Bernadette Del Chiaro - PFAS Pesticides on Your Food

Our guest tonight is Bernadette Del Chiaro, Senior Vice President at the Environmental Working Group, a non-profit working to empower people with breakthrough research to make informed choices and live a healthy life in a healthy environment.

Bernadette leads EWG’s California operations, building the organization at the state level to continue its groundbreaking work on advancing critical environmental and public health priorities, through innovative policies, enhanced transparency and improved accountability of government agencies.

Del Chiaro has 30 years of experience building non-profit organizations focused on the goals of  clean energy and a healthier environment. Most recently, she served as the executive director of the California Solar and Storage Association. Under her leadership, it became the nation’s largest clean energy business association focused on consumer-facing solar energy solutions.

Prior to that, she worked for nearly two decades for environmental non-profit organizations, including Environment California, where she championed the Million Solar Roofs Initiative, and the Toxics Action Center, where she helped neighborhood groups fight for their right to a clean environment.

Del Chiaro has authored several reports on a variety of energy topics and has been widely quoted in many national, international and local media outlets.

In tonight's episode we discuss the following:

• Despite the known negative health effects of "forever chemicals" known as PFAS, they are still legally used as pesticides on food grown throughout the United States, with a few exceptions, such as in Maine.
• In a March 2026 EWG study involving 930 samples of non-organic California-grown produce, 37% were found to be contaminated with PFAS-based pesticides.
• EWG is supporting legislation such as AB 1603, which would ban the use of PFAS-based pesticides in California by 2035.
• In the meantime, EWG recommends continuing to consume produce, favoring organic produce when feasible, and using proper washing techniques.
• Risks associated with PFAS exposure can be further reduced by favoring produce on EWG's "Clean Fifteen" list, and avoiding the "Dirty Dozen".

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Steve,

Greg Williams: 0:10

thank you for joining us for another episode of climate money watchdog, where we investigate and report on how federal dollars are being spent on mitigating climate change and protecting the environment. We are a private, non partisan nonprofit organization that does not accept advertisers or sponsors, so we can only do this work with your support. Please visit us at climate money watchdog.org to learn more about us and consider making a donation. My name is Greg Williams, and I learned to investigate and report on waste, fraud and abuse in federal spending. While working at the project on government oversight or Pogo over, 30 years ago, I learned to do independent research as well as work with confidential informants or whistleblowers to uncover things like overpriced spare parts, like the infamous $435 hammers and expensive military weapon systems that didn't work as advertised. I was taught by my co host, Dina razor, who founded Pogo in 1981 and founded climate money watchdog with me several years ago, Dina has spent 40 years investigating and sometimes recovering millions of dollars wasted by the Defense Department and other branches of government while at Pogo as well as an independent journalist, as an author and as a professional investigator, our guest tonight is Bernadette del Caro, Senior Vice President at the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit working to empower people with breakthrough research to make informed choices and live a healthy life and a healthy environment. Bernadette leads ewgs California operations, building the organization at the state level to continue its groundbreaking work on advanced, critical environmental and public health priorities through innovative policies, enhanced transparency and improved accountability of government agencies. Del Chiara has 30 years of experience building nonprofit organizations focused on the goals of clean energy and a healthier environment. Most recently, she served as the executive director of the California solar and storage Association. Under her leadership, it became the nation's largest clean energy business association focused on consumer facing solar energy solutions. Prior to that, she worked for nearly two decades for environmental nonprofit organizations, including Environment California, where she championed the million solar roofs Initiative and the Toxics Action Center, where she helped neighborhood groups fight for their right to a clean environment. Del Chiara has authored several reports on a variety of energy topics, and has been widely quoted in many national and international, national international and local media outlets. A native Californian, del chiaro holds a degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and lives in Sacramento with her husband and two children. Dina, would you like to say a few words about why we're excited to have Bernadette with us?

Dina Rasor: 3:17

Yes, so we have employment, money. Watchdog people say, Oh, yeah. Why are you doing this? And I'm like, we also are really wedded to the idea of Earth overreach and that whole idea of chemicals and whatever. So we don't really stop at the climate because the PFAs might get us first. You know, it's that kind of thing, the micro pellets may get us first. And so from and so I was pretty shocked when I read your stuff, because, of course, I live it, live in California, and those big, giant strawberries that we send back east, the non organic ones, because I usually try to buy organic now, now I will knew nothing but by organic that kind of pollution. And I'm really, quite frankly, interested to see how they've been trying to do to fix it and some of the hang ups in California, because usually California, you know, is the cutting edge, so welcome, and we're looking forward to that. Okay,

Greg Williams: 4:22

anything you would, you'd like to say before we get started with our questions?

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 4:27

No, I mean, very thorough introduction. Thank you so much for having me. I really admire the work you guys are doing. And you know, if not for these types of forums and these types of non partisan nonprofit organizations, we would still be, you know, solving even more problems than than we are today. So really, really happy to be here and happy to talk about solutions as we also eliminate problems.

Greg Williams: 4:55

Well, thank you for being here. So for our listeners who may not know your work, what? Exactly do you do at EWG, and how did you first get involved in fighting PFAs and pesticide pollution?

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 5:07

So EWG, as you mentioned, it's a it's a 30 year old nonprofit, also nonpartisan organization. We were formed originally in Washington, DC, to kind of complement unmarried together science research and advocacy. We focus in on environmental problems, starting with really kind of a revealing pesticides in baby food back in the 1990s that sort of gave us our start. We've really focused in on agricultural policy in the United States, consumer products, on the safety of consumer products from a public health and toxics point of view, as well as as energy. Where does our energy come from? Those are kind of the main focuses. EWG really puts the consumer and the health and safety of the consumer and consumers immediate environment sort of the equation, and then work to do research, cutting edge research, and then advocacy stemming from that research.

