A published in the American Chemical Society’s Environmental Science and Technology Letters is raising concerns about the pervasive presence of “forever chemicals” – also known as PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) – in something many triathletes have on their bodies 24/7: watch bands.

These synthetic chemicals, notorious for their persistence in the environment and human body, are now being found in common consumer products, with fitness tracker and smartwatch wristbands being the latest addition.

“These PFAS are pretty nasty chemicals as a class,” says Graham Peaslee, professor emeritus at the University of Notre Dame and corresponding author on the study. “All of them that we found are toxic, a couple of them are bioaccumulative, and all of them are persistent.”

This group of chemicals, which comprise more than 14,000 individual compounds, is particularly resistant to heat, water, and oil, so they’ve been used in products like stain-resistant fabrics, food packaging, cosmetics, firefighting foams, and non-stick cookware. But it’s been well-established that PFAS are linked to serious health issues including multiple types of cancer, suppression of the immune system, thyroid disease, decreased fertility, and liver and kidney damage.

Forever Chemicals in Watch Bands Study Overview

For the study, researchers analyzed 22 watch bands, from a mix of brands and price points, for the presence of PFAS. The bands, which included brands like Apple and Fitbit, were all purchased from Amazon or Best Buy, or were donated. Of the bands, 15 of them had the presence of these “forever chemicals,” and all were in very high concentrations. The researchers found one particular compound, PFHxA, in abundance – many times higher than what has been found in recent studies of cosmetics, food packaging, and school uniforms.

PFHxA being found in such extremely high concentrations is bad news for people who wear these watch bands for 12-plus hours per day. It gives the chemical significant opportunity to transfer through the skin. In addition, with athletes wearing these bands during exercise means additional sweat contact and open skin pores. And showed that PFHxA can be dermally absorbed, especially in the presence of sweat.

“If you wear these daily, over long periods each day,” Peaslee says, “then you undoubtedly are getting some exposure.”

Should You Replace Your Watch Band?

Before you burn your watch band, rest assured that PFAS are already in your bloodstream – they are in the blood of 100% of people in North America, says Peaslee, “thanks to our pervasive use of it from the 1950s onward.” Whether or not you use consumer products with PFAS directly, once they’re discarded into landfills, they break down and make it into our drinking water, our irrigation water, and then into us.

“I’m not too worried about the exposure, in terms of, we’re exposed day and night to everything else,” Peaslee says. “This is one more, but the next time you buy one, you really want to read carefully.”

While the study’s authors didn’t disclose specifically how each brand tested, they did provide information to help you determine whether your current watch band likely has PFAS.

First, seek out the materials in your own multisport or GPS watch band, if they’re listed (sellers are not required to publish materials, but some do). If any publish that they’re made with fluoroelastomers, fluorine, or the abbreviations FKM, FEK, FEKK, and FEKM, steer clear – they very likely have PFAS. For Garmin wearers, the company has been working to (PFOA and PFOS) from their products, including watch bands, though that doesn’t mean all Garmin watch bands are currently 100% PFAS free.

If your watch is made of other materials, such as silicone, nylon, or leather, “those are presumably not PFAS treated,” Peaslee says – you should be safe to continue wearing and using them without risking exposure.

What to Look For in a New (PFAS-Free) Smartwatch Band

If you’re not sure what your watch is made of or you’re not confident it’s free of PFAS, Peaslee recommends being proactive. “It’s well worth trying to replace them as soon as you can,” he says.

And especially since it won’t be an expensive swap: The researchers found a correlation between the presence of PFAS and the price of the watch band. It was only the medium-priced ($15-$30) and expensive watch bands ($30+) that contained the chemicals – the bands less than $15 were unlikely to contain a fluoroelastomer, which the researchers presumed was due to the increased cost to manufacture using PFAS. You can also search for bands made from the materials silicone and nylon.

And hopefully, in not too long, we’ll see more and more “PFAS free” or “fluorine free” labels on watch bands. Europe actually proposed a ban on PFHxA, Peaslee says, and “I think there’ll be more transparency in the future.”

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On a brisk weekday in October 2023, three sewing machines hummed while experimental indie pop played quietly inside a warehouse near the airport in Missoula, Montana. Three sewers had their heads down, assembling eggplant-colored jumpsuits, as Mallory Ottariano, the 34-year-old founder of the women’s outdoor clothing brand , squinted into a dizzying spreadsheet. The Youniverse—what Ottariano, a queen of puns, calls the factory she opened just eight months earlier—smelled like the sugary candle that had been burning that morning, and soon it would be fragrant with garlic.

“What kind of pizza do you guys like? Or not like?” Ottariano shouted from the lofted office that a handy friend helped her build. Staring at numbers was making her hungry.

“No olives!” one of the sewers shouted between stitches.

“Any meat?” Ottariano asked.

“I like pepperoni,” said another.

You couldn’t tell from the employees’ nonchalance, but Youer was in the middle of its latest supply-chain crisis. Actually, two. First, it couldn’t find a specific purple thread in all of the U.S. to sew together 300 pairs of leggings, 30 of which had already sold to customers eagerly awaiting their arrival. Any other color would look weird, and dyeing was too expensive. Second, inventory slated to be ready in a month for a Black Friday drop wasn’t even underway at a contract factory in Los Angeles, California. Unless Ottariano found a fix fast, Youer’s customers would be disappointed, if not angry.

Since Ottariano started out back in 2012 with a $100 sewing machine from eBay, her brand has amassed a fanatical following among active women. Signature garments like the best-selling ($179) and stretchy ($94) sell out quickly. The vibrant prints are hand-designed and cheekily named by Ottariano, like a floral pattern called OK Bloomer.

Prodded about her stress levels, Ottariano shrugged as if to say, What’s new?ÌęAfter all she’s been through—including contemplating bankruptcy following losses in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to unreliable factories in 2020—not many setbacks phase her anymore.

“I’ve proven to myself that we can figure it out,” she says. “It’s not really fun, but I think that’s just the reality of business. If I want to stay in this industry, that’s going to happen all the damn time.”

It’s especially the reality for small outdoor businesses like Youer that have chosen to manufacture domestically despite countless challenges such as higher costs, fewer resources, more regulation, and now potential new tariffs proposed by President Donald Trump on U.S. imports from China, Canada, and Mexico.

These obstacles pose such a threat to small businesses that doubt lingers: Is having more control, greater transparency, and better ethics by manufacturing in the U.S. worth it? And do American consumers care enough about those things to keep the few American-made gear brands alive?

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Barely two weeks into his second presidential term, Donald Trump has already dramatically changed the policies governing public lands, outdoor recreation, and the environment.

On Monday, January 20, Trump renamed the country’s highest peak, 20,310-foot Denali, to Mount McKinley, replacing the indigenous title with that of the 25th president of the United States. The same day, Trump the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, the 2016 international treaty to battle climate change. He on oil and gas leasing within the state’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He requiring the National Marine Fisheries, Bureau of Reclamation, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to begin pumping water from California’s San Joaquin Delta across the state—a move that could jeopardize endangered fish. And Trump announced a , which has a within the National Park Service.

These moves echo ones that Trump made during his first presidential term: like the controversial downsizing of Utah’s Bear’s Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by almost a million acres apiece and the different climate, water, and wildlife protections.

