 Aloha Owinala, I am Kaui Luakes, host of Hawaii is My Main Land, Fridays at 3 p.m., keeping it on the bright side and off the grid. As a survivor of malignant mammalianoma, I take sun protection seriously. As an inhabitant of a fairly small island on planet Earth, I realize coral reefs are essential to life as we know it. So I have invited Dr. Robert Richmond of the University of Hawaii's Kuala Marine Lab, part of the Pacific Biosciences Research Center, to discuss the science behind Senate Bill 1150 and what the best ways to save our skin and our reefs really are. Bob, welcome back. Thanks very much Kaui, I guess I did okay last time to get your attention on that. It was wonderful, we were talking about Papahanaumokuakea. Now we have a bigger, it's not more politically, it's a smaller area, it's not a smaller area either. Another important topic, how's that? Very good. Okay, so as of this week, Senate Bill 1150 has made it through, all the way through the Senate, it's now in the house, it's made it through two houses, two committees in the house, and it has been recommended for referral to the third committee, CPC, consumer protection. So we're close, but reading through the testimony, there are some really big questions, like is this the right sunscreen bill? And some people still think we don't really need a sunscreen bill or we don't need this one. So let's start with what the bill says. So it's prohibiting the use or application of non-prescription sunscreen, sunblock, or cosmetics containing oxybenzone or other chemicals, harmful to coral reefs in marine life conservation districts, and prohibits the sale of such sunscreen, sunblock, or cosmetics by concessionaires serving marine conservation districts and nature preserves. It requires commercial use permittees to inform their customers of the prohibition and also allows the department to, that would be DLNR, to propose rules prohibiting the use of sunscreen, sunblock, or cosmetics containing oxybenzone in any area as needed to conserve marine resources. So what is, some of the people who are objecting to this said, we don't have enough science. People like the Department of Health, okay, Department of Health isn't a person, but you know, they said they believe more evaluation of the health and environmental impacts of restricting the use of oxybenzone is warranted. A key concern to be resolved is the ability of safe and effective alternatives. What do you say to that? Okay, I'll start with the most important element, that the intent of the bill is to protect coral reefs and specifically to remove one of the local stressors that's very easy to control and that's exposure to a chemical that's been scientifically proven to have a negative effect on the coral reefs. So from that perspective, the intent of the bill is sound and I would argue that the science behind it is sound. It's not a single study from a single individual. My major disclaimer is that I'm not Craig Downs, so Dr. Craig Downs is the brains behind it. He was one of the people who led the study. Several of the studies have been in peer-reviewed literature, Dr. Yosi Loya, Dr. Sheryl Woodley, Dr. John Fout, these are some of the world's leading researchers on coral reefs. So you've got top researchers doing excellent science in a very controlled and appropriate manner and the conclusions are sound. So in answer to the first question, do we need more science? The science is there. People argued for years on tobacco, well we just don't know. It's called manufactured uncertainty. I'm not accusing Department of Health because I have dear friends and colleagues there, but when in doubt, people often say we need more. As a scientist who knows the science and the scientists, I would argue that there is sufficient science to say it's a good idea to ban the use of these sunscreens. In answer to the second question about public health and how a bill can actually help with this, you know, I'm howly. I go out in the sun. I've been working in tropical ecosystems since 1974. I understand the importance of protection against UV. Are there alternatives? Absolutely. I have a variety of rash guards. I have a hoodie rash guard. I have rash guards with gloves on them. I have a good variety. So my first line of defense is rash guards. I do use sun blocks and that's different than a sunscreen. These are the ones that are either zinc oxide or titanium dioxide non-nanotized without getting in all the geek stuff on that on the particles that are big enough not to interact with a lot of brain life and not to penetrate your skin either. There are a variety of sunscreens and sun blocks on the market. There are rash guards on the market. There are hats. There's a variety of ways of doing it. I fully agree. There's no question that exposure to UV is bad and it doesn't matter just if your light skinned or dark skinned exposure to UV is bad, but there are many, many alternatives that people can use that are non-damaging to the coral reef and to the marine environment. So I didn't plan to get in here, but you bring up a good point about the rash guards and sunscreen, sun block. Is there... What is the comparison? Do you happen to know? Yeah. Well, if you look... There's a lot of clothing that's particularly manufactured for UV protection and just look at the tag. You can go to Columbia, REI, you can go on any of the sporting goods manufacturers and find UV protective wear, and that's not just for going to the beach. People that are hiking, people that are climbing, whatever. Most of those have a sun