Walter English's Mission To Illuminate Black Ancestry

Summary

Marriage and Martinis: Episode Summary

Episode Title: Walter English's Mission To Illuminate Black Ancestry
Release Date: April 28, 2025
Hosts: Danielle & Adam
Guest: Carrie Rinehart

---

Introduction

In this compelling episode of Marriage and Martinis, hosts Danielle and Adam take a poignant detour from their usual discussions on marriage and parenting to shed light on a critical environmental issue through the harrowing story of Carrie Rinehart. Carrie’s journey from a concerned mother to a relentless environmental activist underscores the profound impact that chemical contamination can have on a community.

---

Carrie Rinehart’s Story

Danielle introduces Carrie Rinehart, a devoted mother from Franklin, Indiana, whose life was irrevocably changed by environmental contamination. Carrie shares her personal experiences living in Johnson County, Indiana, where her family's groundwater was contaminated with trichloroethylene (TCE), a known carcinogen.

[08:00] Carrie Rinehart: "I was trying to do all the right things. I breastfed her, I got her vaccines on schedule. She went to the doctor on schedule. I was just happy because I was in love with her and being a mom."

Carrie's daughter, Emma, developed a severe brain tumor linked to TCE exposure, leading to Emma's untimely passing. This tragedy propelled Carrie into activism, fighting tirelessly to prevent further contamination and protect other families.

---

Understanding TCE and Its Impact

A significant portion of the episode delves into what TCE is and its detrimental effects on health and the environment. Carrie provides a detailed explanation of the chemical and its persistence in the environment.

[09:39] Carrie Rinehart: "Trichloroethylene, or TCE, is a degreaser used often in manufacturing. Once it's in the ground, it sticks to soil forever until someone removes it. It breaks down and becomes even worse over time, turning into vinyl chloride, which is definitively linked to brain tumors."

Carrie emphasizes the long-term dangers of TCE, highlighting how it contaminates groundwater and poses significant health risks, particularly to children.

---

The Fight Against Environmental Contamination

Carrie recounts her collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and her efforts to bring the issue to the forefront of legislative attention. She describes how her advocacy led her to Washington, D.C., where she met with lawmakers to discuss the urgent need to address TCE contamination.

[17:39] Carrie Rinehart: "In 2014, my 13-year-old daughter had been getting nauseous and throwing up. She was diagnosed with papilledema, indicative of brain swelling. Standing there with her in the MRI room, I knew instantly that Emma had a tumor."

Carrie's firsthand experience with her daughter's illness galvanized her mission to advocate for stricter environmental protections and better regulatory measures against harmful chemicals.

---

Public Response and Challenges

The episode explores the mixed public reactions Carrie faced in her community. While many supported her cause, others were resistant, citing concerns over property values and skepticism about the severity of the contamination.

[32:26] Carrie Rinehart: "This is not an opinion. My opinion is we should not poison our kids. Our kids are not the effing canaries in the coal mine."

Carrie discusses the emotional and social challenges of advocating against entrenched interests and the skepticism of long-term residents who underestimated the dangers of TCE exposure.

---

Current State and Future Efforts

Despite initial victories, Carrie highlights the ongoing threats to environmental regulations, particularly the efforts to deregulate and allow continued use of harmful chemicals like TCE.

[35:14] Carrie Rinehart: "They’re pulling back the regulations already and they're talking about passing something to try to make it so that TCE doesn't get banned and that Congress can never vote on it again."

Carrie warns that the fight against chemical contamination is far from over and underscores the need for sustained activism to protect public health.

---

How to Help and Get Involved

Carrie offers actionable advice for listeners who wish to support environmental causes. She emphasizes the importance of contacting representatives, engaging in social media activism, and staying informed through trusted organizations like the Environmental Defense Fund.

[37:03] Carrie Rinehart: "The most important thing that people can do is contacting your representatives, up and down. That has by far been the most effective means of advocacy."

She also encourages community members to share information, participate in petitions, and maintain pressure on lawmakers to uphold and strengthen environmental protections.

---

Conclusion

Danielle wraps up the episode by expressing deep gratitude to Carrie for sharing her heart-wrenching story and inspiring listeners to take action. She reinforces the importance of community support and collective effort in combating environmental injustices.

[47:16] Carrie Rinehart: "I'm so excited about it. Enjoy this episode and thank you again, Carrie."

The episode serves as a powerful reminder of the critical role individuals play in advocating for a healthier, safer environment for future generations.

---

Key Takeaways

• Awareness: Understanding the harmful effects of chemicals like TCE is crucial for community health.
• Advocacy: Persistent and informed activism can lead to significant policy changes.
• Community Support: Building a supportive network amplifies the impact of individual efforts.
• Actionable Steps: Contacting representatives and leveraging social media are effective ways to influence environmental policies.