Greg Williams: 6:09

Great,

Unknown: 6:09

and

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 6:09

we've been sorry I didn't add we have been working on the issue of PFAs since it originally sort of broke in 2001 when there was the landmark lawsuit filed against Dupont, our researchers and scientists dove into those documents, those court filings in 2001 and out of that really sprung over 20 years of work on this issue of this class of chemicals that we call PFAs, we did really groundbreaking and tragic research on umbilical cord blood, looking at 10 babies born in the United States, showing that they had high levels of PFAs in their blood, showing that PFAs migrate through membranes in the human body and contaminate unborn fetuses. So we've been at this a very long time, and you know, it just, it's one of these problems that, you know, we're not yet, we haven't yet gotten our arms around it, but we need to keep making progress.

Greg Williams: 7:16

Do you want to take a moment to explain in in plain language what PFAs are, and why people call them forever chemicals.

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 7:25

Sure, I mean PFAs. It's an acronym, P, F, A, S, it's a stands for per and polyfluoroalkyl substances. But nobody needs to really know that. Basically, what you need to know is that they are a class of chemicals. There are now 1000s of them that have been engineered and designed in a lab. They don't exist in nature on their own, and the thing they have in common is they include a fluorinated atom, and that that that fact, that fact of the chemical structure of these these substances is what makes them so dangerous as well as useful, if you will. They're useful because they resist they resist water. They're water repellent. They're resist grease, they're grease repellent, and they're very sticky and long lasting. Those are the properties that to industry. Industries of all sorts, including farming, make them very desirable, but those exact same qualities are also what make them so persistent in our environment. They have a sort of nickname of forever chemicals, because they don't break down in our environment. They don't go away and they buy it. You know, they accumulate in our environment over time. So that's what they are. And the thing that's shocking, thing is, once you kind of look at this issue, is just how ubiquitous they are and how widespread the usage is it reminds me. They remind me a lot of you ever have read, it's been a long time for a lot of us, but you read the Cat in the Hat, the original cat in hat by Dr Seuss, where there's the pink stuff. And no matter what the children do and the Cat in the Hat does to deal with the pink stuff, it just keeps getting it keep kind of keeps getting worse. It just keeps spreading everywhere, throughout the house and then then out into the snow. It's a little bit like that we it's a count. It's a problem that just gets bigger and bigger the more we use it. And so the only real answer to this, to this problem, is we need to stop using these class of chemicals. They should have never been released out into the environment in the first place, and then we have to, obviously turn off the faucet right before we start to mop up the mess that we've created. So that's kind of where we're at, is still trying to turn things off and get these chemicals out of. Circulation.

Dina Rasor: 10:01

Okay, well, you know, like most people, think it's drinking water or industrial sites, but in drinking water, but, you know, if you lose use a little bit of logic, especially in California, where almost everything is irrigated, you know that I could just see, think of the I can understand why it's really, really prevalent in things like peaches and nectarines and something because they have things they have very high water content and so anyway. But what surprised you most about finding pieces fast so closely linked to everyday produce, but what gave you guys the idea to even look there?

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 10:38

Well, we've been like I said, we've been researching and exposing the widespread use of PFAs. And as you mentioned for over 20 years, as you mentioned, most of us associate PFAs with industrial chemical use, so made famous by dupont's, you know, engineering of this chemical for Teflon, right back in the 1950s this miracle, you know, surface treatment for pots and pans, so that your eggs never stick when you fry them. I mean, it was like classic 1950s you know, modern chemical chemicals as sort of like the next best thing since sliced bread and it we but then more that industry saw these, these, the uses of these chemicals. They started using them everywhere. So we've been looking at this and exposing the usage and calling for a class wide ban on the these chemicals for over 20 years, and it wasn't until the late 20 teens that we started to take a close look at pesticides. I think we were as shocked as all of you and everyone that hears this information that as we're having this conversation over here about PFAs in common everyday consumer products, not just Teflon on skillets, but dental floss, ski wax. You know, it's it's the food wrappers at the fast food joints that wrap your hamburger. This. It's really used all throughout our society, but the idea that they were deliberately being sprayed and used as an active ingredient in pesticides was a whole new level of of a problem that I think we were shocked to see that in part because the US EPA that regulates pesticides at the federal level, and the Department of Pesticide Regulation that regulates them at the state level. They don't classify them as PFAs, they don't call them PFAs. They don't regulate them differently because they're PFAs. And that sort of has sort of hidden the ball from a lot of people, and so we've been working to to expose all of that. And I think that gets at your, you know, the shock factor that we're it's not just an unintended by product or an industrial chemical that escaped the factory, right? This is intentionally being sprayed on food crops and ending up, you know, on the kitchen table.

Greg Williams: 13:22

Yikes. So your new analysis looked at 930 samples of California grown conventional, meaning non organic produce, and found that 30, 37% had PFAs, pesticide residues. What does that number mean for somebody picturing their grocery cart?

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 13:40

Yeah, I think part of not just the fact that we're spraying them intentionally as the active ingredient in these pesticides, but is a shock, but just how many commonly grown and commonly consumed produce products have residues on them, in some ways you go, I'm not surprised, right? Because these these chemicals, are sticky, they're long lasting, they don't go away. That's the attributes that make them so desirable to industry. So in some ways, it's not surprising, but I think what's so I think what is surprising is just the types of fruits and vegetables that they are being found on peaches, plums, strawberries, grapes. These are just some of California's most iconic crops and most sort of widely consumed, very popular food products that are widely consumed and, you know, in the state and obviously throughout the US.

Dina Rasor: 14:41

I have a quick question. I have a quick question on that, when you put the grapes through the wine process to the PFAs, end up staying in the wine.

