Rich “Raz” Razgaitis is a clean-water evangelist and co-founder and CEO of Flowater. We chat about PFAS "forever chemicals" in fish at popular lakes.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Rich who goes by raz Or as Guidius, who is
a clean water evangelist and co founder and CEO of
flow Water flo wat R. And at the risk of
offering free advertising, just give me a few seconds on
what flow water does and then we'll talk about the
(00:20):
topic of the day.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Ross great to be back on the show. Flow Water
is focused on putting an end to single use plastic
water bottles, but really doing that by restoring America's drinking water.
We have a prolific issue with drinking water across the
United States today. We don't have a problem called if
I could only find a faucet. We have a problem
called people don't like or trust what's coming out of
that faucet. And so we're trying to do is really
(00:42):
take the last six feet of water line and purify
that so that whatever you're drinking is free of contaminants
and tastes great.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
And your primary customers are businesses and institutions. It's not
really a product necessarily for somebody's house.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
It's not a house product.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
So our focus is primarily B to B and that's corporations, businesses, schools, gyms, warehouses,
anywhere where.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
You're really at work or in a hotel or traveling.
Let's talk about the topic of the day here. This
is a headline from the Colorado Sun. Colorado warns anglers
and families to limit eating fish laden with peafasts pfas
at popular lakes.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
And I won't.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Spend much on the article here, just in the interesting time,
but basically it says, normally, if you're fishing in a lake,
you can eat quite a lot of fish. Here, I'll
share this with you. But the FDA or whoever is
recommending now no one should eat more than one serving
a month of small mouth bass caught at Chatfield Reservoir.
(01:45):
All right, what are we talking about here?
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Well, actually, Chatfield, Runyon, and bar they all have advisories
around it. One fish a month really to me says
you should not be touching that fish at.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
All, not even with your hands. No right, ye, not
your mouth.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
And so what's happened is pea fasts are prolific across.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
The United States.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
They're used in everything from firefighting foam to nonstick products
like clothing, tapestry on your sofa, some cosmetics. And what
ends up happening is you get runoff through agriculture, through
municipal water or into municipal water, but that also makes
its way from landfills into lakes. And so with the fish,
(02:31):
this pea fast concentrate hundreds to thousands of times the
level that are in lakes because they basically just accumulate
within that fish and they don't they don't degrade. They're
called forever chemicals because they're in there practically forever. And
so that's a that's a huge issue that we have.
So it's not an issue in swimming in the lake.
I mean, you can't really absorb it very easily in
(02:52):
your skin. It's very deminimous. But it's a massive issue
as it relates to consuming fish. But really what this
points to is and even more epidemic issue across the
United States that we have with PFASs contamination that's affecting
well over two hundred million Americans. And so this is
just these fish in bar and Chatfield and Runion.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
They're just the canary in the coal mine.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
If we're talking about not being able to eat those fish,
we're really dealing with a bigger issue around p fast
across the United States, not limited to Colorado, not limited
to those lakes, and it.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Might be because of the issue of this these chemicals
in water. But even as a nerd, I hadn't heard
of p FAST before. But they've actually been around for
like seventy five years or seventy years, and then they've
been around a long time, and I realized, you're not
an MD, and you're not you know, on here representing
yourself as a doctor. But do you know anything about
(03:42):
the potential health risks from PFASs.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Well, the data anyone can go to chat ept or
Google and search this to get a more prolific explanation
for that.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
But p FAST they affect a variety of things.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
So there's an association with an increased incidence in cancer, kidney, testicular,
prostate cancer. P FAST caused developmental issues in newborns or adolescents.
Liver toxicity and liver disease is another one of those,
and so it goes on from there. There's another half
dozen things that if you just google this, you'll see
(04:17):
the number of instances and incidents that occur as a
result of p FAST contamination.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
And there's no safe level.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
I mean, these are things that are these are health
issues that are detected even at the one part per
trillion level. So one part per trillion is sounds minuscule,
but this is how dangerous and damaging p fast chemicals
can be.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
And so it's why it's worth solving.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Is this is an issue that's worth solving for you know,
our ourselves as well as our kids and the communities
that we live in, you.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Know, and for listeners.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
If you want to see the article I'm referring to,
if you go to my blog at Rosskominsky dot com
today and just go to the guest section right, you'll
see a link for raz and a link for flow
water Is Company, and a link to this article. And
one of the useful things in the article is there's
a there's a map and you can see around the
state of Colorado which bodies of water have are are
(05:16):
safe to eat fish from and which aren't.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Uh, this is kind of.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
A crazy thing, right, I mean, I Chatfield Reservoir is
this big, beautiful thing near where I used to live.