---

Resources Mentioned

• Environmental Defense Fund: [Show Notes Link]
• 3am Uprising Community: [Show Notes Link]
• Petition Sign-Up: [Show Notes Link]

Listeners are encouraged to explore these resources to further educate themselves and contribute to ongoing environmental advocacy efforts.

Transcript

[Carrie Rinehart]

If you're a parent or share a fridge with someone, Instacart is about to make grocery shopping so much easier because with family carts, you can share a cart with your partner and each add the items you want. Since between the two of you, odds are you'll both remember everything you need. And this way, you'll never have to eat milkless cereal again. So minimize the stress of the weekly shop with family carts. Download the Instacart app and get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes. Plus enjoy. $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees app for three orders in 14 days excludes restaurants. Hey everyone.

[Danielle]

Welcome to Marriage of Martinis. This is Danielle. So today's episode is kind of different than what I'm used to doing. I personally, when it comes to activism, I guess, as so many of us do, I think that I have certain topics around which I feel most informed. I've been involved with for direct and indirect reasons. For me, as much as I care about care about clients, that isn't one of the lanes that I'm usually very involved in because I don't really feel like I have the tools or the knowledge to kind of go in that lane. But I have family members who are extremely, extremely involved and I am so grateful that they are doing this work and cast. You've heard me talk about my sister in law, Joanna, who is married to my brother Mitch, and that my kids, all in an apocalypse, want to go and live with Joanna because she is just this sort of, how do you even explain it? Like she just is this gut instinct and this perseverance and this determination and about being a change maker, especially when it comes to the environment. And she works with the Environmental Defense Fund. And right now obviously we know that there is insane gutting of every program in the federal government and key protections could be erased. Up to $254 billion in annual benefits for public health and the environment, which obviously is going to loosen restrictions and roll back so much research, so much advancement. Joanna and her team had asked me if I would speak to to a mom named Carrie Rinehart who lives in Indiana and was living in Johnson County, Indiana for a long time with her kids and has a really gut wrenching, important story to share. And right now when we have so much less access to to all of this information, it's so important to share these stories and to learn from them what we're probably not going to find out or learn otherwise. And so of course I was very happy to talk to Carrie and to Share her story and basically, Carrie has been through a lot and she is a mom who is no different than you or I and who, you know, had just was enjoying raising her kids as we all just want to do. And it was caused by tce, which is a known carcinogen that contaminated the groundwater in Franklin, Indiana, which where Carrie and her family had lived for 20 years. And so she started fighting for of course, her daughter when it occurred and then continued fighting and has continued fighting since then. So in this episode we talk all about sort of, you know, trusting your gut and what signs to look for in your community if you think something might be off or toxic. And just basically the ways that we need to stay informed and especially right now, because it is right now scary. It's hard to get information from trusted sources and the Environmental Defense Fund is one of those trusted sources. I will put all their links in the show notes. There's a petition that you can sign and go follow them on Instagram and just watch the work they're doing because they really are one of the last guardrails that are in place. I am so grateful to Carrie for sharing her story with us. As you can imagine, to retell and relive a traumatic event like this is beyond words. You know, it's just to live through it once is hell and to keep talking about it is really difficult and she's doing it for the safety of everyone. So enjoy this episode. Also, my new community, our new community, the 3am uprising. If you have been following on Instagram, you know that I'm starting a new community of women who are going to come together in a private space on a different platform where we can just like minded women talking about current events, talking about all kinds of stuff that's important to us that's going on now. There's gonna be a book club every month. We are going to have live events and vent sessions and Q&As and experts. We're gonna do creative work. We're gonna do a lot of activism and I'm really excited about it. I'm beyond excited about it. I will put the link to the email and the sign up for that in the show notes. Also if or you could go over on Instagram and go to the link in my bio and get that. There's already hundreds of people signed up on the email list. You can't sign up yet to get a spot, but that's opening this week. So if you want to get in for the first month, I am only going to have about 30 people join the first month and then there will be a waiting list. So get on as soon as you can and be one of the first to sign up if this is something that appeals to you, because I think it's going to be phenomenally special and I'm so excited about it. Enjoy this episode and thank you again, Carrie. Make sure you guys go out and do some research and trust your gut, share your stories and work together to get through all of this madness. Hi, Carrie.

[Carrie Rinehart]

Hi.

[Danielle]

Thank you so much for doing this.

[Carrie Rinehart]

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

[Danielle]

So we have in common my sister in law, who I've spoken about on our podcast many, many times.

[Carrie Rinehart]

Wonderful one.

