01 February
But the lingering impacts of the AltEn neonic contamination catastrophe in Nebraska are frightening
As the sun rose on a summer day in the Bronx during the 1960s, my father boarded a bus with his friends for their annual summer school trip to Bear Mountain State Park up north in the Appalachians.
As a first generation Nuyorican (of the New York Puerto Rican diaspora) growing up in the South Bronx, he didn’t visit state and national parks because my grandparents couldn’t afford it. This was the one day a year they spent in the mountains hiking, swimming, canoeing and playing games – and my dad looked forward to it all year. . For the rest of the summer, my dad spent time outdoors in the city—the South Bronx was his backyard.
Now a bit more than 50 years later, as a staff scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council focusing on forest ecology and climate change, I find myself wandering around a different national forest every other month with a curiosity I didn’t tap into until graduate school. Growing up, we visited the South Bronx often. The food, noise, loud accents, people that looked like me… it felt like a home I had forgotten about. When we visited dad’s backyard, hikes or camping did not feel like part of the culture. Rather, when I think back to those visits, I remember sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen, eating pizza and asopao. I remember sitting on the plastic-covered couch playing games with my brother while the window unit air conditioner hummed in the background. I remember looking out of the window from the 20th floor at the street below where a parked car honked at a vehicle trying to double park. I remember visiting my Tía Rosa’s apartment where everyone talked over each other in Spanish at the top of their lungs. I don’t remember thinking about “wilderness.”
Author Carolyn E. Ramírez in elementary school with their twin brother and father on the subway in New York City.
Credit: Carolyn E. Ramírez
I associated nature much more with whiteness given my memories of camping as a child in Missouri with my girl scout troop led by my mother, a white woman from Texas. Girl scout camping trips were some of the most fun I had as a kid, and I treasured those experiences with my mom. But I am not sure if I brought my whole self or only the part of me that felt superficially normalized by the white community I was a part of. When in parks or forests as a kid, I remember seeing a lot of people who looked like my mom, but not many who looked like my dad. Part of that was due to the demographics of Missouri where I grew up (not a lot of Latines), but now, having lived in many places and traveled to many national parks and forests, one thing has remained the same: most of the people I see out on trails and managing the parks look a lot more like my mom’s side of the family than my dad’s.
An analysis of data from the U.S. Forest Service shows that white people make up almost 95% of the visitors to national forests (77% to national parks), despite many forests being located near communities where people belonging to minorities are the majority. On the managing side of the equation, things are not too different: at almost every meeting or excursion I attend for my job, I am the only Latine person represented and very rarely are there people of color present. The people driving the decisions in the environmental movement, especially around nature conservation, are mostly white and male. As the United States becomes a minority-majority country, federal agencies have started to fear that fewer people will care about public lands because of the primarily white-led stewardship and use of public lands now.
A lot of this racial and ethnic gap in federal land usage is blamed on indifference or lack of interest from people of color and people of other minority identities, but this viewpoint ignores critical context of how a person’s identities shape their relationship to public lands.
Green spaces should feel like everyone’s backyard. Federal agencies, forest and park managers, and conservationists have to stop believing these are “neutral” spaces. We must grapple with their colonial and racist roots. The viewpoint that our federal public lands system is good as is and that marginalized populations need to buy into it centers colonial and white supremacist structures of land stewardship. Pursuing co-management of federal lands with tribes, looking at examples such as state park co-management in Northern California with the Yurok tribe, and a deep consideration for what makes people from marginalized communities feel safe, would shape a more equitable outdoor experience for all.
Sierra Nevada landscapes photographed by the author while on a work trip in central California.
Credit: Carolyn E. Ramírez
Recently, my colleague and I visited the Stanislaus National Forest in central California’s Sierra Nevadas to learn about the landscape and forest service management. This forest sits on the ancestral homelands of the Sierra Me-wuk and Washoe peoples, who lived there for at least 8,000 years before European settler colonization. The largest settler impact to the tribes began in the 1840s with the start of the California Gold Rush. Miners and settlers took violent positions toward the Sierra Me-wuk and saw them as obstacles to their wealth in the “western frontier.” Reports indicate settlers and miners murdered hundreds of Me-wuk Indians between 1847 and 1860 and thousands of Indigenous people died before 1870 from a variety of causes, including starvation from forced displacement, massacres, and disease. Colonists also forced Indigenous people into slavery in the Sierras to work in the mines. As a consequence, the overall Indigenous population in California was estimated to have dropped from 150,000 before 1848 to 30,000 after 1870.
This violent legacy echoes throughout the United States, where hundreds of tribes were forcefully displaced. When European settlers colonized these lands, they exhausted the natural and cultural resources that existed in abundance, especially wood. Indigenous people had managed the continent’s vast forests with cultural burns and sustainable wood harvesting for millennia. By the 1600s, colonists began to decimate these forests, often employing Indigenous and African slave labor, adding important context to the relationship many Indigenous and Black people have to forest lands today. By the end of the 19th century, colonial timber companies had completely deforested much of the eastern forests.
Sierra Nevada landscapes photographed by the author while on a work trip in central California.
Credit: Carolyn E. Ramírez
As the timber hunger spread west, some settlers began to consider the gravity of destroying natural landscapes and began to advocate for federal protection of forests. They based much of these forest management ideas on German forestry techniques, which relied on “mathematical precision” for “management and exploitation of forest resources” rather than in consultation with Indigenous people who were–and still are–the experts on managing these forests. Congress passed the Forest Reserve Act of 1891, which empowered the president to establish reserved forests in the west. President Harrison initiated this process under his administration. In 1905, the United States Forest Service (USFS) was officially established under the United States Department of Agriculture. Today, the USFS manages 155 national forests and 20 national grasslands, separately managed from the United States National Park Service.
