In part two of this two-part interview, Dr. Peter Thorne, University of Iowa Distinguished Chair and Professor of Occupational and Environmental Health, discusses persistent pollutants, climate change, and the future of science-informed policymaking.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the student hosts, guests, and contributors, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the University of Iowa or the College of Public Health.

Lauren Lavin: Hello everybody and welcome back to Plugged Into Public Health. I’m Lauren Lavin, the producer of this podcast, and if it’s your first time with us, welcome. We’re a student run podcast that explores major issues in public health and how they connect to all of us, both inside and outside the field. So today we’re bringing you the second half of our conversation with Dr. Peter Thorne. Max and Caroline talked to him last week in the first part of the episode, and he is the University of Iowa distinguished chair and Professor of Occupational and Environmental Health. In part one, they explored how agencies regulate chemicals in food, water, and air, and what the precautionary principle looks like in action.

In this episode, they’re gonna dig deeper into persistent pollutants like PCBs and pfas, the challenges of translating science into policy and what happens when science advisory boards face political pressures. Dr. Thorne also shares his perspective on climate related health threats, including wildfire smoke and extreme weather.

And why better science, communication and policy action. Are critical for the future. So let’s get plugged into public health. Plugged into public health is produced and edited by the students of the University of Iowa College of Public Health, and the views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the student hosts, guests, and contributors.

They do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the University of Iowa or the College of Public Health.

[00:01:12] Max: So we’ve talked a lot today about regulations on chemicals. We just opened up talking about these persistent long-term chemicals. It sounds like a lot of the exposure to these chemicals really just comes from long-term practices within a community or long-term behavioral things that communities do.

Do you feel that that is a large challenge in regulating these chemicals? So taking the example of PCBs we, we see that indoor exposure is higher than outdoor exposure, and it used to be our. The majority of our exposures came from food, but now we’re seeing that it comes from inhalation. So over time we’ve seen a shift in where the exposures are coming from that help us identify sources and eliminate them.

[00:02:05] Dr. Thorne: So one example, we found that schools that were built before 1976. Have much higher levels of PCB inside in the air than schools that were built after that, after the ban of those, those materials. And so when, when. We’re thinking about a school that’s older, should it be renovated or should it be demolished in a new one built?

Oftentimes the difference in cost between those is, is not that big. If it’s got high levels of PCBs because of the materials that were used to construct it in the before 1976, that could tip the balance towards demolition rather than renovation of that, that facility. So I think this kind of research helps communities make wise decisions bringing in the health component particularly when it comes to.

Children’s environmental health being of, of paramount importance. And so we’re trying to provide the data and the guidance to help schools make, make the right school districts make the right decisions with regard to food. There’s still some place in the world where people are eating. Fish that are on the high end of the food chain predator fish.

And they tend to bioaccumulate these, these PCBs, which means that the, the, the fish that they ate and the fish that those fish ate had PCBs and at each stage of, of pre predation, those are transferred to the predator. And, and so it’s not surprising that, polar bears have among the highest levels of PCB exposures because they’re at the very top of the food chain.

People have been at the top of the food chain as well. And so so historically we’ve had those high exposures. So also then providing guidance on what to eat and food, like fish advisories for instance, there’s. Fish advisory, if you’re eating certain fish from the Great Lakes, you shouldn’t have more than two per month.

Is, is an advice, and that’s because of Mercury and PCBs that are accumulated in these fish. So we can help protect people when we understand what the routes of exposure are, what the amounts are, and what the toxicity of those chemicals is. And, and that’s, that’s a key to the. Translation of the research we do to make a difference to the lives of everyday people in the, in the country and in the world.

[00:04:34] Max: Something that came to mind there when you were coming, when you were talking about the schools. Yeah. And talking about, say either demolition or demol demolishing the school or renovating the school. Mm-hmm. In the case that there were, say, like an institution that had a similar. A similar concern with PCBs, but there’s not as much of a benefit to benefiting or I guess to improving the live or the health of that population compared to that of a school population, if that makes sense.

I guess so my question is. Given those cost benefit analyses and the potential for there to be a lot of nuance there, are there any like large challenges that are faced in trying to regulate these persistent chemicals in the environment?

[00:05:19] Dr. Thorne: Well, I think at, at, at the largest scale, we have a lot of risks that we face and we have a lot of benefits that we get from various consumer products and from education and from going to school.

