Another downside, kinda related to the
others, is very similar to fertilizer --
pesticides runoff too. Plants and soil can
take up but so much. So if you spray it
and then water your plants or, or it
rains, all that extra is going to runoff,
so very similar to what we saw with
fertilizers. So here we sprayed our
pesticides, but we're running a sprinkler.
Well that pesticide is just gonna run off and
go into the water and then that
pesticide could affect organisms in that
water. So fish, amphibians, reptiles, even
us. We get our own drinking water from
local ponds and local rivers, so
incredibly important. Another way that
they run off, so thinking you spray your
plants then it rains, a plane fly over. So
you may have seen these before, these
planes, are just releasing tons and tons
of pesticides and a lot of it goes on
the plants. Well, I wouldn't it say a lot,
less than 10%, so barely any, actually go
on these plants. Another 90% it's just up
here in the air. It doesn't settle. So,
some of it might end up settling a
little bit later, but if it's windy, even
a small amount of wind, that pesticide is
gonna go somewhere else. They might go
into a neighboring field, it might go into a
neighboring forest, it might go into a
neighboring lake, so we don't have a lot
of control over where this pesticide is
going. And because of that, some of those
other things can happen affecting other
types of wildlife, affecting humans, etc. I
want to talk about one pesticide in
particular, because it's pretty crazy
what it does. It's called Atrazine, and
Atrazine is something you can buy.
It's used by farmers but it's something
you can buy, and is the second most
widely used herbicide. The first one is
called Roundup. So two different
pesticides used roundup and atrazine.
Atrazine is the second most widely used,
and I talked about it because it's an
endocrine disruptor.
You may have read that somewhere. You may have heard of that before because
there's actually a lot of chemicals that
are endocrine disrupters. Endocrine are
hormones and these specific hormones are
testosterone and estrogen. So an
endocrine disruptor is something that
disrupts or gets in the way of and
endocrine hormones such as testosterone and estrogen. Well that's a pretty important
hormones in the body, whether you're an
animal like frogs in this picture, or
you're a human. Like that is not
something you want to mess with. What
we've been seeing is in farmland that
uses atrazine in the water, near these
farms, we are seeing some weird stuff
happening. So in this picture of this
frog, this frog has some extra legs,
testosterone and estrogen are important
in the development of the body at a
young age and not just the development
of like hands and legs but also of the
reproductive system. So this is the
cross-section of the inside of a frog
and these black lines are showing cross
sections. S the scientists took a cross
section and put it on the microscope, so
this black line is a cross-section of
right here, and it's crazy what they
found. At this cross section the frog had
testes. A little bit further, oh they have
ovaries. A little bit further they had testes
and ovaries, and a little bit further
they had ovaries. So in one frog they're
seeing the development of both testes
and ovaries because this atrazine is
affecting those hormones and when you're
developing, those hormones really, really
control do you have ovaries or do you
have testes? So it's very, very
interesting. Now these are affecting
humans as well. So  there are a
lot of different diseases that are
becoming more prevalent with children
and how their sex is not really forming.
They aren't developing, you know, ovaries
they're not developing testes, they're
developing both, and it's really interesting. Although we
filter our water supply, these we're not
quite filtering yet or we're filtering
but not a lot of it. So I'm going to kind of go
on a tangent, really interesting tangent
though. Chemicals like this, like Agent
Orange, DDT, atrazine, you know,
I've showed you the effects of these
chemicals, but why are these chemicals
allowed in the first place? Like how do
they get through the whole review
process to be allowed to be used on
humans or around humans or for humans?
Why, why is that a thing? And it
actually has to do with the fact that
the United States is a capitalist
country. So there's two different ways to
approach chemical regulation. The first
one is called the precautionary
principle. This is not what the United
States does. This is what pretty much what the
rest of the world does, particularly the
European Union. So the precautionary
principle says that companies have to
prove that whatever they are making,
their product that they are making, is
safe and once it has been proven that
that chemical is safe then it can be
sold on the market. So it makes sense. It
is safe, so it goes on the market. Okay. In
America though, that's not what we do. As
a capitalist country we don't want to
regulate companies, we don't want to make
it harder for them to do something,
that's kind of the attitude of
capitalism. So in the American approach
regulators, so organizations like the
Food and Drug Administration,
organizations --
-- like -- mainly food and drug is going to
be the big one,
there's some other smaller organizations,
but it is their responsibility to make
sure that a chemical isn't dangerous and
it won't kill you. So for example, I am
Johnson & Johnson, I'm making shampoo and I'm like "hey, I want to sell this shampoo
and I'm going to," so they have to go to
the FDA and they have to essentially say
we're gonna sell this shampoo. It's the
FDA's job to determine
if that shampoo will kill you and that's
about the extent of what they do. The
biggest thing they make sure is that if
I put the shampoo on the head, will I
keep my hair, will it not burn me like
etc like will it do anything immediately.