Our modern forest landscape would be more barren than it is today if the advocacy surrounding the USFS had not happened. However, it is critical to note the colonial and racist historical context surrounding the agency’s formation and the stark lack of input from marginalized groups. The formation of the USFS happened after Civil War reconstruction, amidst the ongoing atrocities forcing Indigenous people from their ancestral homelands and while Black people were facing few employment or land ownership opportunities despite the end of slavery.
Throughout United States history, white settlers claimed to revolutionize land stewardship because they saw the preserved ancestral lands of Indigenous people to be untouched, wasted capital and refused to acknowledge the human impact Indigenous people had on the land for millennia before colonization. They peddled the idea of public lands as peaceful, neutral places–to be untouched by humans once they realized the environmentally catastrophic impacts of their colonial actions. But these lands weren’t – and still aren’t – neutral and were not untouched by humans before settlers arrived. As I have learned from Indigenous scholars in our current fellowship cohort, the idea of public lands being neutral, wild spaces is actually violent. The ability for settlers to frame public lands in a cloak of neutrality–dismissing the centuries of genocide and conflict that took place there–is an act of violence and erasure of Indigenous life. Neutrality is rooted in safety, lack of conflict, and lack of trauma. For people of color and people of other minoritized identities, public lands aren’t neutral because they hold within them many risks to our personal safety due to the scars of settler colonialism.
As a queer Puerto Rican person, I experience challenges working in environmental forest protection that my white, cis-male counterparts will never go through. There are regions of this country where my last name could trigger a request for immigration papers (which I do not need because Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens) or where my presence may be seen as an unwelcome intrusion into an otherwise white-settler-only landscape.
Personal safety largely shapes who visits and manages forest lands. As an ethnically Puerto Rican and racially white person, my whiteness provides a shield against discrimination in these spaces. People of color do not have this protection. Forests and the outdoors hold a deep history of violence in this country against people of color including murders of Black and brown people outdoors, all at the hands of racist white settlers–from slavery to Jim Crow by violent means of lynching and other forms of death. “Sundown towns” in the United States were (and many still are) all-white, violently racist towns that pose dangerous threats to Black and all non-white people, especially after dark. The violence targeted at Black people and other people of color in these towns often has been perpetrated at the hands of police.
In order to make public lands safer for people of color, we can’t increase law enforcement presence. Most Black people and other people of color do not trust police. That distrust is justified by the racist police brutality throughout American cities. This violence is by no means restricted to cities, as evidenced by the recent murder of Afro-Venezuelan forest defender, Manuel “Tortuguita” Teran, by police in Atlanta. Tortuguita was part of Defend the Atlanta Forest, a coalition protecting the Weelaunee Forest from deforestation and development of a cop training facility bordering a majority-Black community. Another forest defender told Democracy Now! that “their passing is a preventable tragedy. The murder of Tortuguita is a gross violation of both humanity and of this precious Earth, which they loved so fiercely.”
To make these spaces safer for minorities, we should decrease law enforcement and put those monetary resources into local minority-majority communities to better support community centers, healthcare, education, and tribal co-management programs, creating a deeper bond between federal agencies and communities.
When federal agencies lament minimal interest from communities of color in federal land stewardship and engagement, they are not considering how people’s identities and lived experiences shape their relationships with that land. As my dad puts it, “not knowing about it [public lands], I didn’t know to miss it.” While we can’t undo history, we can carry this important context into our country’s future of land management, centering the marginalized.
Carolyn E. Ramírez, Ph.D., is a staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council where they focus on protecting mature and old growth forests on federal lands from logging to preserve these trees as natural climate solutions and key components of ecological biodiversity. They are also exploring the key environmental justice components of their federal forest work through collaboration with tribes and deep consideration for systemic changes that must happen in government forest management to make green spaces everyone’s backyard. Carolyn earned a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Northwestern University. Follow them on twitter @CRami77.
This essay was produced through the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice fellowship. Agents of Change empowers emerging leaders from historically excluded backgrounds in science and academia to reimagine solutions for a just and healthy planet.
Since the late 1960s research has shown that a plastic additive in polyvinyl chloride (PVC), leaches from medical devices and is toxic to multiple organs, especially for premature infants.
Despite more than two decades of evidence, advocacy and education around the issue, PVC products containing this harmful phthalate chemical still dominate the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) environment.
Feeding tubes, fluid bags, syringes, respiratory support tubes, intravenous lines, nasal cannulas, catheters, incubators – this is only a short list of the PVC medical supplies that assist in everything from eating, to breathing, to sleeping for premature infants in NICU. The majority of these devices contain DEHP, a class of chemical called phthalates, which are used to make plastic softer and more flexible. Phthalates mimic the body’s hormones and can disrupt important processes during an infant's rapid development. Scientists have linked phthalate exposure for newborn infants, also known as neonates, with several toxic endpoints including damage to the developing brain, liver, heart, lungs, male reproductive tract and more.
While training as a clinical neonatology fellow and pursuing a masters of public health in the early 2000s, Dr. Annemarie Stroustrup Smith, the vice president and director of neonatal services at Northwell Health in New York, started to draw connections between the emerging research on prenatal phthalate exposure and the health outcomes observed among premature infants.
