Air Date: January 24, 2025

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Trump Blocks Climate and Eco Action


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Back in power, President Trump immediately took aim at climate and environmental protection with a flurry of executive orders such as blocking the Paris Climate Accord and boosting fossil fuel sales. Environmental law expert Pat Parenteau joins Hosts Steve Curwood and Jenni Doering to explain why the President may have over-reached but could still do lasting damage to the climate and environment. (11:40)

EVs in the Trump Era


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One of President Trump’s Day One executive orders commands a reversal of the Biden Administration’s goal for half of vehicles sold in America by 2030 to be electric. Getting rid of the $7,500 EV tax credit and federal funding for charging stations may take acts of Congress, but auto journalist Jim Motavalli tells Living on Earth’s Aynsley O’Neill that already this effort to shift EVs into reverse is making for uncertainty in the US auto industry. (09:54)

Can Eating Organic Reduce Your Cancer Risk?


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A number of pesticides have been linked to cancer, but there are challenges to studying whether eating organic food grown without these toxins would help reduce your risk. Dr. Mary Beth Terry of the Silent Spring Institute joins Host Steve Curwood to explain the mixed results of some studies on organic food and cancer and offer a variety of ways that people can reduce their cancer risk. (11:14)

The "Dirty Dozen" and "Clean Fifteen"


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Not all conventionally grown fruits and vegetables are loaded with high levels of harmful pesticides. To help consumers make efficient choices in the produce aisle, every year the Environmental Working Group puts together two lists, the “Dirty Dozen” and the “Clean Fifteen.” EWG Toxicologist Alexis Temkin talks to Host Steve Curwood about how to use them during grocery trips. (08:34)

Ice Visions / Erik Hoffner


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As winter settles in over the northern hemisphere people find creative ways to get outside and enjoy nature. For environmental journalist and photographer Erik Hoffner, winter is a time for ice skating, a passion which gave rise to some unusual art, now 20 years in the making. (03:25)

Show Credits and Funders

Show Transcript

HOSTS: Steve Curwood, Jenni Doering

GUESTS: Jim Motavalli, Pat Parenteau, Alexis Temkin, Mary Beth Terry

REPORTERS: Erik Hoffner

[THEME]

CURWOOD: From PRX – this is Living On Earth.

[THEME]

CURWOOD: I’m Steve Curwood.

DOERING: And I’m Jenni Doering.

Back in power, President Trump takes aim at climate protection with a flurry of executive orders aimed at everything from Paris to the electric car.

PARENTEAU: These executive orders are wildly overreach, a power-mad President who thinks he can do anything he wants, and thinks he’s got a Supreme Court to back him up on everything he wants to do – he’s going to find out that’s not true.

CURWOOD: Also, healthier choices in the produce aisle.

TEMKIN: The reason we put out this guide is so that if you’re shopping for items on the dirty dozen, it might be worth considering buying those organic to reduce that pesticide exposure. And then this clean fifteen list are low in pesticide residue even through conventional. So, it’s a way to balance, perhaps, buying organic and buying conventional because of course, that can be difficult.

CURWOOD: We’ll have that and more, this week on Living on Earth. Stick around!

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[NEWSBREAK MUSIC: Boards of Canada “Zoetrope” from “In A Beautiful Place Out in The Country” (Warp Records 2000)]

[THEME]

Trump Blocks Climate and Eco Action

CURWOOD: From PRX and the Jennifer and Ted Stanley Studios at the University of Massachusetts, Boston this is Living on Earth. I’m Steve Curwood.

DOERING: And I’m Jenni Doering.

President Trump has made one thing clear at the beginning of his second time in office. He has no interest in using his powers to slow the advance of the climate emergency.

TRUMP: So, we have more oil and gas than any country in the world and we're gonna use it. We're not gonna do the wind thing.

CURWOOD: It’s not just the climate he doesn’t want to help. Among a flurry of executive orders, he has issued a bunch to try to stymie environmental protection.

DOERING: Joining us now is our regular contributor Pat Parenteau, Emeritus Professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School and former EPA Regional Counsel. Pat, good to have you back again!

PARENTEAU: Thanks.

CURWOOD: Let's talk about the slew of orders that President Trump signed on his first day in office. Tell me, what kind of power does an executive order have and on what timeline?

PARENTEAU: So, executive orders are really just directions to the rest of the federal government, and by themselves, they don't actually create any new law. They're really not legal documents, per se. They are directions from the President, obviously, the CEO of the government, to his appointees. But it's only when those appointees, let's say the Secretary of Interior, Secretary of Energy, Administrator, EPA and so forth, it's only when they then take specific actions based on the orders they've been given that you have what we call a final agency action that could be challenged in court, for example, or at least when it begins to actually take effect in the real world. So, the orders themselves are setting the stage for what's to come.

DOERING: Well, there really are too many orders here, Pat, to discuss in one sitting. So, could you walk us through just a few of the heavy hitters in the environmental realm? What stuck out to you?

PARENTEAU: Right, well, the one that's getting all the attention is the quote, declaration of an energy emergency. Of course, there is no energy emergency. The United States is the largest producer and marketer and exporter of oil and gas in the world. Gasoline prices are actually the lowest they've been in 70 years. So, there is no energy emergency. There's a climate emergency, for sure, but there's no energy emergency. Now, what we've heard from the Secretary of Interior designate Governor Burgum, is that there's gonna be a surge of electricity demand related to AI, and that's for sure. But here's the thing, what studies have shown is that you know what the fastest way to generate electricity in the United States is right now? Build solar farms. So, it's not trying to build brand new power plants. If you really wanted to prepare for the demands from AI, you would be building solar farms left and right.

CURWOOD: Let's talk about the foreign policy here. What does his order in those areas mean?