And and the idea that you know, you basically can't
eat at least bass, and maybe bass has a higher
instance of concentrating the chemical in their body versus some
other kind of fish for some physiological reason. But you know,
(05:43):
if you can't eat bass from there, I'm not sure
i'd want anything else from there either.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
It really is I don't know, it's a little surprising.
Well it is. It is jarring, and it is shocking.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
But I think also this just points to this systemic
issue that we have across the United States that's affecting
us locally here in Denver and throughout Colorado. But there
are over fifty thousand chemicals in use in the United
States today, fewer than one hundred of those are regulated
by the Safe Drinking Water Act. And so when you
see what happens and accumulates over time, life has the
(06:18):
same thing commonly known as roundup, which is, you know,
once upon a time that was very localized and was
used in agriculture. Now you can find it in trace
amounts in a lot of the municipal tap water across
the United States. And so it's a little bit like smoking,
which is, you know, if you have eight people in
a room and seven or non smokers and one is smoking,
you're basically all smoking as a result of the secondhand smoke.
(06:39):
And that's exactly what's happening with our drinking water across
the United States today. Is we're getting this byproduct or
this secondhand smoke equivalent in the form of a chemical cocktail.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
And PFASA is just one of those.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
So you know, a couple of years ago it was
chromium six. More recently, fluorid's been brought up, you know,
as a result of RFK a p fast. But there's
other things like pharmaceuticals, other herbicized pesticides.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
These are these are serious issues in our drinking water.
And what it really means is that we live in
a world today where you have to treat your water twice.
That's the outcome of this, which is, yes, we need
to do things around appropriate levels of regulation. Yes we
need to rehaul infrastructure, upgrade municipal water treatment plants. But
today we've got to take matters into our own hands
and treat our water twice.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Ras Res Guidus is a founder and CEO of flow Water.
I think I give the wrong U R L before.
It's drinkflowwater dot com. Right, that's a drink f L
O W A T E r dot com. If you
want to get some for your business, right your where
your office, your warehouse, where people are working for your business,
drinking a lot of water, uh, and you want to
make sure that's clean and drinkable and healthy and safe
(07:49):
for your for your folks.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Go check out drinkflowwater.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Dot com and see if some of those products are
are good for your business.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
RAS, thanks for coming in, Ross, Thanks for having me
Rich who goes by raz Or as Guidius, who is
a clean water evangelist and co founder and CEO of
flow Water flo wat R. And at the risk of
offering free advertising, just give me a few seconds on
what flow water does and then we'll talk about the
(00:20):
topic of the day.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Ross great to be back on the show. Flow Water
is focused on putting an end to single use plastic
water bottles, but really doing that by restoring America's drinking water.
We have a prolific issue with drinking water across the
United States today. We don't have a problem called if
I could only find a faucet. We have a problem
called people don't like or trust what's coming out of
that faucet. And so we're trying to do is really
(00:42):
take the last six feet of water line and purify
that so that whatever you're drinking is free of contaminants
and tastes great.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
And your primary customers are businesses and institutions. It's not
really a product necessarily for somebody's house.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
It's not a house product.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
So our focus is primarily B to B and that's corporations, businesses, schools, gyms, warehouses,
anywhere where.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
You're really at work or in a hotel or traveling.
Let's talk about the topic of the day here. This
is a headline from the Colorado Sun. Colorado warns anglers
and families to limit eating fish laden with peafasts pfas
at popular lakes.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
And I won't.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Spend much on the article here, just in the interesting time,
but basically it says, normally, if you're fishing in a lake,
you can eat quite a lot of fish. Here, I'll
share this with you. But the FDA or whoever is
recommending now no one should eat more than one serving
a month of small mouth bass caught at Chatfield Reservoir.
(01:45):
All right, what are we talking about here?
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Well, actually, Chatfield, Runyon, and bar they all have advisories
around it. One fish a month really to me says
you should not be touching that fish at.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
All, not even with your hands. No right, ye, not
your mouth.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
And so what's happened is pea fasts are prolific across.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
The United States.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
They're used in everything from firefighting foam to nonstick products
like clothing, tapestry on your sofa, some cosmetics. And what
ends up happening is you get runoff through agriculture, through
municipal water or into municipal water, but that also makes
its way from landfills into lakes. And so with the fish,
(02:31):
this pea fast concentrate hundreds to thousands of times the
level that are in lakes because they basically just accumulate
within that fish and they don't they don't degrade. They're
called forever chemicals because they're in there practically forever. And
so that's a that's a huge issue that we have.