And so it, it becomes a matter of trying to ensure that we’re taking. The resources we have in applying those to reduce the most significant risks and making those risk decisions is challenging for policy makers because, you know, there’s, there’s many out there and sometimes the data are not as complete as we would like.

So you, you have to say, well, this looks like this is gonna be a. Real concern. This other one, well, maybe that’s secondary and we’ll, we’ll deal with that later on. And so, so tho those kind of policy decisions are very challenging. And a lot of times public opinion weighs in on those and sometimes the public is not as well informed as they should be in order to apply.

The science and, and push for the policies that are gonna make the biggest difference in their lives and the lives of their children and their grandchildren. Do you have any, do you have any insight to offer on bridging that gap between the science and the general population? Yeah, I think that, that we, we, what we want to see is, is scientists.

Who communicate the findings of their research in a, in a balanced manner. Sometimes scientists are a little bit over enthusiastic about the, the significance of their data and may may not properly talk about the limitations of their data. And, and, you know, you as an epidemiology student know that I virtually every.

Peer reviewed paper and epidemiology ends it with a section on limitations, where you try to disclose the strengths and limitations of the studies. But oftentimes when we communicate our studies to the public, we don’t do the same thing. And so they’re left with sort of an alarmist viewpoint. On the other hand, there there’s sometimes industry scientists who, who seek to minimize the impact or minimize the risk of, of the products that they study and citing.

Maybe something else that is unrelated, that’s far more dangerous in their view. But, you know, we, we don’t have to deal with these things one at a time so we can have a, a balanced and nuanced view of this. And that’s really the role of the science advisory Board. Going back to what we said earlier, to, to provide that context, to provide that dispassionate advice to really help say, well, this one is important, that one is less important.

And, or the data aren’t strong enough for us to make a decision on this one, whereas the data here are very strong. And we, we know this will show a benefit. So I, I guess that’s the best way we can approach it.

[00:08:18] Caroline: I’m glad you mentioned the advisory board again. Mm-hmm. Because I did want to ask since you’ve seen it through different, I guess, eras of public concern and administrations what has been. Some of the biggest surprises being on the board and also some of the biggest challenges.

[00:08:37] Dr. Thorne: Yeah. Well, I think we’ve, we’ve entered a time where, where things are far more polarized than they ever have been in the past.

The EPA has been around since 1970. The Science Advisory Board has been around since shortly after that. And through all those administrations and, and. You know, EPA administrators are appointed by the president to serve the administration. Over all those years, it was really a, a nonpolitical, quite well balanced board that had representatives from industry, as I said, from academia, from from NGOs and from state and tribal governments.

And we’ve now entered a period where the, our hyperpolarization is, is showing. Showing itself in, in these boards. So I’m, I was serving on the board until about three weeks ago when I received an email that I was no longer to be serving on the board, and they had disbanded the board. The, the EPA Science Advisory Board is created by two acts of Congress, and it must exist unless congress repeals those laws yet.

The current administrator of the EPA has chosen to ignore the law for now and may, may reconstitute those boards in the future, but that, that’s unknown. But I’ve been told flat out that I’m no longer on the board. I was elected to a three year term. I served the first six months of that term and am now no longer a member of the board and not a no longer a special government employee as well.

So. This has not happened before. So we don’t, we’re in uncharted territory and I, I’m concerned that the role of scientists under the current leadership at EPA is viewed as not a. A key to the process or a benefit, but is viewed as a threat. And I don’t understand why that is. And I worry about how the EP a’s gonna do its job to protect human health and the environment going forward

[00:10:49] Caroline: on like the hyperpolarization and implications of not having these boards and having the work be.

Challenged in this way. I know another area of your research is climate related disasters in relation to human exposure to environmental chemicals in these situations. Mm-hmm. Could you talk a little bit about like how that work has looked and what it could look like?

[00:11:13] Dr. Thorne: Mm-hmm. Well, you know climate change is, is one of the largest threats we face in, in looking at the future.

We know from the vast quantities of data and, and very advanced climate models that will have coastal inundation due to sea level rise. We’re going to have more extreme hurricanes and other climate disasters. We’ve seen wildfires increasing. Globally, not just in the us. And so there’s adverse health effects associated with all of these disasters and climate exacerbated extreme events.

