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Welcome back to another real Foodology podcast. I am your host, Courtney Swan, and today is going to be another solo episode. I've been wanting to do this for a little while now because there's a lot of talk about what's happening at the EPA right now. And let me be very clear and say this out the gates. I'm not happy with a lot of what's going on right now. If you have been following me for the last five years with my podcast or on Instagram for the last 14 years, you know that I'm very vocal about chemicals in our food and water, and I'm incredibly concerned about them. Specifically PFAs, phthalates, VOCs that are in our furniture, and as you know, glyphosate, atrazine, paraquat, all of the things that are being sprayed on our farmland right now. These are all chemicals that should be regulated by the epa. And pretty much none of them are being regulated by the epa. Now, there's a lot of chatter online about this right now, which I just want to call out, but because I find it incredibly convenient that the accounts that have been going after me for years saying that I'm a quack are all very vocal about what's happening at the EPA and these supposed rollbacks. So let's go into it. There's some half truths happening right now, and I want to get the truth out and let you guys know exactly where all of this stands. So let's talk about PFAS first, a very big account. Dr. Jessica Nurik is doing a lot of videos on this right now, and I find it really fascinating because I would love to know where, where you were, Jessica, the last four years when we were all trying to sound the alarm on this. So she keeps bringing up that the EPA is rolling back regulations on PFAs. PFAs are also known as forever chemicals. They are found in nonstick pans. So all your nonstick cookware, including air fryers, waffle makers, anything that has that nonstick lining potentially has PFAs. And it's safe to assume that they have PFAS in there. They're also found in things like waterproof jackets, rain jackets, your ski gear. All of that is coated in pfas. Food packaging is notoriously full of pfas. I don't know if you guys remember a couple years ago, Kerrygold grass fed butter was under fire for having PFAs and they were getting it in the butter from the packaging. Now Jessica is saying that the EPA is rolling back all these regulations on PFAs right now that Biden put into place. Let's be very clear. We have known the science about how bad PFAS are for us since the 90s, and no president has ever done a thing about it until Biden. And we will give Biden administration credit for that. Because I'm not in here trying to take sides. I'm in here for the American people and for our health. And I'm not going to not say that we have a win on one side just because I don't agree agree with who's doing it. However, it was not as big of a win as we would all hope for it to be. So in 2024, they put regulations in place to regulate water, PFAs in water. And now Jessica is saying that the Trump administration is rolling those back. But this is the truth. So Biden's EPA made rules for six different PFAS chemicals, and Trump's EPA is keeping the rules for two of them. So they're keeping rules for two of them. Which are the worst offenders? PFO and pfoss. So they're not rolling those back. They're. Those are staying in place, but they're dropping or delaying the other four, saying that the rules were too fast or too expensive for water systems, so. Meaning that cities may not be able to pay for or keep up with the maintenance of regulating and filtering out PFAs in the water systems. Now, I don't like this. I'm not agreeing with this. I'm just telling you the truth of what is actually going on right now with the EPA rollbacks. They're also extending deadlines for cleanup and testing, and they're pushing them further. So it's a rollback in that sense, but it doesn't mean that the EPA is not saying and acknowledging that PFAs are safe and that they're not fully being regulated. Now, here is my beef with this. Yes, we need regulations on pfas and water, but if we are not going to the source of where these forever chemicals are actually coming from, how they're getting into our food and into our water in the first place, what, what are we really doing here? So, yeah, we can, we can regulate how much is allowed in our drinking water, but why are we not going to the source in the first place? Why are we not banning and regulating companies being able to use them in clothing in the first place? Why are we not regulating companies being able to use them in their cookware? Why are we not concerned about PFAS showing up in food Packaging. That's honestly what I'm more concerned about. And look, any win is a win. Of course we want regulating of PFAS in our drinking water and I am all here for it. And I want to the EPA to go harder on regulations. But the fact of the matter is, and this is the real issue, no president's administration has ever gone after any of these chemicals. I mentioned earlier pfas. We've known the science behind PFAS and how