,and you know, seeing how issues like
(05:09):
structural racism can cause disparities in environmentalhealth and outcomes for individuals in real time
really also was kind of underpinning someof my academic training as well, and
that also informs of my interests inenvironmental health. And so after I graduated
from undergrad, I've worked as asustainability consultant for a few years from really
(05:30):
doing life cycle assessments where we're kindof trying to understand the environmental footprint of
different kinds of products, and thatwas interesting for a few years. I
eventually grew a little bit tired andactually wanted to do some more public health
relevant kinds of work. So Ileft and I went back to grad school
and did my master's degree in environmentalhealth at the Harvard chan School, and
(05:56):
so then I really kind of delvedinto environmental health public did classes and epidemiology
and biostatistics and all sorts of fieldsto give me some more public health treating
and so I started my master withactually a few months before the pandemic began,
So that was another kind of youknow, current event in the world
that really shaped a lot of myresearch interest a lot of my academic kinds
(06:20):
of training as well. And afterI graduated from my master's degree and then
started my PhD in the same departmentat the same school. So now kind
of working on my research, it'sall focused on pfast and drinking water.
Definitely, we'll talk more about thatthroughout the podcast, but that's you know,
how I arrived here today. Okay, very cool. And so I'm
(06:43):
particularly excited because You're environment engineering backgroundled you to look at issues of public
health, look at environmental justice,and so I'm excited to see that that
engineering background is kind of what underpinnedthe way that you engage these issues and
these topics and these conversations. Andso for all the engineers listening, you
don't have to just graduate and bea consultant. There are other ways that
(07:05):
you can make a difference, tomake an impact. And we have an
example right here where Jared went fromenvironment engineering to public health to look at
environmental justice issues. And so I'mjust excited to know that that trajectory is
part of your story. And thenwhen I think about the Flint, Michigan
crisis, I know it made animprint in on a lot of our minds,
and those of us who've kind ofbeen in this environmental justice world.
(07:28):
We might have just read about it, seen some smaller kind of instances in
our communities, but to see thatinstant on a big national stage making worldwide
news, I mean, I knowfor me it made a big impact on
how I viewed environmental justice and particularlywater, because that's one of my passions
is dealing with water issues and watercontamination. From your advantage point, I'm
not sure if you were in schoolof the time, if you're working as
(07:51):
a consultant at that point, Butwas that crisis something that kind of shifted
your perspective and kind of moved youtowards where you are now, or kind
of we're already on that path andthis is just another event that confirmed the
need for you to go where youwere going. I was definitely aware of
environmental justice issues before the Flint,Michigan crisis happened. I think it did
(08:13):
shift me more into doing this kindof work, because you know, it
was happening in the whole time,and so I hadn't really witnessed an event
like that in my lifetime, andso it did, you know, take
it from being a set of issuesthat I was invested and interested in as
an individual to being something that Iwanted to work on and I wanted to
do my own research on as well. So that was definitely like a formative
(08:35):
event in terms of, you know, what was happening in the world that
informed my research as well. Yeah. Yeah, I mean definitely informed on
a lot. And I guess asa PhD candidate, how would you describe
your research interests? Are they broad? I Kin'm thinking about things like environmental
justice. We're talking about water,this is p fact, you could talk
about it, emerging contaminants. Iknow, for me when I was with
(08:58):
my PhD, I focused on morebroadly emerging contaminants, water treatment, environmental
justice. Like, how would youdescribe your research and interests? Yeah,
so my research interests are you know, right now, all on p fasts,
specifically in drinking water. I'm alsofocusing specifically on public water systems in
(09:22):
the US, and so my researchinvolves environmental justice issues, trying to understand
disparities in pfast contamination as well tryingto understand trends over time in pfast contamination,
particularly because they've been industrial shifts andproduction of pfasts over time, so
we don't necessarily know as much aboutwhat that means for contamination. And then
(09:46):
related to all that, I'm alsointerested in how we can think about this
in terms of human health outcomes aswell. So can we make some link
between PFAST contamination specifically of drinking waterand human health. So those are kinds
of the kinds of issues I'm interestedin, specifically for fast intriguing water.
Okay, yeah, can you tellus more about p fast what those are.