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 14:52

We have not tested wine yet, but it is in Monterey County, Sonoma County, the. Are wine growing regions it it's logical to think that some of it is getting into the wine, but we have not done that testing,

Dina Rasor: 15:08

and we shipped that all over the world. Yeah. Okay, go ahead. Greg,

Greg Williams: 15:13

so as you point out, strawberries stood out because they carry 10 individual PFAs pesticides more than any other crop in your analysis. Why might strawberries be such a powerful example of what's happening here?

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 15:26

I think you know strawberries are. Any of us who have ever grown strawberries or eaten strawberry you know, or purchased strawberries from the store, you know that strawberries are They're fragile and they they actually kind of go bad pretty quickly. You have to eat them right away. They're not like an apple that can sit in the fruit bowl for several days. You know, you have to eat them right away. And same with raspberries and, you know, blueberries, some of these other berries, and that's because they're prone to mold and fungus. And what the growers are attempting to do is prevent that by dousing these, these crops with PFAs pesticides after harvest. So I think that's one of the things that I really took away, is these aren't that there are definitely PFAs pesticides that are herbicides, that are insecticides that are sprayed on the plants that are growing the produce the way you traditionally kind of think about pesticide application. But in the case of some of these, these fruit that we're talking about that are prone to mold and fungus, they are this the last thing they do before they put them in those plastic containers and ship them off to the to the grocery stores. They coat them with a PFAs pesticide that inhibits the growth of mold and fungus, so that when you eat them, they're still, you know, firm and red and delicious, but invisible to your eye are these PFAs pesticide residues that are that literally were placed there as a, you know, intentionally coded on the fruit and so, yeah, the fact that strawberries, which are well known fruit that often has a lot of associated with a lot of pesticide use, the fact that many of them had 10 different types of PFAs. Is really disturbing, in part, because no government agency is studying what are the effects of being exposed to that many different types of pesticides all at once and in combination, it's like a toxic soup. We oftentimes focus on the dose as only and we just look at exposure, the amount that you're being exposed to. We never study what we're being exposed to in as it enters our body. And then how do those chemicals all interact together inside our body? And so it's really disturbing part of the strawberry story.

Dina Rasor: 18:02

And I know we're going to talk about this later, but in just in the beginning, I think it's important when the thing that jumped out at me is, you know, they put the, they put all this fertilizer, which, of course, right now everybody's worried about not having enough. Maybe it'll do some good. But all these for all this fertilizer on the this and, you know, and there's big agricultural things and whatever Why is and but it, you haven't found it in organic food, because if they're certified, they're not allowed to use that kind of fertilizer. Is that? Right?

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 18:37

Yeah, there's a whole lot of requirements that go with being certified organic farmer. That makes organic farming in the early days very difficult. It obviously pays off in the in the long run for those farmers, but, but yes, you can't use the whole host of inputs. The inputs to the farm are regulated and restricted, and so you're not going to find these types of of really harmful pesticides on organic fruits and vegetables. So

Dina Rasor: 19:05

is organic more expensive? It's not because they they don't use the fertilizer. Is it because they are done in smaller lots, not such a big agribusiness, or because, you know, fertilizer, I know from my family farm fertilizer is really expensive, and so why? I never could quite figure out why organics are so much more expensive and but, you know, obviously, when by time we get done with this, I hope we've convinced everybody that it's worth the extra buck or so to do it, but a lot of people wonder about that. You know, why is it is an economy of scale that most organic farms are smaller?

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 19:48

I think that's a there's probably many answers to that question, but I think one of them is that. I think the other is what we've been talking about here, if you're producing fruit for market, that needs to be. Consumed in a relatively short period of time. Otherwise it will start to mold you're you're just going to have disruptions in the supply and the sales, you know, kind of chain process, and that can add up costs that said, I find as a shopper, oftentimes, organic isn't more expensive, especially if you're shopping within the season that that fruit naturally grows. So if you wait to buy your strawberries in the summer, you can often get very competitively priced organic strawberries. I oftentimes find that the inorganic ones are just as expensive as organic in the middle of the winter. I can't say why that is, but I think also just people should be aware that there is a seasonality to our produce. And if you shop organic and shop within season, you can actually oftentimes be quite competitive in your in your shopping experience. You just maybe can't have that strawberry in December.

Dina Rasor: 21:01

Yeah. And that food tastes better

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 21:02

too. It does. It really does. Sometimes withholding, not to interrupt, but I find sometimes withholding and having that summertime treat, it makes it all the sweeter. And I try to teach my kids that as well. Of just It's okay, you you don't have to have everything that you want at your fingertips all the time, like you can actually enjoy life a little bit more when you embrace seasonality of things.

Dina Rasor: 21:32

Go ahead. Greg,

Greg Williams: 21:34

oh, so for somebody who buys strawberries, grapes or stone fruit every week, how should I think about these findings without either panicking or just tuning out?

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 21:45

Well, first of all, strawberries can be grown and sent to market without PFAs. PFAs have not always been around. Strawberries have been around for a very long time. Other European countries have banned these, these pesticides, and they still grow plenty of strawberries. So I think whether you're conventional, conventionally grown purchaser or organic, you should just know that this is not a you know, fade to complete. We can actually provide for our families and ourselves without using PFAs chemicals as the pesticide, and we just need to move in that direction. I think it's never helpful to get too Doom and gloomy. The fact that we're having this conversation, the fact that we're exposing this, this, this reality, means that there are people working to solve the problem. So it's almost like what you are hearing it. There's reason to sort of see the upside of that. It's the unknowns that are actually almost scarier. But we know that this is a problem, and there are people that are working to solve them, and we'll get there.

Greg Williams: 22:53

So were there any crops that looked relatively clean in your analysis? And what are those cleaner crops tell us about what's possible.