bad they are for us since the 90s. They didn't even put regulations in our drinking water until 2024, until last year. Not to mention the IARC, the international agency for Research on Cancer. They classified glyphosate, which is a widely used herbicide that's sprayed all over our farmland and ends up in our food, in our water. They classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen in 2015. Do you know who was president in 2015? Obama. Has Obama or did Obama do anything about glyphosate after that classification? No. Has any president since then done anything about that classification of it being a probable human carcinogen? No. My point is myself and many activists like me have been voting blue most of our lives begging these administrations to do something about these chemicals. And they have ignored us. They have never done anything. We have a problem in America with corporate capture, with industry caring more about their profits than human health. And this is a problem across the aisle. This is a Republican problem and this is a Democrat problem. No president has ever done anything about glyphosate. They have barely touched the surface about pfas. Let's talk about what happened in Flint, Michigan. The water crisis in Flint, Michigan started in 2014. The EPA region staff knew by early 2015 that Flint's water was not being treated, which violates federal law. There was internal email emails showing that the EPA scientists raised alarms, but leadership hesitated. The EPA did not issue an emergency order until January of 2016. Again, I am not making excuses for anyone. What I'm trying to get people to understand is that this is a problem of deep corruption that's been happening in our government for a very, very long time. Same thing with bpa. Let's talk about BPA and the lack of regulations that the EPA has done on that. So in 2010, they released a BPA action plan acknowledging BPA's reproductive development and environmental risks. They started monitoring BPA and Water the Environment and Industrial Releases did an alternative assessment to encourage industry to move away from bpa. So like thermal Paper and all that. They talked a lot about it. They have not banned or restricted bpa. Under federal law, there's no enforceable limits for BPA in consumer products, food packaging, or water. And EPA explicitly said it does not plan to regulate BPA at this time. Again, this is not a Republican issue. This is not a Democrat issue. This is a. An example of deep corruption that's been happening in our government for a long, long time. And the reason that I'm really pointing this out is because I'm so sick and tired of now, conveniently, you know, there's these big influencers like Dr. Jessica Nurik that are putting these videos. They're sounding the alarm and going, oh, my God, the EPA is doing this and that and that. Well, it's really convenient. They're talking about that now and they're blaming it all on the Republicans and acting as though the Democrats would have done anything about this. Do you think that Kamala would have had the balls to stand up against the chemical companies, the big chemical companies in this country or the big agrochemical companies in this country? If you think that big pharma is corrupted, you have no idea how corrupt big agrochemical companies are and how deep their tentacles go into our government. And this is my point, you guys. Everyone's fighting. I'm getting DMS from people blaming me and they're mad at me because of who I voted for in this last, last administration. And it's really convenient, I like to say. Welcome to the conversation, guys. I'm so glad that you're here. And now you're really angry about these chemical companies that are poisoning us. Welcome. People like myself have been talking about this for over 14 years publicly, and we've been trying to get this fixed. I voted for Obama begging him to do anything about any of these chemicals in our food, in our water systems. I voted for Biden begging for him to do anything about it. They ignored glyphosate. They ignored bpa. They barely touched pfas. Like, we already mentioned all of this. So my point is, your fellow humans, your fellow Americans are not your enemy here. Stop turning this into a left and right division. This is not. This is not a time for us to be fighting and getting mad at each other and pointing fingers. The democrats have had 16 years to do this and clean this up, and guess what? They've never done anything about it. So what are we talking about here? Yeah, I'm pissed. I'm pissed that the EPA is not doing more right now. And actually, I have another thing that I want to talk about that they're doing right now that I'm pissed about. And I'm not happy with the Trump administration about this. But let's be very clear. I have not been happy with the Biden administration about this. I have not been happy with the Obama administration about this. So we have to be very clear about who our enemy is. You guys, your fellow humans, your fellow Americans are not your enemy. We all need to band together because it's we the people, against