[Danielle]

Yeah. And she's awesome and she thinks the world of you. And my kids have already told me, like, in any emergency situation, they will leave me and go to Joanna.

[Carrie Rinehart]

I mean, I can see it's. It's a solid choice.

[Danielle]

Yeah, I mean, me too. Like, I definitely would too. But tell me about how you met Joanna and, you know, your backstory with everything.

[Carrie Rinehart]

I. Oh, gosh, it's been a while since I met Joanna. We've been working with her for a while. It feels like a long time. Through Environmental Defense Fund. They heard about our fight with TCE and reached out and asked if I'd come to dc. And I'm trying to remember the first time we came, what exactly the topic was besides just tce. But the second time, I know it was because Michael Dorson was being nominated for the EPA's, like, head of their chemical division. What Mikhail Friedhoff used to do. Dr. Friedhoff. And so she asked for us to come talk to lawmakers and share Emma's story and let them know the impact that TCE and PCE and whatnot had had on our life.

[Danielle]

And now can you, first of all, if you want to just explain to us what TCE is and you know, and you're. You're leading up to going to Washington. Yeah.

[Carrie Rinehart]

So TCE is trichloroethylene, which probably took me two years to be able to say that whole word correctly out loud because this is not my life. Like, this is not what I come from. My background is nothing to do with this. In fact, I'm pretty sure I failed chemistry in college. So anyway, TC is trichloroethylene. It is a degreaser used often in manufacturing, but also found in some. Not so much anymore, but in household things, gun cleaning solutions. But mostly the biggest issues are with, like, manufacturers who are using it for decreasing. It's a Volatile organic compound. And the problem is like, once it's in the ground and sticks, it sticks to soil. It's there forever until someone removes it and. And as it sits there, it actually breaks down and gets worse over time. It turns into vinyl chloride, which a lot of people know when they hear vinyl chloride. That one kind of rings a bell with some people that it's bad. It's really bad. It's what was in the train derailment in Ohio. And I can promise you there will be a brain tumor cluster there because vinyl chloride has definitively been linked to brain tumors. So it's nasty stuff.

[Danielle]

Yeah. And before you, like, we're obviously had to go on this mission sort of against D.C. and everything. You just like you live in a town in Indiana with your family and everything. And it was in a place that. Were there a lot of issues before that with, you know, either water or chemicals or like, was it one of those places where there's, you know, kind of feel like, okay, there's always something happening?

[Carrie Rinehart]

No, I mean, I moved to Franklin when I was 18 years old. I was. It was in 1995, so the contamination had already been there for a decade. The college campus is within a mile and a half downstream of the main area. The main plume of contamination, the EPA identified that cuts through the creek and whatnot. So I went to college there. I got married right after college. And then I had Emma in 2001. And she was a big fat healthy baby. And I was just happy because I was in love with her and being a mom and I was trying to do all the right things. You know, I breastfed her, I got her vaccines on schedule. She went to the doctor on schedule. Know, just trying to always do the right thing. Organic was first becoming a thing. And so trying to buy organic once you started eating as much as you could afford, especially back then, never, never heard about anything, any kind of issues the entire time that I was there. And mind you, I was. I majored in journalism at Franklin College in news editorial journalism. So the news was my life. I'm a news junkie. Like a die hard news junkie. And I never heard a thing about it. And I was married to a family who is like third generation townie. No one said a word to me about that. If they ever knew about it, they never said a word. And it was all right there. Like my entire life, basically from the time I got there until even the time I left was centered within a mile to a mile and a half. Well, even less, you Know, a half mile, mile, mile and a half within the site.

[Danielle]

Wow.

[Carrie Rinehart]

And it's just these, you know, the EPA themselves have said over time. Yeah. Being exposed to TCE over and over is terrible. Obviously we know this, we know it increases the chance of Parkinson's by 500 times. But the EPA themselves, in scientific studies, you know, back when we used to have that, the EPA has said one exposure to TCE is unacceptable, let alone. And that's. We're talking adults. You know, we don't, we don't talk about kids when we're talking about maximum contamination limits and whatnot. We're talking about what can an adult handle? So what happens when you put, you know, you can have five parts of TCE in drinking water? That's what's allowed by the standards. Five parts. So what happens for an adult who can have five when my daughter's bottle or your toddler sippy cup ends up with two parts.

[Danielle]

Wow.

[Carrie Rinehart]

You think about it in those terms and how we should be using things called the precautionary principle, which means you assume that this chemical is the worst that it can possibly be until you know better. And that's the opposite of how we've done things in the industry in this country, which is frightening. Instead, what the EPA has done is let mass amounts of chemicals flood the market and take in the word for, you know, the chemical industry taking what they say it's safe, then we say it's safe until, you know, we end up with three girls with brain tumors in a two block radius in two years. So that's the long answer, right?