factor of 50, which is a good number. What it basically means is that it's blocking the UV rays from hitting your skin directly. And frankly, I just feel more comfortable in a rash guard and it helps you from getting scratches, bumping into things. I'm pretty much of a klutz. So wherever I am, I'm having that extra layer of protection is a good thing. And so the bottom line is that the combination of sunscreen protections, whether they be a chemical sun block or sunscreen or a physical barrier to UV radiation like rash guards, these are always protecting the skin and you can do skin protection without a cost to the environment. And that's the main point. Okay. So the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii, I mean, I know it's their job to protect businesses, but in the long run we certainly see protecting reefs as protecting these businesses. They said that at a minimum we should wait for the results of studies conducted in the open ocean before further action is taken. Hawaii is the only state in the U.S. to introduce legislation on oxybenza. That is a non-starter in my opinion. Nevertheless, once more research is conducted in the natural environment, we will need more evidence to make an informed decision. So they're basically saying you have to have it in the open ocean and even once you've done it in the open open, we're going to need more evidence. So I mean, it is the Chamber of Commerce, but that comment about in the open ocean is has science, it seems like a bad idea to conduct it in the open ocean to me because it's... It's about scientific methodology. I mean, first and foremost, as the saying goes that procrastination is the most subtle form of rejection. And so there's an entire industry that we better not do that. We better not act on climate change. We better not stop people from smoking because we just don't know. The precautionary principle says if you don't know if something is safe or not, you don't do it until you're sure it's safe. So these arguments that, well, we're not quite sure it's that dangerous so we should keep going, people have to understand in science that the absence of information, showing something is terribly wrong, doesn't mean it isn't, it just means you lack data. And if there's a good chance it's going to be wrong, you should be careful, precautionary principle. The answer to this is we're way beyond that. This kind of collection or this mismatch between doing it in the field versus doing it in the lab, the way science like this is done is to first go out into the field and find out if this is relevant. So we have two maps that can show what's going on in Hawaii. Water samples around Oahu, water samples around Maui and beach samples, which we don't have a map of why I didn't put that up. But an answer to the question is, is it out there? Is it relevant? Is it at concentrations that matter? The answer is absolutely yes. So this is work that Craig Downs did and others with water quality sampling. Here you can see here's a map of Maui showing a variety of sites where water quality samples were taken from the field, from the actual places where people are lathering themselves up with sunscreen with oxybenzone, going into the water, and this is no surprise. So the PPT stands for parts per trillion, which is a concentration, and the active range for which problems begin to show up can be as low as 200 parts per trillion. So if you see any dot with a number greater than 200, that's an area in which it's been shown the concentration in the field is above the level at which laboratory experiments have shown it's a problem. So here's the connection between you go into the field and you find out what's there. Then you bring it back and the only way you can do a controlled laboratory experiment is to remove any other variable except that one. That's why you have to do it in the field. We actually do some experiments in the field where we can put out chambers and do the same exposure so they have the same amount of light, the same amount of other things going on. But this is the appropriate way for scientific design, statistical rigor, what we say to make sure that we know what we're saying with a high degree of certainty, and this is what is required in the peer review process that allowed these scientific publications to go forward by being reviewed by top-notch scientists to say these studies are valid, the experimental design was sound, and the results and the conclusions are sound as well. Let's go back to that map of Oahu for a minute. I wanted to see that again. So can you tell a little bit about how this study, how they just took the water or they took coral samples from these places or how did it work? So there were a couple of things that Craig and his colleagues did. They took sand samples on the beach and once again you look at where the sources are. People don't go in the water and then put it on. They're either in a boat or on the shore and it seemed that one of the worst offenders were the spray-ons because just like spray painting, I'm not allowed to use spray paint because I'm a real slob, but you can't be that focused on that. When you put it on your hand and then you rub it into your skin, there's a lot more control over the aerosol spraying and so when Craig did his studies on the beach, he found that that was a lot of the overspray on the beach sand would then get washed into the water so that could be a source, but once you put it on your skin, it's on your skin, you go in the water, it comes off there as well. So it