the chemical corporations that have captured our government and they have poisoned us for decades and they have hidden all of the science behind it. I have promised you guys from the very beginning that I will not just blindly take sides and just say, yeah, oh, I agree with everything that this administration is doing and everything that they're voting in and putting forward, because that's not who I am. I've been very clear and I made a promise to you guys in the beginning that I would be very vocal about the things that I'm not happy about, and I'm being very vocal about the things that I'm not happy about. And let me be clear that there's been a lot of amazing things that have happened under Maha that I'm very excited about and I'm. I'm very excited to see what continues to happen. But the stuff with the EPA does not look good right now, and I am pissed. But it's not new. It's not new. So they are quietly trying to rewrite the TSCA rules right now. TSCA is the Toxic Substances Control Act. And essentially what this is is that it is a subset of the EPA that regulate an inventory of over 40,000 different chemicals, including things like phthalates, BPA and forever chemicals, which. But again, they've never done any proper regulation and bans of it yet. So there's a new proposed rule change. The EPA could open the gate for more hazardous substances to enter our everyday products while making it easier to keep dangerous chemicals on the market with minimal safety data. And there's all these accounts online saying, oh, Maha got duped. Maha got duped, guys, we all got duped. The American public got duped. And we've been getting duped for a very long time. Unfortunately, this is not new. This is what we've been seeing with Big Food, Big Ag, Big Pharma in this country. We allow big industry to care more about profits than they do about Americans health. And this is a problem. Corporate capture is nothing new. I have a whole post about this on Instagram if you guys want to see more. But I am actively working on this right now. I am texting with my fellow friends that are in, my colleagues that are in the Maha movement with me, and we are all very unhappy about this. And we're trying our best to do what we can to sound the alarm to get the public behind us. Guys, the louder that we get about this and the more that we can all band together. Whether you're left, you're right, you're libertarian, you're in the middle, you're politically homeless. We all are affected by this and we're all getting poisoned by these corporations. And we all need to come together and demand, we the people, that we stop allowing corporations to poison us because we're done. We're fed up. We don't want this. Over 90% of Americans care about these issues across the aisle, and we need to understand that our fellow humans are on our side. None of us want this. None of us want this. Every single person I know in Maha does not want this. So I just felt like I really needed to dispel a lot of the myths about this. If you loved this episode, send me a message. Please share this with everyone. Post about it, tag me, share with your friends. Because the truth needs to get out there. We have to stop fighting and being divisive about this and come together. And we all have to fight this together because I don't want to have to worry about all the poisons that are getting sprayed on our food and on our farmlands and getting into our water systems. And I know that you don't want to either, and we're all fed up. So thank you so much for listening. If you could take a moment to rate and review the podcast, that would mean so much to me. It really helps to get this podcast into more ears and I hope that you loved the episode. Until next time. Thanks, guys. Thank you so much for listening to the Real Foodology podcast. This is a Wellness Loud production produced by Drake Peterson and mixed by Mike Fry. Theme song is by Georgie. You can watch watch the full video version of this podcast inside the Spotify app or on YouTube. As always, you can leave us a voicemail by clicking the link in our bio. And if you like this episode, please rate and review on your podcast app. For more shows by my team, go to wellnessloud.com see you next time. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual medical and mental health advice and doesn't constitute a provider patient relationship. I am a nutritionist, but I am not your nutritionist. As always, talk to your doctor or your health team first.
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Are you ready to rock middle age? I'm Dr. Tina Moore, Gen X truth teller and holistic physician on the Dr. Tina show, one of Apple podcast Top Alternative Health Shows. I share what actually works for metabolic health, hormones and strength. Backed by decades of clinical results, not trends. From loving the gym and hitting your protein goals to peptides and microdosing GLP1s, it's all done the right way way, not the hype way. Because menopause doesn't have to suck if you're fit. New episodes every Thursday, produced by Drake Peterson and Wellness Loud.