Martin Scheringer: "The Growing Threat from Chemical Pollution" | The Great Simplification #37

[@Nerdthropic]

Nate - your interviews with world-leading experts in so many fields of study is one of the best concentrations of knowledge online. You clearly do thorough background research prior to each interview which the guests recognize as they often remark on the sharpness of your questions to them. Distilling all of these spheres of knowledge and synthesising them into your developing view of the global ecology is laudable and based upon your comments section is gifting people epiphanies. Thank you for your gifts and let's plan for a lower consumption more evenly distributed energy future, for ALL forms of life.

[@stewartdouglas2636]

Thanks for so much insight into the ecological and social predicaments that we need to collectively address. I am 71 years old and spent my early years until I was around twenty-one in a rural agrarian setting. This was a culture of self-sufficiency and minimalism. Focus was directed to production, processing and consumption in place. I still long for those days and try to pass these values on to my family. The more you unpack these predicaments, the more I'm convinced the current regenerative farming and organic movements using appropriate technologies may begin to wean us off "the super organism". Thanks again for your research, information and dedication to addressing these problems.

[@MrPaddy924]

This discussion, more than any other I've seen from you, Nate, made me want to cry. What are we doing to this planet, to ourselves, to the biosphere? No matter where I move, no matter how remote my home, I'm surrounded by and compelled to injest PFAs, a range of chemcals whose precise impact on us and future generations we can only guess at. We're ony traversing the lower slopes of our understanding of their impact and it's already very, very scary. Thanks for opening my eyes, but I sometimes wish I was akin to the majority of people who seem to be able and quite happy to live their lives in blissful ignorance of all this stuff.

[@deusvultfpv6957]

Every time I watch one of your videos I learn so much thank you ! The more I understand and the more I see that I was an ignorant...

[@rcm929]

Great to hear more on this subject in detail. I’m pausing listening briefly to comment that the example of replacing plastics with glass wouldn’t be a solution due to the shortage of silicon, the need to extract raw materials in general to make virgin glass, and the pollution generated by both making virgin glass and recycling waste glass. Also the manufacturing of paper products is incredibly resource intensive and chemical/pollution producing, sometimes even more than plastic. We’ve made our chemical soup, are totally dependent on plastics, and to supply even the most basic food and medical supply needs for 8 billion humans and counting I don’t see a current good solution for this. Things like plastic-eating organisms are gaining attention, but I wonder if those could have unforeseen consequences as well. Even rubber is too risky because rubber trees are one mass tree infection away from destroying that resource globally, and research on other potential rubber resources (e.g. dandelions) is just starting. This is a big, incredibly important piece of our poly crisis puzzle for sure that needs to be addressed - the inherent health tax we’re paying on our chemical use is going to get higher and higher. Unfortunately it’s just another example that points to the growing body of evidence, which Nate so bravely and wisely marches forward illustrating, that the only way to even get close to improvement involves global degrowth.

[@raewynhaughton1585]

Thank you Nate! Your videos, messages and guests provide the most important content on YT and beyond. It bothers me that the masses aren’t yet switched on to these issues, with your voice I hope they will! Keep going my friend, love from Australia! 🐨🤍🦋

[@dbadagna]

Brilliant interview featuring two knowledgeable and thoughtful people of conscience, who are (unlike most) willing to tell things like they are. Appreciated!

[@tonybaldwin6280]

I'm a carpenter turned farmer and through my research into how to farm well came across the sort of information Nate offers, there is a lot of hope in regenerative farming and simplification but very discouraging when I tell the story to farmers ,parents and christians who don't want to know or are too busy to wake up

[@richardbruton5980]

I am a scientist turned regenerative farmer myself. I have found that my customers are so happy when they find me. They get it for sure! We just need to lead the way and hope that when the paradigm shift comes, we are there to set the example.

[@matthewcurry3565]

​​@@richardbruton5980f I'm not mistaken regenerative farming is already used alongside with made fertilizers. I could be wrong, but from what I recall huge farms still have a half life in the soil even with regenerative farming due to the demand.