(10:07):
I know it's been in the news, and obviously your study has been
in the news, but generally speaking, I've seen a lot of traffic about
pfast, what it is, wherewe can find it, what it does
to our health, how it impactsan environment, and so can you just
give us some background just to helpus understand what p fasts are. What
are we even talking about? Yeah, So p fasts are per and polyphloral
(10:28):
alkhal substances. That's what the abbreviationstands for. They're a really large group
of man made chemical compounds and areall characterized by carbon fluorine bonds. And
so if you remember from chemistry,that kind of bond is really strong and
for you know, industrial applications,for consumer product applications, that gives them
(10:50):
really useful properties. So they haveboth non stick, hydrophobic and hydrophilic or
like water resistant water loving kinds ofproperties. Also really resistant to break down
in the environment. What that meansfor human health and you know environmental health
is that they don't break down easily. So pfasts are pretty persistent in the
(11:11):
environment, also persistent in organisms,including humans. And we know from right
now a few decades of animal andhuman health studies that even at low levels
of exposure to p fast they canresult in advertise health outcomes for individuals.
And so that's what I'm really concernedabout them from a public health perspective.
Okay, perfect, And then Iknow, just from what I've learned just
(11:35):
over time reading articles and different typesof discussions, that past appears to be
and you can correct me if I'mwrong, appears to be very pervasive in
the environment, like it's everywhere youknow I here described as forever chemicals.
And my understanding is that all ofus, no matter who we are,
where we are, at some pointin time, we've probably been exposed to
(11:58):
P fast, we probably have somein our system. And it's funny when
I read the articles, I getthe sense that we're kind of all affected
by P fast, And so Iwonder for your research and for this study
in particular, how did you cometo the realization that you want to look
at P fast from an environmental justiceperspective, Because in my mind, environmental
(12:20):
justice suggests that there's one group that'smore disproportionately impacted than another. But when
I think about P FAST, Iget the sense that we're all impacted by
it, and we're all subject tobeing exposed to it. And so how
did you come to this research question, this topic that you kind of focused
in on for this study, andI guess for your research in general.
(12:43):
Yeah, that's a really great question. So you know, on one hand,
we know from surveys, many ofthem done in the US, that
you know, virtually everyone is exposedto P fast and has measurable levels of
P fast like in their blood andrelated that as well, there's many different
ways that an individual can get exposedto P fast, So confess our inprinking
(13:05):
water. As all discuss, there'sexposure for some individuals by food, by
dust, exposure by consumer products aswell, So there's many different ways to
be exposed as well. So formy specific study that we're going to talk
about today and focused on drinking wateras an exposure specifically. And we crafted
(13:26):
our idea for the study because weknow from previous research and from historical accounts
as well, that sources of industrialpollution hazardous waste facilities are distroportionately located near
marginalized communities, including community of colorand lower income communities as well. And
(13:46):
we know from chemistry that p fastsare man made substances and in many cases
can come from industrial origins. Andso we had this idea that and this
hypothesis that because of these two factorsthat p FAST in drinking water, we
may actually see certain socio demographic groupscould be more highly exposed to be FAST
(14:07):
by drinking water because drinking water canbe contaminated by some of those industrial sources.
And that's was our idea and ourhypothesis going into this work. Oh,
that's interesting. So you're thinking aboutthe sources, where those sources might
be located, and how those sourcesmight disproportionately impact those communities that surround them,
versus all of us kind of equallybeing exposed to p FAST. And
(14:31):
so when we talk about sources,I'm assuming you're talking about industry facilities,
things of that nature. And withthis being an emerging contaminant which I don't
think is regulated at the moment,it had to be pretty difficult to get
actual reliable data to do a studylike this because I can't imagine an industry
providing you the data. I don'tthink there's people monitoring it because it's not
(14:54):
federally or state requirements in place.Maybe there are definitely correct me. I
guess my question is how did youdo to study? Yeah? How did
you actually get information that could beuseful to make the fine that you had
in your study? Yep, sothat was that was a real challenge.