“We tend to chalk up health challenges that children born preterm have as due to prematurity, but that's not really a mechanism,” Stroustrup Smith told EHN, “So my question was, are some of those [health challenges] due to phthalate exposure? And if it is, that’s something we can fix because we totally control the NICU environment.”
Stroustrup Smith’s research adds to a growing body of studies seeking to understand levels of neonatal exposure to DEHP, health effects and the benefits and drawbacks of alternatives. And the science is making a difference — there is positive movement in the marketplace with phthalate-free devices becoming increasingly available. However, cost remains an issue and the contaminated medical devices continue to fall through the regulatory cracks.
Feeding tubes, fluid bags, syringes, respiratory support tubes, intravenous lines, nasal cannulas, catheters and incubators are just some of the medical devices that often contain DEHP.
Credit: abbamouse/flickr
Some DEHP-free medical supplies, such as feeding tubes, are readily available on the market. However, it is impossible to have a completely phthalate-free NICU in the U.S. due to unavailability and the high cost of alternative options. While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a guidance document for the pharmaceutical industry on avoiding DEHP in 2012, they have yet to ban or restrict its use in medical supplies, like the European Union has done. This is despite ongoing research, advocacy and a direct ask from members of Congress who wrote a letter to the FDA last year.
"Patients should not be exposed to phthalates and [endocrine-disrupting chemicals] when they seek medical treatment," the representatives wrote in a letter to acting Food and Drug Administration chief Dr. Janet Woodcock.
According to Joel Tickner, a chemical policy expert and professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, two big reasons industry hasn’t switched from DEHP are cost and resistance to change, but regulation would solve that. “It’s policy,” he told EHN, “if the FDA put their foot down and said, ‘we need to move in the next five years,’ that would change things very quickly.”
The FDA says that DEHP is on their radar and they issued a discussion paper last year for the public and stakeholders to comment. However, the paper does not specifically mention DEHP. In addition, the FDA only approves devices in their final form. “The FDA does not clear or approve individual materials that are used in the fabrication of medical devices, but does take the chosen components and materials into consideration,” FDA media representative Audra Harrison wrote to EHN.
The international organization Healthcare Without Harm started working with researchers in the late 1990s to raise awareness about phthalate exposure in the NICU. Today, their sub-organization Practice Greenhealth focuses on leveraging the purchasing power of more than 1,500 healthcare organizations in their network and helping health systems make informed purchaces. “At the end of the day, I think the most expedient and long-lasting impact is a market-based solution,” John Ulman, director of safer chemicals and procurement at Healthcare Without Harm, told EHN.
For example, In 2012, Kaiser Permenante, one of the largest U.S. healthcare companies, switched to non-DEHP and non-PVC IV bags. According to Seema Wadhwa, the executive director for environmental stewardship, Kaiser made this switch in six months, including product performance testing, and saved $5 million in annual costs. In 2021, the medical supplier B. Braun launched CARESAFE, the first PVC-and-DEHP-free IV sets on the U.S. market. The three-year process from development to launch was rigorous and resource intensive, requiring creative engineering, process validation, testing and FDA clearance. “Four decades ago we recognized environmental and safety risks from DEHP and PVC,” Scott Moyer, the associate director of research and development at B. Braun, told EHN. “The goal is from the bag to the patient making sure that pathway is free from harmful chemicals overall.”
In order to bolster the market around safer NICU medical devices, Stroustrup Smith said researchers need more data to prove to clinicians that switching materials will improve infant health outcomes, which takes time. “If you look at making changes in medical care, typically from the first point an intervention is shown to be effective, it often takes a decade before you actually get that change,” she said, “and that’s when it's a slam dunk, totally obvious visible change…this is not that straightforward.”
All DEHP substitutions are not created equal. “We have to be wary of regrettable substitutions,” said Ulman when describing the dangers of replacement chemicals that are not well studied and could have similar effects. For example, some alternative plasticizers, such as DINH, have thorough toxicological data, but others have little to none.
Some experts argue that the material itself, PVC, is problematic and that instead of swapping DEHP for another plasticizer, manufacturers should switch to materials that don't require plasticizers. The entire life cycle of PVC is harmful — production requires a lot of energy and releases toxic chemicals such as mercury and asbestos into water and air. For disposal, PVC is the least recyclable plastic and is often incinerated by healthcare facilities, creating highly toxic and persistent pollutants called dioxins and furans. For this reason, PVC-free materials, such as the thermoplastic polyurethane in B. Braun’s CARESAFE line, are the preferred substitutes.
Outside of medical supplies, phthalates are found in a wide range of products including building materials, cosmetics, furniture, food packaging and more. Thus, there are several opportunities across a person’s lifespan to come into contact with phthalates, starting from the womb. A 2022 study linked prenatal phthalate exposure to an increased risk of preterm birth – meaning there is a chance infants born preterm due to phthalate exposure are then exposed to even more phthalates in the NICU.
Since scientists first raised concern about DEHP, progress towards reducing exposure to children and infants in the U.S. has inched along. In 2008, Congress banned DEHP and two other phthalates in toys and in 2017 the U.S. The Consumer Product Safety Commission banned five additional phthalates in toys. Prominent health organizations, such as the American Public Health Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have published policy statements on the issue. NICU’s across the country have committed to buying DEHP-free products whenever possible.
Individuals can also play a role. Healthcare professionals can advocate for DEHP-free products with healthcare administration, researchers can continue to study the impact of DEHP exposure and the benefit of replacements, and patients can ask their doctors about exposure to phthalates during care.