[@mischevious]

@@matthewcurry3565On those farms that have transitioned from traditional to regenerative agriculture, yes there can be petroleum based fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides present. But there’s a three year waiting period to become an organic farm for that purpose. And it also takes at least three years before your perennials are producing and in the meantime you’re rebuilding soil biology which mitigates all manner of contaminants. By the time new perennial crops start producing amounts are down to trace levels. And potatoes are also often used as a field cleaning prep crop because they absorb and retain heavy metals and all manner of toxins.- A great way to prep a backyard garden space if you’re concerned about what toxins or heavy metals might be in the soil. Just be sure to throw those potatoes in the trash, don’t eat them or leave them for wildlife. Unfortunately we’ve contaminated every last square inch. But nature has ways of dealing with it, just needs a hand to help fix what the hand broke.

[@Seawithinyou]

Watch Professor Martin Scheringer has just done a DW Doco on this 🕊🌏🧐

[@williamjmccartan8879]

Thank you both Martin and Nate for your efforts in trying to educate a wider audience, peace

[@TerryMaplePoco]

this episode was gruellingly depressing. Thank you for going for it.

[@johnbanach3875]

Yes, just when you thought it couldn't get any worse!

[@dbadagna]

If you want more, see the 2020 scientific paper "Micro- and nano-plastics in edible fruit and vegetables. The first diet risks assessment for the general population," which found that vegetables and fruits like carrots and apples contained tiny fragments of microplastics amounting to 52,050 to 233,000 particles per gram of vegetable or fruit, these particles apparently being absorbed into the plant via their roots.

[@harveytheparaglidingchaser7039]

This was a great interview. System thinking urgently required

[@sarahammer5492]

If we localise we remove some of then packaging needs that proliferate plastics. If we reduce consumption, particularly of the unnecessary stuff, we would also reduce the demand for some of it. My perception is that these two actions are a thread that runs through many of the risks discussed here. Thanks again for this weeks eye opener.

[@TennesseeJed]

I knew this one was going to be scary since it was a day early. "My God, what have we done‽", was the quote from the crew who nuked Japan. Seems apropos to the chemical soup we live in that we have shat up beyond belief.

[@BraveblueRaven]

I was thinking of that myself as I listened...to the telling of yet one more predicament to add to the list of multiple predicaments. There are indeed many "elephants in the room" but they are also on fire and, as yet, very few can actually see them. And even fewer still can sit with them and feel their enormity.

[@dbadagna]

Have you read the short story "He-y, come on ou-t!" by Shinichi Hoshi? v=U_KirrTwxdQ

[@felipearbustopotd]

We are treating the only home we have as a petri dish. Very myopic. Thank you for uploading and sharing.

[@johndavis2399]

Thank you for providing a sounding board for this crucial topic Nate.

[@brendafosmire6519]

More please! This was such a tour of so many topics. You definitely need to pick a sub topic and do it justice.

[@em945]

Thank you so much Martin and Nate. Nate, your gallows humour was on form this interview. I think THIS is our biggest problem.

[@noahbrown4388]

Thanks Nate and Martin! :)

[@sandraweiss1652]

Oh my goodness. I knew this was bad but I had no idea of just how dire.

[@netrabantawa3439]

Keep going...it's tough..but please keep it moving . Thanks!

[@bobmathieson987]

Wonderful work guys. Keep it up.

[@eileenmacarthur1446]

I have begun to think of 'things' as chunks of the planet that we have converted into stuff. If this stuff can be converted back into 'planet', that might be okay. But if we are exchanging the planet for objects, then we really need to think about how important those objects are, how long they last, how we value or care for them, and especially how they can become part of the planet again. Everything we are and everything we have, has come from pieces of our planet.

[@teddybearroosevelt1847]

So in your definition an object is something that was made by us? I would say that these chemicals and other things we created will become part of nature, as nature will evolve to do useful things with these things we created. So our plastics will be digested by bacteria, molds or algae and in a similar vein nature will learn to use these forever chemicals to its advantage.

[@raajaggarwal7777]