But critics may forget that, during his first term, Trump also signed into law a pair of very significant conservation bills. In 2019, the John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act created 1.3 million acres of Wilderness and ten new Wild and Scenic River segments. It also increased the size of three national parks. Then in 2020, Trump encouraged the passage of the , which funneled $9.5 billion towards the infamous National Park Service (NPS) maintenance backlog. It permanently allocated $900 million annually to the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the nation’s single largest source of outdoor recreation infrastructure funding.

What will the second Trump administration mean for public lands, the environment, and outdoor recreation? Nobody knows for sure. But we’ve taken a look at the decisions Trump has already made, what he’s said he’ll do, and a wish-list created by personnel from the previous administration, to make an educated analysis.

Hiring Personnel Who Appreciate Outdoor Rec and Industry

One of the former president’s first personnel nominees for his upcoming administration was North Dakota governor Doug Burgum to lead the Department of the Interior. The agency controls some 500 million acres of public land and oversees the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Critics have labeled Burgum a champion of the oil and gas industry, having led the state with the third-largest oil production and publicly criticized the Biden administration’s efforts to . At the same time, Burgum is himself an avid horseman, hunter, skier, and hiker and has been a booster of outdoor recreation in North Dakota, creating the state’s Office of Outdoor Recreation and allocating $1.2 million in grants for trail building.

Trump is also expected to name Burgum the administration’s energy czar, following through on his campaign promises to increase oil and gas production as a way to curb energy costs. Burgum’s nomination drew praise from the energy and mining sector. “He recognizes that affordable and reliable energy along with American mineral production are critical to growing our nation’s economy,” Rich Nolan, president and CEO of the National Mining Association told .

Conservatives argue that increased mining and domestic fossil fuel production could spur economic activity, but conservationists are bracing for the environmental blow. “Public lands are beloved and vitally important to people in this country. The first Trump administration treated these places like they’re meant to be dug up, drilled, or sold off for profit,” David Seabrook, interim president of the Wilderness Society, said in a press release.

Despite Burgum’s alignment with the oil and gas industry, other sources within the outdoor recreation community told șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű that the North Dakota governor represents a best-case-scenario nominee from the Republican administration. “Governor Burgum has shown a commitment to supporting outdoor recreation as an economic driver and a meaningful way to connect communities,” said Jessica Turner, president of outdoor recreation trade association Outdoor Recreation Roundtable, in a press release. “As an avid outdoorsman, we are hopeful that the governor’s long-time admiration of Teddy Roosevelt and deep understanding of business will help support and grow the recreation economy.”

According to Cody Schulz, director of North Dakota Parks and Recreation, which oversees the state’s new office of outdoor recreation, Governor Burgum is “an incredibly curious and collaborative leader who encourages his personnel to make decisions based on data.”

Schulz says that Burgum’s efforts to improve outdoor recreation in North Dakota stem from his own passion for the outdoors, and from an understanding that the industry can be an important economic driver. “Conservation and outdoor recreation infrastructure draws both visitors and new residents to North Dakota,” he says.

Burgum’s data-driven approach offers a ray of hope for fans of the Bureau of Land Management’s new Public Lands Rule, which considers recreation on equal footing with extractive industries like grazing and oil and gas when making land use decisions.

Moving the BLM Back to Colorado

In 2019, the Trump administration relocated the agency’s headquarters from Washington, D.C. to Grand Junction, Colorado. The relocation was touted as a practical move to get managers closer to the lands they managed and seen as a way to attract workers who may not have been able to afford D.C. ‘s notoriously expensive cost of living.

Eventually, the BLM’s headquarters was returned to D.C. by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in 2021. According to a 2021 Government Accountability Office report, collapsing the D.C. office drove out the agency’s most experienced employees and the number of vacancies. Out of 176 staff told to relocate, only 41 accepted their reassignments and the rest left their positions.

Tracy Stone-Manning, who was appointed by Biden in 2021 to lead the BLM, called the move “wildly disruptive,” in a . “It’s years of opportunity cost when we could and should be focused on the work of the bureau, for public lands and the American people, and we had to instead focus on rebuilding the bureau,” Stone-Manning said.

Lawmakers in Colorado, , have said that they support moving the BLM headquarters back to Grand Junction.

Taking Aim at Environmental Policy

The downsizing of Bear’s Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments was one of the former president’s most high-profile decisions on public land. While the cuts were reversed by the Biden administration, it’s possible that Trump will again shrink the monuments. Utah Republican Representative John Curtis told The Salt Lake Tribune he .

The first Trump administration championed mineral extraction and land development as a way to pump revenue into local economies and return power over protected lands to states. The administration also weakened several bedrock environmental laws. Probably most significant were alterations to protections afforded by the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA).

In 2017, Trump’s EPA , which afforded protections to seasonal wetlands and streams, particularly prevalent in the arid, but recreation-rich western United States. Then in 2019, the administration changed the Endangered Species Act,Ìęremoving protections for threatened species and making it more difficult to add additional species to the list. Agencies would also be allowed to conduct economic assessments when deciding whether a species warrants protection.

More subtle, but arguably more problematic, was the weakening of the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), the law that requires an environmental review and public comment period for every major project. It’s used on everything from major timber sales to ski resort development.

Jon Jarvis, director of the Park Service under President Barack Obama, said NEPA helped guide multiple policies during his time with the NPS, from the relocation of wolves to Yellowstone, to the altering traffic flow in Yosemite. “Sunlight is a great disinfectant, and many of these agency plans would now be done in the dark,” Jarvis told șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű.

Trump’s Interior Department made several other controversial moves during his first administration that directly impacted outdoor recreation. In 2017, the department made a unilateral decision to increase admission prices during peak seasons at the nation’s most popular national parks from $30 to $70. There was so much furor about the decision that the administration canceled those plans five months later.

Then in 2020, the department issued an order that allowed for e-bike use on any federal trail where regular bikes were allowed. Cycling advocates and at least one advocacy group applauded the decision that would allow better access for cyclists who rely on e-bikes. “The Secretarial Order will help get public lands visitors out of their cars and beyond congested visitor centers and parking lots,” wrote the cycling advocacy group People For Bikes at the time. More than 50 other recreation groups, however, formally objected to the policy, saying that the decision had been made without any study on its impact on wildlife and visitor safety.

This year, the Park Service ruled that it would make decisions on up to individual park units on a “case-by-case basis.”

Creating Fewer National Monuments

Some Western conservatives would like to see the administration spearhead an effort to repeal or weaken the 1906 Antiquities Act, which allows a president to create new national monuments. The law has been used in some 300 instances by presidents from Teddy Roosevelt to George W. Bush to protect millions of acres of federal land. Some of the nation’s most popular national parks began as monuments, including the Grand Canyon, Joshua Tree, and Grand Teton.

Only Congress can repeal a law in the United States, so abolishing the Antiquities Act would require a majority of both houses to want it gone. Given pro-monument public sentiment, that seems like a long shot.

More likely is a severe weakening of the law through the Supreme Court. Published in April 2022 by the conservative think tank The Heritage Project, the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, known colloquially as “Project 2025,” outlines the steps such an effort might take. The document calls for a “downward adjustment” of the nation’s national monuments, and then directs the republican President to “vigorously defend the downward adjustments it makes to permit a ruling on a President’s authority to reduce the size of national monuments by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Throughout his campaign, Trump repeatedly distanced himself from the document. But authors of Project 2025 have noted that other prominent conservatives support weakening the Antiquities Act. In 2021 Chief Justice Roberts signaled that he is looking for a case whose verdict could be used to curtail the ability of presidents to create large monuments.