And so. We need to be preparing for these and adapting to a changing climate while we’re seeking to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. And I think we’ve made some progress in the last last, especially the last four years, but in the, in the last decades. But there’s so much more that we need to do to prepare for this and to.

Mitigate future greenhouse gas emissions. And I’m, I’m concerned that we’re not taking this threat seriously and and enacting the policies that we need to, to minimize the impacts it’s gonna have to future generations.

[00:12:25] Max: You mentioned that wildfire, well you, you mentioned that climate disasters have been on the rise over the past couple decades. Mm-hmm. I know in one of my classes actually, we’re talking about how wildfire smoke could be affecting people’s chronic respiratory outcomes.

However, a lot of the research there is kind of like, kind of in its pilot stages, I guess. Mm-hmm. In regards to those environmental exposures being actually. Objectively causally related to those outcomes. So I guess I’m, I’m curious, what areas of environmental chemical regulation do you think require the most urgent utmost attention from policymakers?

[00:13:04] Dr. Thorne: A lot of the science is well known and well established, and we can already forecast many, many of the disasters and the impacts it’s gonna have in human health. So in, for, for many of those things, we really don’t need any more research. We need policy. Now, ’cause the research has already been done with regard to long range transport, a wildfire smoke.

We’re trying to understand. We know that exposure to wildfire smoke causes at, at high enough level causes pulmonary diseases and cardiovascular disease, and there’s some evidence for adverse birth outcomes when exposure comes to pregnant women as well. And so we’re, what we’re doing there is trying to understand.

What is the burden? What is the hazard ratio associated with that exposure at a national level? And if we determine that we can monetize the health impacts of that and. Bring it into the equation of is it worth spending money on climate mitigation, climate change mitigation in order to lessen that health burden that we’re experiencing?

And so, so it’s not just a ask question, is there a hazard? But how big is the hazard? And, and how does that weigh into the equation of spending? Precious resources to mitigate that threat. And also there’s other aspects like people who are living in the urban wilderness interface now and putting themself in harm’s way.

Should we be saying, you know, that’s not a place to build homes. Maybe you know, we can, we’re gonna have forest fires, we don’t want to have. Resources of firefighting and, and firefighters risking their lives to save structures that never should have been built in that location in the first place. We know that wildfire smoke from a, a burning up house is quite a bit more toxic than the wildfire smoke that comes from burning trees.

They’re both hazardous, but when you’re burning all those plastics and all those building materials, that’s more toxic wildfire. So, you know, we, we need, we, again, we use the data to drive the policies that try to minimize the risk to human health. That’s what, that’s what we’re all about. And I just to add, we’re, we’re, we’re doing a study, one of, one of my students is doing a study now among veterans who receive their care through the Veterans Health Administration, looking at the impacts of wildfire smoke on their health.

And it’s an interesting group to study because we, we have. A sample size of about a million in our study. And we have complete data of on their health and where they receive care and where they live. And, and, and we have climate or wildfire smoke models that can tell us within a kilometer resolution of what the exposure was on a day-to-day and hour to hour basis.

And that’s derived a largely from a whole series of satellite systems. So combining. Huge data set on health outcomes with location-based data of absolute exposures. We can start to really get a very clear understanding of what the impacts are of exposure to wildfire smoke at a national level, and those are tools we haven’t had before.

So it’s really an exciting time to be doing work in that area.

[00:16:22] Max: It, I mean, it just over like the past couple years, it sounds like so much has changed and so much good and bad has happened. I’m curious in looking into the future what do you think are like the most urgent things that we need to be paying attention to as a, as a policy maker per se?

[00:16:39] Dr. Thorne: Well, I think it. Lemme start. As an educator. As an educator, I think the most important thing is to make our students aware of the science behind these issues that we’ve talked about here and, and to be able to communicate effectively in their professional lives what that science means to ordinary people.

So I think that’s an important part. I think having a higher level of science. Knowledge and science education among our citizenry is important. I think we lag other countries in terms of a basic science knowledge among our citizens. And if we could improve that, I think it would help people make, reasonable decisions about things like climate change and about exposure to environmental chemicals or food additives. So that’s an important thing from a policymaker standpoint, I think having, having a suite of policies that are well reasoned and designed to provide the maximum good for public health is really important.