PARENTEAU: Well, we knew going in that he was going to withdraw, once again, from the Paris Agreement, and his executive order directs the State Department to do that. It takes a year to withdraw from Paris. That's gonna have ripple effects, of course, across the globe. It's interesting that China's response is, well, we don't need you. And you know what? There's some truth to that. China is the largest producer of solar panels in the world. China is becoming the largest producer of electric vehicles in the world. China has most of the rare earth materials we need and processing facilities we need for the EV revolution and so forth. So, there's gonna be a mixed reaction, I think, to the US leaving. It's not a good thing, by any means. But I think other countries are going to step up.

CURWOOD: Hey, Pat, President Trump is saying he wants to get rid of what's known as the endangerment finding, that is that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. I mean, this was won in the Supreme Court, what, 20 or so years ago, 15, 20, years ago, and then the EPA did decide that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, and therefore giving its status to take on the question of climate disruption. What does Trump's rhetoric have to do with the reality of dealing with the endangerment finding?

PARENTEAU: Yeah, the endangerment finding is the foundation for all of the greenhouse gas regulations that we have in the United States under the Clean Air Act, so it's absolutely essential to any effort to reduce emissions. Now, the science behind the endangerment finding is stronger now than it's ever been. That was issued in 2009. My goodness, there's 99.9% climate scientists in the world saying not only is it a danger, it's an out of control danger. So, I don't foresee the Trump administration being successful at all in trying to reverse, revoke the endangerment finding, not even in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court had an opportunity in what we call the UARG case, years ago, to review the endangerment finding. It declined. So, I don't foresee that one going down.

DOERING: Pat, what other executive orders should we be watching here?

PARENTEAU: Well, as part of this energy emergency, he's directing the Secretary of Interior to convene the Endangered Species exemption committee on a quarterly basis to basically create exemptions for energy projects from the Endangered Species Act. That can't happen. I was there in 1978 when the Endangered Species Act was revised to create the exemption process. I know this process very well. It doesn't exist to waive requirements for energy projects. It exists to resolve what are called irreconcilable conflicts where you risk losing a species entirely as a result of a single project. So, it's not gonna work the way Trump administration thinks it's gonna work.

The other thing that the executive orders direct to the Corps of Engineers is to once again, declare this quote emergency and waive some of the permitting requirements under the Clean Water Act. It doesn't work that way either. That process of accelerating permitting is only done in the face of a disaster where human life is at risk or property is at risk. So, here's my point about the executive orders. They're way beyond the scope of the President's authority. They're way beyond the scope of environmental laws that actually govern the way these projects and permit systems are required to proceed. So, it's true that Trump is also going to go after every single Biden rule, but when there are rules, you have to go through a rule making process to take them off the books. That takes years. So frankly, I think these executive orders are wildly overreach. A power mad president who thinks he can do anything he wants and thinks he's got a Supreme Court to back him up on everything he wants to do. He's gonna find out that's not true. That's my prediction.

CURWOOD: So Pat, to what extent are these executive orders performative? I mean, they don't have the force of law, as you say, they're just an order to some official to do something inside his own government. And many of these seem to be aimed at providing good news for the fossil fuel industry. To what extent do you think he's simply trying to satisfy promises that he made to that sector, that the process that he's using he really can't deliver on?

PARENTEAU: That is a big part of it. Some of it is to distract us by throwing so many things at the wall that he spreads what he calls his opposition, his enemies list, and make it hard to, you know, challenge everything he's trying to do. But some of it is real. Okay, so here's some of the real things. He's gonna scrub all of the websites on climate information and climate science. He's gonna do away with the Environmental Justice Office of EPA and other offices. He can do that. He's gonna do away with the social cost of carbon. He can do that. He can intimidate people. Even if he doesn't accomplish firing people, he's gonna drive people out of public service. He's gonna damage these institutions. He will do that. He's gonna damage our reputation in the international community. There are things that he's gonna be able to do that are gonna set us back, that are gonna be a lot of lost opportunities. We're gonna lose a lot of the momentum that had been generated in the Biden years. But some of these legal things he's talking about, he's going to get stopped in the courts. That's what I predict.

DOERING: Pat, what are the long-term implications of some of these orders on environment and energy?

PARENTEAU: Well, we can't afford this distraction. You know, we are up against some incredibly frightening tipping points in the climate system of the earth, and we're way behind on what we need to do to transition across the board, clean energy, clean transportation, better food systems, everything, buildings, you name it, we need to change it. And that's happening. It's just not happening at the rate that's needed. So, the biggest impact of Trump is the lost opportunity. The second biggest impact, as I mentioned, is we're gonna have a brain drain of the smartest people, the most dedicated public servants, people I've worked with and know, and we're going to lose those people because they're just not going to put up with another four years of being harassed and intimidated. These are the things that are gonna undermine the ability of the agencies and the experts to deal with the problems which we don't have the time to ignore.

CURWOOD: Okay, at the risk of being labeled Pollyanna, what's anything bright in this scenario? If at all?

PARENTEAU: Yeah, well, the brightest thing is gonna be the response of states like California and other, frankly, blue states stepping up and trying to use their state laws and their state agencies to fill some of the gaps. I think you're gonna see the private sector. The market is already factoring in the transition to electric vehicles, to electrification generally, to cleaner and more efficient means of production. That's already happening, and I think there's gonna be resistance from the private sector to a lot of this. Some of the major automakers are all in favor of EPA's tailpipe emissions rules, because they understand that the automotive industry is transitioning, that innovative technologies are taking over, that the future is not the past, so there's a lot of support to resist what Trump is proposing.