[Danielle]

No, I know. And you know, it's especially obviously right now when the whole world is ass backwards, you know, and you're seeing people who are, you know, wanting health to go one way, but like we're cutting all the funding for all the stuff that actually matters and it makes no sense.

[Carrie Rinehart]

So you don't want red food dye anymore. Great. I agree. Nasty. We shouldn't give it to our kids, we shouldn't give it to our adults. But are we going to regulate the jerks that put red food dye in everything in this country? Who thinks we're going to do that?

[Danielle]

Right.

[Carrie Rinehart]

We are deregulating like as fast as possible right now. So how do you make that happen? Who enforces that? Just like with the epa, who's going to enforce it? Who's going to make sure that the groundwater in Franklin, which is still not clean to this day, four decades after it was first contaminated. Wow. A creek and playgrounds and Schools and all these other things. Who's going to make sure in 10 years that contamination that they are supposed to be actively cleaning up today is actually finished, you know.

[Danielle]

Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

[Carrie Rinehart]

Yeah, it's just, it's scary and it's very, you know, it's very disheartening at this point because we literally just heard from the epa. I just got a call in October from the hit of this division. You know, Dr. Mikhail Friedhoff calls me to tell me that Emma's impact has been so important that they are banning TCE and that, that, that her story, she wanted me to personally know that her story was pivotal in making that happen and turn around. And months later it's like, are you kidding me? Everything.

[Danielle]

Yeah, people don't, they don't connect the dots is the, is the issue. But yeah, if you could tell us a little bit about Emma's story and you know, what happened and how you kind of put it all together. Not you know, of course I don't want to. It's, it's not about fear mongering or anything like that, but it is, it is especially right now when there's going to be less and less regulations.

[Carrie Rinehart]

It's, it's incredibly important. Yeah. Like I said, I did not come from this world obviously. So in 2014 I had, my 13 year old daughter had been getting nauseous in the morning, sometimes throwing up. Emma was in eighth grade and she was super active. She'd been on swim team since she was 5. She never had any real medical problems. And so she had had a lot of like allergy problems other than like allergies. And she had some acid reflux and she had gotten bad about taking her allergy medicine like she was supposed to, etc. So they thought that she was having a lot of like drainage and whatnot. And this all persisted for a little while. They put her on some medicine and it got better. And about two weeks later I was working, I was an ER nurse at the time in Indianapolis and my ex husband text me and he said because he, it was his day with the kids, I was working, they had eye appointments just like their yearly eye visits. And he texted me and he said do you know what papilledema is? Because the doctor says Emma has it and it almost put me to my knees because as a nurse I started to put together like this whole picture because papilledema is optic nerve swelling. So it's indicative of brain swelling. And I said I'm going to call the doctor because I of course freaked out. I ran back, I talked to my charge nurse who was like one of the smartest people I knew. And one of my docs was there, and I said, Ryan, like. And he said, it's Friday afternoon. It's, we've seen this, it's covered your ass kind of stuff. He's sending her in because he's bringing it to your attention because he's covering his ass on a Friday afternoon. You know, it's. It's easy. It's an easy thing to misdiagnose. And I said, okay, okay. So I called him and he said, if you have students there, they need to look. It's that obvious. And that's never a good thing. Like, if a doctor wants to bring a student in to see you, a teaching moment is not what you want to be. And it sure shit is not what you want your kid to be. So I told my ex husband, I said, bring her to me. So he brought her to me. We checked her into the er, took her to mri, and while we were in the MRI room, I was standing there with my hand on her leg like the whole time because they take forever and they're loud and they're scary for an adult, let alone a kid. And the tech came in and said, I'm going to give her a little bit of contrast so we can see better. And I looked her in the eye and I knew instantly that Emma had a tumor because they wouldn't be giving her contrast to look at anything if they hadn't seen something to begin with. So I just knew then. I knew then. And it turned out that it was. And it was a massive brain tumor. And we ended up in at Riley Children's Hospital in Indy A couple days later. She was having a biopsy. They were draining. You know, we were in the ICU and my kid is having holes drilled into her skull. It's just insane. Like your whole life just flips on a dime like that with no clue, no indication, nothing to ever think. I never had anything but a fat, healthy baby, right?

[Danielle]

And then where had there were the other cases of the tumors before Emma or after?