It may also mean the loss of a Biden-era protections like a 10-mile oil exploration moratorium placed around New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon National Historical Park to help protect Native American antiquities, and one on 221,898 acres of Forest Service and BLM land on Colorado’s Thompson Divide, just northwest of Crested Butte. The latter was the result of years of work by an unlikely coalition of ranchers, hunters, anglers, mountain bikers, off-road vehicle users, and environmentalists to protect the habitat of elk, bear, deer, moose, mountain lion, and a pair of endangered species: Colorado River cutthroat trout and Canadian lynx. The Project 2025 document specifically targets both protections.

Also on the chopping block may be Biden’s public land order to Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area for 20 years. The decades-long fight over proposed copper and nickel mines adjacent to the wilderness area was seemingly settled in 2023 with the order. At issue were concerns that mine waste would flow directly down the Kawishiwi River into the waterways of the nation’s most-visited Wilderness Area (some 165,000 visitors annually.) Project 2025 calls for that order to be reversed despite recent polling that shows 69 percent of Minnesota for the Boundary Waters.

All of these potential rollbacks fly in the face of what many Americans want, says Jenny Rowland-Shea, director of public lands for The Center for American Progress, a progressive research and advocacy group. She cites a , which found that 78 percent of Western voters want more emphasis on conserving wildlife migration routes, providing highway crossings, and limiting more development to protect wildlife habitats. According to the study, just 20 percent of voters want more emphasis on economically productive uses of land such as new development, roads, ranching, or oil and gas production.

“The United States is actually producing record amounts of oil right now,” she says.

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Dear Sundog: Am I a jerk for not owning an electric vehicle yet? I live in a city, commute to work, and like to get outside. I have a decent car that gets decent mileage, but feel like I would be doing better for myself and the planet with an EV. Should I buy one? —Looking for Environmental Alternatives that are Friendly

Dear LEAF,

Let’s say you’re the average American who commutes 42 miles per day round-trip to a job that you find moderately soul-sucking. Maybe your labor serves a corporation that enriches its execs and shareholders while doing ill in the world. Maybe you work for an idealistic school or nonprofit, but are expected to work nights or weekends without additional pay. Or perhaps you simply sense that your one and only life on this gorgeous Earth is slipping past while you compose reports and gaze at Zoom.

In any case, you want to lead a more principled and less wasteful life than your vocation allows—you don’t want to be a jerk—so you upgrade your Corolla for an electric vehicle. Where will you find that $35K or $75K? If you can pull the funds directly from your savings or trust fund, then God bless you. Otherwise, you’ll borrow the money and make a monthly payment. You’ll have to keep doing your job in order to afford your green ride.

You will likely be paying interest to some bank. Will that bank use your hard-earned dollars to manifest a better society? More likely, their profits will go for millions in dividends to stock owners, or they’ll be loaned out again to finance all kinds of hideous adventures, from oil pipelines across to deforesting the .

So by reducing your dependence on the gas station—one tentacle of the fossil fuel industry—you’ve now become a partner to some other tentacle. Also, much of the electrical grid from which you’ll power that EV is still burning coal and gas to make electricity, so unless you’re charging from your own rooftop panels, you haven’t fully escaped even one tentacle.

So, no, LEAF, you’re not a jerk should you choose a different path. And yes, if you’re buying a car—especially to replace a gasoline car—it should probably be an EV. But there are so many variables.

You will no doubt have heard about the of using rare-earth elements like cobalt and lithium for electric batteries. It’s true: mining is bad. But this alone is not a valid reason to pass on buying an EV. The damage required to extract these miracle elements is much smaller than the alternative—drilling for oil and gas, and digging coal to produce electricity. If you can’t stomach the exploitation of nature and humans that is inherent to the industrial economy, let me gently suggest that you make a more radical lifestyle change than getting an EV—and try giving up your car altogether.

Sundog does not give advice he would not heed, so here’s my full disclosure: even I—literally a professor of environmental studies—do not own an EV, not even a hybrid. My family’s fleet consists of a 2005 Toyota Tundra that gets an alarming 15 to 22 miles per gallon, and a 2012 Subaru Outback that does only slightly better at 21 to 28.

As a matter of principle, I don’t think the only way to save the planet is by transferring billions of dollars from regular citizens to the corporations that build cars. As a matter of budget, I have never owned a new car. All my vehicles have cost less than $10K, except the Outback, which was $16K. I’ve actually never even sat in a Tesla, but I imagine driving one to be like having an orgasm while watching a looped clip of Elon Musk declaring: “I’ve done more for the environment for any other single human on earth.”

Let me state on the record that I love cars and trucks. They’ve provided much joy in my life, usually along a lovely lonesome stretch of two-lane blacktop or at the terminus of some rutted old ranch road. But those sort of experiences likely account for less than one percent of overall driving. In the past century, we have built American cities to accommodate people using cars for the most mundane of outings like commuting, shopping, and bar-hopping. The tradeoff is not just carbon emissions and pollution, but also sprawl, isolation and streets unsafe for walking and biking.

Turns out that in cities built before the era of the automobile—from New York to Barcelona to Kathmandu—you can get around without a car. When you remove traffic jams, parking tickets, the endless search for a place to park, the glum designation of a sober driver, and the claustrophobia of being locked in a metal box, city living is just more . . . fun.

When Sundog and Lady Dog set out to design our own lives, it was not to be in some Old World capitol, but rather in a midsized city in the Rockies. We didn’t aspire merely to burn fewer fossil fuels: we wanted to free ourselves from our car. We bought a house less than a mile from the place we work, less than a mile from the center of town. Our kid goes to preschool two blocks from here. Now we get around mostly by foot and bike, and can walk to trails and a creek. Many days go by where our dented guzzlers sit on the street—we drive each vehicle about 5,000 miles per year, about a third of the of 13,500.

The downside is that the houses in this neighborhood are a century old, dilapidated, small, and expensive. It’s a bit of a whack-a-mole game: our heating bills are low because we live in 1,000 square feet, but we can’t afford solar panels or a heat pump. We don’t spend much money on gasoline, but we can’t afford an EV.

Had we decided to live 21 miles from our jobs, we might have had a big new well-designed home and a slick new EV. But we love walking and biking; we want to teach our son that he can do the same, and that his parents are not his chauffeurs.

So why do we bother owning cars at all? For one, Montana is a lovely place to live, but it sure costs a lot to leave. Cheap airfares are not really a thing here. Neither is public transportation. So if you want to take a family vacation within a 1,000-mile radius, you’re likely driving. We bought the Tundra during the pandemic to tow a camp trailer (our “office”) and to haul lumber while we built a permanent office. Now we use the truck for long river trips, which entail carrying heavy loads for hundreds of miles through remote areas and down rutted dirt roads.

I don’t know of any EV that could do this. The Subaru is the town errand runner, and also takes us down bumpy roads to lakes and up icy mountains to ski. If it bites the dust and the cost of used four-wheel-drive EVs drops below twenty grand, I’d be happy to upgrade.

None of this makes Sundog feel particularly righteous. My point is that choosing a car is not a stand-alone decision as you forge an ethical life.

Mark Sundeen teaches environmental writing at the University of Montana. Despite his fleet of internal combustion engines, he refuses to purchase a parking permit and therefore commutes on a 1974 Schwinn Continental, with a ski helmet in winter.