The other thing that's interesting is the inflation Reduction Act. The biggest benefits of that act are in Republican districts. Eighty percent of the new growth and jobs and manufacturing is in Republican districts. So when Trump goes to Congress and says, repeal a lot of the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act or claw back a lot of the money and tax credits under the Act, I think Republicans, certainly in the House, are gonna have a real hard time with that, explaining to their constituents why these factories that are creating jobs are gonna close, and why the money that's coming in from, particularly from Europe for offshore wind, Denmark and Norway in particular, willing to invest billions, when they start saying, Well, I guess that is not a good investment opportunity under Trump, certainly not when we start seeing tariffs coming down and so forth, you know you're gonna see a loss of investment, and in the time it takes to get these projects approved and built and operating, that's the biggest problem that we face.

DOERING: Pat Parenteau is an emeritus professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School and former EPA Regional Council. Thank you so much. Pat.

CURWOOD: Yes, Pat, thank you so much.

PARENTEAU: Thanks guys, always a pleasure to be with you.

Related links:
- AP News | “Everything Trump Did in the First Executive Orders and Actions of His Presidency”
- Inside Climate News | "Executive Orders on Energy and Climate Have Advocates Across the Nation on Edge"

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[MUSIC: Eart Fatha Hines & Marva Josie, “Jazz Is His Old Lady” on At His Best (Triple Album Deluxe Edition), by Earl Hines, MidnightBluesJazz]

DOERING: Just ahead, President Trump’s bid to revoke federal support for electric vehicles. Keep listening to Living on Earth.

ANNOUNCER: Support for Living on Earth comes from Sailors for the Sea and Oceana. Helping boaters race clean, sail green and protect the seas they love. More information @sailorsforthesea.org.

[CUTAWAY MUSIC: Phil Cunningham “The Palomino Waltz-Donna’s Waltz” on The Palomino Waltz, by Phil Cunningham, Green Linnet Records]

EVs in the Trump Era

CURWOOD: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Steve Curwood.

DOERING: And I’m Jenni Doering.

As part of his Day One executive order titled “Unleashing American Energy” President Trump is commanding a reversal of the Biden Administration’s goal for half of vehicles sold in America by 2030 to be electric. Getting rid of the $7,500 EV tax credit and federal funding for charging stations may take acts of Congress, but already this effort to shift EVs into reverse is making for uncertainty in the US auto industry. To learn more our colleague Aynsley O’Neill talked to Jim Motavalli, who writes about green transportation for Autoweek and Barron’s.

O'NEILL: So, you're joining us from sunny San Diego, where you just test drove an electric jeep. What did you hear from the folks at Jeep about this executive order?

MOTAVALLI: Well, I don't think they're really thrilled that the idea of losing the federal income tax credit. I mean, they're concerned about keeping EV prices down. Everybody who puts out EVs is. Basically, what they told me, is they're gonna wait and see what happens, whether it really goes away. They're gonna see what other automakers do and how they handle it and that will determine their response. I mean, everybody is at the same time selling EVs and trying to compete with Tesla and at the same time facing all these competitive pressures and the business climate is keeps changing. The demand for EVs has not really gone down, but it's not rising as much as they had hoped. So, there's a lot of challenges in trying to get out a new EV and knowing how many of them to build, where to build it, all those things like that. You know, it's very, very tough market right now.

O'NEILL: What would you say is the overall impact of eliminating Biden's electric vehicle Executive Order, what Trump has been referring to as the EV mandate?

MOTAVALLI: What I think is going to happen as a result of this is actually contrary to what Trump himself has said he wants. If he wants to be competitive with China, it seems like this is the wrong way to go about it. His approach is gonna be putting tariffs on Chinese imported vehicles, but by taking away the income tax credit, which, under Biden's IRA very much encourages automakers to build cars in the United States and also to have their battery packs built in the United States, that makes it less likely that automakers will consider the US as a place to locate their battery plants and their car plants. That's exactly the opposite of what he wants. So, I don't quite understand, unless you're operating on some kind of visceral hatred of electric vehicles, why you would take that approach, I don't understand it.

O'NEILL: Jim, what do you make of the President's decision to enact all these orders against electric vehicles?

MOTAVALLI: I think part of it has to do with seeing them in a sort of political light, which, to me is a mistake. They're just cars. They're not left or right, they're not red or blue, and you can put whatever bumper sticker you want on them, they'll represent you whatever your position is.

O'NEILL: [LAUGH] That's a good, that's funny.

MOTAVALLI: That's a good one, right?

O'NEILL: And California has been a driving force when it comes to policy that promotes electric vehicles. How will President Trump's executive order impact California's EV policies?

MOTAVALLI: Well, under Trump one, in his first administration, he tried to take away California's exclusive right to set separate fuel economy standards, which it has, and other states have the right to follow California rather than the federal policy. Trump spent four years trying to get that taken away. He met California in court, it didn't happen. And I think California they are going to be ready. They will have their guns primed and ready. They will take them to court. What the ultimate outcome of that, I couldn't say, but it's not an executive order that will take that away.

O'NEILL: And President Trump has also put a pause on billions of dollars in funding allocated for EV charging stations through the inflation Reduction Act. What impact is that pause going to have on America's electric vehicle landscape?

MOTAVALLI: I think… You could blow that out of proportion. You could think that would have more of an impact than it does. To date as a result of that 5 billion not a whole lot of EV charging stations were opened up. It was moving fairly slowly. A lot of them would have been opened up if he hadn't instituted that order. But it's not like EV charging stands still without federal funding. It's not the critical thing. Tesla, as a matter of fact, has already installed a pretty robust electric charging network around the whole country. And so therefore, if you have a Tesla right now, you could drive it to California from New York, you could drive it from New York to Florida. You wouldn't have too much trouble. That network is easily gonna get you through there. Now, every other automaker is now signed on with the Tesla charging standard. That means within about a year, just about every car on the market will be able to charge at Tesla stations. So that makes it a lot better for charging nationally. There's a number of independent companies that have pursued this as a business, and we have a much more robust National Network of all kinds now than we had a few years ago. It's still not quite adequate. I recently had a fairly painful experience on the New Jersey Turnpike where I started charge there, and they were all shut down, and I ended up trying to find a charger in the middle of the night, but it eventually worked out okay.