Change takes time, but some argue that we shouldn't wait to act on protecting the most vulnerable patients. “The science was there 20 years ago,” Tickner said, “Why is it taking so long to act on this?”
Editor’s note: Environmental Health Sciences, which publishes EHN.org, is working with B. Braun and others to create a phthalate-free health care sector.
Pete Myers, founder and chief scientist of Environmental Health Sciences (publisher of EHN.org), and Tyrone Hayes, a biologist and biology professor at University of California, Berkeley, spoke at the Collaborative for Health & Environment's 20 year anniversary about how far the environmental health field has come — and how far it has to go.
Hayes discusses how agricultural giant Syngenta targeted him and his work, and both environmental health leaders talk about the challenges and opportunities ahead when it comes to reducing exposures to toxic chemicals.
Watch the full conversation above.
Gabriel Gadsden joins the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast to discuss the intersection of rodent infestations and energy justice and how we can simultaneously tackle both issues.
Gadsden, a current fellow and Ph.D. student of Environmental Sciences at Yale University’s School of the Environment, also talks about getting researchers to break out of siloed thinking, tips for science communicators and how his golf game is going.
The Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast is a biweekly podcast featuring the stories and big ideas from past and present fellows, as well as others in the field. You can see all of the past episodes here.
Listen below to our discussion with Gadsden, and subscribe to the podcast at iTunes, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Brian Bienkowski
Gabriel, how are you doing today?
Gabriel Gadsden
I'm doing great. It's very exciting to be on the podcast. Also, we've gotten some time to hang out with each other and learn a little bit about each other. And so to bridge that conversation further is exciting. And hopefully, you know, people listen to it and take something away from our conversation today.
Brian Bienkowski
Yes, hopefully people do listen to it. That's an important part of this. And I know that people will and are listening right now. So that's, that's good to know. And Gabriel, where are you today? Where are you talking to us from?
Gabriel Gadsden
I'm in New Haven, Connecticut. In the basement, in my office, my advisor said that doesn't look like I live in ... which I don't know if is a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your take on academia being a grad student. Funny or not even funny. But we just had our first snowstorm in New Haven. But it's already gone.
Brian Bienkowski
Came and went, hey
Gabriel Gadsden
yeah, already gone, indeed.
Brian Bienkowski
When our snow comes here, it doesn't leave 'till May. So we just keep, we just keep stacking it, and stacking it on top of old snow, which I like it is a good, it is a good thing for us to have that. So speaking of place, if you've listened to the podcast, you know, I'd like to go back to the beginning, before we talk about the exciting stuff you're working on now. So tell me about Hayti. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. But historically Black community in Durham, North Carolina where you grew up.
Gabriel Gadsden
Yeah, no. So Hayti. And don't feel bad because I feel like everybody gets it wrong when they first read it. It does read like Haiti, but it's Hayti. It is the Black section of I would say more like center-southerner. There's actually a Hayti historic center, which kind of documents both a congregation space but also a area that documents the history of that area. So it kind of runs between Fable street and Highway 55, in North Carolina. The Center is around there. A lot of Black businesses, the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company is kind of connected to the Hayti center, a lot of Black elementary and middle schools ... Shepherd Middle School is around there. So a hub of you know, Black entrepreneurs and academia educators kind of in that areas, putting roots down. And that's where a lot of my family grew up in North Carolina.
Brian Bienkowski
And I'm guessing that Hayti, since you grew up there as a child, you don't know any difference, right? I mean, when you're a child, wherever you grow up, that's what you know. But what can you pieced together from growing up there? maybe it is how it affected you now or in your youth?
Gabriel Gadsden
you know, but maybe not outside so much of Hayti in my family. I... my dad was always big on you know, understanding the history of where we're coming from, you know, ancestors and whatnot. Understand the history of Durham. He was there when he was a child while his mother was in grad school at UNC in public health while his dad was in law school as well. And so, you know, he got to see Durham and Hayti in a very different light. And so, you're just kind of understanding that, you know, by the time that I was being reared in North Carolina, North Carolina Mutual had closed down its doors. And so that's kind of, you know, you can see in a lot of black areas of cities, you know, there's this really steep incline of entrepreneurship and whatnot, and then there's a decline, for whatever reason, whether there's a highway being built, you know, just kind of distant disinvestment into an area, it still had a lot of the history and the roots was still there, but it wasn't maybe as bustling as, as it would have been in maybe the 50s, 60s.
Brian Bienkowski
And where and how did science enter your life?