If you have an ethical question for Sundog, send it to sundogsalmanac@hotmail.com

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Chick fil-A used to be my guilty pleasure, especially when traveling. When I’m rushing through airports that seductive red and white sign always calls for a detour and a Chicken Deluxe. Now, thanks to about the plastic chemicals found in food packaging, that sandwich is dead to me. A team of scientists and concerned citizens recently tested more than 300 unique foods for harmful plastic chemicals. My beloved treat sat near the top of the inauspicious leaderboard.

My regular readers know that I have long been concerned with the scary amount of plastic chemicals that we interact with as we Ìęgo about our daily lives.

There’s the black plastic in our utensils. And the PFAS (a.k.a forever chemicals) found in everything from our clothing and furniture to our beauty products and toilet paper, the foaming agents in our toothpaste and laundry soaps.

The list goes on and on. We are a society addicted to plastic chemicals and all the modern conveniences they afford. Meanwhile, cancer rates in people under 50 are . I am in doubting that this is merely coincidence.

But nothing freaks me out more than chemicals making their way into my family’s food. Who among us could ever enjoy a bite of a Chicken DeluxeÌęagain if we knew it were laced with poison?

I decided to look into what we know about chemicals in food packaging, what regulators are doing about it, and how we can protect ourselves.

Plastic Chemicals Pervade Our Everyday Food

I’ve been seeing pop up in my newsfeeds about plastic chemicals in food. I’ve had moments of paralysis in the grocery story trying to find a decent head of lettuce that wasn’t swathed in a plastic.

A group of Californians felt the same way. TheyÌęembarked on a six-month research project to test common food items—from local grocery stores and take-out joints—for the presence of chemicals that enhance the performance of plastics. Phthalates, for instance, are a class of chemicals used to make plastic more pliable. Think: milk jugs and yogurt cups. Bisphenols are plastic hardeners found in beverage bottles and linings of canned goods.

The independent group, working under the name PlasticList, purchased 775 food samples of 312 items. Everything from Almond Breeze milk (currently sitting in my fridge) and grass-fed steak from Whole Foods to Taco Bell chicken burritos and, yes, my beloved Chicken Deluxe from Chick fil-A. They then tested those items for the presence of 18 common plastic-related chemicals that fall under the umbrella of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (or EDCs). Ample proof exists that EDCs cause like cancer, diabetes, and reproductive and neurological disorders.

The is pretty shocking: the PlasticList team detected plastic chemicals in 86 percent of the food tested. “But this doesn’t mean we should all freak out,” says Yaroslav Shipilov, the PlasticList team leader. “Although it was surprising to discover the presence of plastic chemicals in such a huge percentage of the food we tested, in all but 24 specific cases, the items are still safe to eat according to the three major regulating bodies, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).”

Shipilov hopes that his findings will spawn more testing. He also hopes that the regulating bodies will update their outdated safety limits, which are decades old and often contradictory. “For example, in some cases we have chemicals that have been banned from children’s toys, but not food. This suggests that they are not safe for toddlers to touch, but are fine for them to ingest,” he says.

Are Plastic Chemicals Harmful to People?

Make no mistake about it. A rapidly growing body of evidence proves that plastic chemicals are really bad for human health, not to mention the harm they cause the environment.

To get an overview of the health impacts, I reached out to Philip J. Landrigan MD, a pediatrician and biology professor at Boston College. Landrigan serves as director of both the Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good and the Global Observatory on Planetary Health.

In October 2023, Landrigan published , a wide-ranging report covering the many health and environmental implications of plastic chemicals.

“Plastics have allowed significant benefits to humanity in the fields of medicine, electronics, aerospace, and more. But it’s also clear that they are also responsible for significant harms to human health, the economy, and the earth’s environment,” says Landrigan. “Thousands of chemicals—including carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, neurotoxicants, and persistent organic pollutants—leach out of plastics and harm human health at every stage of the lifecycle, from production to discard.”

For example, Landrigan says, consider the coal miners and oil field workers who suffer from cardiovascular disease and lung cancer. (These workers extract the raw materials that create plastic.)ÌęThe plastic production workers who have an increased risk of leukemia, lymphoma, and brain and breast cancer. The plastic recycling workers who contend with high rates of toxic metal poisoning and neuropathy. The workers in the plastics textile industry die of bladder cancer and lung disease. And the families who live near plastic production facilities who have increased risks of premature birth, low birth weight, asthma, childhood leukemia, lung cancer, and a host of other life-threatening ailments.

The report says that these harms exceed $500 billion per year in health-related costs in the U.S. alone.

“What’s most concerning to me as a pediatrician,” says Landrigan, “is the risk that chemicals in our food pose to pregnant women and young children. We all need to be more aware of plastics’ threats to human health. And we need to take intentional steps to reduce our exposure and our children’s exposure to plastic.”

Food Packaging Regulations Are Rolling Out–But Not Fast Enough

The federal government has been slow to respond in a meaningful way to the growing body of evidence that plastics in our food system are poisoning us.

Just last week, a group of environmentalists filed a new lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over the use of phthalates in plastic food packaging. For close to a decade, the FDA has ignored calls to take stronger action against phthalates. We lag far behind the European Union in this regard.

Reporting from suggests that this refusal is due to pressure from the chemicals industry, which would surely suffer in the face of a phthalates ban.

Still, some states have begun to take independent action to protect our food from plastics chemicals.

“States have taken the lead on phasing out dangerous chemicals from food packaging and containers,” says Gretchen Salter, policy director for Safer States, a national alliance that works to protect people and the environment from toxic chemicals. “Our shows that 16 states have adopted 29 policies to remove chemicals like PFAS, phthalates, and bisphenols (chemicals like BPA and BPF)Ìęfrom food packaging. Additionally, Washington state has recently Ìęto ban allÌębisphenols in drink can liners and require disclosure of the use of allÌębisphenols in food can liners.”

5 Ways To Protect Yourself From Plastic Chemicals in Food

Try as we might, avoiding plastic food packaging altogether is downright impossible. But there are some things we can do to not only limit our exposure to their inherent chemicals (like phthalates, bisphenols, and PFAS), but to be part of long-term solutions that will protect our kids, grandkids, and all the generations to come.

1. 1. Avoid fast food and take-out. When you can’t, get that hot food out of its packaging as soon as possible to avoid chemical leaching. Even pizza boxes contain PFAS.
   2. Bring your own take-out containers. When dining out, bring a glass or metal container from home for leftovers. And avoid putting plastic take-out containers into the microwave. Although the specific research around this practice is , most experts believe this can cause additional contamination and leaching.
   3. Opt for fresh, whole foods. Skip the packaging whenever you can. For example, buy loose veggies rather than those ensconced in plastic. For meat and fish, buy direct from the counter. Ask for it wrapped in paper, rather than picking up a package from the chiller, where it’s been resting in a plastic package for who-knows-how-long. (Note: even that butcher’s paper likely has chemicals on it, so unwrap it as soon as you get home.)
   4. Ditch all plastic from your kitchen. Yep, you heard me—all of it. Storage containers, colanders, utensils, cereal bowls. Start to replace all of those items with glass, wood, metal, and ceramic. I’ve scored some really high quality replacements at the second-hand stores I love to frequent. And don’t forget the Saran Wrap and Zip-Lock bags. Transition away from those, too, and go with beeswax bowl toppers and silicone baggies.
   5. Speak up! It takes one minute to to create a Global Plastics Treaty. Do it! Another powerful action you can take is to write a letter to your state congress representatives. Urge them to support the Global Plastics Treaty as well as state laws to ban toxic plastic chemicals. Here are to get you started.