O'NEILL: Oh, I'm from New Jersey, Jim, I hope you'll forgive my home state.

MOTAVALLI: [LAUGH] Yeah.

O'NEILL: And Trump also pledged to impose a 25% tariff on all imports from Mexico and Canada. What kind of impact would that have on car pricing?

MOTAVALLI: It'll make cars more expensive. Right now, American automakers have plants in Mexico. They've put them there because they can produce cars at a cheaper rate, and they can also end up charging less for them. That's why they moved to Mexico, to lesser extent, it's why they build in Canada too. It will mean in the long run that automakers will want to locate in the United States if there's no benefit to locating in Mexico, no financial benefit, it will ultimately have that effect. But for consumers it's definitely gonna push up car prices, which are already very high. Like the average car today is something like $48,000 I mean, that's a lot of money for… And this is the average. This is what people pay. You know, the prices are already high, people are feeling the pinch of that and adding those tariffs is going to make that worse.

O'NEILL: Jim, you've been covering electric vehicles for most of your career. How much have we advanced in EV technology and adoption over the years?

MOTAVALLI: It's remarkable. You know, if you go back to, say, 2010 or earlier, a little bit before that, 2005 or so, when the first EVs came out, they were essentially the same technology we had when EVs disappeared in 1920, and they had lead acid batteries in the same kind of range, maybe 40 or 50 miles, because there'd been essentially no real research into electric technology for automobiles in 100 years. So, when the industry started applying its full force into making better batteries and making vehicles that were designed to carry batteries, it's the pace of improvement and the pace of innovation just remarkable to see. And batteries have come way down in cost, cars have gone way up in range. The prices have come way down. The amount of packaging the batteries take is much smaller. The battery packs are now routinely placed under the car, where they give the car a lower center of gravity and better handling. And just EVs are just so much more fun to drive than gas cars, and… They're just better. I mean, in a very short time, the EV has become better than the internal combustion car and that improvement will just continue as every automaker introduces EVs.

O'NEILL: Overall, how are these most recent presidential actions going to impact us electric vehicle competitiveness?

MOTAVALLI: I think it will make us less competitive. If you look at the Chinese and how they're moving, they currently have over 50% EV adoption. Some other countries in Europe, Iceland and Norway are two examples, they have over 90% EV penetration. So effectively they don't have non-EV sales anymore. China is moving in that direction, and really fast, because they have, they can pretty much command what's going to happen. And the pace at which new EV companies are arising in China is just amazing to see. I was just at the Consumer Electronics Show, and there was another new Chinese EV maker exhibiting there. So, I think the US is in danger of falling behind Europe and China in terms of EV adoption and EV leadership. You could say the world EV leader has been Tesla up until this point, but there's Chinese automakers that are threatening that.

DOERING: That’s auto journalist Jim Motavalli speaking with Living on Earth’s Aynsley O’Neill.

Related links:
- Inside Climate News | “Executive Orders on Energy and Climate Have Advocates Across the Nation on Edge”
- Inside Climate News | “Buckle Up for a ‘Weird Moment’ in the U.S. Electric Vehicle Market, Even as Global Sales Have Soared”
- CBS | “Michigan auto expert speaks on potential impact of tariffs on car prices”
- The New York Times | “Automakers Brace for Impact of Trump Tariff Plan for Canada and Mexico”
- Learn more about Jim Motavalli

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[MUSIC: Joshua Bell & Edgar Meyer, “BT” on Short Trip Home, by Edgar Meyer, Sony Music Entertainment]

Can Eating Organic Reduce Your Cancer Risk?

CURWOOD: A number of pesticides have been linked to cancer, so one might think that eating organic food, grown without these toxins, would help reduce your risk. In fact, studies of animals exposed in the lab to pesticides have demonstrated correlation between these chemicals and cancer. But people don’t live in labs, don’t always remember accurately what they eat and can change their diets over time, so studies of humans and the impact of eating organic have major limitations. That said, a large study from France published in 2018 found eating organic food was correlated with a reduced risk of breast cancer and lymphomas. More recently, a Danish health study found a decrease of stomach cancers in participants who reported eating more organic food compared to those who ate less. But the same study found an increase in non-Hodgkin lymphoma among those organic eaters. For insight into these confusing results, we turn now to Columbia University Professor Mary Beth Terry of the Silent Spring Institute. Dr. Terry, welcome to Living on Earth!

TERRY: Thank you so much!

CURWOOD: So, what can we say about any links between eating organic food and the incidence of cancer? What do studies tell us? There was a study published by the Journal of American Medical Association from France almost a decade ago, and more recently, from Denmark.

TERRY: What we have evidence on that is very compelling, is the evidence between pesticides and cancer risk. Many of these studies that are conducted in humans have been conducted by using what we call biomarkers, which is measures of the pesticides from your blood. They're looking at these measures in bio specimens, which is often more accurate than questionnaire data. What's new now with looking at organic food specifically, is a study, as you mentioned, from Denmark, looking at a variety of different cancers and self-reported use of organic food. And so, within that study, they did find a very strong reduced risk of stomach cancer. The study was equivocal on a number of other cancers and actually showed an increased risk with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. So, I think what we can say, which is very related to organic food consumption, is that many pesticides are known carcinogens. Since organic food do not contain the pesticides that you would see in some other foods, eating organic would be preferable if you can reduce your exposures to pesticides.