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 23:03

Yeah, there were watermelon, cantaloupe, sweet corn, avocados. These were some of the conventionally grown produce that had no or very, very small levels of PFAs pesticides. And those are, again, as a mom, I think about those as some of those crops are, are, you know, Kid favorites and pretty yummy as well. And so there's, there's ways for us to make immediate changes as we look at our shopping cart and try to steer toward the safer products. If we can't buy organic on that day.

Dina Rasor: 23:36

I'm really surprised about watermelon, because so much of its water, you would have thought, but it must have some, it must have a certain filtering system that doesn't let it get in the side, because there, I think watermelon has the highest content of water.

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 23:50

Yeah, I think it's a little bit like, think about the it's like a watermelon is the polar opposite of a strawberry in terms of its hardiness. You know, if you it's hard for pests, fungus, you know, mold to really get into a watermelon, it has that hard, hard shell. Avocados have a shell, you know, oranges have the peel. So things with peels and hard shells tend to be harder for pests to go after, and therefore have fewer pesticides associated with them. That's not, that's not a, you know, a hard, fast rule. But that's a similarity that the hard, more crustaceous type things tend to be harder for insects and pests to get through, whereas the soft, fleshy fruit, peaches, nectarines, plums, strawberries, those are the ones that we end up dousing a little too much with chemicals.

Dina Rasor: 24:42

Okay, so now we're going to talk about the people that have to pick the crops, the farm workers, and the nearby communities that have it in their water and whatever. But I would think that farm workers would be exceptionally bad, because they're they're right down. There next to the ground, picking this stuff, which where that fertilizer has been laid. So they're getting it just through the food. They're getting it through respiratory. They're getting it, you know, just exposure. Have you seen any? We'll talk about the health problems later, but you see, have you seen any push by the United Farm Workers or anyone to try to not use this pesticide, or at least provide masks while they're working.

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 25:28

Yeah, not yet. And again, this is something we brought to light in just November of last year, so I think the entire community is is still digesting this and taking it in. And again, our environmental protection agencies that are there to think about these things have not been advertising that these are PFAs. So these pesticides, there's 53 that have been approved for use in California alone. They are not given protected status, so the farm workers do not know that they are handling and being exposed to PFAs pesticides, so it is absolutely something that our farm worker community needs to be concerned with. We know from studies that's getting into the groundwater higher levels around farming communities, not surprising, and we're currently looking at state data that has been testing and measuring PFAs in surface waters and sediment to take a look at pull that curtain back and take a look at how is it behaving in terms of getting into the environment. We know it's there, so we'll be looking at those numbers and releasing that analysis soon.

Dina Rasor: 26:42

Okay, good. What, what area regions of California have you seen, or hot spots of of it, or is it just sort of universally used down the whole central valley?

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 26:53

Well, it is most intensely again. So our, our, our analysis shows that California is using dosing 2.5 million pounds of P fast pesticides on crop land every on crops and crop land every year, 2.5 to put that into perspective, that's covering six football fields worth of P fast pesticides every year, that number is going up. It's not going down currently. So we need to stem that tide. And just to highlight that is just the P fast that just just the active ingredient that has that fluorinated atom in it. It's not all of the pesticides. So it's really that that six football fields is just the P fast portion. It's a lot, and so, you know, we're wanting to kind of highlight that, and really emphasize just how ubiquitous This is and that we're finding it. You know, Fresno is the number one county in terms of use of P fast pesticides. Kern is number two, but it's also in other counties throughout the state, Imperial County I mentioned earlier, Sonoma, Mendocino, Monterey, it's all throughout our counties, really, that are agricultural, especially I should mention also PFAs. Pesticides are also used in urban environments as a pest control. So you know, it's not just on crops. It's also in pet flea medicine, in its in those. You know, when you hire an exterminator to come out and treat your home, those, those are most likely they're using PFAs. So that's another source of human exposure and contamination. But by far, agricultural uses are the number one source and the number one problem.

Dina Rasor: 28:51

Well, I was thinking about the Salinas Valley, which a lot of people think, Oh, the Central Valley is where everything's built. But Salinas is very big on vegetables. I mean, that's pretty much the vegetable capital of the country. And yet, anybody who's ever been there knows that this stuff goes straight into the ocean, the runoff that goes straight in their ocean. Has anybody thought maybe, like Monterey Marine, Marine Aquarium, or anybody anything like that, how much is running off from those vegetables into the into the base,

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 29:25

that's another place to look. We know that there is some testing, and we're just starting to really see as a as a state and as a country, that we need to start testing for PFAs more widely. So the Coast Guard has done some testing out in coastal waters. We have some testing in bays like the San Francisco Bay to take a look at that question of we know it's getting into rivers and streams and into groundwater near the fields, the agricultural fields. Where is it going from there? Because it attaches to water easily. And it's going to move and not go away and break down into Yeah, so these are great questions, and I think something that we need to be taking a look at again, PFAs is nothing new, that PFAs is being used, that it's in common products, that it's getting into our environment and into our bodies, is not necessarily new, but what is new is that it is being applied widely and in large quantities on farmland. And then, as you just said, Dina, that by almost by definition, means it's getting into the broader environment, and more so than I think most people realize.

Dina Rasor: 30:34

And as a forever chemical, it's hard to, you know, I mean, you think we're our next, our next podcast, or maybe the one right after is going to be on a professor and who came up with this revolutionary filtering system to filter it out of the water. So it'll be interesting best for us to say to him, yeah, but what do you do with all this stuff's going to the ocean? Now it's a problem, problem of scale, you know,

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 31:04

sorry to interrupt you. Yes. And a problem of cost, right? That there's the cost to the public as public health as it causes public health problems, and it's going to be a cost to our water agencies to filter it out. And you know, these costs do not get factored in to the cost of doing business for a farm. And this is, this is part of the, you know, this is the story of environmental, the environmental movement in large part. But it's important to point out that those costs are being borne by all of us in different ways.