Kristin Hostetter is șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű’s sustainability columnist. Sadly, she has eaten her last Chick fil-A Chicken Deluxe. But she’s currently working on recreating a healthier version in her home kitchen.Ìę Follow her journey to live more sustainably by for her twice-monthly newsletter.Ìę

The post Proof That Our Food Is Filled with Plastic Chemicals appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

I’ve read more books on climate action than I can count. So I don’t say this lightly: I’m obsessed with the one I just finished, byÌęAyana Elizabeth Johnson.

In it, Johnson, a marine biologist and co-founder of the nonprofit think-tank , conducts interviews with 20 experts in everything from finance to farming to film and asks them to imagine what a replenished and healthy world might look like if we use the collective wisdom we already have to combat climate change.

I read this book in mid–November, right after the 2024 presidential election, and I was pretty gripped with climate anxiety.

This is not another preachy enviro-book. It’s not pushing hope for hope’s sake down our throats. Instead, it spotlights innovative solutions that are already working—like an increased reliance on renewable energy, greening up transportation and buildings, regenerative agriculture, and reducing food waste—and urges us to consider the possibilities when these things scale. Interspersed throughout the interviews are lists of jaw dropping facts, poems, and essays. And plenty of calls to action.

There was one paragraph that really hit me. In her interview with Paola Antonelli, senior curator for architecture and design at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Johnson asks her a question that recurs throughout the book: “How can we be part of the solutions we need? Is there a call to action?”

“The call to action is really to be better humans,” Antonelli says. “I don’t know how else to put it. Be better humans by understanding that we live for others. Otherwise we don’t have much reason to live. And when I say ‘others,’ I mean also the rest of the environment, all creatures and things. The answer is love.”

I decided to reach out to Johnson for a climate pep talk. The book hit shelves in September 2024, and we’ve had a presidential election—and a lot of global unrest—since then. I was curious how Johnson felt now, and whether her attitude or ideas had shifted with the socioeconomic and political tides. Plus, I just really didn’t want the book to end. Johnson’s casual, conversational style of writing left me feeling like we were already friends and hoped I could glean even more insight from one of the most exciting minds in the climate movement.

OUTSIDE: Talk me off the ledge: the book’s premiseÌęponders what theÌęworld would look like if we get climate action right. But can we actually get it right? In the time that we have? How?Ìę

JOHNSON: I have a lot of angsty journalists on my calendar right now and I’m just like, at what point did I become everyone’s climate shrink? How did I become the pep talker? It’s sort of funny because I am decisively not an optimist. I’m well aware that this climate scenario could very easily go even further off the rails. But it has literally never occurred to me that we should give up because that’s absurd, right? You don’t give up on life on earth.

And so it just always comes back to the question of what can we do to make it better? Because not trying is not an option. I was raised by two people who were in various small ways active in the movement for civil rights. At no point did people in that movement say, “This is too hard. Let’s just give up and be unequal forever.”

Sometimes I think there are a lot of people out there who are just quitters when it comes to climate change. They think the odds are too long and they’ll be gone anyway. But that’s a very weak and sad response.

Part of the problem is that we’ve been told that we have to stop or solve climate change. And those verbs are clearly delusional because we can’t solve it and we can’t stop it. But we can make things much better than they otherwise would have been if we didn’t try.

People just need to roll up their sleeves and get their heads in the game. I don’t really know what to say about the anxiety that most people are feeling except to say this: you will feel a hell of aÌęlot better if you’re doing something about it.

Most of the people reading this interview care and want to take action. But unfortunately there are so many who don’t, who just go about their lives, and intentionally or unintentionally don’t think about what the world will look like in 50 years. What would you say to them? Wake up! As the saying goes, if you’re not part of the solution,Ìęyou’re part of the problem.

You use a Venn diagram exercise to help people find their niche in the climate movement. Can you explain how it works? To ensure a livable future on this planet, we need to move beyond the platitudes of reduce, reuse, recycle. There is no one person or one entity that can fix this problem. We need to create a culture where everyone has a role to play. Are we gonna put our heads in the sand or pitch in?

The Climate Action Venn Diagram is a tool that helps everyone find their unique role by finding the intersection of three questions. 1) What brings you joy? 2) What are you good at? 3) What work needs doing?

The book is the result of my Venn diagram.

The Biden-Harris administration has arguably taken more climate action than any in history. A lot of environmentalists are bummed—even scared—about the results of the recent presidential election. You wrote the book before it happened. How did the election impact you personally and how will it impact your work and message moving forward? The last Trump administration rolled back well over 100 environmental protections and we don’t want that to happen again. In this current environment, I think we may need to do some reframing. We may get more traction if we talk less about “climate change” but keep pushing on the solutions. For example, there may be some openings in just the basics like the government protecting clean air and clean water, and we can reframe a lot of climate stuff in those terms because all Americans care about that.Ìę

When you feel like you’re banging your head against the wall, stop doing what you’re doing and find a different way. Because if yelling climate facts at people was enough, we would have solved this already, right?

I also think it will be really hard for the Trump administration to turn its back on the economic benefits we’ve seen from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Especially when so many red states are benefitting the most. Texas and Iowa lead the nation on wind energy. Not because they’re a bunch of hippies but because the finances just make sense. As of 2022, the clean energy sector employs more than 3.3 million people, over three times more than fossil fuels.

My reaction to this election was OK, what does this mean for me and my work? My answer, after reevaluating all my projects: I just need to double down. That includes focusing on what city governments can do to adapt to climate change, via my think tank Urban Ocean Lab, and supporting the next generation of climate leaders through teaching at Bowdoin college, and consulting with corporations that are trying to get it right since the federal government isn’t adequately regulating their climate impacts.

But overall, the role that I see for myself in climate work is to welcome more people into it. We need way more people working on climate solutions. So how can I help people get creative and find their own personal approach?

Was your book tour, which really wasn’t a book tour in the traditional sense, part of that approach? Yes, the Climate Variety Show, which we put on in Brooklyn, Los Angeles, and Portland, Maine, was born out of my own complete lack of desire to read my book aloud in bookstores across the country. What could be more boring? People are already bored of climate change, so how do I entice people in? I feel like there are things we haven’t tried yet as far as communications and influencing our friends and family.

So the was all about taking climate seriously without taking ourselves seriously. It was basically like a high school talent show—comedy, dancing, hula-hooping, poetry, games, music, puppets, and magic all mashed up into an evening of delightful chaos.

And everyone there filled out their Climate Action Venn Diagram in real time. If you want to get a sense of what it was like, you can hear audio clips in and see a in my Substack newsletter.

In What If We Get It Right?, you end each chapter by asking your interviewee the top three things they wish everyone knew about their particular area of expertise. So I’d like to ask you: What are the top three things you want everyone to know about your book?

1. It’s quite a fun, spirited read. I’ve been told the vibe of the book is like eavesdropping at a dinner party with me and 20 dear friends and colleagues, because the book includes interviews with these brilliant folks who are showing the way forward to their “visions of climate futures,” as the subtitle puts it. And if you listen to the audiobook, you get to actually hear these conversations.
2. There’s magnificent art and poetry mixed in.
3. I envisioned this book as something that people would read and discuss together, so, for book clubs and teachers, I made .

Oh! And as a bonus, the very last page has , which I spent an inordinate amount of time putting together and includes anthems for victory, love songs to Earth, tunes for tenacity, and sexy implementation vibes.

