 This is here in my chat room. I am not a robot. This is the forever claim on the internet. Yeah. Am I a robot? I am not a robot. I am not a robot. Some days I feel like playing back on the internet. Yeah. Sorry about that. Playing back on the internet. We are live. Ha ha. Recursive forever and ever and ever. Let me get started here. Introduce everything, everybody. We are getting started with this special makeup interview. Yay. Welcome everyone to This Week in Science. I'm Dr. Kiki and today we are having a special makeup interview with Dr. Suzanne Brander. Unfortunately during our live broadcast Wednesday night, the internet failed us and we lost contact with Dr. Brander. And we have rescheduled and today are making up this, the audio from this episode, this special interview will be put into the podcast. So everyone will get a chance to hear all the wisdom she has to impart on us. But without further ado, let me remind you that if you have not ever subscribed to This Week in Science, you can do so by hitting the subscribe button here on YouTube or heading to twist.org for subscription information. Dr. Suzanne Brander is an ecotoxicologist working as an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental and Molecular Toxicology at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. She also holds an adjunct position in the Department of Biology and Marine Biology at the University of North Carolina. According to her lab website, her lab's research encompasses the fields of toxicology, endocrinology, and ecology. It integrates molecular approaches with measurements at the organism and population level. Their main focus is on the effects of stressors such as emerging pollutants, plastics, big thing for everyone these days, and changing climate on aquatic organisms. But their work spans the links between ecology and human health. Dr. Brander, welcome to This Week in Science. And thank you so much for offering the opportunity to make up the snafu from Wednesday. I'm just excited that we're able to make this work because when I found out about you and your work, I was very excited about getting the chance to talk with you about what you do. So to jump into this conversation, let's start with your background. We both went to UC Davis at one point in our educational career, but how did you get to where you are now as an ecotoxicologist? That's a really good question, and I think I mentioned this before and Wednesday before. It's not as if I decided that I was going to be an ecotoxicologist when I was a 12-year-old reading a book on toxicology. It was a bit of a long and winding road because I didn't have any scientists in my family growing up. So I would pick up all the trash on the way to the bus stop and be concerned about impacts on the environment, but I didn't know you could make a career out of that. So it was sort of gradual. I went to a minor in biology, and then I went and got a degree in environmental science and policies, a master's student. And sort of through that journey, I started to meet other people who were doing research, who were getting PhDs. A couple of that sounds really cool. And after working for a couple of years, I backed for a PhD. And I was lucky enough to be in the San Francisco area, and the UC Davis Marine Lab was right up the road on the Sonoma Coast. And so that's kind of how I landed there. I became a toxicologist a little bit by trial and error and a little bit by luck and a little bit by just being in the right place at the right time in some ways. So can we talk a little bit about what ecotoxicology is? What exactly is this area of study? That's a great question. So the field of toxicology, any type of research science that investigates how chemicals or other environmental stressors interact with our physiology, interact with organisms, in some cases, with adverse effects. And the questions around things like, how the chemical do you need to cause an adverse effect? Do those we observe scale up and cause issues with the overall health of a population? Ecotoxicology, much of that focuses on effects on human health, which of course is a big concern. Everything from air pollution to water pollution to other stressors affects human health greatly in a lot of ways. But ecotoxicology, that is specific to effects on organisms in the environment other than humans. So there are people who study effects on terrestrial animals, so animals that live on land. And then I in particular study effects in animals that live in the water, so in rivers, lakes, estuaries. So ecotoxics, it kind of broadly encompasses a description of the science involved in studying the responses of all of those organisms to stressors. Mostly pools, but now more about interactive effects, everything that comes along for example. Right, and the aquatic environment is one, I mean, we live on land, right? So land animals, what's happening in the air and on the land is something that's very important to us. But how does the health of the aquatic ecosystem feedback to affect us? Sure, sure. So in lots of ways, well, you know, all of the chemicals that are getting into the water are, like you said, originating on land. You know, treated wastewater, maybe they can run off from agricultural lands, from industrial facilities. And so all of those chemicals that are present in the water are likely present in some form in the air or, you know, in our food. And as we get further along this field, we're coming to realize that responses that we observe in aquatic organisms, in particular fish, also vertebrates just like us, that many of those responses are very similar to what we see in humans. So the responses we're seeing in fish when it comes to things like disruption of hormones or, you know, which then can scale up to disruptions in growth or effects on reproduction, how many offspring they're able to have. We often see those types of responses mimicked