Online audio programs, including presentations, panel discussions, documentary and online interviews, talk radio guest appearances, broadcast radio news and feature stories, green performances, and radio documentaries with a broad focus on toxic materials and wastes and the health and environmental impacts thereof, threats to the healthfulness and adequacy of food supplies from climate change, pollinator declines, and excessive food processing, and what we can do as consumers and citizens to reduce these threats.

Specific topics include the health, environmental, and national security costs hidden in every barrel of oil, Lois Gibbs and the story of Love Canal, a toxic dump for chemical waste, birth defects caused by toxic chemicals, how our regulatory system is not adequately protecting us from potential hazards in food, diapers, shower curtains, baby bottles, and other consumer products, and flame retardants and other toxic chemicals that alter hormone levels, damage reproductive organs, impair thyroid glands, and cause mutations. Steps to reduce these problems are discussed, including the precautionary approach to chemical regulation, consumer and building products without toxic chemicals, and local, organic, and whole foods that protect your health, combat climate change, and protect the Earth’s living systems.

Love Canal 35 Years Later. Interview with Lois Gibbs. Love Canal was a toxic dump for chemical waste used by the Hooker Chemical Company in the 1950s in Niagara Falls, New York. In the next 20 years, two schools and 900 homes were built on or near Love Canal. A young housewife, Lois Gibbs, lived there, and tells host Steve Curwood of PRI’s Living On Earth that more than half the children had birth defects. She organized the community and led a precedent-setting fight against the federal government to get all the families relocated. Listen Here >>

Bullitt Center: A Building That Functions Like An Organism. Radio interview with Denis Hayes. Discussion of the new Bullitt Foundation headquarters building in Seattle. They call it the greenest building in the world. It is a “living building” that will generate all its own electricity and water. The Bullitt Center team worked for more that two years to identify building products without toxic chemicals. They have also negotiated with building material suppliers to ensure their products did not contain any of over 360 toxic chemicals. Listen Here >>

Pollinator Declines Threaten Public Health. Interview with Dr. Samuel Myers. Some 200,000 species of animals pollinate crops and help supply about 35 percent of the world’s food, but scientists say pollinator numbers are declining. New studies published in the medical journal The Lancet examine the potential impacts of pollinator loss on staple crops as well as on the availability of vitamins and nutrients. Helen Palmer of PRI’s Living On Earth discusses the findings with Dr. Myers, the study’s author, who explains the impacts on public health. Listen Here >>

Science Friday: Feeding A Hotter, More Crowded Planet. Ira Flatow leads discussion with Lester Brown, Gawain Kripke, and Gerald Nelson. Nearly a billion people worldwide don't have reliable access to food, according to United Nations estimates, and some experts worry climate change will drive that number even higher. Flatow and guests discuss the challenge of keeping food supplies secure in the face of a changing climate. What are the problems? Where can we look for solutions? How can farmers adapt in coming generations. Listen Here >>

Eight Steps To Improving Your Food Choices. Interview with Annie Bond. The author of True Food: 8 Simple Steps to a Healthier You, Bond discusses why slow, local, organic, and whole food matters, for both your health and the Earth. Listen Here >>

Voice of America: Extreme Weather Intensifies International Food Crisis. Interview with Lester Brown. Climate change could break Africa’s agricultural backbone. Brown explains: “The earth’s climate system is now changing. And with each passing year, the climate system and the agricultural system are more and more out of sync with each other…making it more difficult for farmers to expand production fast enough to keep up with (world) demand (for food).” Listen Here >>

Lives Per Gallon. Interview with Terry Tamminen. Discusses the health, environmental, and national security costs hidden in every barrel of oil, how to hold oil and auto companies accountable and force industry reform, a blueprint for developing alternative energy sources based on California’s real-world experiences, and California’s landmark global warming law. Listen Here >>

The Forest Of Illusions. Podcast by Matt Levine. There’s a lot of crap out there in the grocery aisles. But there’s a special kind too, call it bullshit. The kind that tries to hide its stink behind a wide variety of label claims promising products that they say are better for our health or the environment or both. But how are we to know? In this episode we look at the way label claims have evolved and how manufacturers manipulate the rules, where like our financial system, the regulators and the regulated are too close for comfort and the outcome is way too predictable. The bonus episode, Navigating The Forest Of Illusions, is focused on how to make ethical shopping choices. Listen Here >> Bonus Episode >>

Easy Concrete Steps For Going Green On A Budget. Interview with Diane MacEachern. If we can shift $1,000 of our family’s yearly household budget to greener products, it will send a strong message to manufacturers that consumers care about their health, safety… and planet. In this audio, you’ll hear what you need to know to make every purchase count. Listen Here >>

Blue Mind: Water & Our Health, Brain, Well-Being. Discussion with Wallace ‘J’ Nichols. A dialogue about the interface of water, neuroscience, health, creativity and well-being. Listen Here >>

Salt Sugar Fat. Matt Levine interviews Michael Moss. Investigative journalist Moss, best-selling author of Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, talks about why you can’t stop eating those chips or cookies, about the ways America’s food giants research, analyze and engineer food to change our tastes, expectations and desires. Listen Here >>

Do You Want Delicious Food, a Healthier Body, Mind, Spirit AND a Healthier Planet? Interview with Laura Stec. Stec explains how we can have more delicious food, healthier bodies and combat climate change all at once. She’s got a 6-pronged program that offers many alternatives. You’re bound to find something that works for you, whether it’s the way you shop, eat, cook or treat the soil. Listen Here >>

Better Living through Chemistry? Interview with Steven Gilbert & Rich Grady. We depend on chemicals in consumer products to perform as expected, and to be safe. But our regulatory system is not adequately protecting us from potential hazards in our food cans, diapers, shower curtains, baby bottles, and other consumer products. This interview includes discussion of the need for better regulation of consumer products, the precautionary approach to chemical regulation, and the importance of state-level policy change. Listen Here >>

Be Better Podcast: Blue Mind. Interview with Wallace ‘J’ Nichols. Features a discussion about the neurophysiology of the impact of water on our mental and physical health and about the power of nature. Listen Here >>

The Wendel Forum: The Dangers of Flame Retardants. Interview with Arlene Blum. Flame retardants, which are used in electronics, furniture and baby products, are similar to PCBs and DDT, toxic chemicals that were banned decades ago. Blum explains that they pose serious, long-term health concerns because they alter hormone levels, damage reproductive organs, impair thyroid glands, and change DNA. These chemicals continuously migrate out of products. In the case of couches, for example, they emit toxic dust even when no one is sitting on a couch. Listen Here >>

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