An Introduction to ContamiNation

Welcome to a brand new podcast dedicated to exploring the intersection of industry and the environment, shedding light on environmental issues Americans are facing right now. We'll explore contamination and pollution and work to understand the underlying science of these concerns, including why these problems exist in the first place and how that relates to the products you and I use every day. Join host Dr. Corey Husic, PhD for an enlightening and informative discussion of these important topics.

Transcript

The environmental issues we most frequently hear about tend to be those at the global scale. This is no doubt important, but these issues can feel abstract, out-of-reach, and not particularly relevant to the daily lives to most of us here in the United States. And I think for many, the consequences just feel too far off.

On the other hand, when it comes to more local environmental concerns, perhaps ones with a more direct and immediate impact on our lives, we tend not to hear much about these at all. And when we do, it’s probably very bad news. Something sudden and on a massive scale. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill and Flint, Michigan water crisis come to mind.

This hasn’t always been the case. The American environmental movement reached a peak in the 1960s and 1970s when public awareness and subsequent outcry helped with the creation of some tremendous legislation: the Clean Air Act of 1963, the Clean Water Act of 1972, and the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974. It’s easy to think that such significant laws have been keeping us safe—and to some degree, they have.

But what we don’t hear from the mainstream media is that even to this day, nearly 40% of the US population gets drinking water from sources that violate the Safe Drinking Water Act. That’s something like 130 million people.

Pretty recently, we started hearing about “forever chemicals.” Yet, the chemical industry has known about the carcinogenic and toxic properties of these molecules since the 70s. They’ve known about the presence in the environment for nearly as long. Still, this issue is generally reduced to buzzwords. What even is the forever chemical? Maybe you know them as PFAS, but what is that? Why are they here? Why are they such a problem? I mentioned that these materials are in our environment, but they’re also in nearly every household in our country. And they’re in all of our bodies.

We’re surrounded by environmental concerns that we’re told not to worry about, that are presented in a way that is meant to confuse us, or that we aren’t told about at all.

I’m your host, Dr. Corey Husic—a PhD chemist and an environmentalist—and I’m hoping to change the way we have that conversation. Welcome to ContamiNation.

In this new podcast, I want to share what I know—and what I learn—about local environmental issues facing Americans today. This will be from my perspective as a chemist who has worked for one of the largest chemical manufacturing companies in the world. I want to dive into the intersection of manmade chemistry and the environment. And I hope you’ll join me as I travel around the United States finding stories that teach us something about how we interact with the planet in this way.

I don’t want to point fingers at an industry or shame consumers who use their products. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a future without many of the chemicals and materials we’ll discuss on this podcast. I use them on a daily basis. I bet you do too. Instead, I want to understand the implicated chemicals and processes. I want to bring awareness to the environmental and health issues that exist in our own backyards right now. We shouldn’t be in the dark here. 

I’m approaching this problem through the lens of how I generally think about the world—through science. I’m interested in the fundamentals of why these contaminants exist, how they ended up in the environment, and what we can do to mitigate their negative impacts moving forward. The goal here is for all of us to understand our world—natural and not—just a little bit more.

Now, this podcast is sure to get a bit nerdy at times. We’re absolutely going to talk chemistry, we’re going to dive into the science behind the products you and I use every day, and we’re going to discuss those hard-to-pronounce chemical names you see on ingredient lists. At the same time, I want this podcast to be accessible to anyone who wants to learn more about the environmental issues we face here in the US. I hope we all leave with a deeper understanding of the industries and products that ultimately exist to make our lives easier. From there, we can understand how to best advocate for safer products, better industrial processes, and greater environmental concern. This podcast is for the curious and for the concerned. It’s for those who care about the wellbeing of the environment, ecosystems, and communities in which we live.

I’m a big believer that education, demystification, and productive, informed concern is the path to finding an appropriate balance between our wants and needs as a constantly developing society with a world that isn’t poisoned—that isn’t poisoning us.

If you’re interested in following along, please subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Additional information can be found on our Instagram page @contaminationpod. 

This podcast is produced and written by me, Corey Husic. The research and production are made possible by the Milton and Rosalind Chang Career Exploration Prize from Caltech.