in humans and in terrestrial animals as well. And so we're all connected in that way. At the cellular level, we're all pretty similar. So when you're, what you're studying in the water, what are you looking at one category of these stressors that we know of that do affect humans are endocrine disruptors. Can you talk a little bit about those and the other things that you study? Sure, sure. And, and I've been studying endocrine disruptors since I started my PhD felt 12 years ago now. It sneaks up on you. So I remember writing, I was writing in one of the muni trains in San Francisco, and this was back before I had thought about going back for a PhD. But I'd been reading about people being concerned about feminization of fish. And then there was a poster up in the muni that was instructing people not to flush their drugs down the toilet because of this concern that feminizing fish. And I was like, oh, that's probably an oversimplification, but that sounds really interesting. And I want to learn more about that. And so I ended up focusing my PhD work on the effects of endocrine disruptors, mostly from agricultural runoff. And so it turns out that endocrine disruptors, which interfere with hormone function come from come in many different flavors. You have pharmaceuticals that run off into water, usually from wastewater treatment and effluent that come from things that are designed to mimic hormones. So birth control pills, for example, those have synthetic chemicals in them that look a lot like estrogen and testosterone or progesterone that are produced by our bodies and by fish as well. They use the same hormones. And then you have things like pesticides. There's a class of pesticides that is used across the country now called pyrethroids. And some of those, when you're spraying your lawn to prevent mosquitoes from coming in and attacking you, you may also be contributing a little bit to runoff that can interfere with endocrine function. There's also industrial chemicals that we've all heard of, like this phenol A and this, you know, a scat of other plasticizers. So they come from many different sources. And the tricky thing about chemicals that interfere with hormone function is that you don't need a lot of it to cause an effect. Your endocrine system is incredibly sensitive and you will respond to a chemical that's at a picomolar concentration. So to put that in perspective, it's like one drop of that chemical in an Olympic-sized swimming pool if you don't think concentration. So people will say, there's not that much runoff getting into the water. It's diluted, right? It's at a very low level. But it turns out you don't need a lot to cause at least subtle effects that can cause a fish to stop laying as many eggs, for example. So when you're talking about feminization of the fish, I mean, sounds like that's great. Wouldn't that lead to more egg laying all around? In some cases, yes. In some cases, it's more complicated than it sounds. And we had a model that we published last year where we looked at kind of the trade-offs between feminization and masculinization. And so one of the points that that paper made was, well, if you have just the right levels of estrogenic chemicals and androgenic chemicals kind of mixing together in a waterway, and that's what the fish are exposed to, then in some cases they can cancel each other out. But it gets more complicated than that because along with feminization, maybe you're producing more eggs, but there's offspring end up being lower quality, for example. There's almost always a trade-off or you grow more quickly, but that might make you more vulnerable to predation. Or it might mean, again, that you produce offspring earlier, but those offspring are less healthy. So there are lots of observations like that in the literature across organisms. So you might make more eggs, but they might not be as good. Right. So it's situational, really. It depends on what's going on in the water in terms of the chemical concentrations. It also depends on the individuals and the species that are there themselves. Yeah. So when you're talking about these animals, there's the individual effects like the endocrine disruptors affecting an individual. How do the individual effects parlay into population level effects that really have an effect on evolution and generational things? Absolutely. Yeah. So in the same study that came out last year, we did look, basically compiled a bunch of different laboratory experiments that have been done and came up with a model that predicted what population levels might be if in the situation fish were exposed to X, Y, and Z chemicals, examples of chemicals in the water. And for the most likely combination, it was about a 30% decline in population numbers for this particular species of fish. Whether that translates to other species, we're not sure. There are many other papers published across fish, across other organisms showing similar effects. So it's not, and I think that's sometimes why it doesn't get as much, there's not as much alarm about the situation because 20 or 30% doesn't sound maybe like that much to some of us. You know, not in the sciences, not sort of surrounded by this stuff. But over time, that can add up. And if you're talking about a fish that you like to eat, for example, that could eventually mean that you have less of that fish, you know, when you go out for sushi dinner, for example. So maybe that's a way to get people's attention. So it's gradual and some recent work we're showing is also demonstrating that these effects can be transferred across generations. And so if you expose parents to low levels of endocrine disruptors and then rear them out for a couple of generations, you're seeing reduced hatching success and reduced survival and altered growth in the unexposed generation. Yeah, so not only do you see a carryover effect to the offspring, which isn't that