Yeah. So first I want tosay, this study is a collaboration with
(15:16):
doctor A little Shader who's at theSilence bring In stut and my advisor,
Professor LC Sunderland. And so forour study, we have a bunch of
different data sources that we're compiling together. And so we in terms of the
drinking water data that we're using youryou know right now in the us pfasts
are not federally regulated and drinking water, although that could change even within the
(15:37):
next year. And so more recentlywe've had to rely on state monitoring for
pfasts for public water systems, andthat can come from a combination of some
states that have their own regulations ata state level that are doing monitoring to
understand whether public water systems are belowthat those specials that they're setting, or
(15:58):
other states that are doing monitoring tokind of understand if there is contamination in
their state at all. And soour approach to doing the study was to
combine a lot of that data together. So we specifically combined eighteen different monitoring
campaigns done around the US from differentstates to get our data set of community
water systems. And community water systemsare public water systems that just serve the
(16:22):
same population year round. So youcan think of the data that we're using
us coming from you something similar toyour utility if you're served by utility.
And alongside that, we combine allof this with census information to understand,
you know, what is the demographicprofile of those community water systems in terms
of the counties that they're serving.So that's all commuterment the census. We
(16:47):
combine that as well with these differentdatabases that the EPA has made for researchers
for individuals to understand where community watersystems are serving and also has some other
kinds of characteristics about them, likethe population that they serve and how many
people that they serve, and youknow, what kind of source water that
they use. And then they alsoincorporate data on the p FAST sources that
(17:10):
we were talking about and our paper, because there are actually also many,
many sources of p FAST contamination,we focus on kind of a narrow list
of ones that have been identified inthe past as being associated with contamination,
and so these include major industrial facilitiesthat have produced PFAST in the past.
These include military fire training areas thatmay have used firefighting homes or even currently
(17:34):
use firefighting homes that contain high concentrationsof pfasts, as well as airports that
may have also used those firefighting homes. And we also use a list of
which water treatment plants around the USand landfills, and both of these can
think of maybe in some cases beingyou know, the end of life kind
of place where PFAST may go,so either through disposal of consumer products or
(17:57):
other kinds of products that contain fast, and so we rely on the list
that is previously from another study.But there's many other sources of p fast
as well. So our study isn't, you know, looking at all of
them, just a kind of acondensed list. Yeah. No, that's
great, And I think I haveyour study with me, and so I
think you had eighteen states that youwent through and studied. Let's get to
(18:18):
the findings first. Let's get tothe findings. I think that's the really
big headline that we want to reallytalk about and dig deep into. I
saw your study on the Grist.I've seen it on other websites as well,
and the big headline is always thesame, Black and Hispanic communities most
likely to have drinking water with pefast. And so you have your Black
and Hispanic communities environmental justice issue,you have P fast emerging contaminant, also
(18:42):
a big issue. You have drinkingwater, which is always a concern because
when we see different issues in oursociety, it usually it revolves around drinking
water, the quality, the availability, and so I feel like your study
hit all of the big ticket issuesall at once, and so that's I
(19:02):
think why. And obviously it's verygood research, but it's also something that
people are really concerned about, andI think it's really resonating and people are
starting to see more about it.What was it in your study or what
did you find that legs to thatconclusion where you could say that with confidence
that blackness man communities are more likelyto have fast in your drinking water.
I wonder what you saw or whatthings that you identified that legs to that
(19:27):
conclusion. Yeah, So I'll kindof first talk about some of the three
main kind of components that our paperhas, and then I'll talk about,
you know, how we got tothat conclusion. So we took all these
data and we had three primary researchquestions in mind. The first is actually
(19:48):
not related to environmental justice or disparities, but it's kind of going back to
this earlier study that used nationwide dataon p fasts around the US. More
limited in terms some of the laboratorymethods, but it was one of the
first datas that's out there on pfasts interning water in the US, and
so we compared using the same methodsas that prior study. We analyzed weather
(20:11):
contamination sources. This group that Imentioned earlier were associated with pfast concentrations around
the US. And then we actuallyprepared directly with that study to see,
you know, dob se similar kindsof associations or their differences and you know
why there may be differences of well. Second, we analyze this association between
(20:33):
sociodemographic factors and contamination sources. Thoseare the same group of sources as the
first research question, and we specificallyfocus on for our main analysis. We
focus on sociodemographic factors that relate tocommunities that experience segregation, that experience in
structural racism and poverty. And sothat included the proportion of Hispanic residence,
(20:56):
portion of Black residents and residents inthe federal poverty line. Though we also
actually have analyzes that do other thingswith some other demographic factors as well,
and so that is kind of gettingto a citing question about you know,
our certain communities are they are therewater systems more in proximity to sources of
pfast contamination than others and do wesee differences or not? And then the
(21:18):
third we take our drinking water dataand we analyze whether the community is served
by community water systems that have detectablelevels of P fast contamination? Are they
more likely or not to detect Pfast? So that's kind of directly with
the drinking water data. And throughoutthat specific third analysis, we did simpler
(21:38):
statistical tests where we're just kind ofcomparing the demographics for systems that do and
don't exceed five nanograms per leader interms of the concentrations of P fast that
they detect or didn't detect. Andthen we went all the way to more
sophisticated, you know, statistical modelingwhere we're adjusting for differences that maybe between
(21:59):
states in terms of demographics or contamination, and we consider different kinds of community
water system characteristics like the source water, like whether they had potentially relevant technologies
for treatment of P fast, aswell as you know, the system size.