was a combination of water samples and sediment samples, sand samples on land, but these are real numbers from within the ocean in the areas where there's coral. So that goes back to the relevant question of, they need to be done in the open ocean. They need to be done in the area where the corals are. To ask the question, is there an exposure means for the coral? The answer is yes. Is it at a level of concern? Yes. Then you take those two things and say, well, let's bring it into the lab and try these controlled experiments and see what happens and that's when the next set of data came out. Okay. So one of the other really big departments that is weighing in on this is the Department of Land and Natural Resources because it would be their job. This is less of a science question, but I know that in your career, you have spent a lot of time in public advocacy and are well aware of the tensions between the non-academic community and the rest of the population. So just kind of wearing that broader hat. This is, they're worried about enforcement. So they say, DLNR says, an enforcement officer would have to observe a person on the beach or in a boat applying the product and then determine if the product contained oxybenzone or some other chemical that has been found to harmful to corals. Even if use of these products were decriminalized by making their use a civil crime, it would still relegate the department's division of conservation and resource enforcement officers who are enforcing the measure to being sunscreen police. Well, yeah. Okay, no, I totally get what they're saying. First, let me back up and deal with a quick definition. When you say I've been in person on advocacy for scientists, you need to be careful in the use of terms. Advocate usually means someone who is paid to take a particular position. That's not what scientists generally do, some do. We're objective purveyors of knowledge to try to enter into that. No, no, I'm just trying to let people know. But interpretation of the data is a very important part of what we do. And again, as I was here before on the show with Ruth Gates and Mark Hickson, when we were running the core reef symposium, the whole idea there was bridging science to policy, which is a very important part of what we do. The knowledge that we have is of no value, so what part unless we can translate it into a form that people can use. So with Suzanne Case and what the position is of DLNR is absolutely correct, I completely agree. This was not meant to be a punitive law to go around finding ways to punish people and the worst scenario is for an unknowing tourist or an unknowing local member of our community to go to the beach, do the normal thing of putting on sunscreen and then end up being in violation of the law. That's not what this was intended to do. What it was intended to do is what we critically need to do back to the core reef symposium is to control local stressors today to buy time to deal with climate change, which is overriding what's happening to core reefs and the world in the long term. This is low-hanging fruit and once again in the idea of regulation, you know, compliance is always what you would prefer and frankly a lot of this through community education, you could knock out probably 50 percent of the problem just by getting people to voluntarily go with it. The problem is the access to chemicals that we know are harmful to the coral reef. It's all over a while. You can go into EBC's store, you can go into any CVS longs, you name it, and the major sunscreens you'll find behind the counter on the counters are the ones with oxybenzoin. Okay, Bob, we're going to stop here, take a minute, and then come back and start again with that in the trenches on the beach. Got it. Aloha. Aloha. My name is Reg Baker and I'm the host of Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We broadcast live every Thursday at two o'clock. We highlight businesses and individuals that are successful in Hawaii and we learn their secrets to their success. I hope you can join us and listen in because we always have a pack of information on successful stories in Hawaii. Aloha. Hi, I'm Tim Appichella. I'm the host for Moving Hawaii Forward and the show is dedicated to transportation and traffic issues in Oahu. We are all frustrated by sitting in our cars in bumper to bumper traffic and this show is dedicated to talking with folks that not only we can define the problem, but we hopefully can come to the table with some solutions. So I invite you to join me every Tuesday at 12 noon and let's move Hawaii forward. Welcome back to Hawaii is my mainland. I'm Kauai Lucas with me here today is Dr. Sorry, Bob Richardson from the Kuala Research, Marine Research Lab, which is an amazing place out at Point Panic. So he has one of the best offices I would say in the world. I do. Okay, so we were talking about what we can do to effectively make a difference in the health of our reefs, taking care of our bodies, doing the sunscreen thing, but without killing them and without turning our deal and our guys into sunscreen police. What should we do? So I completely agree with chair case from the Department of Land and Natural Resources. That would be an impossible job to turn the few people that they have an enforcement to have to focus on that when they're far more important things for them to focus on from a marine resource sustainability point of view. The idea, the more effective way of doing it is called operationalizing. It's one they have a good idea. The devil's in the