Gabriel Gadsden
Yeah, you know, I was most excited about this question. And I kind of molded over it and thinking about it. I think that for me, science was always a part of my trajectory, as it was a part of my life. And so I'll say this: growing up, I was diagnosed with a speech impediment that was in part because I couldn't hear, and I still can't hear out of my right ear. And so, you know, not being able to talk to kids, and not really being able to hear anybody, I kind of stayed in my own head, stayed to myself, but, you know, when you're wandering, you know, devoid of interaction with other kids, you find other things to interact with. And so my first thing was rocks, loved them loved how they looked, clean them, you know, put them in buckets, and had this rock collection. So you know, first thing was geology for me. And then I got a little bit older, and then it became PBS. So I was watching Zoom. And learning about chemistry didn't know it was chemistry at the time. But they were adding baking soda and sodium chloride and making gases. And so I would go into my parents’ bathroom probably wasted about $200 worth of product throughout that time period. And I was mixing Vitalis, and Listerine, and alcohol and hoping that I was making and make a discovery of some new chemical, some new gas. My mom had a bachelor's degree from North Carolina Central University. That was her first degree from there. And, you know, she said to me, "don't mix ammonia and bleach." As you know, she saw what I was doing, but they kind of let me stay off for myself after that it was Zaboomafoo. And, you know, I won't sing the catchphrase. But you know, you know, who do you see? Can you identify this mystery? What was this animal? and loved Animal Planet, "Top 10 dangerous," and all of these other shows just really captivated me when I was younger. And so you know, taking that into the classroom, being generally curious, not really having the foundations. And I think we'll get into that a little bit more. But in the last thing, I'll say, and why I say that science was just kind of always the part of me, was that I grew up and still am religious. And so in Christianity, what is my religion that I identify with, but you know, whether it's Judaism, Buddhism, Muslim, you will find environmentalism, ecology in the roots of them. And that's something that I've kind of come back to now here at Yale School of the Environment, a lot of connections with the Divinity School, and recognizing the similarities and recognizing that our morality is tied to the environment. And obviously, with traditional ecological knowledge, TEK, I think kind of making a resurgence in people's psyche, and the paradigm shift that we need to really get back to, quote-unquote, "roots" is something that I've always carried with me. There's tons of verses in the Bible that a lot more knowledgeable people could spout off in terms of connecting those two. And so I was filled with wonder when I was a kid, and it carried me to here.
Brian Bienkowski
Excellent. And you just alluded to this; you said, I remember this in your application. You mentioned that your primary education left you woefully unprepared to conduct research, which I don't think is an uncommon thing. I know I hadn't seen a scientific paper until graduate school. I didn't know what they were. So I don't think you're alone. But can you talk about this obstacle? And how you overcame it to go on to, right now, one of the most prestigious universities in the country?
Gabriel Gadsden
Absolutely, I'll start with this. I don't want that statement. You know, people hear it to say that I had bad instructors or teachers. My elementary school was filled, filled with amazing educators. I could name them, and some of them are still friends with me now. These were incredible people. But when it came to specialists, we had computer PE, art, and music. There was no science special. It was, there was one teacher at the school at the time, Mrs. Daniels, who had a classroom filled with animals and that was probably the closest thing we got to true science education at that time. Then I went to middle school and so obviously I've been watching these shows and asking my own questions, reading my own books. But it's just another step up now you're just learning about tectonic plates and geology, you know, kind of periods and whatnot, the Paleocene or Jurassic, kind of understanding that. But that stuff there I had already read. It wasn't fascinating to me. It was nice to be able to raise my hand and know that, you know, the question that kind of kept my interest in science. But we weren't learning the scientific method, we weren't looking at two different species and asking, Why is this one different, and whether or not we could change in the laboratory, we weren't getting any kind of hands-on experience. Same thing in high school. I didn't see science shown to a younger audience until I was a TA, and teaching assistant for Duke TIP, which is a talent program run by Duke University. And there I saw, you know, true scientific method building, trying things, failing, going back, you know, iterative process, that's kind of part of the science experiments that you see in laboratories. You know, went to a high school college. And so, I did get some early science classroom experience before going off to the UNC. But when I got there, you know, understanding how to navigate those classrooms, but also recognizing that there was a world outside of chemistry and biology, which just was not something that clicked to me, I think about it now, and I probably should have should have been an environmental science major, I would have had an easier time. You know, it wasn't until sophomore year that I realized that I was taking classes that were for pre-med, you know, doctors, and that's not what I wanted to do. I knew that going in. But I didn't know of other majors. And so it's it's kind of a multi-tier thing, both from the kind of primary education getting students prepped for the many fields that are going to be available to you as a college student, but also colleges recognizing and you know, I've seen I have some friends now who are in like STEM education, at the kind of academic level, and are trying to write papers and trying to understand what fails when they make that jump from high school to college. I think that there's some really good progress going on. But I think it's kind of a two-fold issue. One, a lot of the primary education, particularly in Black communities, don't have the money to bring in science instructors to do specials, or science Fridays and stuff like that. But then two, when you get to the university level, universities just aren't understanding that students are coming in from very different standpoints, and maybe have very different interest and maybe only thinks that biology is the only way to get into science, which isn't the case.
Brian Bienkowski
It's a great point. And I like to think that this program, not only is... the point is to show that scientists themselves are from diverse backgrounds and can be diverse people. But also that science itself is diverse. I think I grew up thinking that science; maybe, I think you were saying this kind of too, I thought of chemists, chemistry, beakers, and you know, the lab experience experiments and didn't think of social scientists or, you know, even forestry and fisheries to a certain extent, were things that I think if I would have been exposed to at a younger age, I would have said, "Oh, my goodness, yes, I want to do that! That's excellent" So yeah, those are excellent points. And I hope I hope some of this program is opening people's eyes to different types of cool science. So before we get into that cool science that you are doing right now, what is the defining moment or event that shaped your identity?