Kristin Hostetter is șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű’s sustainability columnist. This column is the result of a similar Venn diagram exercise she did several years ago when she became a founding member of the . Follow her journey to live more sustainably by for her twice-monthly newsletter.

The post This Book Is the Cure for Climate Anxiety appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

For decades, American alpinist Kitty Calhoun made a name topping out on some of the world’s highest peaks, including the West Pillar of 27,766-foot Makalu in the Himalayas. But what stayed with her more than any summit view were the alarming effects of climate change.

At such elevations, she often noticed melting ice, a hindrance to her ascents. But in the high deserts of Utah, the repercussions were causing real daily struggles for those living on the Navajo Nation, something she became aware of while mentoring an Indigenous climber who’d grown up there.

For over a century, natural resources like oil, coal, and uranium extracted from Navajo land have powered the American West, yet approximately one-third of the Navajo Nation, roughly 13,500 families, live without power. That indignity on its own is hard to fathom, but climate change has also exacerbated the aridity and seasonal heat in this region, forcing families to endure more triple-digit days without respite.

With that in mind, last year Calhoun persuaded Utah-based Lion Energy to donate 35 solar-powered kits—lunch-box-size generators that can be charged in as little as four hours—and raised $32,500 to buy an additional 65 for families in one of the reservation’s most disadvantaged areas, remote Navajo Mountain. Equipped with 100-watt solar panels, a single kit can run a mini fridge for 16 hours, charge a laptop 11 times over, and last up to 20 years.

Calhoun then reached out to Norman Lameman, the Native founder of , a nonprofit devoted to preserving tribal values, to lead the distribution efforts. “I didn’t want to force kits on people,” Calhoun says. “If they were interested, Norman could explain how the technology worked in their language.”

Angelo Baca, a Navajo-Hopi distance runner and filmmaker, and Sahar Khadjenoury, a Navajo-Persian producer and director, documented the project using a grant Calhoun received from Protect Our Winters for a film called Navajo Solar Sunrise.

“It’s important for us to take care of people. From an Indigenous perspective, the people are part of the land,” Baca said. “It’s important to step away from extractive resources—our people are still dealing with the effects of uranium contamination on the reservation. And solar isn’t the end-all solution, but it’s an important first step.”

In October of 2023, the trio traveled with Lameman to oversee installation and document the myriad ways the kits can improve lives. Families were able to run fans when temperatures soared and refrigerate food, medication, and breast milk. They could rely on electric blankets and small space heaters to keep them warm in winter, and access the internet to apply for jobs, government programs, and educational opportunities. They could charge their phones. Before the kits, Calhoun says, many residents relied on car batteries to power such necessities.

“Living simply should not mean living in poverty,” she says.

To donate for more solar generators in the Four Corners region, .Ìę

The post Many in This Navajo Community Didn’t Have Electricity. An Unlikely Foursome Collaborated to Make a Difference. appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

The camp chairs are set up. A cracked clipboard rests under my arm. I’m stuffed into my mom jeans. It’s showtime.

June gloom blankets Encinal Canyon in a lush mist. I could be in Narnia instead of Malibu, but I barely notice. My body stands in front of a marooned Airstream, waiting. But my mind is back home, wondering if my 14-month-old is napping as I review the research on my clipboard. Tonight I’ll camp in this patch of Eden with Shailene Woodley, the 33-year-old actor and environmentalist known for her lead roles in The Fault in Our Stars, the Divergent trilogy, and the series Big Little Lies, instead of sleeping at home with my daughter. It’s the first time I’ve been away from her overnight.

“There she is,” a member of our six-woman crew says. An electric sedan with a mint green surfboard on top crunches to a stop. A luminous creature in a pastel silk shirt emerges and wraps me in a hug. My mind freezes. My clipboard is blank on basic human greetings.

“I had to stop at REI and get a new sleeping pad,” Woodley says, rolling her eyes. “I left my old one with my ex.” The actress is no stranger to camping, and remarkably at home in the outdoors. From a young age, she’s felt a kinship with and responsibility toward the natural world. Her lifelong commitment to environmental work started when, as a freshman at Simi Valley High School, she rallied her fellow students to petition for a recycling program. Since then she’s become an outspoken advocate for the climate, working with various nonprofits and NGOs and participating in the Standing Rock protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

We sit under an ancient oak tree in collapsible chairs. If Woodley has a phone, I don’t see it. When I ask about it she says, “I guess I’m addicted to real interaction.” She glimpses mine and coos at the wallpaper photo of my baby. When I tell her I met the love of my life at 39 she says, “You give me hope!”

Woodley radiates something I can’t place. Youth and beauty? Sure. But that’s everywhere in Hollywood. Later, when I play back the recording of our conversation, I hear how rushed I sound, so determined to ask all the questions, to get somewhere. But she’s in no hurry. She’s right here.

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The first time river guide Bart Baldwin ever dipped a paddle into whitewater, he was rafting Oregon’s Upper Klamath River. “It spoiled me,” recalls Baldwin, who grew up near the river. That initial experience sparked a passion for paddling that Baldwin parlayed into a career that led him across the country—and back to the Upper Klamath, where he’s operated Noah’s Rafting Company since 2008. He discovered that the “UK” whitewater had few equals. “It was unique,” Baldwin says. “It wasn’t natural by any means, but unique.”

Timed releases out of JC Boyle dam created surges in the river’s flow and some of the biggest (class III and IV) rapids in the Pacific Northwest. And the water was a comfortable temperature: Unlike the bracing snowmelt that many rafters brave across the western United States, the Upper Klamath water that flowed from Boyle Reservoir and Upper Klamath Lake farther upstream was known for its warmth. The crowd-pleasing day trip accounted for more than 50 percent of Baldwin’s annual revenue.

But summer 2023 was the last season for the dam-dictated Upper Klamath. JC Boyle and three other Klamath River dams were dismantled between July 2023 to October 2024, and without those timed, high-volume releases, the Klamath no longer offers its famously thrilling whitewater. The river, which had been dammed for over 100 years, has yet to settle into its new normal—and it’s unclear whether it will have sufficient flows to be navigable at all.

Saying goodbye to that income, and to the rapids that inspired Baldwin to devote his life to running rivers, came hard. The Upper Klamath, which runs through high-desert western juniper forests that grow in volcanic soils, “feels like home,” Baldwin says. “I spent 30 years up there, and they were some of the best years of my life.”

The removal of JC Boyle and the other three dams is the world’s largest-ever dam removal project, affecting a 41-mile stretch of the Klamath River flowing between Oregon and California. Built between 1908 and 1962 to generate electricity for nearby communities, these four hydroelectric dams submerged indigenous lands, blocked salmon passage, and created pockets of warm water where toxic blue-green algae thrived. Deconstructing them promises to repair significant social and environmental damage, and consequently, many people celebrated when the smallest of the four dams, called Copco Number Two, was removed in summer 2023. Drawdown of the other three reservoirs continued in January 2024, and the project was officially completed in October. Keno Dam, which sits far upriver, was left in place because it has a fish ladder and provides irrigation for farmland.

This change promises, in the long-term, to improve water quality and allow salmon to reach their former upstream spawning grounds. But there are unwelcome tradeoffs: People who lived and worked along the dammed Klamath had built homes and businesses that relied on its series of reservoirs and rapids, and many of these stakeholders had opposed the dams’ removal. Since the dams have come down, property values along the former lakes have declined. The region’s sprawling farms and ranching families also fought the project because the dams routed water to their lands. And some environmentalists question whether salmon can or will return to upriver spawning grounds. Rafting outfitters anticipate significant financial losses now that dam releases no longer produce the rapids that attracted boaters. People stand to lose not just money, but also their identities.

