Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances—commonly known as PFASs and "forever chemicals"—have become ubiquitous in the environment and are being found almost everywhere in soil, water, plants and bodies. The Trump Administration has lowered drinking water standards for PFASs presence but that does not mean the stuff has gotten safer. You might know PFASs in the form of Teflon which, for many years, are applied to non-stick cookware so those eggs slide off the pan. But if you overheat that pan, the Teflon might also slide off. PFASs slide off of many other things, as well. The environmental and health impacts of PFASs are almost totally unknown, although they are beginning to look pretty bad.

Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Dr. Faith Kibuye, a Water Resources Extension Specialist in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management and the Institute of Energy and the Environment at the Pennsylvania State University. Kibuye specializes in environmental engineering, focusing on water quality, aquatic chemistry, cyanobacterial blooms, and contaminants like pharmaceuticals and PFASs, and their fate, transport and transformation.

We’ve heard a lot about the problem of microplastics pollution. Just how bad is it? What are its causes? What are microplastics doing to us and the world? Is anything being done to stem the accelerating production and consumption of plastics that end up in our water, our air, in animals, and in human bodies? Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation about microplastics with Dr. Myra Finkelstein, Adjunct Professor in the Microbiology and Environmental Toxicology Department at UC Santa Cruz and Dr. Steven Mentor a Santa Cruz climate activist and long-time environmentalist. Finklestein has been examining the health effects of plastic ingestion on seabirds to better understand the consequences for marine wildlife and human health. Mentor discusses law and campaigns in California to regulate microplastics and what can be done to turn the tide of plastic packaging and consumption.

You can learn more about the topic from Food and Water Watch, the Netflix film "The Plastic Detox" and the Interstate Technology & Regulatory Council.

Indigenous peoples around the world are under threat, especially from massive development projects engineered by governments and corporations, which promise to destroy the lands, forests and waters on which those peoples depend. In an article that appeared in a recent issue of The New York Review of Books, “We Think They'll Kill Someone” journalist Anjan Sundaram reported on one such project in the Southern Mexico Oaxacan town of San Blas Atempa, where a new factory will wipe out a communally owned forest.

Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Sundaram. He is an Indian author, war reporter, academic, television presenter and founder of The Stringer Foundation. He is the author of three memoirs of journalism, Stringer, Bad News and Breakup. His forthcoming book, Double Exposure: Two Reporters in the Climate War, is scheduled for publication this coming fall.