Gabriel Gadsden
So from a science standpoint, when I was an intern with the Applied Wildlife Ecology Lab, with Dr. Harris, Sam Harris at the University of Michigan, at the time, was the first time going and doing kind of forested wildlife ecology fieldwork. And I remember going into the forest and kind of seeing the light beams, and hot and sweaty – and had just climbed a hill and gone through the thicket– and I kind of emerged into this field and felt a spiritual connection, a birthing. You know, it was, it was truly a moment of great pleasure for me to knowing that I had finally done that, what I felt like my life was supposed to be, like was going out and collecting data and trying to then come back and share that data with with people. From a more personal standpoint... Maybe, man, my parents would have a different story. I know the story my dad would tell. For me, it was maybe a bit of a devotional, I was actually dedicated to God when I was seven. And I felt like I was always a good kid, I felt like I always had this connection, you know, we talked about a little bit earlier. But for me, it was this recognition that... humbling experience to know that I am just a small dot in this great big world, and a lot of it that we don't understand and that we have faith in it. We have faith in science, right, that we'll learn some of our answers, and we have faith in our religions. We have faith in humanity and our people. I think that was a moment, you know, being very young and actually just realizing that I'm just a dot in this, you know, kind of vastness, but I could make a difference. Clearly, people felt like I was making a difference in their lives within that, that congregation. And so I think, "oh, I can make a difference in this world. And whatever capacity I am," I've tried to carry that with me.
Brian Bienkowski
Excellent. That's an excellent, excellent couple of moments. And let's get into some of the research you're doing now in making that difference. And so I've had the good fortune to not only talk to you when you applied for this program, but we met in Philadelphia and talked about your research. So some of this I know, but some I don't. And I find it fascinating. So as you put it, it's kind of at the intersection of human health, wildlife, and energy justice. So can you, just off the top, tell us how these three fields merge in your research?
Gabriel Gadsden
How does it merge? It started when I was back an intern, and walking through the forest with with my advisor, Dr. Harrison, starting to ask questions about society, and how all this what it really meant, when it boiled down to it. Again, my dad and mom had instilled in me, you know, we need to stand up for what we think is right. You know, being just and being fair, and morality. Science was the path that I was taking. It wasn't like I was gonna go to law school, though my dad might still think that's a possibility. And the questions in ecology just weren't there. At that time, I don't think ecology –this was, you know, back in 2016, 2017– I don't think that they had really kind of saw that ecology could really be tied to social justice or social equity. And at that point, I'm really grateful that Dr. Harris kind of saw that and wants people to be great. So it's like, well, you should probably go into environmental science, try to find Dr. Tony Reams, who was at the time taking on students who does energy justice work. And I kind of made that pivot and knew at the time that it was a hard pivot. But it worked out. And I just had a text message kind of chat with Tony and just, you know, still believes in me, He still thinks that the ideas are great, and going to continue to do good things. But there, I was able to actually collect data that was directly tied or more visceral for people doing air quality data in an efficient housing. And so environmental justice is, you know, public health, public health is epidemiology, and you know, all these things kind of merge and mix together. And so recognizing that people were living in inefficient housing, and then had bad health, having this background in ecology with wildlife, and you know, how as a story goes, I was reading energy justice papers, and I was reading wildlife papers. And I thought to myself, "Oh, foxes, and other things like raccoons and bats live in people's homes. How do they get into those homes, though?" And then, you know, I just, you know, the literature, you know, they talk about these gaps in the foundation and inefficient walls. And so there's no insolation. So it becomes, basically just a nesting place for wildlife. And I thought, "Oh, wow, this is, it's pretty interesting." And, you know, lo and behold, there wasn't a lot of data on it. Now, I can certainly talk more about the literature that is there. But at the time, and still to a large degree, there is not any hard data about housing quality and wildlife and health and putting those two together, even though you know, wildlife, they carry zoonotic diseases that can be, you know, obviously transmissible to humans, that make us sick. And so, you know, it's kind of becomes this double jeopardy of if you have wildlife that are in your house carrying diseases and you're already in poor health because of your inefficient housing, what that could mean for public health crises? and kind of being cost effective. If there's a solution to multiple things, we should probably champion that solution. And I have to thank Dr. Grove for that, in the urban ecology class that I just was a teaching fellow for, understanding this complex nature of problems. And if we don't think complex, you know that they are complex problems, and there's multiple ways of entering the issue, then we're not going to get very far.
Brian Bienkowski
And just on the ground level, what does this research look like? How do you conduct a study that examines both energy inefficiency and rodents?
Gabriel Gadsden
Yeah, so, as a first year, as then, last year, first-year Ph.D. student or someone trying to get into grad school, I thought I was going to save the world and then realized, no, it wasn't realistic. But you know, we have an unlimited supply of plunder, right? Um, I thought I was going to talk to some people in Philadelphia; they were going to let me into the house, we were going to get all this money and do home interview scores. ATS is, and then we're going to trap inside. And then we were going to retrofit with another $15,000. And then do a before-and-after controlled trial. None of that happened or didn't happen yet. We were still optimistic that some of those things would happen in time. And hopefully, you know, the funders who are listening to this will recognize the importance of this. But the reality is that we're starting outside, you know, Philadelphia. While they do have vector control, Philadelphia has not kind of systematically kept ties with, you know, what the pathogens are, and where the rodents are in the city outside of 311 calls. And so hopefully working with them to get them just kind of more data, where the rodents in the city, I think it's kind of the first question and what environmental variables, you know, both, you know, trash receptacles, Park size, you know, trash on the street, housing, type of housing stock, is attributing rodent populations, or is increasing or decreasing rodent populations, excuse me. I think that’s, so that's the first step. And then the second step is to then, you know, ask for in these neighborhoods, collecting rodents making contacts, hopefully, we have a meeting tomorrow with 57 Blocks, which is a gun violence advocacy kind of research group out at the DA office in Philadelphia, recognizing that some of these issues with what is attracting rodents in cities, also could mitigate or increased gun violence. And so I say that to say, you, you work with people who are already doing great work in the city on different issues – Philly Thrive and other folks that are doing EJ work – And hopefully, by those connections and those collaborations, then they will say, "Oh, yes, this person, it would love to talk to you about this research." And that's how we're going to get into homes.