Dina Rasor: 31:36

Okay, so let me go on to talking about health. Greg. Go ahead,

Greg Williams: 31:41

yeah, so that's exactly where it was going to go. Your report highlights concerns such as immune suppression, reproductive and developmental harm, and links to cancer from PFAs exposure. How strong is the evidence here, and what do scientists feel most confident about right now?

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 32:00

Oh, the evidence linking PFAs as a class of chemicals to those health harms is very well known and well understood. And I think it's important to, like, actually bring it back to the pesticide use. You know, pesticides are designed to kill living organisms. That's what they do, right? Whether it's an insect, another plant that is unwanted, mold or fungus, and we share, like 50% of our DNA as human beings, we share with fungus. So what works for a fungus and disrupting its reproductive cycle or causing some sort of internal harm such that it can't reproduce or can't live. Those are very similar to how these chemicals behave in mammals and and so this is like the science is pretty solid. What needs to be studied more I mentioned earlier is, what are the effects of multiple exposures of the toxic soup that we're all being exposed to. What? What does that do inside the human body and inside inside mammals? And then, what about some of these short the shorter chain piece mask chemicals? So what the long chain ones, PFOA, P FOSS are, are well known and have been banned widely, but the short chain ones are proving to be just as problematic and just as long lasting and just as ubiquitous. And that's a whole area of research, both in terms of detection, but also in terms of the health harms that we think scientists and the government need to get on top of. In the meantime, we know these things are bad. We know that they are harmful to the environment and harmful to human health, and we don't have to live with them. We don't have to use them just because they were invented. And so we think we should take a precautionary approach to this and phase out their use, especially when it comes to direct contact with food.

Greg Williams: 34:04

So for a general listener, how would you recommend they think about chronic low level exposure through food, especially for kids, pregnant people and people with health vulnerabilities?

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 34:17

Yeah, I think people need to be really concerned and try to work to phase it out and reduce their exposure, because it does bioaccumulate, it does build up in our bodies and causes harms down the road. You know, eating one peach that has PFAs on it isn't necessarily going to cause an immediate harm, but it's over lifetime exposure that can cause those, those unwanted health outcomes and and so we just need to start to phase out the use of them as a society. Each of us individually, need to just be that more aware and try to lean toward, again, organic or the low pesticide fruits and vegetables. And then. And we always recommend people still eat your fruits and vegetables, even if you can't get your hands on organic produce, but be sure to wash them and wash them with a you know, soaking in about 10 to 15 minutes of water, if you can add a little splash of vinegar in there that will help dislodge more of those chemicals and then lift the produce out of the water and rinse it off one last time, and then you can DAP it dry. And those kind of a It's not that hard to do, but it's one of these important things that we should all just get better at and get in the habit of washing so

Dina Rasor: 35:34

it's, it's really on the outer shell. It doesn't go up into the into the vegetables very much.

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 35:39

That's what that's that's what we're finding, though. You know, some of these studies, some of these studies, don't they just, they literally put the fruit, the whole fruit, in a blender, like a mechanical blending process, and then they test it. So I think there's more testing that should be done on that front. But I think we know that. You know, if avocados and and watermelon don't have PFAs. It suggests that if it's, you know, it's certainly not getting inside, because, as you mentioned, they're so full of water, so it's not getting taken up inside.

Greg Williams: 36:13

Yeah, I think you have a really handy guide on exactly how to wash produce on your website, and we'll be sure to have a link to that with the podcast.

Dina Rasor: 36:25

Want to talk, go ahead. Go ahead.

Greg Williams: 36:27

No, no, you go ahead.

Dina Rasor: 36:29

Okay, well, I'm, I'm trying to figure out that let's, let's start talking about the EPA, which is supposed to be protecting us from this on a federal basis. I mean, I've certainly run on in this, because I've mainly done federal investigations in my whole life on whatever topic I'm working on. And then state governments always good, but, you know, it's always, it always is a little bit different from, say, state and sometimes and everything, but the federal government was supposed to be sort of the overlord of it. And I've realized that when we started climate money watchdog, we wanted to look at Biden's big, huge amount of money he was shoving into climate change and into environmental to make. Because whenever you shovel money in, that we've learned from the Pentagon investigations all these years, there's going to be waste and cronyism and everything else. Well, then the hurricane hit EPA, and everybody that I've ever talked to an EPA is like, it's over. Just don't even try to get us to do anything. It won't happen. So I switched, we've been switching a lot of our stuff to California because they were the fourth largest, fourth largest economy in the world, and so Cal and and as you probably well know, California sets trends, if you they Put it in and just so the listener knows the any kind of rule that the federal government makes, you can make it more strict, but you can't make it less strict. So the EPA that's to keep the federal government always you that's the bottom, and you can if you're if California, and you can add more. What have you seen? Explain to us about how there's been efforts in bills and efforts in the legislature, and people talking about trying to ban these, these chemicals by certain dates, and also, surprisingly, I hear Gavin Newsom wouldn't let one of the bills go through it. I'd like to just kind of hear about that of the why? Because I'm working on oil and gas stuff. And he certainly is much better than Jerry Brown was, you know, he is not wedded to that, to the big oil. So now, obviously wedded to big, to big fertilizer.