CURWOOD: This is a difficult topic to actually drill down on, right? You have this sort of strange result that people who ate organic had actually a larger incidence of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I mean, how do you get a result like that?

TERRY: Yeah, that's a great question, and I think this is what can be very frustrating to most people when they hear about epidemiology results. Until you have a large body of data, no one study is conclusive, because of all the challenges of measuring things in humans and all of the other factors that may be related. With diet, again, people can change their diets over their lifetime. Often do. People may not know what's in the foods that they eat, so it can just be a very hard thing to measure reliably. So that's why we would want to see a lot of studies on this. That being said, I know just from my own experience and reading the literature on nutrition and cancer, many of the older cohorts in this country didn't ask specifically about organic food consumption. So even though there's a lot of studies and cancer cohorts that we use for all different exposures, there's really a much smaller percentage of studies that even ask people about organic food consumption. And that's why you may see, for example, in the Jama study, one cancer being lower and one cancer being higher in this newer study. And so, until there's additional studies, it's hard to know if this is just statistical variation or not.

CURWOOD: Dr Terry, there are pesticides around us much of the time. You walk into a building, they have vermin that they're spraying for, a field nearby that has crops or a golf course, those things get sprayed with pesticides. How can we tell that if someone gets cancer that is maybe linked to pesticide that they got it from eating, as opposed to these other exposures?

TERRY: Unfortunately, for any one individual who gets cancer, we don't know what their source of exposure is and so what we can tell, though, at a population level, is that when you introduce certain exposures into a population and the cancers increase, then that's a strong signal of a causal signal between those whether or not that chemical came from the water or came from the apple or came from the lawn. There is no way to distinguish between all of that. So, all we know is that you can reduce your exposures, and when people do reduce their exposures, they can reduce their risk.

CURWOOD: How safe is it to say that if people eat organic, they are reducing, at least to some extent, their risk of cancer?

TERRY: I think that's a very fair statement to make, we all have different ways we can reduce our cancer risk throughout our life, and I think the focus should be on reducing the risk rather than prevention, because cancer can occur also just from random mutations as one ages. An important way to think about it is each and every person, regardless of their history, can reduce their risk, their exposures today and going forward, if that is by eating organic or eating fruits and vegetables in general, is a good thing. We do have decades worth of research showing that having fruits and vegetables on a daily basis helps reduce the risk of many different types of cancer.

CURWOOD: One of the things that seems rather confusing about looking at this arena is the risk that is sometimes imposed by plastics when food is sold in plastic packaging, which, over the years, has had things like estrogenic chemicals in the actual plastic, and people could get exposed that way. What about plastic packaging and concerns about cancer in our diets, whether it's organic or not?

TERRY: You are aware, I'm sure that the UN plastics treaty just folded without reaching negotiation in Korea, and some of the scientists at Silent Spring over a few years ago published some really interesting work on the impact of plastic packaging on cancer risk. And then we do know, just through recent analyzes, that there's a lot of chemicals that are in plastics. In fact, well over 400 chemicals that are in these plastics we use every day that are breast cancer carcinogens, so either through, as you say, endocrine disrupting chemicals, or also by directing and damaging DNA. I think, how we eat food, how much food we eat, and how we store our food, should be emphasized a lot more than about specific components.

CURWOOD: Now, of course, science has connected a wide variety of other factors to cancer risk. There's everything from genetics, there's smoking, there's obesity, based on what we know, how important is organic food consumption in comparison to these other factors, do you think?

TERRY: Again, the data on organic food consumption is pretty limited compared to some of these other exposures. So smoking, we've known for 80 years almost now. One of the things that's very challenging when people ask the question is it sometimes does depend on how we measure these. So, for example, smoking is much easier to measure than most other things. Most people remember when they had their first cigarette. Most people remember if they smoke a pack a day or a half a pack a day, where it's harder to remember how much broccoli you eat or where you got your broccoli from. So, I think what has happened over time is once you look at these younger cohorts of individuals, we have an epidemic of early onset cancer. Now these are cohorts that are not smoking, and they're still getting a lot of cancer. So, this is telling us, too, as a piece of evidence that it's not just smoking, that when we take smoking out of the equation, cancer still are increasing.

CURWOOD: Why are people getting cancer at younger ages, do you think?

TERRY: So that's the million-dollar question. And there's a lot of research going into this. So, I do think a lot more research needs to focus on measuring and measuring, well, environmental chemicals, particularly for breast cancer. And you know, there's other research looking into differences in the microbiome. So again, kind of a combination of the food that we eat plus our microbiome that can be very much affected by use of antibiotics and other things. So, I think diet is very interesting because it does interact with everything, like environmental chemicals with pesticides or antibiotics and things like that. But it's, I think, going to be a combination of these things, not just one.

CURWOOD: And when you say microbiome, are you referring to what's in our intestinal tract?

TERRY: Yes, yes. And actually, some of the cancers that are increasing for early onset cancers are GI related cancers.

CURWOOD: Dr. Terry, if you were conducting these studies, what would you want to add? What do you think is missing from them?

TERRY: The first thing I would really want to look at is to look at whether or not there are differences by age of onset for some of these cancers, because, as I mentioned before, you can get a lot of changes later in life when most cancer is diagnosed that may not be attributed to the exposure as much as it's attributed to the process of aging. So, I would really wanna look at whether or not having an organic diet could prevent, for example, early onset colorectal cancer or something like that.

CURWOOD: So, Dr. Terry, we can't know everything, can we? But what are some practical things do you think people should do in their lives when it comes to things that they consume, things that can end up in their bodies, to lower the risk of cancer?