Envisioning a New and Undiscovered River

Historical and scientific records yield only a few clues about what the Klamath River was like before it was dammed. The annals confirm little beyond the fact that fall- and spring-run chinook salmon, Pacific lamprey, and steelhead trout all used to migrate to some unconfirmed point near the headwaters of the Klamath River, at marsh-ringed Upper Klamath Lake.

The Klamath that living people have come to know starts there, at a shallow basin that hugs the eastern edge of Oregon’s Cascade Range for 25 miles. Those warm waters flow through Keno Dam, JC Boyle Reservoir and Dam, and into Copco Lake” before spilling out through Copco One and Copco TwoÌęand passing myriad agricultural diversions along the course to Iron Gate Dam. From there, the Klamath picks up speed as it slices through northern California for 200 miles to meet the Pacific Ocean near Crescent City.

Baldwin, a lifelong adventurer, can’t help but feel curious about the potential for continued exploration on the newly free-flowing river. “There is some opportunity here,” he says of the transformed stretches of riverbed. “We’ll push off in boatsÌęand wonder what’s around the corner. We’ll run something with no beta, and that’s so unheard-of in the Lower 48,” Baldwin says.

Already, he’s scouted , a stunning 1.7-mile chasm of columnar basalt that had been dried up by Copco TwoÌędam. Future flows there may range from 5,000 to 10,00 cubic feet per second (CFS) in winter to 700 to 1,000 CFS in summer for class III and IV rapids. “That was pretty cool to see,” says Baldwin.

Because the flows on the future Klamath River will be lower than the summertime surges facilitated by the dams, big rafts probably won’t be able to negotiate the new runs. Baldwin is mulling the possibility of offering multi-day fishing trips in small catarafts that can plumb technical water through remote canyons.

“I don’t know if salmon are going to be teeming through that section. I hope they do,” says Baldwin, noting that large-scale, water-hungry agricultural operations have appeared along the Klamath River and challenge the return of historic flows. “I hope that with the dams out, that entire river system will heal, and be better in the long run.”

That vision tests Baldwin’s faith. Nevertheless, he’s putting plans in place—in part because he enjoys seeking solutions to novel problems that haven’t already been solved. The future is uncertain, but it could be exciting. “I could be a taxi into some of the newest and most unique fly-fishing spots in the US,” says Baldwin.

Connecting Past and Future Visions

Since 1918, salmon and steelhead have bumped their heads against the aptly-named Iron Gate dam, the lowest of the four dams and an impassable barrier for migrating fish, which was removed on May 5 of this year. Installing fish ladders and updating the aging hydroelectric infrastructure at Iron Gate and other Klamath River dams wasn’t worth the expense, decided PacifiCorps, the energy company that operated the dams. And so, after decades of protests from the region’s indigenous tribes, California and Oregon issued approval for dam removal to restore habitat for four keystone fish species: Chinook salmon, Coho salmon, Pacific lamprey, and steelhead trout.

“Conifer forests benefit from the marine-derived nutrients,” explains Keith Parker, senior fisheries biologist for the Yurok Tribe, one of several entities that’s working to restore the Upper Klamath and its sea-run species. Salmon, steelhead, and Pacific lamprey spend most of their lives in the ocean, which fattens them for their long migration (totaling hundreds of miles) up the Klamath River to reproduce. Their eggs feed other fish, such as bull trout, and their carcasses enrich the soil to nourish some of the world’s tallest, oldest trees. Multiple, cascading ecological processes rely on these fish.

The fish have both biological and cultural significance, explains Parker. “They have fed our people since time immemorial with high-quality protein,” he continues. The Yurok people now eat a primarily commercial diet, but Parker is hopeful that the return of the salmon could help them reconnect with ancestral foods and traditions. His tribe suffers disproportionately from obesity, diabetes (at twice the national average), and poor mental health. are 14 times higher than the national average.ÌęParker believes that sourcing local, nutritious food is an important step towards better community health.

Parker considers the fish population and the Yurok people intertwined. “My people were wiped out to fewer than 1,000 of us, and the salmon experienced their own genocide,” says Parker. The Klamath River’s current salmonid population represents just two percent of historic levels. “Yet they still persist,” continues Parker. When he imagines the future of the Klamath River, he looks to the distant past.

“Salmon are in the fossil record,” Parker says. The oldest salmon fossils in Oregon are . That history gives him confidence that they will return, which many people outside the tribal community view as uncertain. To Parker, a hundred-year lapse can’t permanently interrupt a five-million-year-old habit.

Parker also draws inspiration from more recent proof of salmonids’ resiliency.Ìę“There have been close to 250 dam removals in the western US, and the common thread among all of them is that within a short period of time—literally months—biologists found juvenile salmon and larval-stage lamprey above the dam sites,” he said. As of this writing, As of this writing, Chinook salmon have started to into the previously inaccessible water above the Iron Gate dam site, roughly 150 miles from the California coast. They haven’t yet reached the former JC Boyle reservoir, 32 miles farther upriver in Oregon.

Focusing on the Future

After Danny Fontaine moved to the shores of Copco Lake in 2011, he’d spend the mornings and evenings on his dock, casting a fishing rod for perch, bass, and crappie. The water shimmered just below his lakeside home, with a 150-step staircase linking his back door to the shore. Some days, he captained a pontoon boat across the water; other times he launched his motor boat.ÌęNow, the lake has receded back to a river.

His home sits among a small cluster of buildings: There’s the defunct Copco Lake Store (which Fontaine owns and hopes to remodel), the fire station, the Community Center, and its outdoor swimming pool. These buildings and the residents they serve : nobody knows for sure how the river—or the local economy—will regenerate. Amid that climate of precarity, Fontaine’s work as a real estate agent has dried up.

But Fontaine is training his eye on the future. He seeks solace in tangibles such as the Copco Lake Store and the interior remodeling that it requires. “Thinking about that makes me feel good,” he says. His hope is that rafting outfitters might find a way to continue to offer float trips on the new river, and that those boaters would use the future store as a resupply station. Maybe creating a new campground would give visitors a reason to come to the community that once occupied the southeast end of Copco Lake.

Such visions of the future help Fontaine accept this change. He also reminds himself that the Copco residents will persist, even without the lake. Throughout the year, the Community Center hosts monthly dinners involving area residents. Fontaine or his husband Francis Gill, a trained chef and the Community Center’s president, typically cooks for the group. “Everyone out here is fairly tight-knit,” says Fontaine.

“Nobody here has sold their house because of the dam removal, nor do they plan to,” he says, concluding, “We won’t be able to have the water, but we’ll be able to have the community.”

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Update (January 9, 2025): The study cited in this article had a mathematical typo in calculating the exposure risk of a harmful chemical called deca-BDE, inflating the number by tenfold. As a result, some news outlets have canceled the study. But the recommendations to avoid black plastic in the kitchen remains, according to co-author of the study, Megan Liu: “Due to our miscalculation (not included in the abstract, highlights, or conclusion) the estimated exposure of one of the chemicals detected, deca-BDE,Ìęin kitchen utensils is an order of magnitude lower than we originally reported. But our recommendation to use alternatives such as wood and stainless steel, especially with kitchen utensils, remains. Deca-BDE is a banned flame retardant that can still pose health hazards, especially to children. Plus, our study also found 10 other harmful flame retardants in certain black plastic items. None of the chemicals tested are regulated in recycled plastics. And they should be.”