details of how do you make that good idea work. The goal is to get the oxybenzone off the reef and to allow people to have means of protecting themselves in a way that does not compromise the integrity of coral reefs at a time when they're in dire straits. So by having a ban on sales and actually in discussing this with the industry and the sales and the various hotels, they much prefer to have a ban on the sale of the material than a ban on the use. Meaning most people don't bring their sunscreen to Hawaii with them, you know, especially with baggage fees the way they are right now. They come to Hawaii and they buy it and that's good for the local economy. What we're saying is that there are plenty of commercially available sunscreens that they could buy from the ABC store or longs or Walgreens or any place that are reef safe and that still protect people's skins and by controlling what's available here, you do that's 98% of it right away. You will have some people that may bring it from the mainland. If we can cut it down to that level that it's people buying the appropriate sunscreens here, if you cut off the supply of the wrong stuff people will be using the right stuff and that's a much easier way to go. So in the way the law is written, I wrote it into my testimony. I know a number of others have from the private sector to say, don't put the onus on the user. Don't try to give a hard time to the tourist who doesn't know or for the local community member who doesn't. Just cut off the supply of the things that are wrong and make available the stuff that's right and you've got your solution right there. It's no impact on the community, the Chamber of Commerce. They can still sell it and frankly some of the really nice sunscreens that are safe, you can up the price on that. So the profit margin would be just as good. Everybody comes out ahead. The reefs come out ahead, the people can still protect themselves and they're doing the right thing in a way that helps continue. I mean our reefs here, $34 billion in value, $360 million a year. How can you put a price tag on that? Herman Cesar, a great study that was done funded by the Hawaii Corp Reef Initiative, actually went in and did a study of the valuation of Hawaii's reefs. And what they came up with is $34 billion in value and that includes things like coastal protection from erosion. We know about that in a world of sea level rise. They protect our coastal areas, $360 million a year to the economy through ocean activities. So why would we be killing the goose that lays the golden egg, the way in which oxybenzone works? And we can talk about the geek science for a bit. It interferes with reproduction. It interferes with their resilience to things like the major bleaching events we've had. These reefs are already in dire straits and it's not only death by a thousand cuts or more straws on the camel's back. Anything we can do to remove these local stressors is critical now. And what easier thing is there to do than to remove a chemical that people don't have to use that has already been scientifically demonstrated to cause problems and just take it off the reef. And that's what this bill was intended to do. There's still some wordsmithing that needs to be done, but a ban on the sale of oxybenzone containing sunscreens in Hawaii is a huge step forward. Scientifically defensible, economically feasible, good for Hawaii. So that organization you talked about, would they be willing to or is there some organization in Hawaii that you know of that would be willing to come up with a little sticker that we could put on sunscreens that are safe, a little coral safe sticker. And what I'm talking about is something like this. This is what I picked up at the World Expo. The government of the Maldives got together with the university in Italy and they developed this very nice, it's only 20 SPF though. SunbioCare, it's called. And it's stamped coral safe. Can we do that? Is there some way we can do this? I mean, it just seems so. Absolutely. That's not again a block to anything moving forward. There are companies that do that. Unfortunately, there's a couple of companies that will say that we're in fact reef safe and they just put it on their blog or they put it on their product when in fact it's not. And that's why education is such a big part of what we do. Education and outreach to let people know here are the chemical or chemicals that shouldn't be there. And once again, it's much easier to control this at the sales point of working with the various companies that are selling large amounts of it, whether it be the small beach shack at a hotel, whether it be, you know, the 7-Eleven down the street. Any of the stores here, you can very easily work with them on what's allowed to come into the state. And that's the easiest place that just basically tell people if you can buy it in Hawaii, it's reef safe. And the control for doing that is working through the manufacturers, working through the distributors. And once again, it's just a much easier way to go. It puts the, it takes away the owners from what chair case that says Suzanne Case is absolutely right. They can't afford to be checking people out from sunscreen. And there's no need to that, you know, occasionally you may have somebody who had a bottle in their dive bag from their last trip to Florida. You know, that's not going to be the problem. If we were to cut it down by the amount that would be removed by simply changing what's sold in Hawaii, we'd be right over the hop. We'd be in the place