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 39:00

Yeah, yeah. So tell us, yeah. You know, I have my my career has always focused on state level action across, you know, many decades, across many presidential administrations, both Democrat and Republican, precisely because it is hard to get things done in Washington, DC, that's hard for the public to get a kind of a handle on accountability. It's so big and it's, you know, it's hard to move the needle politically. And there's just so much entrenched, you know, the entrenched special interests have that much more power the bigger you go, you know, higher up you go in the in the kind of decision making ladder. So I personally have always, I hear you it's becomes a patchwork quilt of different states doing different things, and it sometimes sort of seems harder, but I actually think it's ultimately easier to get things done at the local level. And the states are, you know, great incubators of democracy. And creativity, and it's easier for the individual consumer or voter to have a bigger voice. There's more direct democracy. So I'm a big fan of state level work, even though I think we should always hold our presidents and their administration accountable and hold their feet to the fire, whether they are Donald Trump, or Joe Biden, or any of the predecessors, right? And

Dina Rasor: 40:24

they all go

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 40:25

and, you know, I would mention Joe Biden approved, you know, under the Biden administration, even while they were making really historic headway on regulating P fast pollution in drinking water standards, they were also simultaneously approving new PFAs pesticides. So you know that we need to just be mindful that the the machinery that's out there, like the machinery is to be permissive, and we have to blow the whistle on that and try to slow that down so that we can protect public health in the environment. So it's true that. So we're getting more progress at the state level than we're getting at the federal level. And you know, it's true that Gavin Newsom vetoed we had a bill last year that would have banned PFAs from pots and pans. So would have gotten rid of Teflon coatings. It would have also banned PFAs and other really common everyday consumer products I mentioned earlier, dental floss, of all things, can be coded in PFAs. So really it's unacceptable what we're doing and how we're using this chemical. And the Governor Gavin Newsom did, unfortunately veto that bill last year. His logic for vetoing it was really unsound. It was that we were now going to have, you know, limited choice of pots and pans to buy in the grocery store. He got heavily lobbied. This is shocking, I think, to a lot of people, but Rachel Ray and these other celebrity chefs that have their own branded line of pots and pans that are then sold and targets and Walmarts around the country. They heavily lobbied Governor Gavin Newsom to get him to veto that bill, not because they actually cook necessarily with Teflon, but they have a branded product, and they want to make a lot of more money, and it's just, you know, it's just Grady,

Dina Rasor: 42:25

I'd be worried about any chef that wanted to cook in something that they knew was going to be in, you know, their customers thing. So, yeah,

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 42:35

it's so it's just unconscionable. I mean, those folks most likely cook in extremely expensive pots and pans. But then they use, like, poor people need to have access to fancy pots and pans that are lined with Teflon. I mean, it's just, it's really, it's really kind of disgusting to me that they, they they took that bait, these, these famous chefs. And really, it's like, there's one or two manufacturers of these Teflon pans. Oftentimes, these are Chinese companies that are doing the manufacturing, and then they just rebrand the product, right? It's just a boxing and a branding. It's the same product all throughout the country. And this idea that we're going to willingly and knowingly pedal that product on, on, you know, middle working class families that shop at Walmart, it's just really unconscionable. So we're not going to give up on that. We're going to keep fighting. But in the meantime, right now, we're focused on P fast pesticides. And you know, we know that the cost argument always gets brought up. That's always the argument. They'll bring it up again, but we think we have strong counter arguments on that that the governor, hopefully this year will listen to and we'll sign the bill if we get it on his desk, and we haven't talked about the bill yet, but yeah,

Greg Williams: 43:46

yeah, so let's do that. I assume you're referring to AB 1603

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 43:50

Yes, yeah, AB 1603 is our bill this year that addresses just PFAs and pesticides.

Greg Williams: 43:59

So what exactly does it do?

Dina Rasor: 44:02

How is it what is it going to do, and how is it doing?

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 44:05

Yeah, so the bill does four main things. One is it clearly labels these pesticides as P fast, so the public farmers, others are aware that this is a PFAs product, and so it requires disclosure on that front. We then put a moratorium on the approval of any new PFAs pesticides. So again, I mentioned that there were new pesticides approved under Biden and some new ones now under the Trump administration, California has to approve everything as well. There's a sort of a double layer of approval process with pesticides, where our bill would say, no new okay, we're going to cut it off at the current 53 and then it does the third thing it does is it bans by 2030 so in just four years, the use of 23 PFAs pesticides that have already been banned by the European Union and. And then it gives the farming community another five years, 2035 to ban and phase out all of the remaining PFAs pesticides. So it's an ambitious bill. It would be only the third in the country. Maine and Minnesota have already taken steps to phase out P fast pesticides. But obviously given California size, not just the size of our economy, but the fact that we are really the growers of the nation, that it'll really go a long way toward protecting public health and the environment.

Greg Williams: 45:33

So what are you expecting to be the main arguments or talking points from opponents of this legislation, and how do you hope to overcome them?

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 45:43

Yeah, the opponent's main two arguments against the bill are that these chemicals are safe. You know, you can drink a thimble full and it'll just go pass right on through you. It's kind of a typical, classic industry talking point to just sort of hide the ball and claim things are safe. The second

Unknown: 46:02

Yeah, I can

Dina Rasor: 46:02

drink it. Well, you're not gonna have any flora in your in essence. But yeah, yeah.

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 46:10

And then the second argument is, you're going to drive up the cost of strawberries, you know? You're going to make the produce more expensive, which, in the, excuse me, kind of a era right now of Democrats being very concerned about affordability. That being a buzz word, you know, that's a that's a clever strategy for the industry to take. And so those are the two arguments so far. They have not been winning out. The bill was considered in the environmental toxics and safety committee in the California State Assembly, and it did pass, it is now sitting in an appropriations committee, and then we'll go to the Assembly floor, and we're hopeful that it will get out. We think that a lot of people recognize, we understand, you know, a lot of people understand the dangers of P fast chemicals and want to do something about it. And again, that other bill that we mentioned about banning PFAs in consumer products like Teflon pans and dental floss that did get all the way to the governor's desk in the face of stiff industry opposition, the legislature acted appropriately and put that on his desk. Unfortunately, he vetoed it. But again, Hope springs eternal. And we'll keep, we'll keep fighting and putting new, new bills on the governor's desk. And hopefully he'll, he'll, we'll do that with this AB 1603, and and we'll get him to sign it this year.