So it's not an issue in swimming in the lake.
I mean, you can't really absorb it very easily in
(02:52):
your skin. It's very deminimous. But it's a massive issue
as it relates to consuming fish. But really what this
points to is and even more epidemic issue across the
United States that we have with PFASs contamination that's affecting
well over two hundred million Americans. And so this is
just these fish in bar and Chatfield and Runion.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
They're just the canary in the coal mine.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
If we're talking about not being able to eat those fish,
we're really dealing with a bigger issue around p fast
across the United States, not limited to Colorado, not limited
to those lakes, and it.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Might be because of the issue of this these chemicals
in water. But even as a nerd, I hadn't heard
of p FAST before. But they've actually been around for
like seventy five years or seventy years, and then they've
been around a long time, and I realized, you're not
an MD, and you're not you know, on here representing
yourself as a doctor. But do you know anything about
(03:42):
the potential health risks from PFASs.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Well, the data anyone can go to chat ept or
Google and search this to get a more prolific explanation
for that.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
But p FAST they affect a variety of things.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
So there's an association with an increased incidence in cancer, kidney, testicular,
prostate cancer. P FAST caused developmental issues in newborns or adolescents.
Liver toxicity and liver disease is another one of those,
and so it goes on from there. There's another half
dozen things that if you just google this, you'll see
(04:17):
the number of instances and incidents that occur as a
result of p FAST contamination.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
And there's no safe level.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
I mean, these are things that are these are health
issues that are detected even at the one part per
trillion level. So one part per trillion is sounds minuscule,
but this is how dangerous and damaging p fast chemicals
can be.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
And so it's why it's worth solving.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Is this is an issue that's worth solving for you know,
our ourselves as well as our kids and the communities
that we live in, you.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Know, and for listeners.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
If you want to see the article I'm referring to,
if you go to my blog at Rosskominsky dot com
today and just go to the guest section right, you'll
see a link for raz and a link for flow
water Is Company, and a link to this article. And
one of the useful things in the article is there's
a there's a map and you can see around the
state of Colorado which bodies of water have are are
(05:16):
safe to eat fish from and which aren't.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Uh, this is kind of.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
A crazy thing, right, I mean, I Chatfield Reservoir is
this big, beautiful thing near where I used to live.
And and the idea that you know, you basically can't
eat at least bass, and maybe bass has a higher
instance of concentrating the chemical in their body versus some
other kind of fish for some physiological reason. But you know,
(05:43):
if you can't eat bass from there, I'm not sure
i'd want anything else from there either.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
It really is I don't know, it's a little surprising.
Well it is. It is jarring, and it is shocking.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
But I think also this just points to this systemic
issue that we have across the United States that's affecting
us locally here in Denver and throughout Colorado. But there
are over fifty thousand chemicals in use in the United
States today, fewer than one hundred of those are regulated
by the Safe Drinking Water Act. And so when you
see what happens and accumulates over time, life has the
(06:18):
same thing commonly known as roundup, which is, you know,
once upon a time that was very localized and was
used in agriculture. Now you can find it in trace
amounts in a lot of the municipal tap water across
the United States. And so it's a little bit like smoking,
which is, you know, if you have eight people in
a room and seven or non smokers and one is smoking,
you're basically all smoking as a result of the secondhand smoke.
(06:39):
And that's exactly what's happening with our drinking water across
the United States today. Is we're getting this byproduct or
this secondhand smoke equivalent in the form of a chemical cocktail.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
And PFASA is just one of those.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
So you know, a couple of years ago it was
chromium six. More recently, fluorid's been brought up, you know,
as a result of RFK a p fast. But there's
other things like pharmaceuticals, other herbicized pesticides.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
These are these are serious issues in our drinking water.
And what it really means is that we live in
a world today where you have to treat your water twice.
That's the outcome of this, which is, yes, we need
to do things around appropriate levels of regulation. Yes we
need to rehaul infrastructure, upgrade municipal water treatment plants. But
today we've got to take matters into our own hands
and treat our water twice.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Ras Res Guidus is a founder and CEO of flow Water.
I think I give the wrong U R L before.
It's drinkflowwater dot com. Right, that's a drink f L
O W A T E r dot com. If you
want to get some for your business, right your where
your office, your warehouse, where people are working for your business,
drinking a lot of water, uh, and you want to
make sure that's clean and drinkable and healthy and safe
(07:49):
for your for your folks.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Go check out drinkflowwater.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Dot com and see if some of those products are
are good for your business.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
RAS, thanks for coming in, Ross, Thanks for having me
The Ross Kaminsky Show News
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