surprising, but then you can call them the grand fish, I guess the grand offspring, grandchildren are, we also see effects in those individuals as well. And that can then be scaled up to the population level. If you have fewer fish hatching, you're going to have fewer fish survive to adulthood. Right. Do we know how this is happening? Is this, I mean, I've read about this in across literature where there's a stressor in one population and then, you know, the successive generations have effects. Do you think this is an epigenetic effect? Is that I read something recently about RNA or epigenetic and transcription factors being packaged with sperm? Do we have any idea how this is having this long lasting effect generationally? Sure. There are a couple of different mechanisms. The main one that the most is known about is DNA methylation. And just to break that down a little bit, DNA methylation refers to the addition of small functional groups, small methyl groups. We won't get into the organic chemistry on this, but anyway, small, you can call them tags, like little tags that are being added to your DNA, close to the area where a gene is, and they can dictate how often that gene is expressed. And so this has been shown from humans down to, I think there was a paper out in sponges, even that sponges get their DNA methylated. So it's highly conserved. All organisms have it to some extent. Plants, there's been a lot of study in plants, studies in plants, for example, but so these tags are added to your DNA dependent on events or stressors or, you know, good and bad that you encounter throughout life. I think one of the most interesting studies was done on Holocaust survivors and their children and grandchildren. And they were finding that the offspring and even grandchildren of Holocaust survivors were more likely to have certain types of anxiety disorders. And it wasn't based on experiences they had had in their own life, but it was based on stressors that occurred in their grandparents' lives, and they were able to link that back to the methylation in the area of particular genes. And so we are now studying, yeah, it's crazy, right? And it makes you feel very cautious about what you're doing with your life because you don't want it to affect your great-grandchildren, right? But we're looking at that in fish in the lab now, and it's been looked at in other species in fish and determining that fish do have DNA methylation and use it for similar purpose to mammals and humans. And so we're hoping to link the potential epigenetic effects we see in this current study to methylation and that it's cranking away at the UC Davis Genome Center right now. Oh, fantastic. That's fascinating. Do you know about how long, like, any estimate on how long this study is going to take? I'm supposed to present it at a conference in early November, so I'm hoping for it. So yeah, so it should be in the next couple of weeks. Oh, that is exciting. That's going to be some interesting, those will be some interesting results for sure. Thinking about how these epigenetic factors work and, you know, things like endocrine disruptors in the environment and having these transgenerational effects. I'm just wondering how is this evolutionarily sustainable? Why would an organism want to methylate, control the regenerative or reproductive capacity of the offspring? I mean, what benefit would that be? Are there any ideas on that? Yeah, there are. And there is now, so the Skinner Lab, I think he's at University of Washington, came out with a paper a couple of years ago where he has put forth that the two events of epigenetic, methylation or if it occurs via another mechanism, epigenetic modifications are probably linked to longer term evolutionary adaptation. And there is some evidence that genes that get methylated are then more likely to mutate down the line. More likely. Yeah, so that's something I've done in my lab, but that's something that others have been looking at. And the thinking is that, okay, you are in a stressful environment, say there isn't a lot of food. And so the gene that controls how quickly you metabolize things gets methylated. And then that means your offspring, that gene is methylated in your offspring, and it's a situation where there's not enough food. Again, that situation continues. That offspring has quickly been able to adapt to that situation. But it's not always beneficial because what if, you know, if you're a human and you move from the situation where there's salmon to where food is plentiful, then that offspring is predisposed to the metabolic disorders and that sort of thing. So it can be good, but it can also kind of backfire in a way. Yeah, and this lines up also with the rapid change in the environment currently due to climate change, where populations are potentially methylating for the current situation, but down the line it may not be adaptive. That's absolutely right. Your adaptation has to match with the right period in time and the right set of conditions. So sometimes you get a mismatch and then that. That's really where I think part of the field of toxicology is heading to think about evolutionary toxicology and how, you know, are these epigenetic mechanisms leading to resistance, or are they leading to organisms that are more susceptible due to these trade-offs or due to a mismatch between the epigenetic tag that was laid down and the environment that they're currently in. I love the phrase that just struck me was evolutionary toxicology. I have never considered it. I think of it in terms of the human lifespan and always have where what's happening to me in my lifetime, but suddenly we're at a point where we're thinking about how these compounds that we are releasing into the environment that are in the environment are affecting generations down the line. That's a striking change in perspective in the questions that we would be able to