Hello Nate, thank you for this podcast on this issue, I've struggled to find any coverage on this new study on PFAS's beyond short articles. I have a more speculative question on the future with the caveat that I acknowledge no one knows what the future will hold, and that you may not have a good answer. As someone who is greatly interested and working towards a viable future of education, do you think that there is any future for mass education for an educated citizenry (as Daniel Schmachtenberger would put it), especially given that we will over time go back to something like ~80% of humans living on farms and being self sufficient, as Jason Bradford said on your podcast, and that digital tech seems not to be sustainable on longer time scales? While generations will be "educated" in working on farms and being self sufficient after, and ideally before and during, the Great Simplification, do you think there is any room for education that plays a role in teaching useful knowledge for maintaining democratic governance and human rights (I'm thinking about things like history curricula that teaches things like Marvin Harris's anthropological theory, training students to see and value different perspectives, core texts that discuss liberal democratic values, perhaps even some content on the cognitive biases that impact our sensemaking, etc.)? Washington, Jefferson, and other founding fathers discussed the importance of an educated citizenry, and the start of compulsory schooling in the US occurred in Massachusetts in 1852, largely before the carbon pulse. Are you aware of any other educators or organizations that are thinking about the future of schooling after factoring in your work? Personally, while I think a low/no tech education system that's highly effective in its goals is legitimately possible given how much we know about effective learning and teaching techniques and about the development of literacy, I'm skeptical that our culture will actually value such a system given how K-12 education is essentially a slave to the goal of GDP (the federal government spends $50 per student on STEM vs $0.05 on civics www.educatingforamericandemocracy.org/take-action/, currently much of the emphasis in schools is for high-tech jobs and entrepreneurship i.e. maker education and robotics).

[@boombot934]

Thank❤🌹🙏 you, Martin Scheringer and Nate👍! Chemical pollution is the leading cause of cancer, not genetics😢

[@nunofoo8620]

39:38 That was a known polluting industries lobbyist called Patrick Moore. Also a known anthropogenic climate change denier. He claims he's a co-founder of Greenpeace (Greenpeace says he's not, but he was a part of Greenpeace but left in 86). Anyway, he said he would drink it, but unfortunately for him the people interviewing him actually had some of the stuff and offered him a glass of it. This made him storm out of the interview. You can search it on youtube: partick moore weedkiller. It has great comedic value.

[@TennesseeJed]

I saw that!

[@henninghusum]

"Do newer mention the weedkiller incident": m.kzbin.info/www/bejne/b4msoYenl7GFa7s Patrick Moore defends nuclear to avoid climate change caused by CO2. Reject that CO2 causes climate change. Denies that PCB is dangerous. And on it goes. As Peter Hadfield explains in the video, Moore has to earn a living. 🤢🤑

[@roberthornack1692]

We've become spoiled in our current situation. If we are truly honest with ourselves. We should be living like indigenous peoples.

[@nicholasporteron]

Brilliant episode, an area I previously knew nothing about.

[@weliveonearth8012]

A good compliment to this episode is from The Sun magazine September 2022 "The Great Decline" Shanna Swan on the worldwide drop in fertility, an interview by Tracy Frisch. Patrick Moore is the sensationalist who said he would drink RoundUp and then of course refused. He almost never has his facts right. For example, when claiming Round Up is safe he cites that people unsuccessfully commit suicide with Round Up...people also unsuccessfully commit suicide with a gunshot to their head but that doesn't make it safe. Also, people do successfully die from the Round Up and sometimes even small amounts. Either way, it's not safe for consumption and even farmers who handle it do face consequences. His recent interview on Modern Wisdom was a mess and Chris failed to properly challenge him. It's sad that someone like that gets platformed uncontested. Modern Wisdom has had some decent content though lately, like Nate Hagens, Sabine Hossenfelder, Peter Zeihan.

[@em945]

Shanna Swan is great. Nate had her on the podcast quite early on. I believe her chemical research was phthalates. From my understanding, round up or glyphosate kills smaller microbial life. It technically does not kill human cells, and is registered as an antimicrobial. The problem occurs for humans when it is ingested or enters the body. The human body is made of 90% non human bacteria etc. So for eg, the human gut, made of microbes can be killed and create weakness and therefore open to metabolic illness and cancers etc. So the damage is almost secondary. It also kills bacterial life in soil, depleting it's health. I imagine the man you spoke of that was saying all the stuff, may have some mental state that requires being sensationalist and gaining attention.

[@paul1862]

Hello Nate thanks for all these wonderful podcasts. I would like to address one concern. The intro music is typically much louder than the audio content. I listen with headphones and it can be uncomfortably loud.

[@JaseboMonkeyRex]

This is truly scary....

[@bradbear]

You don’t need a benevolent dictator to make changes necessary or an info campaign run by govts you just need to talk about it (which you’re doing) and get your voice amplified by some big influencers while at the same time not making it political. Repetition is the name of the game.

[@liamhickey359]

You being serious. Were up against capitalism here. You think the chemical industry or the oil companies ever thought for a second it was anything but political.

[@johnbanach3875]

@@liamhickey359 True. They bought off the politicians long ago, who've allowed their lobbyists to write legislation, and insured a Supreme Court that has protected their "freedom of speech."