[Carrie Rinehart]

So yeah, there were cases of the other girls were two were in the years prior to. I found out about later once I started tracking the kids and mapping them, putting them on the map. And that was really when it was like once those kids, you know, all these names started flooding in. Basically what happened was the media got wind of everything and that's how we found out there was any contamination at all. And this was after Emma had died. And so I never had a chance to even think about how or why Emma got a tumor, let alone that tumor, because she died three months after she was diagnosed. It was so fast. Like all. It was sheer fight or flight, just survival mode the entire time. And knowing, you know, as soon as I saw Ms. MRI images, I knew like, this is, this is not good. And that the likelihood that she would survive was, was it would take a miracle, literally. And so all I did was literally pack everything I could into her life. As in those, in that amount of time, you know, we went to Paris. That was her, you know, her. The Indiana Children's Wish Fund sent us to Paris and we came back and three days later, on the day that was supposed to be the day that we got her follow up mri, Emma had a seizure and passed away.

[Danielle]

It is every parent's nightmare. It is. And it's. And the fact that you have kept going and like to make it your mission to, to tell people and you know, and you haven't like retreated and I'm sure there's times you have and I'm sure that there's times you wanted to and everything, but like, my goodness, it's. I mean, thank you for, you know, making it about, like making it even bigger than I know and I know it's an honor of her too. So. So it's important definitely to spread the word. And so what, how did, how did it come about? Like, were it, was it a cover up? Was this something that they were aware of in the town that they were covering up and like how did you figure out that it was the chemical that was the cause of it?

[Carrie Rinehart]

So I feel like over time it was like a. I mean there were definitely people covering things up in all levels of this, all levels from the top down and I mean everywhere down. But there were also, it's like things like people just let things slip through the cracks over and over and over again or things like enforcement didn't happen when it should have. How that happened over and over again for 30 years is beyond me. But it did came about that another mom had contacted her son, had leukemia, had contacted a bunch of different media because in the course of his treatment, one of the nurses said, where are you guys from? Etc. You know, just small talk. And she said, oh, we see a lot of kids from your area. And that set off something in her. So she had started contacting the media and I didn't even know anything about it. Of course it's this point. But yeah. So when that came out and the story came out, and luckily the reporter was smart enough to start, she looked at all the kids in our county and then took surveys of all the different kids, parents who would participate. And the one thing she figured out was that the kids that were sick, the one thing they all had in common was they either lived in Franklin or they had spent a lot of time in Franklin. Like grandma and grandpa babysat you when you were a toddler. You know, my mom, dad worked, or you're on the swim team there, the club, swim club or whatever it is, they all had spent a lot of time in Franklin. So that was what pushed her to look deeper into Franklin to say what's going on there? And then she was able to discover, you know, we had an EPA super fun site. Never knew that, you know, I'm talking about literally like my, my ex in law's house was built on it. And nobody knew and they would know.

[Danielle]

Why it impacts some people and not. Is it just like one of those things where that's how your body reacts and it's.

[Carrie Rinehart]

Yeah. So TC can affect you neurologically. Like they have a definitive link to kidney cancer because people who worked with it and they, they could do a very, you know, control group study. So those people were getting kidney cancer at a high rate. So they've said for, for, you know, definitively it causes kidney cancer. And I work with a doctor who says there is for sure kidney cancer cluster that they have missed in Franklin in adults. But so my twins, Sam and Sophie were nine when Emma died. And it's really hard. Like once this all came out and they started hearing about it, not just for me, but from the community, and it was on the news and they asked that, they said, how come Emma got sick and we didn't. And the way I explained it to them was every chemical is like a key. And sometimes in your body it unlocks a rash, and in other people it unlocks Parkinson's disease, but not for another 20 years because you don't know that it opened the door. And in some people it unlocks brain tumors, and in other people it unlocks nothing. And every single chemical out there affects us that way. And so while no, no one can look at TC scientifically down to, you know, at this moment and say, yes, it caused Emma's brain tumor, I'm going to tell you it caused Emma's brain tumor. Because if you have an ounce of common sense, an ounce of common sense, and I'm someone who believes in science. But I also believe it better pass the laugh test. And you can't tell me having all these girls with brain tumors. Not kid brain tumors either. We see dipgs in kids, we don't see glioblastomas in kids. And this is the. These tumors were all rare. So, you know, we know it affects you neurologically. We know it affects you autoimmune. Your brain is neurological. You know, all these things connect. TCE breaks down to vinyl chloride. Vinyl chloride for sure, makes causes brain tumors. It's just the fact that we're even contemplating again, letting all of these people be exposed to it. And all of these manufacturers just go back to using it like it's, it's orange juice. It's just mind boggling to me.

[Danielle]

So when she went to Washington and everything, there was, there was action taken. And so what was that action? And you know, and how do you sort of see that? I mean, first of all, I guess I'm wondering also, was there like a mass exodus from your town after that? How did people react? Like, you know, you think sort of like there's this thing that's out there and you don't know is it going, you know, I mean. And how did the public respond?