The FDA does not test for long-term
effects. The companies don't have to test
it for long-term effects. They are not
responsible for that; whereas, with the
precautionary principle they do. So it's
a big key that I don't have written here.
So they look for long-term effects,
whereas in ours it's only short-term. So
both the company and the FDA are going
to make sure that, okay this will not
kill you if you use it immediately, but other than that they don't search anything
else. They don't see how it interacts
with the body, they don't see how it
interacts with the water supply, or the
ecosystem. So you don't hear these crazy
stories in the European Union because
they catch those chemicals before they
even hit the market; whereas, here in the
United States that is not what we do. We'll
let it on the market, it's fine, but
if something ends up going wrong then
we'll recall it later. That's why we have
so many recalls here is because we
realize, oh actually, that's actually not
that safe because we didn't test it to
begin with or we didn't test it
rigorously. So I'll give you guys some
examples. For example mac and cheese so I love mac and cheese and this breaks my
heart, because i really do like it, there
is a food coloring in it it's like
yellow number six, it's actually been
linked to hyperactivity in children and
in the European Union they banned it.
They still have mac and cheese there, I
think, but they banned that food coloring
in it because of this direct link to
hyperactivity. We in the United States, our  lawmakers, the makers of mac and
cheese, they know this. They have access
to that science, but they don't have to
do anything about it.
And the FDA, again, doesn't want to
regulate business, because if you
regulate business that goes against
capitalism and people get angry.
BPA, you've probably bought a water
bottle that says bpa-free. BPA is a
chemical in water bottles that leaches
out of water bottles. In the European
Union, it's banned. Here, companies are
trying to get rid of it mainly because
we, as consumers, are telling them to. In a
capitalist country, the consumer is the
most important part of the puzzle. If the
consumer demands something, if the
consumer wants something, we can get
something changed. But the problem is, is
the consumers don't know enough, and
aren't trying to learn enough. Some of
them are, but a lot of us aren't. And I'm
I'm totally accused of it. I am still
gonna go buy my mac and cheese. I don't,
I'm not gonna pay five dollars for the
organic mac and cheese that doesn't have
that because I'm cheap and I just want
my cheese. But if everyone was buying
that $5 organic mac and cheese and no
one was buying Kraft,
yeah Kraft would start doing something
because they are driven by business. So I
do want to say what the American
approach people have the power, whereas in
the precautionary principle, I will say,
people don't even have to have the power
because they're safe from the get-go.
Some other examples, there used to be a
flame retardant that was found in
everything like pillows, curtains, couches,
that has since been banned because we
realized that it causes cancer.
PCBs, these are found in different
plastics, lead-based paint, these are
things that have been banned but they
shouldn't have been on the market to
begin with. You guys know lead, you guys know it's such a dangerous chemical. We had it
in paint, we had it in gasoline, Flint
Michigan has it in water, so we know lead
is bad but it was allowed in paint, it
was made in all paints, it was allowed in
our gasoline because no one really
tested it. And so this sounds scary and
honestly it is, like you can't trust the
products you buy. You have to research
the products you buy, which kind of sucks,
we buy tons and stuff all the time. As
another like fun, really depressing fact,
in the European Union,
because they practice the precautionary
principle they have about 9,000
chemicals banned. So 9,000 banned.
So there's 9,000 things that you cannot
use in other things. You can't use these
things to make shampoo, they can't use
them, and put them on couches, you can't
use them in clothes etc. In the United
States, you know how many we have? We got about 13. 13 things banned, including lead.
Lead's banned now, it wasn't banned  before but it's banned now. Yeah
only 13 compared to 9,000 and again
that's because we're a capitalist
country. We want products and we want
companies to have the freedom to make
whatever products they want. Now with
that being said I do want to be fair, of
those 9,000 chemicals that are banned
some of them are things that would never
be used. For example ground-up cow brains. Yeah don't think anyone's gonna use
ground-up cow brains, you never know, but
no one's going to use them. Tthe reason
it's listed is because of mad cow
disease that was prevalent in
particularly England, so like, that's like
one of those 9,000. There's quite a few
that are like that but still, 9,000
things have been vetted that either it
causes harm now or will cause harm
in 20 years, you cannot use these
products. So I just want to make you
aware of this. So thinking about those
pesticides, thinking about Agent Orange,
and DDT, we didn't know they were bad. We
didn't test to even find out if they
were bad, or at least bad in the long
term. So just really important and I
think you know Americans and businesses
are trying to move towards the
precautionary principle. That they want
to make safe products, because we as
consumers, we're demanding that. And so we
are seeing changes in regulations,
particularly out in California, but it's
a really interesting thing to study
because it's kind of scary to think
about all the things were exposing our
body but no one's really protecting us.
The FDA, the government, they're not
protecting us. Companies, some companies,
are protecting us but others just trying
to make a buck. So just kind of be aware
of the things that you're taking into
your body.