[@Basieeee]

Cool I found this, first time this got me thinking when I found out about the global distiliation effect, global warming or CO2 is nothing compared to chemical pollution.

[@porlarctm]

Is there any way to treat drinking water in order to remove at least some of the PFAS?

[@robinhood4640]

Activated carbon filter.

[@sudd3660]

you can also eat more fruits, then you need less tap water. its a win win

[@porlarctm]

@@sudd3660 do you have any source for that? Didn't knew that fruits could grow leaving PFAS out.

[@porlarctm]

@@robinhood4640 thanks. Thought about activated carbon, but didn't knew that it was already tested successfully. Do you have any source for that?

[@sudd3660]

@@porlarctm fruit have the most healthy and cleanest water inside, pfas values spesiffically you have too look into yourself.

[@janklaas6885]

📍42:56

[@roberthornack1692]

& if we did stop using plastics, how do we get rid of what we currently have safely? Shoot it out into space?

[@elizabethpearce2011]

Nobody even tests fot DDT anymore since it is in ALl soil samples. But on the positive side, many of the bird species that were highlighted for their soft eggshells have bounced back.

[@OldJackWolf]

At my first job at a regulatory agency in the late 80s there was a contest on what to call sewage sludge so that the public and farmers wouldn't of think it as a nasty pollutant or byproduct of the sewage treatment plant. Bio-solids won the contest. And sewage? We call it wastewater now. So all is good - no problems at all now. Just change what you call it and no one will be the wiser.

[@maggieadams8600]

I think that we ought to love and cherish our abundant natural world and aim to live in harmony with it, and our fellow man, it's the only solution and gratifying. Still it's not easy passing messages on about toxins and climate news, etc; I find it annoys people, but there are so many concerning issues now, we're overwhelmed by the scale once we see one, we see endless numbers sadly! Incidentally, you don't have to go back 80 or a 100 years to get to a time when plastics bottles weren't in use, they were introduced in around the mid 1970's ish as I remember in Britain, heralded on our popular science program "Tomorrow's world", who went on to tell us years later, that CDs, (just invented), would still function perfectly if you scratched them with a nail, which he demonstrated, I don't know how. Another blip of plastic over consumption, was that program just another advert to get us to buy more plastic, and yet more, and more and more until your civilization poisons itself mentally, physically and spiritually dead to the amazing living world? Lies die eventually.

[@ErnestOfGaia]

Algae is being considered as a partial substitute ingredient in some plastics

[@optimisticfuture6808]

My husband’s company is one of few worldwide that cleans out PFAS specifically

[@treefrog3349]

It COULD be said that a large portion of our Congress are living examples of the deleterious effects of PFAS

[@Rhetoscut]

Entropy. How many atoms in one gram of any material? If you have one part per billion in you, how many parts end up in each cell ? A lot, not a negligible amount as there are millions of billions of parts per gram or is it billions of billions I can't recall, it's astronomically absurd

[@bryandovbergman5654]

Funny talking Columbia blues Woody Guthrie sang in the 40s every thing would be made of plastic in the pursuit of electricity. I've often felt bad about disposable silverware. But if it ends up in a landfill why is it so bad? Many places here in Israel layers of earth a foot thick are just pottery shards. I guess it doesn't have these chemicals. But I'm pretty sure as Dr lustig the endocrinologist has talked about extensively, obesity is being caused primarily by sugar consumption with lack of fiber

[@stephen_pfrimmer]

Green Plastics: An Introduction to the New Science of Biodegradable Plastics, E. S. Stevens.

[@brianhawes3115]

Sometimes I think about all the garbage out there and I wonder why we make stuff we are so ashamed of, it’s sort of unconscious shame

[@brianhawes3115]

That , to me , is exactly what’s happening

[@timberrecycling]

it's not "funny" but I laughed pretty hard at 58:17. "no, ok..." Baseless optimism seems to be the default human mode.

[@optimisticfuture6808]

It can be be thermally destructed . It’s extracted by activated carbon or ion exchange resin

[@optimisticfuture6808]

My husband should be on the show “ Dirty jobs” because of what he does

[@laa2871]

wow, thanks guys, that was both fascinating and terrifying. My unfortunate eventual conclusion for humanity is that men (and maybe women too) will become sterile, birth rates will plummet, humanity will die off, wildlife will die off and whatever might be left of life will be cockroaches and dung beetles. Greed and ignorance, tsk, as always I hope for a wiser, less selfish humanity someday, but predict i won't live to see it. In the meantime I'm content and blessed to be living in a chemical free 40 acre forest of varied, appreciated wildlife that i'll will to a like minded organization, assuming one exists.