ask. Yeah, it's a huge new area and a colleague of mine, we're on a grant together on a different topic, but for a lot of mass has been studying mutations, specific mutations that allow invertebrates that are exposed to pesticides to the zest become orders of magnitude more resistant to a pesticide exposure compared to one animal that hasn't been exposed. And it's really, it's incredibly interesting. Absolutely. Let's talk about the disruptors that we are putting into the environment. You mentioned the endocrine disruptors. There was a paper out recently about PCBs and killer whales and how there was another paper that we that we covered recently on the show about phthalates in the urine of dolphins. And these all come from these are organic persistent organic chemicals. These are from plastics. What kind what compounds are we what are the big concern compounds right now. The concerns it comes from two two different two different sources and the two chemicals you mentioned are good examples of PCBs highly coordinated by phenols were used basically as flame retardants back in and we banned them back in the 60s or 70s. I don't have the exact date in front of me, but they are so persistent because they bind to sediment they're hydrophobic. They sit in the sediments of aquatic areas of waterways. And they are very good at getting into the food web and they tend to associate with bats with lipids. And so they bioaccumulate and that's why you're seeing them at organisms at the top of the food chain right. It's very difficult to get rid of them. And I think that's something people don't evaluate or think about properly when we when we design new chemicals. We don't necessarily think clear think enough about how persistent those chemicals are in use of phthalates that are phthalates are type of chemical that are still being used as plasticizers. And you know the fact that we're seeing them in the urine of dolphins we're seeing them at an organisms that are at higher food or higher trophic levels and food web should be really right. My cat has just waved down. You can see the tail going from the camera. Hello kitty cat. It should be it should be alarming that we're we know we know what the characteristics of chemicals are that are going to be persistent in the environment. And we're seeing them three, four, you know, even five in some cases decades out still still hanging around yet we're still developing new chemicals that are maybe not quite as persistent but have many of those same characteristics. So it's it's it's problematic. And it's something that we don't consider when we invent the latest plasticizer of the latest. Do you think it's on. Do you think it's on scientists these these material scientists who are coming up with the you know the chemists who are coming up with these new materials do you think it is more on their minds. Now I mean in the 60s it was plastic everything everyone has Tupperware everyone plastic bags plastic wrap plastic plastic plastic and it was the thing the 50s and 60s was the kitchen of the future and it was this modern rage and it was making life better you know there are these advertisements for plastics make your life better you know and now decades later we realize how much plastics are getting into the environment and how much many of these you know like you mentioned the PCBs and the phthalates how they're getting into the environment and staying there so is there a different are we teaching the next the chemists of the next generation, these considerations. I don't know I think I think there might be slightly more awareness and when I think of plastics in the 50s and 60s I always get that movie the graduate, where it's a Dustin Hoffman asks what he should do with this feature and person says plastics. But nowadays it's and plastics are a really good example of where there should be more awareness and I think there is, but then you also have the, the perflornated chemical industry, which pretty Yeah, the ways and all and PFAS which incorporates hundreds of different types of chemicals that you know they're making things that are waterproof and making magical shirts that you spill you know tomato juice on and they it doesn't stain but But the downside is that those chemicals that get they get into waterways and they bio cleanly and in fact people they affect wildlife so I don't think there's enough awareness yet I think there's more but it's I don't think it's gotten to the point where it is influencing the design of chemicals in a way that chemicals are a lot safer today than they were decades ago. I think they're they're marginally safer and we're we're moving forward but but it's going to take and the other challenge too is that there just aren't there isn't enough funding to test enough funding or time to test all of those chemicals and that's a huge challenge. The toxicologist that we need to come up with ways to be able to test hundreds of chemicals at one time and prioritize the ones that we should do further study on and that's that's a big stumbling block right now. Yeah at this point are you still in the phase of well this class of chemicals all have the same basic structure so we'll just lump them all together. That's we're trying to find better ways toxicologists are trying to find better ways of doing that and there there was a call out from the EPA a couple of months ago that was trying to get at that very challenge. Okay we have we have so many chemicals we really need to get away from having all this testing that's based on using live animals live fish rats what have you and we need to have in vitro assays that you can run in a plate really quickly and do lots of exposure at once. And so so we're we're getting there but but but change is slow and especially for for ecotoxicology. You know we don't necessarily have other resources that you know a fancy National Institute of Health Funded Lab would have