where we really need to be. We have a picture of what it does to the coral, which is not pretty. You described some of the effects that it has. But if we did that, do you think that there would be a significant response from the reefs? I mean, we have coral bleaching. And there are a lot of factors that play into the coral bleaching. But do you think we would be able to see an effect of changing our sunscreen habits? Yeah. So to put it in perspective, if we took away the oxybenzone containing sunscreens from Hawaii, the reefs will not magically come back. Okay. We have sedimentation. We have where we're fishing. We have climate change. But the issue is that it's every additional local stressor we put on the reef makes it that much harder to withstand and recover from the next bleaching event, from the nutrients, from the sediment that's running down. Being able to deal with the watershed, these concrete runways from the mountains to the sea, these things are horrible. This is the most efficient system for killing coastal reefs I've seen anywhere in the world. Wow. And Hawaii's got them. Wow. Wow. But we're not going to fix the runoff and these concrete runways overnight. We can stop oxybenzone next week if we want to. And it's kind of like human health too. If you've got diabetes and you've got coronary heart disease and you've got kidney disease, if I go ahead and say, The stressors, that's what you keep saying. Yeah. You take a blood pressure medication, that's not going to affect necessarily your diabetes and others, but holistically, as you begin to remove stressors, if we call triage, if you have arterial bleeding and you have kidney disease and you have strep throat, hopefully arterial bleeding first, you ought to go for the things that you can fix today. And this is a no-brainer. It costs nobody anything. It's a choice that people can make and we can facilitate that choice by making available the chemicals that are less harmful. Terry Hughes, a dear colleague and one of the most brilliant coral scientists in the world, said, the Northern Great Barrier Reef is not bleaching due to sunscreen. He's absolutely right. Nobody's up there. That's climate change. However, for coastal reefs and for Hanama Bay and for Napili Bay and for all the bays here where we have hundreds to thousands of tourists at a time, you know, at one of the national parks and state parks in Maui, they give out little cards saying, please don't use sunscreens with oxybenzone. They can cut it down to the level where that's no longer a stressor. So that's the goal right now. As a coral biologist who looks at the long-term, you know, as not only a scientist, but as a dad, if we don't get our act together, our children are going to have nothing left, nothing that we can recognize as reefs and all the values that go with them. Every stressor that we pull away from the reef today is buying a little bit more of the future for tomorrow. I'm glad you brought up what the deal and our guys are doing or in this case Department of Aquatic Resources. I understand they're even giving out little samples of coral safe sunscreens. Absolutely. And that's a proactive way to go. So again, nobody is faulting. People didn't know better. But this idea is, well, we don't know enough. I mean, come on. You know, we do know enough. And it's not that new, right? No, it's not. And if you go to the National Institutes of Health website and look at Oxybenzone, I'd never let my daughter use the Oxybenzone stuff. We use the zinc oxide or titanium dioxide non-nanotized. Just look for it on the label. You don't have to know what that means. Does it say non-nanotized? It does say, yeah. Non-nanotized means the bigger pieces that may knock you on the head, but they won't get absorbed biochemically into the skin. And because it's an endocrine disruptor and it messes with people, there's something called the Environmental Working Group, EWG.org. Look it up because they've got a lot of good stuff on just chemicals and personal care products. But Oxybenzone is not only bad for reefs, but it's dubious of value to people, especially young girls. And as a dad of a daughter, we always use the non-oxybenzone because of the endocrine disrupting compounds that are included with Oxybenzone. Okay, thanks for setting us straight on all of this. And what else can you set us straight on about scientific happenings in this town in our last minute here? I'm glad you asked. On Earth Day on April 22nd, starting at the University of Hawaii over by Bachman Hall, the intersection of University and Dole, there is the Hawaii March for Science. And it's not a March for Scientists, it's a March for Science. And we hope that the public and community will come out to recognize the value of science to society, to everybody who lives on the face of the Earth, including those who use sunscreen and some Oxybenzone and it will make a change in the future. It's an opportunity to celebrate science, to celebrate truth and knowledge. And it'll be starting at three in the afternoon until six or seven. There was a change in timing because of other Earth Day activities. But we really encourage you can go on to the website. Just look for March for Science, Hawaii. And it'll pop up. And we hope that people come out and celebrate science. There'll be tabling, there will be opportunities for learning, and for another fun time to be out and enjoy Hawaii with a bunch of great people. Hey, thank you so much for coming down to talk to us about this. See you again soon. Thanks for having me back.