TERRY: (Laugh) I hate to make a cliche about it, but I always think like, What did my grandmother do? So, my grandmother never used plastic. We never had plastics in our school lunches. We didn't eat out at restaurants. All of these sort of things were just part of the life of most people, so to speak. But I think it's more important for people to do what's realistic within their life. And so obviously, the big ones are, try to vaccinate when you can. The two cancer vaccines that everyone should be aware of is the human papillomavirus vaccine and also the hepatitis B vaccine. Those are very effective cancer vaccines, and there may be more to come. Fruits and vegetables, lower meat intake, lower alcohol intake, all of those are things that are directly related to a number of different cancers. Alcohol has been causally linked to seven different cancers. So, you know, I think the healthy diet, the physical activity, those both prevent against many different chronic diseases, but are something that you can do at any time and definitely has a positive effect on many different cancers.

CURWOOD: Dr. Mary Beth Terry is the executive director of the Silent Spring Institute and is a professor of epidemiology and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. Thank you so much for taking the time with us today.

TERRY: Well, thank you so much. I enjoyed our conversation.

Related links:
- Read the 2018 JAMA Article, “Association of Frequency of Organic Food Consumption With Cancer Risk”
- Read the 2023 European Journal of Epidemiology Study, “Organic Food Consumption and the Incidence of Cancer in the Danish Diet, Cancer and Health Cohort”
- Nature Reviews | “Is Early-Onset Cancer an Emerging Global Epidemic? Current Evidence and Future Implications”
- Environmental Health News | “Nearly 200 Compounds Linked to Breast Cancer Found in Food Packaging, Tableware: Study”
- Frontiers in Cancer Control and Society | “Comprehensive Assessment of Pesticide Use Patterns and Increased Cancer Risk”

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[MUSIC: Zoe Lewis, “Prince of Love” on A Cure for the Hiccups, by Zoe Lewis, self-produced and distributed]

DOERING: Coming up, the Dirty Dozen and the Clean Fifteen in the produce aisle. Stay tuned to Living on Earth.

ANNOUNCER: Support for Living on Earth comes from Friends of Smeagull the Seagull and Smeagull’s Guide to Wildlife. It’s all about the wildlife right next door to you! That’s Smeagull, S - M - E - A - G - U - L - L, SmeagullGuide.org.

[CUTAWAY MUSIC: Gary Burton and Julian Lage, “Out of the Woods” NPR Tiny Desk Concert, NPR MSusic]

The "Dirty Dozen" and "Clean Fifteen"

DOERING: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Jenni Doering.

CURWOOD: And I’m Steve Curwood.

Though there are no human studies that precisely correlate eating more organic food with reduced risk of cancer, pesticide exposure is certainly not good for our health. But there are tradeoffs. Organic food has limited availability and can cost more. The good news is that not all conventionally grown fruits and veggies are loaded with high levels of pesticides. To help consumers make efficient choices in the produce aisle, every year the Environmental Working Group puts together two lists, the “Dirty Dozen” and the “Clean Fifteen.” Here to explain what these lists mean and how to use them during grocery trips is Alexis Temkin, a Senior Toxicologist at the Environmental Working Group. Welcome to Living on Earth Dr. Temkin!

TEMKIN: Thank you so much for having me, happy to be here.

CURWOOD: So, the Dirty Dozen and the Clean Fifteen. How did the Environmental Working Group put these two lists together? What makes one food dirty and one food clean?

TEMKIN: Yeah so, this is part of a broad consumer guide that we use called the Shoppers Guide to Pesticides and Produce, and we actually look at around 46 different fruits and vegetables for pesticide residues. And these data come from federal agencies that are testing fruits and vegetables on store shelves for the presence of pesticides. And we essentially analyzed that data to look at which fruits and vegetables have the most pesticides, whether that's the number of pesticides found, the concentrations, the detection frequencies of different fruits and vegetables and the ones that come out on top are claim the Dirty Dozen, things like strawberries, spinach, kale, grapes and things that come out on the bottom as the least contaminated, the Clean Fifteen, things like avocados, sweet corn, pineapple and onions, those are the Clean Fifteen.

CURWOOD: So how is this order determined? I mean, for example, I see that strawberries are ranked number one on the Dirty Dozen.

TEMKIN: We use, as I mentioned, data that's actually generated from the United States Department of Agriculture, primarily, as well as from the FDA. There's a program at the USDA called the Pesticide Data Program. We've developed a tool to rank fruits and vegetables based on the analysis of that data. So, it's using six different indicators of pesticide contamination. So we look at for each of these different commodities, you know, whether that's strawberries or apples or blueberries, we look at the percent of those samples that have detectable pesticides, the percent of samples that have two or more, because actually a lot of fruits and vegetables can have, in some cases, up to a dozen or so different pesticides detected, the average number of pesticides on a single sample, the average amount of pesticides found, the total number found on a single sample, and the total number found on the crop. So, there's a few different ways we analyze this, and then based on how you rank in each of those ultimately determines how you rank in the final sort of list of those 46, which we break up right into 12 and 15.

CURWOOD: I'm learning something here because I thought strawberries were at the top of the Dirty Dozen, because you just can't wash the pesticides off of strawberries.

TEMKIN: This is a great point, and I'm so glad you're bringing it up, because the way that the data are generated from the USDA actually involves a washing step before they test for pesticides. So, part of this program in terms of pesticide residue analysis from the USDA is actually designed to try and mimic consumer exposure to some degree. So, fruits and vegetables are typically washed for some period of time, you know, akin to how somebody might do it at home. Fruits and vegetables that need to be peeled, like a banana or a citrus or something like that, are peeled before they're analyzed. So, you definitely don't get rid of all of your pesticide exposure just by washing. There's still a considerable amount of pesticide left over, although washing is something we definitely recommend to at least remove some possible pesticide residue.