Brian Bienkowski
So to zoom out, we're talking about cracks in the foundation are problems in the home that are first leading to energy inefficiency. So maybe your bills are higher, your house isn't as warm, your house isn't as cool. And then the second part of that is rodents are able to get in. And what kinds of diseases or health problems are we talking about when we think about rodents getting into people's homes?
Gabriel Gadsden
So first is childhood asthma, allergens that are already so if you're in a low income area, you likely maybe have some type of power plant or some type of industry that's near you. So you already have those pollutants getting into your home more because it's inefficient, or for whatever reason, you have higher rates of asthma, and now you add on allergen load from mice and rats, so that's going to be exacerbated. So, you know, more ER trips, more money spent on inhalers and other types of treatments. There's also the issue of leptospirosis, which, and hantavirus, s more in the west right now. And I'm not going to get into kind of the debacle of funding that research in cities or in other areas outside of the West. But but certainly those are kind of the two main ones. There's also typhus –plague is still in Detroit.
Brian Bienkowski
and I have to imagine that there's a mental health, stress component to this. There's social stress, I mean, the idea of maybe you don't want to invite people into your home when you know you have an infestation. So I can see this kind of spider webbing outside of the very acute, physical, physical illnesses into mental and social struggles. So I don't want to place blame here and I know this is probably a large issue with some historical roots. But who's to blame? What is the... why is this historically been a blind spot for regulators, housing officials and others?
Gabriel Gadsden
1950s was a really big time. I don't know the researcher's first name but Davies, I believe it's his last name, did a lot of work in Baltimore. There's a lot of really great case studies in Budapest and some other cities of like kind of rat-proof towns that brought population levels of rats down to less than 1% of their historic numbers. Even in Philadelphia in the 1940s, they have their first really big campaign about getting rid of rodents. And then in the 1960s, the mayor kind of created the rat control group, and that rat control group, you know, said, you know, that we will not take the job, if you do not seal up all the cracks in any, you know, in your home, you know, essentially, you know, back then maybe they didn't think about is energy efficiency of sealing up your envelope and the energy inside it, you know, get that, but it makes sense. But life happens, policy change, you know, turnover, it's a lot easier to say, you know, put out bait blocks, and rodent trapping, than to actually do systemic change. We see that time and time again. Actually, solving an issue takes coordinated efforts between many different factors from public health, to housing and development, to parks and rec, all coming together at that table. And cities are not willing to make that choice, at least in America right now, major cities, I'm not going to bash on any politician. But if you follow New York politics, you would have received like a rat czar job posting recently. And the reality is, you know, all the memes where, you know, Charlie Day from Always Sunny Philadelphia, kind of what's his kind of mace-bat-like situation that's gonna go, get rid of all the rodents. And that's not going to work. You know, it’s, and it's not just sanitation, is not just sealing up the home. And it's not just getting rid of vacant lots. It's all of those things at once, across a large scale in a city. And so until we're ready to put up that money, allow natural predators into our cities and kind of coexist with nature in a healthy way. And I don't think that you know, so, you know, really, really comes down to is political will and resource allocation. I mean, most researchers will say, you know, that's a lot of the issues. And if you throw money out enough, it'll fix itself, and you get the right people in the room. But right now, we just, there's really great researchers. Jason Munchie. I'm drawing a blank. But even Merkin Rosenbaum. These are people who are doing rodent research right now. And certainly know more than I do. But I think would advocate the same thing that is a, you know, you have to have this team of teams. To quote Dr. Grove, Morton Grove, if you don't have this team of teams, you're not going to solve the issue. And so cities have to really be ready to sit down and bring people together and spend the money.
Brian Bienkowski
What makes you hopeful about this? you mentioned some researchers who are doing very good work. Are you seeing any on-the-ground movement in Philadelphia or beyond? What makes you hopeful and optimistic?
Gabriel Gadsden
Yeah, I mean, Matt Fryer, another researcher, just trying to create like this really handy, simple rodent tool you can kind of put into cracks and understand whether, you know, it is susceptible to being infested by rodents. So you have this, you know, research-entrepreneurship, kind of burgeoning space, you also have new sensors, with Rat Mo, there are different technologies that are trying to get up, you know, making sure that we spend money in an efficient manner. As much as I don't think the idea of a rat czar going to work, the fact that, that that is a possibility that, you know, maybe the right person that's in that position could really make a change if they're kind of advocating for all of these different methods and allocating funds in the right spaces. I also think that there's maybe a little bit of a change in public perception... I kind of write and so I'm working on, you know, Environmental Health News with you and Maria, that, you know, it's time that people stop accepting this as the normal and I'm seeing that more and more maybe that's because I'm in this space. But I certainly think that as it gets out of hand again, I think COVID-19, and this kind of increase in route and sightings people at home are recognizing that, you know, they're out during the daytime, they're out during the night time, they're, you know that the squeaky wheel is going to get squeakier. And so I think I'm seeing a little bit more of that. I certainly know all of my friends know about it more. And so they send me a lot of papers and different articles from different fields, kind of hinting at this as well. And so I think that does make me optimistic. You know, I certainly have gotten some great responses for my work and so recognizing that people see this as a, as a serious issue, I think it will only get easier to advocate for true rodent exclusion or reduction of populations in an impactful way.