And then we actually also take intoaccount sources of contamination as well,
and the same sources that we analyzeearlier. So do we even see a
(22:22):
difference, you know, beyond takinginto account differences in those contamination sourcess,
there are still kind of a residualassociation between those demographic factors and P fast
contamination. And for that third analysis, we saw these associations persisted throughout those
analyzes where we saw that system servinggreater Hispanic and Black populations were more likely
(22:45):
to detect PFAST and so that's whywe came to that conclusion because it was
consistent throughout all the analyses, consistentthroughout you know, a range of sensitivity
analysis as well, and so that'sultimately why we came to that conclusion.
Interesting, so very detail, verythorough. I guess that one quick question.
I forgot to ask this earlier,but I mentioned that you had eighteen
(23:06):
states in the study. You talkedabout getting data from each of the states,
and I guess compiling it to doyour analysis. You're looking at that
in relation to the communities that aresurrounding these sources that might be potentially producing
these contaminants, to see how thatrelates to exposure. And so can you
(23:27):
talk a little bit about what itwas like to compile this data and to
do the specific analysis that you did, because I would imagine that there's not
a national p FAST approach to collectingdata and that these states probably do things
differently. And then with time tolook at the sources, how did you
locate those sources? How did youcompile that information and correlate the two.
(23:49):
I would love to know more aboutthat process of doing that kind of data
collection and analysis. Yeah, yeah, it was not easy. Sort of
had several criteria that we were usingto include or exclude data from states in
order to kind of harmonize the dataacross all these different sources and be able
(24:10):
to have, you know, aconsistent kind of real data set to work
with, and so that included thingslike ensuring that all of the laboratory methods
for all of the data are similar. It's the standard laboratory approaches actually drafted
by the EPA, and so thatwas one of our criteria. So anything
not using those methods we didn't includein our analysis. We also specifically focused
(24:32):
on states that had done like astatewide monitoring campaign, So there's other states
that aren't included in our study thatmay have done sampling for a smaller group
of system maybe just a handful ofsystems that have decided to do some kind
of p pass monitoring. So we'rereally focusing on either states that did their
own kind of monitoring campaign to understandcontamination. So in many cases that includes
(24:55):
dozens or hundreds of systems or systemsthat actually are required to do monitoring because
their state has a regulation set forp FAST and drinking water, so that
would normally require that they do monitoringof some kind. So criteria like these
are kind of what enabled us toharmonize the data set across all of these
different sources. It's a lot ofcoding, it's a lot of you know,
(25:18):
kind of nitty gritty programming work toget everything together. Would ultimately be
after applying all this kind of criteria, we have a data set of system
that's around eight thousand community water systemsincluded a nurse study, and they serve
in total around seventy million people inthe US. Interesting, very interesting.