CURWOOD: Let's cut to the basic question here, why should people be concerned with pesticides in their diet, especially those of us who've been eating nonorganic produce our whole lives, maybe even today.

TEMKIN: Yeah, well so fruits and vegetables definitely offer an immense amount of health benefits. So, it's something that we always want to emphasize, that it's really important to continue eating fruits and vegetables, even of conventionally grown produce. You know, the reason we put out this guide is so that if you're shopping for items on the Dirty Dozen, if you're a strawberry lover, for instance, it might be worth considering buying those organic to reduce that pesticide exposure. And then this Clean Fifteen list are sort of low in pesticide residue, even through conventional. So, it's a way to sort of balance perhaps buying organic and buying conventional. Because, of course, that can be difficult, but some of the reasons you might wanna be concerned are that exposure to pesticides have been linked to a variety of health effects. There are a few neurotoxic pesticides that can be really important in terms of their impact on developing brains. Some mixtures of pesticides have also been associated with reproductive harm, like actual impacts on fertility, and in some cases, we've also seen pesticides associated with cancer risk. And really the way that these pesticides are regulated, are looking at them one at a time, but we know from looking at this data about pesticides on food, you know, there's about 250 different pesticides detected on food, so the way we're exposed are these mixtures of pesticides. And we sometimes know that when you're exposed to multiple pesticides, there can be different health effects at lower doses than if you were just exposed to one, which is how the regulatory agencies really regulate them.

CURWOOD: Understanding all this, what should people do? What should we do as consumers?

TEMKIN: I mean, I think it's understandable that this is a balancing act, and it is also how we live our lives, and that can be really hard to sort of balance all these different things and worry, how much am I exposed to? How concerned do I have to be? And I think that's exactly why this shoppers guide, or the Dirty Dozens, came into existence, was just to hopefully try and optimize that balance so that there's this beneficial experience of eating a lot of fruits and vegetables, which we know has been studied over and over again in the literature, and is extremely important, it can be really health protective. There are some studies that show sometimes, if you look at the health benefits on cardiovascular disease by eating fruits and vegetables, one study actually showed that, well, if most of your vegetable consumption comes from high residue foods that protective benefit gets a little bit weaker. So, we wanna sort of optimize how you get the benefits of both, and one way to do that is by reducing exposure to pesticides. And you could eat an organic diet all the time, but that's really just not doable for most people. I certainly can't even do that. So, we recommend buying organic options of items on the Dirty Dozen if they're things that you love to eat. You know, for instance, I personally don't love strawberries. I don't eat them all that often, but I do love other things on the Dirty Dozen that we try to buy organic, and then the Clean FIfteen are also really wonderful fruits and vegetables that just have low pesticide residues.

CURWOOD: Wait a minute, you're not into a strawberry on a hot June day that's just so sweet and dripping with the beginning of summer essence?

TEMKIN: That does sound wonderful, actually, when you put it that way, strawberries in season are a special, special treat.

CURWOOD: What about the money? Organic sometimes, but not always, costs more. Someone listening to us thinking about that, you know, budget is a little tight. How far should they reach to include organic in that budget? Do you think?

TEMKIN: I think it's a hard question. I think that's really a personal decision. I would, I guess, prioritize, as I mentioned, eating fruits and vegetables first over processed foods, and then if the budget allows really shifting towards organic options on the Dirty Dozen, or really looking at just more of those conventional options on the Clean Fifteen, you know, but like avocados, kiwi, asparagus, mushrooms, sweet potatoes, carrots, I don't know, that sounds like a lovely stew.

CURWOOD: And what's your favorite on your list of the Clean Fifteen? What will you be cooking tonight, do you think?

TEMKIN: I will probably be cooking something with sweet potatoes, which are on the Clean Fifteen list, and mushrooms… And onions!

CURWOOD: Okay, there you go. It'll smell good.

TEMKIN: Yes, exactly.

CURWOOD: Alexis Temkin is a senior toxicologist at the Environmental Working Group, the organization that publishes the Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen. They change it every year. Thank you so much for taking the time with us.

TEMKIN: Thank you so much for having me.

[MUSIC: The Beatles, “Strawberry Fields Forever” on YouTube originally on Magical Mystery Tour, by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Universal Music Group]

CURWOOD: Hey, by the way Jenni, you’ve shown us there is a great way to get organic food, even fancier stuff like mushrooms, and it’s called do it yourself.

DOERING: Yeah, that’s right! It did take a year before harvest, but Aynsley O’Neill and I inoculated a log, we left it outside in my backyard and then we were rewarded with organic shitake mushrooms. And there was no weeding required!

CURWOOD: Yeah, like almost everyone I get almost all of our family food at the grocery store but just using pots and a small patch we’ve grown organic tomatoes, peppers, chives, and even huge bushes of basil. We also have a raspberry patch, and my daughter has a bed for strawberries, though chipmunks are quick to steal ‘em.

DOERING: Oh, I know! The squirrels taking my garlic… Critters can be a problem of course, and not everybody has a yard, but you can grow things like lettuce and kale pretty easily in a window box. Best of all, you know, whether is a big project or just a few pots, gardening can get us outside, rewards us with a bit of a workout and tunes us to the seasons. It’s still winter here in New England, with a lot of snow on the ground, but my garlic is already coming up!