Brian Bienkowski
Yeah, sometimes a big first step for any of these kinds of wicked issues is just awareness. It's a good, it's a good first step. And speaking of that, so I know after I talked to you about your research, it seemed very intuitive, that these problems would be linked, but it is different and intersectional. And I'm sure you've had to explain it to folks, I'm wondering if you just have any tips for scientists interested in learning to better communicate.
Gabriel Gadsden
After just giving two presentations, two final presentations, I should have practiced more and everybody in my lab as a practice, you know? giving a talk to very different fields also helps. You know, most people don't study rodents, particularly in ecology, or at least well, urban ecology, just because they're not considered wildlife. And so you have to talk to the epidemiologists who are in a very public health, atmosphere or medical research. And so you have to link these things, even this idea of, you know, retrofitting versus, you know, sealing up the envelope, what word you use? those choice words, getting rid of the jargon, paring it down writing different grants, and then writing research talks, and then writing an academic article about it, you're putting it in very different ways. And you find out what works and what clicks with people. Just keep harping on it, if you believe in it, you know, the right words are going to come. And, you know, the same thing as you're reading widely talk to as many different groups. Because they know, someone in social science may say, "this is a word that would really clicked with people."
Brian Bienkowski
I also think starting off, as you as I've heard you do, with just kind of how this affects people is a very tangible way to make these issues click with people. I mean, we've all, most of us – I had a mouse in the house the other day – I mean, this is, this is common, this is a common thing that a lot of people have dealt with, maybe not on the scale that you're researching. But I think starting with, how does this impact people and their health is a really good starting point. And I've seen you do that. So of course, you can't be out there chasing rodents and looking at foundations all of the time. I happen to know you're a golfer. So what is... I don't know if it's golf weather out there if you're getting a bunch of snow, but when you are able to golf, do you get out much, and what's your handicap these days?
Gabriel Gadsden
I do get, I get out as much as I can. Yale is really generous and allows students to play at a discounted rate after turn hours. And so I'll go over there, it's a great golf course. And handicap, you know, I'll say this, there are no pictures on a scorecard. And that can work in a good way or a bad way. What I'll say is that I can get some pars most of the time. I'm shooting bogey, every now and again. I'll get a double bogey or triple bogey more often than I'd like. But if I were doing like a two-man scramble, I wouldn't hold you down as badly as you would think.
Brian Bienkowski
Before we get you out of here today, I have three rapid-fire questions that are supposed to be fun. Hopefully they are fun, where you can just answer with one word or a phrase. So the first one is, what was the highlight of the past year for you
Gabriel Gadsden
was able to go to... see my family. You know, I don't get to see them often. And so in spending any time with my dad and playing golf with my brother. It's always a treat seeing my nieces and my nephews is always fun; being with them
Brian Bienkowski
For sure. The best concert I've ever been to was
Gabriel Gadsden
Oh, two. So Mick Jenkins not maybe a conscious rapper but a little bit less conscious. Really fun and authentic feeling, and then Jidenna, the '85 to Africa tour was really great. I'm a small concert like... I'm huge I love going to concerts. I like going to the smaller ones. I don't think I'll ever go see Beyonce or Drake. But the 30,000 people do It doesn't seem fun.
Brian Bienkowski
That makes, that makes two of us this, the more intimate concerts are, well, they're more intimate. You get to see and feel things in a much different way. I totally agree. And last question every day I look forward to blank.
Gabriel Gadsden
Being a good person, trying to be a genuine and caring person, I think, sometimes can throw people off. Like, what's up with this guy? But I hope that I hope that people who know me and or will meet me now this is just as genuine as I can to be nice.
Brian Bienkowski
But I sure hope being kind doesn't spark too much skepticism among people in your life or beyond. Because it's, it's something I felt from you, and I think it's it's a good thing. We should all be kind and genuine. So last question. I've been asking everybody, what is the last book that you read for fun?
Gabriel Gadsden
Cool. The last book I read for fun. I have to I pulled them off-site, so I won’t butcher their name. So the one I actually just finished was The Age disaster, the failure of organizations in New York and the nation. Great book, quite old, at this point. 1990 was published, but still is very salient, particularly because of the COVID-19, the climate disaster, I mean, you name it, there's a lack of, of coordination and whatnot. So yeah, go go get that. And that was like a free book lying around that I had just picked up from the department. And then, the other book is Fighting the good fight: The militarization of the civil rights movement. And so I'm currently reading that, and I've had some really good conversations because there's something to be said about whether or not we should be using this language. Is it helpful? Is it actually more harmful because of traumatic kind of imagery that comes with militarization? I'm still debating that myself, but I certainly find it a thought-provoking book, if not a bit challenging for a person to kind of wrap their heads around. So I've been asking people, you know, that's my question now at talks. Hey, should we be using this language? Is that hopeful to take that militarization of civil rights to the militarization of climate justice, and whether or not these campaigns and precision and training and communications, those types of things that make campaigns go well, should be co-opted?
Brian Bienkowski
Excellent. Sounds like a thought-provoking book. And speaking of thought-provoking, you can find Gabriel's essay soon out on ehn.org, where you can learn more about his research. And we'll be sure to get that in front of readers and listeners, Gabriel, thank you so much. We're doing this today. It's a pleasure having you in the program.
Gabriel Gadsden
Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day. And thank you to everybody who's listening.