So the big fine that made thenews was that blackest man communities are more
(25:41):
likely to be exposed to p FAST. But as I was going through your
study, another finding really jumped outto me, and I want to just
read it to you and get yourthoughts and kind of help me understand why
it is this way. For yourstudy, it says that the results indicated
that is six to eighteen percent decreasein the odds of detecting pfasts above five
(26:03):
nunigrants per leader were observed for eachpercentage point higher proportion of residents under the
federal poverty lines served by community Watersystem. Each percentage point higher under the
poperty line was associated with thirteen pointeight eighteen percent lower odds of detection about
the state's level past MCL. Andso I read that, and what I
(26:29):
understood was for your study, atleast, the higher the poverty level in
a particular area, the lower theexposure to p FAST. Which was really
interesting because in most instances, weassume that poverty is one of those factors
that would lead to higher exposure todifferent contaminants, more issues relating to environmental
(26:49):
justice would be at present in thosekinds of communities. And even though we
know that race is the primary factorfor experiencing this proportion and impacts, collasses
usually close behind. But in thisstudy it seems like race is definitely one
and then actually poverty produces the oppositeresult. And so how would you explain
(27:10):
that to someone like me who's goingto automatically assume when I read the title
that you know it's gonna be race, It's gonna be poor people who are
more exposed to p FAST. You'resaying, no, Actually, in this
study, people who are in communitiesthat see more poverty are less exposed to
p FAST. Yeah, so thatI think there are many reasons why we
(27:30):
did find that. And we actuallyhave another analysis that I'll talk about as
well that complicates this picture a littlebit too. So in our main analysis,
yes, we did find that anincrease in residence under the poverty line
lowered likelihood that a system was detectingp FAST and that was a counterintuitive result
to us, and so we thentried to hypothesize some ways that, you
(27:52):
know, why why would this bethe case. So the first kind of
reason, just thinking about you know, counties, thinking about demographics, thinking
about the structure of the US,is that many of these PFAST sources we
saw are in more urban eras whereactually at a county level, the poverty
rate is lower than many rural areasof the US. So in some ways
(28:17):
you can see this inverse association,this negative association between these two variables as
indicative of the urban signature of PFASTand also isolation, economic isolation of some
of these rural areas from industry,some industry being industry that are contaminated with
PFAS or contaminated the environment with PFAS. So that's kind of our main hypothesis
(28:41):
as to why we see this association. The second association or the second reason
is that when you think about environmentaljustice studies as a whole, one kind
of issue that they deal with iskind of the unit of analysis that they
analyze. So for our demographic data, we're using county level data because that
is right now the most available thatyou can link with water systems around the
(29:02):
US. It gets a little bitmore complicated, for example, if you
were using finer green kinds of spatialunit for the analysis. So if we
instead looked at you know, citiesor census blox or census tracks, you
may see something a little bit different, especially in some of the urban areas
of the US, where you know, at a county scale we can see
(29:22):
poverty is lower than in rural areas. But if you dug in a little
bit more, you could actually seea lot of variation in terms of income
across census box or census tracks,even in the same city. And so
in some ways that maybe washed outat a county scale when you're doing an
analysis like ours. And so withthat first hypothesis, we actually then,
as I was mentioning, we didanother analysis to understand this a little bit
(29:47):
better, and so we took someother information on the percent of residents in
an area that live in a morerural area versus more urban areas around the
US, and so we then splitour data by area US that are more
rural cursus areas that are more urban, and then we redid our analysis where
we're looking at demographic factors and pfastcontamination of water systems, and in that
(30:11):
analysis, we actually found that inmore of the rural areas, pfast contamination
is actually positively associated with residents underthe federal poverty line, although in urban
areas that negative association is still shown. So that was also confusing for us
that you see these opposite relationships inthese areas, and so we kind of
think this may reflect some of thedifferences in poverty between more urban and rural
(30:36):
counties that in some of these morerural areas, poverty may actually be a
more important factor to consider when you'rethinking about environmental justice for pfast contamination,
although in more urban areas of theUS it seems negatively associated, and you
see race and ethnically being one ofthe important factors. So it's kind of
a complicated picture, although that's kindof the trajectory of our study in terms
(31:00):
that specific finding. Wow, that'sinteresting. So there's definitely at least in
this study. And I would imaginethe others differences that we can see when
we think about rural populations, ruralcommunities versus urban ones, and then even
thinking about the residents in those communitiesracially ethnically would be different as well.
And so it sounds like we reallydo need to think about all those different
(31:23):
layers as we engage this kind ofresearch. We can't just be too broad
when we talk about how these issuesare affecting one population over another. It
pays to get granular. So Ilearned that would you say, when you
think about more broadly, p fastyou think about water contamination, do you
think that these types of patterns,these types of findings would be consistent with
(31:47):
other types of contaminants. I'm thinkingin my mind thinking about things like lead,
I'm thinking about arsenic and sometimes Iread a lot about radiological contamination like
radar and uranium. I know thatin different parts of the country these contaminants
or issues. I wonder if wewould see these tame kind of disparities associate
with those contaminants, like we've seenwith pfast. Yeah. Yeah, that
(32:09):
is another great question. So thereare I think two ways to approach it.