[Carrie Rinehart]

The public response was overwhelmingly positive for the most part. Because when you start seeing dozens and dozens of kids and the kinds of cancers they have, like testicle cancer, testicular cancer in a teenager, you know, ovarian cancer in a 12 year old, the things that you start to see on paper, like when you start to see it, you put it on a map, then people, it's the same thing. People do start to become alarmed and. But there was definitely pushback. There was definitely pushback. You know, this is not good for real estate values. Even though we tried to educate the public, you know, when there have been studies done, like once the EPA cleans up a Superfund site, the property values in that area go up 30% almost instantly once it's done. Because the community trusts where they live. Why would you not want to live there? You know, that's already been taken care of. Because in 30 years, somebody in Franklin, in a different part, is going to find something similar to what I found. And because this is a problem that is so massive and in so many different towns and different places that it just goes on and on. It goes on and on.

[Danielle]

And that's the lead that you had to use in order to try to convince people to care was, was value. And yeah, instead of being like, no, people are going to Die and right.

[Carrie Rinehart]

Our kids weren't enough, like right off the top.

[Danielle]

Right.

[Carrie Rinehart]

It was like, oh yeah, by the way. Yeah, I get it. It sucks. And, and it really was hard because, you know, the people who especially live directly on the plume, this is an area where manufacturing and the industry butts up to residential. And these homes are not fancy. These are people who are lower middle class or, or below. They don't have the means to just up and move and say screw this house or to try to sell it at a loss because it did. It made national news and people didn't, especially people who were born and raised in Franklin didn't. A lot of them were really struggled with it. There was a lot of this attitude, like, I was born and raised here and I'm fine, so it's okay. Like, you're blowing this out of proportion. I'm like, yeah, well I grew up not wearing a seatbelt and I was okay, but guess what? My kids are still in seatbelts in the back. So it's just, it's nonsensical and it's like, like stick your head in the contaminated sand, why don't you? You know, and it's very frustrating when. And it's hard not to be passionate about it. It's hard not to be like, you know what, screw you when you've lost your kid. Like, I've paid the ultimate price. You think I'm afraid to lose a friend? No, I'm not. Like, I will, I will lose my friends over this. If you can't see.

[Danielle]

Rights, it's voting against progress. I have a gay kid and people say, you know, oh, can't we differ on opinions?

[Carrie Rinehart]

No, this is not an opinion. Yeah. My opinion is we should not poison our kids. My opinion is our kids are not the effing canaries in the coal mine. That's not their job. But pretty much that's what they were used for and still are all over.

[Danielle]

I know. And it's so crazy to me, like the Maha movement and how, you know, it's all about these no chemicals and know this and know that. And then at the same time, I mean, they're watching the government gut everything, everything and the environmental protections and everything. And it's like they don't put two and two together that, you know, okay, you think vaccines cause autism, but you don't think that the chemicals cause stuff. Like, yeah, it's really mind boggling and it's infuriating.

[Carrie Rinehart]

It's as backwards. Yeah, yeah. Really hard. Like, especially in a state Like Indiana, this is an incredibly red state. It's incredibly heavy on, like, farming. Agriculture is huge here. You know, I got into an argument with a farmer once because Monsanto was trying to come here and bring a plant to our county right in the middle of all this. And we were like, oh, hell no. And ultimately they pulled their tax deductions and they didn't come. And a farmer tried to argue with me that, you know, he only needs a glass of Roundup, a McDonald's, you know, cup full of ground up to treat five acres. And I'm like. Like, that makes it less poisonous. I'm like, I need a piece of, you know, this much arsenic to kill an entire room full of people.

[Danielle]

Right, right.

[Carrie Rinehart]

Does that make it less, like, it's just. It's really hard. Like, they think it's like, because you don't use very much. Yeah, it's not bad, right? It is bad.

[Danielle]

So what I mean, so now are you seeing that, like, this progress that has been made and all this, you know, all this, this fighting that you guys did for getting rid of it, Are you now. I mean, is it. Is it already like a sudden backwards turn?

[Carrie Rinehart]

Pretty much, yeah. So they're already are suits that have passed up where there's, you know, literally like, one company that still wants to use this shit. So all the children in America apparently are less important than the one company that wants to continue to use this. You know, it doesn't make sense. And so they're. Yeah, they're pulling back the regulations already and they're talking about passing something to try to make it so that TCE doesn't get banned and so that Congress can never vote on it again, basically.

[Danielle]

Because. Because of the money in it.

[Carrie Rinehart]

Yeah, because there's lot. There's big chemical companies lobbying that say we want to use it, and this is. It's more expensive to use this or to use that or. I don't know if it's even more expensive in a lot of cases. My understanding is it's not in a lot of cases. It's like, it's just the good old boy Die Hard, this is how we do kind of thing, you know.