Dina Rasor: 47:33

What what has been the reaction, I'm sorry, what has it been? What has been the reaction to that, your report when it came out, and people thing is, or is it it, or is it all the oxygen being sucked in, out of the air from everything else that's going wrong and and because I would think, you know, mothers groups and things like that, we're feeding blueberries to their babies every day. I mean,

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 48:00

that's right, I think there's been outrage, and I think appropriately so when we first released our fall analysis showing that we're spraying 2.5 million pounds on California crops every year, the reaction from legislators, appropriately so was, hey, let's do a bill. So you know, we have Nick Schultz to thank for that Assembly Member from Burbank, California. And I think a lot of legislators are like you and I. They want to do they want to solve problems, and I think they see this as a pretty obvious problem to solve, and they think the bill is pretty reasonable. It's not being it next year, giving farmers time to adjust, and it's taking it sort of in phases. So I think a lot of majority of legislators are for these types of no brainer solutions. And then to your other question, Dina, yeah, we have very, very bipartisan support for these types of efforts. And everybody from, you know, Maha moms to traditional liberal democratic moms. Nobody wants to be feeding their kids strawberries doused and PFAs and and so what we're seeing is, you know, support coming from all different walks of life in all corners of the state, and that gives us that, you know, political push to get past the special interests.

Dina Rasor: 49:20

How confident are you that you'd be able to you think there's enough public outcry on it,

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 49:30

we could always use more, which is why podcasts like this are so important. In all seriousness, you can never have enough kind of political power in a state legislature like California, you can never rest on your heels and assume you got it made. So we'll never have enough. But I am very confident that we have a shot at passing this bill this year, and especially if individual people that hear this recording and help us take action. If you're in California, you should contact your state legislator, you're both your state assembly member and your state senator, and urge them to vote yes on AB 1603, and help us, help us get to the finish

Unknown: 50:12

line.

Dina Rasor: 50:13

And if you didn't pass this bill, you just work on writing another and because you think it's important enough that you just got to keep at it,

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 50:20

that's absolutely right. Yes, if we fail this year, we will come back. We're not going to let go of this. We've been at this for 25 years, and usually you can build momentum. So, you know, it's half of it is just awareness, the other half is harnessing political will. And so, you know, we'll just keep going and harnessing that political will if we can't get it done this

Unknown: 50:44

year.

Greg Williams: 50:45

So how do you create and build that momentum? Are there things that you wish journalists and local media did better to keep the issue alive, instead of just jumping out and scaring people and then going away?

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 50:58

I mean, it's a good question. I think actually we should be talking about, you know, things like how the European Union is getting by just fine, growing strawberries without PFAs. You know, if we can show people the solutions at the same time that we reveal the problems, I think that gives people hope, and hope is such a powerful motivator that that that can really help stifle, you know, pessimism and inspire activism. Frankly, I think you know from that is just, I still think transparency and just daylighting this information, even if it's you know, doesn't make you happy, is still better than nothing. So if we just had more journalists, more media sources, more people with a platform talking about these issues, we would all be better off. Because, you know, it's sort of depressing at first, but again, it's like with any problem, look to the people doing something about it, and you can find a lot of optimism and hope within that.

Dina Rasor: 52:03

Do you think if people would say to themselves, I'm only going to buy organic and you pump up that market, and you try to stay away from the grocery stores and the non organic produce that has it, because now you're trying to wash it off, and who knows how much you'll get off and and all that kind of stuff, that if you're not somebody that goes down and usually writes a letter or whatever, if you just change your your habits of buying organic food, that that would strengthen the strength of the industry organic food, because you have to jump through so many hoops, and then if more and more goes organic, the farmers will say, Well, I'm going to certify organic. I'm not going to buy this stuff anymore.

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 52:50

Absolutely, the power of consumers, the pocketbook of consumers, and the collective action, is well known, you know, throughout our history, and it really does make a difference. So you put your money where your mouth is, and vice versa, and you you can shift industries. I also have been taken to every once in a while when I noticed that a grocery store doesn't really have a very good organic section. I'll just mention it to the shop, to the workers, I'll just say, you know, I wish you guys would have better selection of organic produce. And just, you know, that type of little thing, you don't even have to write a letter that I think makes in, you know, makes waves and has an influence on on these grocery stores.

Dina Rasor: 53:38

And also, also there real, real quick. The bill that you're looking at wants to not only, not only eliminate the in the short term, 2030, I think it was to eliminate the pesticides that already been banned in Europe. So, you know, maybe this would open them European markets up for, you know, for our stuff, and second of all, that there's still another half a dozen or more that are going to be banned by 2035 I don't understand why we wouldn't ban something that Europe right away, that Europe is not because they that doesn't then open new markets to the countries that have banned it.

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 54:26

Yeah, I think it's, I think I agree. It's, you know, the way legislation works in California is you pass something in 26 and it goes into effect in 27 so we're effectively giving farmers three years to switch out and make the necessary adjustments to those chemicals already banned by the European Union. I think that's infinitely reasonable. I mean, I think we just want to make sure that we pass a bill and it gets signed into law, and we make concrete progress right now, and if that means giving a farm one more year to adjust that. That's better than failing and needing to pick the whole thing back up and push the boulder back up the mountain next year. But I think it's incredibly reasonable to do that, and we know that there are alternatives. We also know, interestingly, you know, California has done a lot of good work on integrated pest management and alternatives to pesticides that are, you know, really good bio dynamic farming, you know, just really where we ultimately need to get to, right where, where it's going to be good for the farmers, good for the land, good for consumers, good for workers. And we can still and we're going to be able to produce more food for humans as a result of treating the land better. We have done a lot of research on this. It's time for California to put that research into practice. But again, as we talk about that and put that vision forward and applaud the governor for his embrace of organic farming and biodynamic form farming, we still have to address the most egregious problems. And you know, it's a combination of carrot and stick right where we want to go to, and let's just minimize the threats that are out there right now. It's a combination of efforts that are really important.