Fair warning: if you invite me to dinner at your house and I spy a black plastic spatula in the utensil canister on your counter, I’m confiscating it. Not because I’m a thief, but because I care about you. I don’t want black plastic anywhere near your scrambled eggs or anything else that goes into your mouth.

A published in Chemosphere, a scientific journal covering environmental chemistry, sounds the alarm on the toxicity of black plastic, which is commonly used in kitchen utensils, take out containers, sushi and meat trays, and even childrens’ toys.

The study tested 200 household items for bromine, a chemical that indicates the presence of dangerous brominated flame retardants (BFRs). Of the 87 items that contained bromine, the 20 with the highest concentrations were then analyzed for BFRs. 17 came back positive. The items with the highest levels of BFRs: a take-out sushi tray, a black plastic spoon, and a children’s pirate necklace.

For me, the scariest part of this discovery is that BFRs have been banned in the U.S. since 2004. So why are they showing up in products on our shelves today? It’s because we’ve recycled BFRs into places that they were never intended to go and it raises big questions about the safety of plastics recycling in general.

Is It Safe to Use Black Plastic?

The growing consensus among experts is that black plastic poses risks to human health and the environment. BFRs are linked to including endocrine, liver and kidney toxicity, cancer, adverse effects of fetal and child development, and more, according to The National Institute of Health Sciences.

“Our study showed that BFRs (including one called deca-BDE which has been banned in the U.S.) still exist in a percentage of new black plastic household items,” says Megan Liu, co-author of the study and the science and policy manager for , an environmental health and advocacy nonprofit.

The problem, she says, is that BFRs is a broad class of chemicals and only a handful of them have been outlawed. (This is a common challenge with chemical regulations, as I discovered when researching an article on PFAs, aka forever chemicals.) When a specific iteration within a large class of chemicals is banned, companies often switch to a similar—and equally harmful—one. It’s been likened to a dangerous game of whack-a-mole in which companies technically stay compliant but exacerbate the danger.

Liu says black plastic contamination traces back to electronics or e-waste recycling. For decades, BFRs have been added to electronics to prevent fire-related injuries and damage to property. BRFs—both the banned ones and their cousins— are still in circulation as old and new e-waste makes its way into the recycling system.

“Without regulations to end the use of harmful chemicals and prevent them from being recycled, toxic flame retardants will continue to enter our homes through the back door and show up in products,” says Liu.

Plastic Was Never Meant to Be Recycled

This black plastic study reveals an inherent and much deeper problem with our plastic recycling system. Despite how desperately we want to recycle the plastic we consume, it was designed to be durable by its very own founding fathers.

Consider thisÌę against Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. The suit alleges that the mega companies contributed to the plastics crisis by misleading consumers with advertising that praises the recyclability of single-use beverage bottles. “Except at the margins,” the suit reads, “it is theater—a show designed to make consumers feel good about, and be willing to, consume unprecedented volumes of defendants’ single-use plastic.”

But don’t take my word for it. Take it from one of the early champions of disposable packaging. At a 1963 plastics conference, Lloyd Stouffer, editor of Modern Plastics magazine, gave a horrifyinglyÌęcelebratory speech about the disposable nature of their darling packaging material and all the money it would make them.

“The package that is used once and thrown away, like a tin can or a paper carton, represents not a one-shot market for a few thousand units, but an everyday recurring market measured by the billions of units,” he espoused. “Your future in packaging does indeed lie in the trash can. You are filling the trash cans, the rubbish dumps and the incinerators with literally billions of plastics [sic] bottles, plastics jugs, plastics tubes, blisters and skin packs, plastics bags and films and sheet packages–and now, even plasticsÌęcans,” he said. I picture him raising his fist in celebration, dollar signs in his eyes. “The happy day has arrived when nobody any longer considers the plastic package too good to throw away.”

You can read the text of for yourself, and you should because it will blow your mind. It reads like an SNL parody. He waxed on and on about how all the different types of throw-away plastic–jars, bottles, cigarette boxes, shrink wrap–were replacing reusables at a staggering rate. All while saving companies millions.

In this room full of industry titans, Stouffer was leading a pep rally for pollution.

Jackie Nuñez, advocacy and engagement manager for Plastic Pollution Coalition, summarizes the fundamental in four words: “Toxics in and toxics out.” In other words, that should be taken out of the recycling system all together, and dealt with as the toxic/hazardous waste that it is.

“It’s ludicrous,” says Nuñez. She even takes issue with the word “recycling” when it comes to plastics. She argues that when plastics are reclaimed and melted down, they deteriorate and lose some of the function they were originally designed for. “Every time you heat up plastic, the chemical bonds weaken,” she says. “To turn it back into usable new plastic, virgin plastic must be fed in, perpetuating our hunger for plastic.”

It sounds like the evil twin of a sourdough starter that needs to be fed in order to rise.

Is It Better to Not Recycle Plastics?

Our long-term goal, according to both Liu, Nuñez, and many other environmental and health experts, should be to phase out plastic production.

According to Plastic Pollution Coalition, about 460 million metric tons of plastic are now produced annually. That number is expected to triple by 2050. Yet, ever made has been reclaimed. Recycling rates for other materials, like aluminum, glass, and paper, are far higher.

“This black plastics study brings to light a disturbing fact about plastic recycling,” says Liu. “We can’t recycle our way out of the toxic plastic crisis. It is critical that governments adopt strong restrictions on harmful chemicals and plastics to protect the health of all people.”

While Nuñez agrees that we need strong policies and regulations, and that polluters should pay for the harm they’ve done, she does not think that we should just give up and stop recycling.

“Yes, consumers should still separate out and sort their plastic according to their local guidelines,” says Nuñez. “This is our current, albeit flawed, system. It’s not broken, it’s just contaminated with plastic.”

How Can You Be Safe from Plastic?

While it’s clear that single-use plastic is bad for us and for the planet, it’s also, very hard to avoid it in today’s world. ThatÌę said, here is anÌęever-growing list of ways that I try to keep myself and my family safe from its harmful effects.

• Speak up! This is perhaps the most important thing you can do to create meaningful change. Ask your grocers and favorite restaurants to offer packaging choices that are nonplastic. Ask them to allow and embrace reusables. Write to your legislators and local officials and tell them we need to break free from plastic. Vote for politicians who support these views.
• Throw out your plastic kitchen utensils. This includes spatulas, spoons, strainers, bowls, cups, cutting boards, and containers.
• Shop smart. When you have the choice between plastic and any other material, steer clear of plastic. This is especially important when it comes to food packaging and anything that touches food.
• Adopt a reusable mindset. CarryÌęyour own water bottle. Bring your own cup to the coffee shop. Even tote your own container to restaurants for leftovers. This not only keeps youÌęsafe, it sends a message to the proprietors that you do not approve of single-use plastic.
• Know your local recycling guidelines. Really know them. Call your town or local recycling center and ask specific questions about exactly what they’ll take and won’t take.
• Sign petitions. It’s a fast, easy way to be part of collective action. Here are two you can sign today in minutes: supports federal legislation that would limit plastic pollution. supports a global treaty with the same goals.

Kristin Hostetter is șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű’s sustainability columnist. She is on a perpetual quest to banish plastic from her life. Follow her journey to live more sustainably by for her twice-monthly newsletter.

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