And so that’s a combination of, of. Drawing from the best science, communicating it effectively to the public, and convincing congress, you know, senators and, and congressmen of what policy initiatives they need to enact in order to really have us have the greatest health benefit we can with the resources that we have.

[00:18:10] Caroline: And just from the red, die three example alone. Mm-hmm. We’ve seen that the policymaking process takes a long time and it goes back and forth. But if you could change one aspect of how we regulate environmental chemicals in the United States today, what would it be?

[00:18:31] Dr. Thorne: I would love to see the science. The underlying science dominate the discussion. What, what often happens is we reach an impasse between the regulated industries and the regulators and the public. And so what ends up happening is, is it goes to the courts and, and when the courts deal with it, sometimes the science is handled well, sometimes it isn’t.

You know, as, as a, if you serve as an expert witness in a a, a court case, they want you to be 51% certain. And in science we talk about 95% certainty At the PEO point, 0.05 level, you know, we, we need a lot of ample proof and so the burden of science proof when it comes to courts is less. And I think that that’s not the best way to.

To enact policy. But oftentimes these days, that seems to be where it ends up in, in court cases, driving policy decisions which sometimes deviates from the best science.

[00:19:36] Max: Well, Dr. Thorne, thank you very much for joining us today and talking through all of these very interesting topics with us, so we really appreciate it. Typically we like to close things out with a bit of a lighthearted question, so I’m curious to know if you are watching or reading anything interesting right now that you’d like to tell our listeners about?

[00:19:54] Dr. Thorne: Sure. I, I’m much more of a reader than a watcher. And so. I’ve been reading a number of interesting books. I’ve read three books recently by a author named Kim Stanley Robinson, who writes realistic science fiction about climate change and, and sort of where, what, what’s gonna happen. And he’s got books from, one book is set in 23 hundreds.

One is in 2140 in New York City, which is now 50 feet underwater. And, and the most recent I’ve read’s called the Ministry for the Future. And that’s looking at 2025 to basically 2050 and, and. And sort of what’s gonna happen in terms of, of climate change and how we’re going to deal with these issues.

And what I love about his writing is, is he must have a whole host of really good scientists advising him. ’cause it’s extremely, I can’t. I can’t suspend disbelief when I watch a movie that has junk science. When I read his books, they’re just right on spot on and really great. And, and that one, the carbon coin becomes the main global currency, which changes everything.

It’s a fascinating book. I recommend it. So that’s Kim Stanley Robinson. The other book I’m, I’m reading is the Overstory by Richard Powers, which many people have read. It’s just an, a incredible book. I’m only about halfway through, but it, it, it’s all about sort of. The interaction between people and, and trees and the value of trees at, at all kinds of levels.

Spiritual, e, ecological, scientific and it’s, it’s just a great book. So I’d recommend those to all of your listeners. Yeah,

[00:21:33] Caroline: I’ll add it to my list. Thank you.

[00:21:36] Max: Thank you very much, Dr. Thorne. I wanna reiterate, we really appreciate you taking your time outta your day to spend the time with us talking about this.

[00:21:42] Dr. Thorne: Yeah. Well, I had a good time.

[00:21:42] Max: Thanks

[00:21:43] Dr. Thorne: for, thanks for inviting me in.

[00:21:45] Max: Of course.

Lauren Lavin: That wraps up our two part series with Dr. Peter Thorne. A huge thank you to Dr. Thorne for joining us across both episodes and helping us understand the connections between science policy and public health. In this discussion, we explored how communities navigate the risks of persistent pollutants, the importance of science advisory boards and guiding regulation, and the growing health threats of climate related disasters like wildfires.

Dr. Thorne also left us with a reminder that strong science. Communication and thoughtful policy making are essential if we wanna protect future generations. This episode was hosted and written by Maxwell Hanson and Caroline Powell, and edited and produced by Lauren Lavin. You can learn more about the University of Iowa College of Public Health on Facebook.

Our podcast is available on Spotify, apple Podcast and SoundCloud. If you enjoyed this two part series, please share it with your friends, colleagues, or anyone interested in public health. Have a suggestion for a team. You can reach us at cph grad ambassador@uiowa.edu. This episode is brought to you by the University of Iowa College of Public Health.

Until next time, stay healthy, stay curious, and take care.