right you know and so there's always a little bit more funding for human health and that might move forward a little bit more quickly but we have to remind people that the two are you know intimately connected. Yeah. Forward but slowly. Slowly. I'm glad we're moving forward that is the that is the big key here keep moving forward I'm just what I wonder how much you know like big data super computers that are able to you know crunch massive data sets to be able to look at molecular structures and how they line up with already. With what we already know about negative environmental or ecological impacts. And that's it and that's a huge movement on the part of the EPA they have a tox cast program that is trying to do just that and use things called quantitative structure activity relationships which is a complicated way of saying group this class of chemicals here and group this this class of chemicals does that. The challenge is that first biology isn't always predictable. And sometimes sometimes things happen that you can't predict just by looking at the structure of the chemical and the fish and humans and we metabolize chemicals that get into the body and sometimes those metabolites are a bit more harmful or have different activity than the parent chemical did. And so that's that's something that's that's difficult to mimic with with a cell line or with just you know a computer program that classifies chemicals based on their on their structure. So the challenges. Yeah, we're talking so we're talking a bunch about this difference between fish and people and you're involved in a study through NOAA the National Geneographic and Atmospheric Association on marine debris. So looking at stuff like plastics in the environment. Could you talk a little bit about what you're seeing through your studies and this is through your your other position in North Carolina right. Yeah, so so technically it's all the same position just just to explain that. So before I came to OSU a year ago, I was an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington for about three and a half years. And so when I moved, you know, of course, you don't always move all of all of the ongoing grants because sometimes it makes more sense for them to stay where they were. And so because that study had already begun and it was on East Coast fish, we left the study there, but it's still it's it's complicated, but it's still it's still part of. And I'm adjunct there now because I still do work there. But my main position is at OSU it's all all kind of in the same part and parcel. But that study there, NOAA was understandably concerned about microplastics and microfibers and what might be happening in commercial fishery species. You know, one, because we want to make sure that their numbers aren't being affected because their health is declining because of exposure to plastic. And two, because we don't want to eat the plastic ourselves or the chemicals associated with those plastics. So they focused their last call on commercial fishery species. And so we obtained some funding to look at Black Sea Bass, which is a pretty big commercial fishery off the East Coast of the United States. And also delicious. And I haven't been able to eat them lately, but so the study consisted of two parts. One field. There goes the microphone microphone. One was a field component where we went out and collected Black Sea Bass off the coast of North Carolina from a couple of different sources just to confirm that they were ingesting plastic. And we've confirmed that microplastics. So plastics that are bigger than five millimeters in diameter in the guts of several sea bass. And now we're looking at eating big pieces of plastic, not just a little tiny. That's right. We didn't find it in that many of them. I think out of hundred and fifty fish or so that were sampled. We found macro larger pieces of plastics and three or four of them. But the thing to think about there is that they're going to excrete these plastics. So that's kind of a snapshot of what was happening on that particular day. And so we confirmed plastic ingestion. We're now looking at micro plastics as well, which takes a little bit more effort and processing. And then the second component of the study was to look at plastics in the lab to do a couple of different dose levels of plastic and to look at responses that are relevant to the health of the fishes. So looking at immune response and respiration. So how much oxygen are they taking in? How much effort are they taking to breathe? Pretty basic stuff. We'll be looking at gene expression down the line. And so the idea was to use the lab experiments to try to have an assessment of the risk that might be happening in the field. But how much risk is there to a black sea bass that has ingested three pieces of plastic? What effects, what biological effects might be sustained by the fish or might be occurring in that fish? So that's the ultimate goal of the study. And I have to give a shout out to all the wonderful, all my wonderful collaborators that are at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington. Because the study would not happen without them doing much of the heavy lifting right now. In terms of the plastic itself, I mean I understand a piece of plastic, it doesn't have nutritional value, it is replacing food in the gut of the animal. But what else would the plastic have in it that would be having an effect? Sure, sure. And I will speak briefly to the plastic taking up space in the gut and that lowering the amount of food that the organism can obtain nutrition from what we've seen in larval fish. And I would encourage that if there are fed plastics, whether they be cleaning plastics or contaminated plastics, that either type will cause a reduction in weight if you grow them out after a short term exposure. And so just the physical presence of the plastic itself can be