[@thegreatsimplification]

accelerating sperm count decline will be another example of importance between mean and median decline. Ie if 50-80% of men become sterile, the non-sterile ones could be extraordinarily fertile. And (IF this comes to pass), might be some weird cultural anthropology trends as well. I believe Shana Swan has new research on this embargoed until early next year at which point I'll have her back on the show

[@hopeowens35]

Dark Waters movie 🥰😍

[@treefrog3349]

I have to wonder if the increase in infertility, testicular cancer and low sperm counts aren't Mother Nature's way of balancing the inordinate influence of homo sapiens.

[@sudd3660]

this is an important discussion, but anything seeking to replace plastic have the problem of keeping our current monetary economic system, witch leads to this shitshow. the best way to tackle everything is build anew from ground up for sustainability, and a healthy economy based on resources and it is a access economy.

[@sela2611]

with ever increasing amounts of these pfas produced and realeased each year how is it that the concentrations worldwide are found to be stable over that past few years of testing? weird

[@freeheeler09]

Every problem, whether the increasing water and fertilizer shortages, mass migrations, mass extinctions, plastics, the climate crisis, whatever. Every human problem is driven primarily by overpopulation.

[@torsteinholen14]

Gonna be blunt here...it`s fucking scary!

[@optimisticfuture6808]

FDA allows parts per trillion as opposed to parts per million

[@optimisticfuture6808]

Dow agricultural. There’s a movie called “ The Devil amongst us”

[@enricojeremias5425]

👍

[@optimisticfuture6808]

We can go back to paper packages

[@optimisticfuture6808]

Organogenesis ocurrs by 12 weeks in utero

[@tonybaldwin6280]

In the first few pages of the bible Cain started mucking up things up and we have been ever since, but I see now we probably had to come to this point to realise our mistakes and in the long term I think God has put us into the ecosystem to be good stewards and modulate the temperature for eons to come. When we get back to a green Eden we need to be here to stop excessive cooling most likely. Adama ( of the earth) sin ( desert )

[@harveytheparaglidingchaser7039]

Interesting thought but I think we should go a bit slower. Exponential processes in biology rarely end well

[@edgeman148]

Speaking of wood, willow is an incredibly easy bush/tree to grow and propagate and once this cycle is started the trees can be harvested via coppicing and pollarding (not felled) and is wonderful as a construction material and many other things including biomass for fuel.

[@SLefd]

Society use of plastic: WHAT are u talking about, using glass in stead etc?? Imagine a hospital running without plastic? Dentists? City underground systems? Will we make plastic free cars, motorcycles, bycycles, planes, helicopters? and our whole traffic system, vacuum cleaners, TVs, sports equipments, millitary, satelites, industrial farming, all kinds of ordinary modern buildings, in fact all kinds of industry, payment cards and that system - ETC ETC - are you going to use glass metal and trees? There is plastic in almost everything and you can't just put something else in them in stead.

[@dbadagna]

It's apparently also in the food we eat; see the 2020 scientific paper "Micro- and nano-plastics in edible fruit and vegetables. The first diet risks assessment for the general population," which found that vegetables and fruits like carrots and apples contained tiny fragments of microplastics amounting to an incredible 52,050 to 233,000 particles per gram of vegetable or fruit, these particles apparently being absorbed into the plant via their roots.

[@optimisticfuture6808]

Teflon fire retardants Fabric softeners clothing

[@dansullivan6825]

Applying ai analysis to the wide ranging topics in this podcast would yield untenable results for humanity imo.

[@annibjrkmann8464]

Reddit collapse

[@peterdollins3610]

A thought for you Nate. The first serious book I read as a child was 'Tarka The Otter.' Before that I was reading Biggles, Hornblower, that kind of stuff. But 'Tarka' affected me at 10. Dorling the UK writer has just published a book I think called 'Seven.' Rather than publishing statistics on children in poverty he has taken seven children from each poverty to wealthy child & told their personal stories. 'For statistics can be as terrible as you like, nobody cares. But by humanising the stories people care. If a great writer now wrote the story of an Orca might this bring the tragedy home for people to care? The writer of 'Tarka' also wrote the story of a Salmon so it can be done & Orcas are exceptionally intelligent I read.