[Danielle]

But that is all more important until it touches them.

[Carrie Rinehart]

Until it touches them. Exactly.

[Danielle]

I didn't think it would happen to me. Right, yeah. So is there anything that people could do, number one, to help with this cause? And also, is there anything right now you recommend doing, you know, for people who are out there and like, knowing that in so many ways red flags aren't Going to be raised about so many different chemicals and so many different dangers. And I mean, you know, is there a way to for instance, check if these chemicals have, are in your community or to go and you know, proactively sort of if you're moving somewhere or are there records are there. You know, what do you recommend people do in order to try to like get ahead of it?

[Carrie Rinehart]

So it can be really tough to be honest because if you live in a town, for example, that's turn of the century, which look around the US it's everywhere and there's turn of the century manufacturing and industry, solid chance your town is contaminated in some way, shape or form. It's just the way it is. I think right now the most important thing that people can do. It's also hard for me to tell people and do because I feel like there are so many things right now. There are so many things, but everybody.

[Danielle]

You know, activism has many lanes. People who I know are, you know, are looking for a, you know, an environmental.

[Carrie Rinehart]

Right. So for sure it's contacting your representatives, you know, up and down that has by enough by far and away been the most effective means of advocacy. You know, I was fortunate to get, you know, Facebook back in the day was really powerful in getting people to move and to speak to their representatives and let them know we don't want.

[Danielle]

This and has already been found in the town. Just to say we want to make sure that it when this comes back.

[Carrie Rinehart]

And also for the fact that you never know where you're going to end up in life or where you're going to live or where your kids are going to live. So even if you don't know actively where, what's, where you are and there are a lot of different tools out there that you can use to look up. The problem is there's not a lot of comprehensive tools out there. And also the current, current state of federal websites.

[Danielle]

Yeah.

[Carrie Rinehart]

Makes it really difficult. So you have to start looking at, you know, agencies and advocacy groups like Environmental Defense Fund and following them and paying attention, you know, to these groups that have long standing relationships, especially in D.C. where they can reach out and make a difference on a level that's really important because it, it does, it feels disheartening and it feels even for me, it feels right now like nothing I do matters. Like all of the, you feel like all of the avenues for advocacy that we used before, that I utilized and in the past have been successful. It's like where are they? I don't even know if they still exist. Right. And so I think right now we all like in the advocacy world have to kind of just stand together and continue working the way we've always worked. And we need them not to repeal this ban on TCE because it won't just be tce. Like that's just the beginning of one chemical. There are so many more out there and whether you know it or not, they're affecting your life probably.

[Danielle]

Do you know when the vote on it is?

[Carrie Rinehart]

I don't know that yet. I need to talk to Joanna more about. Joanna is my. Keeps me in the loop and then she calls me and says, hey, do you want to talk to my sister in law?

[Danielle]

Oh, well, thank you. I really appreciate you doing it. And I know that they gave me a petition that I am going to put the link in the show notes. I'll put it in on Instagram and everything. And you know, and when it comes time, you know, for any action or whatever, you know, please, I mean, I'm sure Joanna also will reach out to me. But however we as a community can help, we certainly will. And I would say also, you know, I know that there's tons of environmentally focused protests and stuff going on all the time.

[Carrie Rinehart]

Yeah, there are.

[Danielle]

We could go and see and you know what I mean, people are, I mean, my God, I just saw like, I mean what happened over the weekend with the postal service. I was like, I didn't even know people were protesting for the postal service. And they're like everywhere right now on the agenda. So.

[Carrie Rinehart]

Yes. And social media, sharing things on your social media. Like I always, it's, it's been powerful. If I share things like this pro, this petition, if people can continue sharing that, like that snowball effect that you don't realize how important, you know, and that's something that I want the community to know and even people who aren't advocates per se to know that just that pressure is seen. And when, especially like if you tag your specific representatives, they see that.

[Danielle]

Yeah.

[Carrie Rinehart]

And they don't like you to know that they see that. But I know they see that because I've sat in meetings with senators staff who say have said to me in the past, you got our attention because you were persistent and you tagged them and tagged them and tagged them. And so that kind of stuff is really, can be really powerful. So anytime someone sees something that they find compelling, if they share it, it's huge.

[Danielle]

Especially I guess if you live in an area where there is a lot of, you know, factories and to just that Just assume that that's one of them.