Related links:
- Environmental Working Group’s 2024 Shopping Guide to Pesticides in Produce: Read here
- Environmental Working Group’s 2024 Clean Fifteen List: Read here
- Frontiers | “Pesticides Potentially as Bad as Smoking for Increased Risk in Certain Cancers”
- CNN | “Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’ Found in Pesticides Used on Food, in Homes and on Pets, Study Finds”
- CBS | “Pesticides Pose a Significant Risk in 20% of Fruits and Vegetables, Consumer Reports Finds”

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[MUSIC: BLUE DOT SESSION “Highway 94 _ Sting”]

Ice Visions

DOERING: Though it’s a bit hard to work the frozen soil right now, there are plenty of ways to get outside in winter. For environmental journalist and photographer Erik Hoffner winter is a time for ice skating, and that’s a passion which gave rise to some unusual art.

HOFFNER: The first house I rented after moving to New England two decades ago was on a lake. I love ice skating, and felt lucky when a cold, dry December created a perfect scenario for skating just outside my door.

[ICE SKATING SOUNDS]

Most mornings I’d pull on skates and glide across that lake until my legs were shaky and sore. The hiss and scrape of blades on ice was often the only sound against the deep, cold quiet of the sleeping landscape. The ice that first year was so clear I could watch fish swimming below. In early winter as the ice formed, I could even hear its cracks, and groans, and pings through the floor of my house.

[GROANS & PINGS OF ICE]

Ice fishermen drilled perfectly round holes in the lake. And overnight tiny bubbles filtering up from sediments below were caught in thickening water inside those holes while inches of new ice formed. The bubbles stretched as the water refroze, creating streaks that radiated from the center outward much like the lines that radiate out in the iris of an eye. These holes seemed to become the lake’s own eyes, gazing at and reflecting the starry night sky. Formations were all different, like snowflakes. In the morning light, they just could look like stars, cells, or galaxies.

Now, every year in early winter I strap on my skates in a kind of treasure hunt for the holes and shoot black and white photos of them. Over 20 years I built up a huge collection of these Ice Visions. I don’t know what’s more fun, taking the pictures or pulling on my skates to fly over the frozen water on these quiet mornings. Some years, though, it snows early, before the ice reaches a safe thickness, making skating impossible. And the photos I make on this choppy, gray canvas are less captivating than when refrozen holes are framed by that smooth, black ice which resembles deep space.

Last winter started cold, and good, safe ice set early, but then the weather warmed for a long stretch well into January and what I saw inside the fishing holes surprised me.

Instead of building 2 or 3 inches of new ice in each hole overnight, there was often just a skin at the surface, so thin you could poke a finger through it. And the tiny bubbles trapped beneath that thin layer of ice pooled with others to create large, semi-frozen bubbles that oozed and flowed together. They looked entirely different, not so much like eyes or stars but rather distorted faces, and strange animals. It was like seeing the face of climate change. It’s too soon to say whether it will be too warm again this year. But there’s already safe ice on lakes in my town, so I’ve taken the cameras and skates out several times and look forward to discovering what wonders this winter will bring.

[ICE SKATING SOUNDS]

DOERING: That’s journalist and photographer Erik Hoffner. His work is now part of the permanent collection of the Bates Museum of Art in Maine. For links to his photographs visit the Living on Earth website loe.org.

Related links:
- Brattleboro Museum and Art Center | Erik Hoffner: Ice Visions
- Erik Hoffner’s official website
- Erik Hoffner on Instagram
- Watch Ice Visions (2020)

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[MUSIC: Laura Love, “All Our Lives” on Music from Women of the World, by Laura Love, Rhino/Sony Music Entertainment]

CURWOOD: Next time on Living on Earth, we’ll hear from a formerly incarcerated firefighter.

HERRERA: Yes, so it makes me think about, I'm paraphrasing here, but a quote by Dostoevsky where he says, “You can tell a lot about a country by how it treats its prisoners”, and so for me the way I look at it is… Well, how it treats its heroes because an incarcerated firefighter is now deemed as a hero so I think that that's very important because we're no longer defined by our mistake that we've made. We're gonna come home, 90% of the population that are currently incarcerated are coming home. What kind of people do you want them to come home to? Do you want an abiding society? And if so, demonstrated in actions allow the opportunities to be able to have programs, classes, just stuff so they can come home as better people. I would say for the general public and individuals that are now experiencing this to think about that because the key to it is this one word, is hope. We all want hope and hope for change, right? And that's exactly what myself and individuals have been incarcerated. We, that's what allows us to survive and move forward is that hope.

CURWOOD: From prison to the front lines of fires, next week on Living on Earth.

[MUSIC: Laura Love, “All Our Lives” on Music from Women of the World, by Laura Love, Rhino/Sony Music Entertainment]

CURWOOD: Living on Earth is produced by the World Media Foundation. Our crew includes Naomi Arenberg, Paloma Beltran, Kayla Bradley, Daniela Faria, Mehek Gagneja, Swayam Gagneja, Mark Kausch, Mark Seth Lender, Don Lyman, Nana Mohammed, Aynsley O’Neill, Sophia Pandelidis, Jake Rego, Andrew Skerritt and El Wilson.

DOERING: Tom Tiger engineered our show. Alison Lirish Dean composed our themes. You can hear us anytime at L-O-E dot org, Apple Podcasts and You Tube music, and like us, please, on our Facebook page - Living on Earth. We tweet from @livingonearth. And find us on Instagram at livingonearthradio. And we always welcome your feedback at comments at loe.org. I’m Jenni Doering.

CURWOOD: And I’m Steve Curwood. Thanks for listening!

ANNOUNCER: Funding for Living on Earth comes from you, our listeners, and from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, in association with its School for the Environment, developing the next generation of environmental leaders. And from the Grantham Foundation for the protection of the environment, supporting strategic communications and collaboration in solving the world’s most pressing environmental problems.

ANNOUNCER 2: PRX.