Greg Williams: 56:21

So what do you think your report reveals about what does and doesn't work about pesticide and chemical regulation in California? And if you had to summarize the system's biggest flaw, what do you think it would

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 56:34

be? I think the single biggest flaw about all chemical regulations is that it's permissive by nature, these, these agencies, they they see their job almost more as allowing chemicals into our environment and into our lives than scrutinizing them and disallowing and so it's just by nature, a kind of a whack a mole game for consumers, whether we're talking chemicals and food being deliberately added to food, or we're talking pesticides or product chemicals added to consumer products like cosmetics and cleaning products, it's a very permissive stance, and I think that's why public health suffers, because we just don't, we don't like put public health and the environment first, and that, you know that's much to our our loss, because we haven't even touched upon this, but we are spending billions and billions of dollars on health Care, dealing with the issues associated with our exposure to all of these toxic chemicals, right? Not just the cancer situation, but diabetes, learning disabilities, are all sorts of ways in which these chemicals are interacting with our bodies and causing really big, important health harms that then harm our economy and cost us a lot of money to deal with, and those costs then get borne by all of us, as opposed to borne by the industries that are profiting from the manufacturer the use of these chemicals. So I think we've got to, at some point, make a shift toward a more precautionary approach to our use of chemicals. Until then, we're going to be doing this Whack a Mole game and looking at these things case by case.

Greg Williams: 58:29

So if we're not able to rein them in, what worries you the most over the next five to 10 years,

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 58:39

if we're not able to rein in p, fast, P, fast chemicals in particular,

Greg Williams: 58:44

yeah,

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 58:45

yeah. Well, what worries me the most is that it's, it's, we're. We keep on approving more like we are. We are just still starting out at solving this problem, and if we just kind of keep adding more and more to the toxic soup, we're just compounding, you know, problem after problem and and that we just have no idea even what the long term effects are of that, again, above this sort of combination of all of these chemicals that are getting into our environment, We're getting it through our water. We're getting it through the air. We're getting it through common consumer products. We're getting it through our food. I you know, I think we should all be extremely worried about the epidemic of health problems. You know, whether it's Parkinson's disease or cancer, we're not really getting out ahead of these problems, and we need we need to. So that's worrisome, but I mostly focus on where we're making solutions, and stay in that space, because we really can win. We have seen tremendous progress just in the past five years on especially States taking the lead. In on getting toxic contaminants and toxic chemicals out of our our food and our bodies and our end consumer products. So I'm pretty optimistic, actually, in that in a bipartisan way, we're going to keep making progress.

Greg Williams: 1:00:15

Well, you're doing a great job of anticipating our follow up questions, so that that helps out a lot. Is there one myth or misconception about PFAs, pesticides on produce that You especially want to correct before we wrap up?

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 1:00:30

Yeah, I think the biggest one is that a lot of people think that only the two most well known PFAs, again, there are 1000s of chemicals in this class called PFAs, PFOs and PFOA are sort of the most well known, for those who know about these things, are the most well known boogeyman, and rightly so. But I think there is this misconception that that there's a safe PFAs chemical out there. There isn't, it's these are, this is a class that needs to be addressed as a class and and, you know, eradicated from everyday use. So I think that's the biggest, the biggest one that we should we should try to tackle and get our heads wrapped around and move beyond that thinking.

Greg Williams: 1:01:15

And is there one takeaway sentence that you would hope listeners remember the next time they're standing in the produce aisle,

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 1:01:24

yeah, again, by organic, by within, season and wash your produce, no matter what those are the biggest things and and everything else is will, you know, audition into that. But, yeah, it really is important to do that, and even if it means spending a little bit more or, you know, going without. I know that's just people don't want to face that, but it beats getting cancer. That's for sure,

Dina Rasor: 1:01:58

support your local organic farmers, you know, closer to the home, more nutrients, less chemicals, so

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 1:02:06

better tasting.

Dina Rasor: 1:02:08

Yeah.

Greg Williams: 1:02:10

Well, it's been a real pleasure having you with us here today. I hope we can have you back sometime as you develop new results, and also to hear about the progress of the legislation you're working on, Dana, were there any final questions that you wanted to ask?

Dina Rasor: 1:02:25

No, she covered it all. Or, you know, every mother is clutching her pearls. Yeah, the immediate is, buy organic and then help fight the fight. You know, I know, in this economic times, that's not easy, but on the other hand, when you think about it's the organic usually isn't that much more expensive. It really isn't. I'm surprised. Yeah, okay, thank you so much. We really appreciate it, and feel free to come on our program on any other climate or pollution stories you want to tell, and think reports keep us in the loop, because we'd love to have you back.

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 1:03:06

Thank you so much. Yeah, I would love to be Thank you for having me. And you know, we didn't get to talk about how energy and toxics tie together. But, you know, I'm old enough to know, remember when energy was primarily a public health issue. It was about air pollution. It was about water pollution and ice energy is still very much just as toxic and bad for us as it was 2030, years ago, with climate change being another problem layered on top. So love to talk to you guys more about our work on clean energy, getting ourselves off of fossil fuels, and how to do that in a way that puts the consumer, benefits the consumer and this to the maximum extent.

Dina Rasor: 1:03:49

Okay,

Greg Williams: 1:03:50

certainly look forward to

Unknown: 1:03:52

it.

Bernadette Del Chiaro: 1:03:52

All right. Thanks, guys. Bye.

Unknown: 1:04:00

You.