So the first that other researchers havetalked about in the past is that
when you're thinking about these connections betweendisparities environmental justice disparities and drinking water quality,
it's that different drinking water contaminants havedifferent origins in terms of how they
(32:32):
end up in our water. Sosome contaminants come from the natural environment so
or even in some cases you know, natural environment plus human sources, and
then others come from you know,human sources alone, and so past are
more in that group. And sowhenever you're thinking about the mechanism that a
particular contaminant, how it arise inthe water, and how that is disparate
(32:53):
for different groups, you have tothink about is this mechanism that's driving this
relationship, is that you know,different between demographic groups or not, And
so that matters when you think aboutmore continants of natural origin versus man made
contentants. Although even with that said, you do see differences and you do
see disparities and contamination for a wholerange of drinking water contentants. So you
(33:16):
know, as you mentioned lad beingone of the kind of the case study
examples arsenic. There studies on arsenicdifferences in drinking water quality between demographic groups.
We also have today is on nitrate. My co author Ryal Shader has
a people on nitrates specifically where shefound similar associations specifically for Hispanic communities as
(33:37):
our study. And then you alsosee this for things like uranium as you
mentioned, and several other heavy metals, chromium, barium, all sorts of
compounds, and even more broadly,there's studies also just looking at violations of
drinking water quality standards where they foundcommunities serving more people of color were more
likely to violate those regulations. Soyou know, even though there are a
(34:00):
host of built environment differences, naturalenvironment differences, community level differences, you
do see throughout several contaminants at leastthat there are disparities that have been found
in private literature. Interesting, that'sinteresting. I don't want to take up
your whole afternoon, and so Iwant to keep pushing just because I want
to get to how your findings shouldinform the way we move forward. And
(34:22):
so think about some of the implicationsof what you've learned from your research in
which you understand about these issues.You had an interesting statement in your study
I want to read. It says, the results of this work should suggest
that addressing environmental justice concerns should bea component of risk mitigation planning for areas
affected by drinking water pfast contamination.And so, I guess my final question
(34:45):
would be, what does that looklike? What are you thinking and what
are you seeing when you suggest thatwe should incorporate environmental justice concerns when we
deal with pfast contamination, maybe evenany contamination at all. What would that
actually look like on the ground orthe community that you're thinking about. So,
I guess i'll talk about, youknow, specifically for p fast.
(35:06):
One of the things that our paper, you know, in some ways coming
at a good time because there aresome proposed regulations for p fasts and drinking
water, actually a few p fastand drinking water that the EPA is currently
working on, and there's some expectationsthat that will be finalized by the end
of the year. Inter paper iscoming out a good time because of that,
and actually the levels that they're proposingare actually pretty similar to the ones
(35:29):
that we analyze in our paper aswell. And so alongside this, Biden
administration has recently made environmental justice likeone of their focuses for the EPA and
in terms of the regulations that they'regoing to set in the kind of the
programs that they're looking to fund.And so one option that they highlighted so
far for p FASS is actually containedin the Infrastructure Bill, which is set
(35:52):
to address some of these contamination concernsfor p FAST. And so we think,
based on our study that if thereis some kind of lending allocation that's
going to be done in the nextfew years, that that should keep disparities
in mind in order broadly speaking,not to perpetuate disparities, you know,
going into the future and the onesthat we piloated in those papers specifically,
(36:13):
and so our study would suggest,you know, they shouldn't just think about
socio economic status, They shouldn't justthink about racimusically. They should think about
both things together in order to addressthese environmental justice concerns. And so actually
several organizations have incorporated details from ourstudy in public comments that they've made on
these proposed regulations. They've said thingslike that the infrastructure bill should be and
(36:37):
you know, ways to apply forgrants should be easily accessible to water systems,
whether that's in you know, providingthings in different languages or community members
to understand and or you know,approaching community water systems specifically to think about
applying for grants and also to youknow, let the public know that these
things are coming down the pipeline.And so, I think the bottom line
(36:59):
when you think about environmental justice,when you think about drinking water quality and
specifically pfast that are coming from theseman made sources, is that you want
communities to be equitively protected from contamination. And because of that, you also
should keep in mind and kind ofkeep top of mind that those who are
(37:19):
disproportunately suffering from past contaminations shouldn't bearthe brunt of cleaning it up either.