[Carrie Rinehart]

Yeah. And I would. It's also hard. I'd encourage people to talk. Like, if you're buying a house, ask your realtor. Like, it's funny because I work with some moms from out in California and I was on a big group call with moms from all over the country and she was said, you know, when we bought this house, we heard about this super fun site and we asked the realtor and she was like, oh yeah. And it was in the disclosure on the forms. And this is in California. She was like, oh yeah, they took care of that years ago. And she said, honestly, I didn't think anything else of it after that until she did. And I just laughed. And I was like, in Indiana, I don't have to disclose anything to you. Like, in California, if you're within so many miles or whatever it is, you have to disclose that in real estate transaction in Indiana, unless I find it on my property, I don't have to tell you jack shit. I have to tell you someone died in my house. Because in Indiana, we are more afraid of ghosts then we are chemicals that will kill our children.

[Danielle]

Is it that? Is it. Are the red states more like you?

[Carrie Rinehart]

Less. Yeah, way worse. Yeah, way worse. And you know, it's frustrating because I sit and I watch, even on our. Our own level, you know, our governor now used to be a senator who I've sat and spoke with in person and who said they would take action on this. And guess what? Never did. You know, just it's. But those people, those meetings never happened to begin with and. And without the persistence of the communities. So, you know, that's my other bit of advice, I guess, for communities is if you find something, you need to. You need to be relentless about it, you need to go after it and you need to not back down. Because. Because I can't tell you, like, if I. If every time someone had said no or shut the door or if I'd been afraid to been told no, I would have gotten nowhere with this.

[Danielle]

Right. And there are nowhere. I mean, when I think about the passion of, you know, of Joanna and even I know the other people who work with her there, like, this is their life's mission and there are people, people out there who. This is what they do, this is what they want to do. And thank goodness, you know?

[Carrie Rinehart]

Yes.

[Danielle]

Yeah. So. And we have a really awesome community. So once I share the petition and everything, I know it will get a lot of signatures. And again, you know, if there's ever anywhere as a community that we can help and, you know, please, you know, I'll get updates from Joanna, but also, if you ever need, you know, the boost of anything, let us appreciate it. Well, thank you so, so much. Is there anywhere in particular other than, you know, the Environmental Defense Fund and everything that you recommend people go to research more? Like, is there anywhere special that you have found really good information or insight?

[Carrie Rinehart]

I mean, if you want to know more about Franklin, you can go to the Facebook if it was your child. And that was the group that was like a grassroots group of the initial parents who were interviewed kind of formed. And that was the group that we kept the community aware. And it kind of snowballed into a large group. There's a lot of different resources over the years that I've put out there, too, because you have different communities all over and different groups that have, you know, they've made different tools for you to research things. But if Your thing is PFOAs, and so you've made a tool to find out if you have PFOAS and you're drinking water, you know, that's great, but it's not comprehensive, and that's the problem. Like, there's not any real comprehensive way until you. You really have to dig in on the state level, the local level, employer request, all of it. And it's insane. It's like our Department of Environmental Management, they have a virtual filing cabinet. And like, you practically need an IT degree to find anything in it, but we expect the community to use it. You know what I mean? Like, it's. That's the way we're informing the community.

[Danielle]

Right.

[Carrie Rinehart]

But, yeah, there are definitely different tools out there. And, you know, you can always look at the EPA's website to see if there have any historical sites near you.

[Danielle]

Okay, well, thank you so much. And I mean, my gosh, like, just the fact that you just tell this story, you know, and I know that it. Every single time you tell it and that you keep doing it and everything is just, like, remarkable and, you know, and Joanna has, like, says the most amazing things about you.

[Carrie Rinehart]

So I have a good cheerleader. That kid is as stubborn as me, so.

[Danielle]

Well, thank you so much for sharing. I mean, really, I really appreciate it. And I know that's like, you know, already things feel so heavy right now. Like, on top of it is not great.

[Carrie Rinehart]

No.

[Danielle]

So thank you.

[Carrie Rinehart]

It's nice to meet you. You too. Have a good day.

[Danielle]

You too. Thank you.

[Carrie Rinehart]

Problem. Take care. Bye. Sa acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.

[Danielle]

Daniel I can't tell you how integrated into my life Taylor Swift is. I use all two L's my 10 minute timer. When I drive into New York, I listen to welcome to New York.

[Carrie Rinehart]

I mean, she just has a song for everything.

[Danielle]

It kind of fits into every part of our lives. Yes. And that premise is the basis of our podcast, let's Ask Taylor Swift. We are going to ask Taylor Swift to speak to our lives.

[Carrie Rinehart]

Every episode we're going to be choosing a Taylor Swift song and bringing a question to it. Questions like how do we want our exes to remember us? Or do we believe in love at first sight? So join us for our new show.

[Danielle]

Let'S Ask Taylor Swift. And make sure to subscribe so you.

[Carrie Rinehart]

Never miss an episode.

[Danielle]

ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere.

[Carrie Rinehart]

Acast.com.