So, whether that is through someof this grant allocation that is targeted towards
environmental justice communities, or whether thatis you know, offering methods for remediation
of contamination at the source or treatmentin a water system that it is meant
(37:40):
to alleviate some of these disparities.And so that's kind of my thoughts right
now on this kind of topic.Nice. Nice, So communication, funding,
awareness, being able to target theefforts to the communities that are experiencing
this in proportionate way, I thinkis the way forward in your right.
(38:01):
I know, the Infrastructure Bill,the Inflation Reduction Act, the new Office
of Environmental Justice, they're all kindof tuned in and dialed into specifically confronting
these types of issues. And soI think your study is timely in that
way too, because it puts thison their radar in terms of understanding what
the issues actually are and what needsto be confronted and address. If they
(38:22):
approve this regulation, then it's goingto be important to know that there are
environmental justice concerns associated with this kindof contamination, so they can actually have
that targeted approach to addressing it.So I think it's great. So what's
next? What's coming on after this? So we now we know because of
your study that p FAST is outthere, it's a problem. We know
(38:45):
that black and brown communities are disproportionatelyimpacted by it. We know that you
have suggestions in your study about howit could be confronted addressed in an equitable
way. I mean, for me, I would be done thank you and
get my degree. But obviously you'reworking on some more things because you're always
making sure that you advance our understandingthese issues. So what's the next thing
(39:07):
that we can see coming from you, come from your lab, from from
your research group in this area.Yeah. Actually, one thing I'll add
to the previous question as well,and that's relevant for some of my work
and I'm planning to do, isthat, you know, one of the
nice things of other paper as well, I think, is that you know,
previously a lot of these the statedata on the fast monitoring was not
(39:30):
available publicly for individuals and researchers toto use or on look at. And
so along with the data which isopen access and our studies open access as
well, we want you know,other researchers to be able to use some
of these data for their projects andso for me personally going forward. So
I am still deep in my dissertationphase. I am looking to use some
(39:52):
of these data to you know,see, you know, do we along
with some of these shifts in productionover times and kind of shifted from UM
something fats that are actually called legacypfast into replacement compounds? Interested in seeing
do we see shifts in the contaminationover time as well. So that's another
project that I'm working on over thesummer and throughout the next few years on
(40:15):
community water systems. Again, alsoreally interested in leveraging some of these data
to investigate health outcomes, So movingyou know, just from the exposure aside,
where we're analytic disparities, where we'reseeing trends over time, into how
do we then connect us with publichealth and health outcomes for individuals and communities.
So that's you know, what I'mplanning to do for the rest of
(40:37):
my dissertation research or research for otherindividuals in our groups. So we're doing
research on related to this environmental justicequestion research on disparities and heavy metal contamination
in drinking water as well. Sothat's another research project that several individuals in
the lab group that I'm are workingon. And we're also interested in other
(40:58):
sources of environmental justice questions and somoving even just from drinking water into contamination
from mercury around the US. Sowe've actually recently released the paper on map
as well, and thinking even abouttreatment technologies and disparities and use of these
different kinds of treatment technologies that arein some cases relevant for treating pfast.
(41:19):
So we have a whole range ofprojects. I'm excited, you know,
for the next few years to seeall kinds of research that we're able to
do as well. Oh, that'sexciting. That's exciting. So and I
know it's going to go well.You're going to knock out the part that
you did with this one. AllI ask is that when you publish again,
when you get that research out,make sure if you get a chance,
give us a call. We'd loveto talk more about whatever else you
(41:39):
learn. Continue to educate us onthese issues, and continue to show us
the connections between these issues and environmentaljustice, because that's what this podcast is
all about. We would love tocontinue to highlight the great word that you're
doing your research group. This dayis amazing. I know your work is
amazing, going to continue to beamazing, and so I just want to
thank you for taking the time totell us more about your study that help
(42:01):
us understands issue better and to continueto highlight why it's important for us to
know these things. Thank you somuch for joining us, Thanks so much
for having met. Thank you,and that is our episode. Thank you
so much for listening to the EnvironmentalJustice Lab, where we are for the
people and for the planet. Seeyou next time.
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