problematic. But as far as chemicals, plastics like lipids and like sediment are really good at sticking to anything that doesn't like to mix with water. So if you have a chemical like PCB, so we'll get back to these persistent organic pollutants. Lots of persistent organic pollutants like PCBs, DDT, which we still find in the environment, still, still everywhere and hello cat. You didn't want to hang out with me until now. Those types of chemicals are found to be associated with plastics. And so the concern is that as a plastic hangs out in the water as it kind of ages, it's going to have more of these types of chemicals adhere to it, absorb to it. And then it becomes kind of a chemical cocktail. If a fish swallows it in a way becomes a way for those chemicals that have stuck to the plastic to be delivered to be like taking, like taking your, your daily dose of DDT. It's a little pill that has DDT and PCB and all these other things in with it. It sounds wonderful. But and now the question is, and something else we want to get at with our, the NOAA work. It's an experiment planned hopefully for next year. We've been a little bit waverly by the hurricane that Carolina is to look at whether do we really, how much of a concern should there be because they're pretty low levels of these chemicals. Do they leach off into the fish? If they do, where do they go? How long does it take? How much gets there? And so is it a concern for the fish? And is it also a concern for the person eating, eating the fish? So that's, that's where we are. We know, we know that plastics are, are kind of soaking up these chemicals. We just don't know how dangerous they are. Yeah. So those are, that's the big question at this point in time. Exactly how dangerous, what kind of effect. Is there a, is there any way to clean up these plastics? I mean, the micro plastics, I mean, I think my fiber, my, my sweater here is natural fibers should, should I be worried about my, the fleece that I wear, you know, my, my sports fabrics. This is also a really good question. And there are labs that are doing really detailed study of micro fibers now, because when you think about, in almost like five hours, like muscles or oysters, which the whole body of then, you know, you're ingesting the fibers and the plastics and whatever else is accumulated in that organism. So, so, so it definitely is, is a concern. We just don't know how much of a concern. Right. That's the trick. And it's going to take time to find out. And I think people, you know, understandably, people want to know now, like, oh, should I, should I throw out my fleece? Should I stop? Should I buy everything in glass and aluminum now? And, you know, and my, I guess my advice on that would be to follow the precautionary principle, because we know those things aren't as good for the environment. Or, you know, plastics aren't as good for the environment as these other, you know, measures we can take. So maybe try to reduce the plastic as much as much as you can. I think that's something that we don't talk about enough in terms of what people can do. I love the you bringing up the precautionary principle. This, if this is the worst thing that can happen, you know, would you want to be involved in making that terrible thing happen? Or do you want to limit your impact on that? Right, right. And I kind of have the same opinion about buying, if you can, I know they're expensive to buying organic fruit when you can instead of conventional, right? You're, you're applying the precautionary principle there too, because you're not only potentially protecting your family, but you're also protecting the people who work in the fields and have to spray those chemicals and get exposed to a lot more. So, so yeah, just think, and, you know, there's only so much you can do, right? And I'm, then you end up being like me and you feel guilty when you send your kids for a birthday party and they get a juice box of plastic straw. So there's, there's a, there's a, there's a fine line between, you know, trying to do what you can and being a little bit over, overzealous about it. But, but yeah, that's, because it's going to take us a long time to really quantify the impact, you know, might as well do what we can now to kind of stave off the constant stream of plastics and chemicals. Yeah. And, and thinking about, you know, from the, as we mentioned earlier, the individual effects of these endocrine disruptors on the population at large, the individual choices that we make can have an effect on the system at large. So even though you feel like, who am I one person? What can my little, you know, deciding to use a straw now or not use a straw later? What difference is it going to make? Well, if all of us are making those choices and choosing, you know, not to use a straw or whatever it happens to be, sometimes it's limiting. It's reducing the impact. That's right. That's right. Even if we can't, we can't quantify it at that moment, if collectively we're having less of an impact. So I get really excited when I see someone, you know, tell the restaurant, tell the waiter that they don't want to straw and that sort of thing. It's, it's the little things, right? Even if it seems, again, even if it seems significant. Yeah, at the larger level, it becomes significant. So we all can, we all can be a piece of this. I don't want to keep you all day long. We're having a wonderful conversation and I am loving talking with you about this. If people want to follow the results of your methylation study, find out what's going on with your research, where can they find you online? Sure. Well, we have a website, which I don't update nearly enough, but that's brandorlab.net. And so I try to update results of studies there as much as possible. I also, I'm on Twitter and the Twitter feed on my page updates to my, to my website as well, thanks to WordPress being a really easy to use. And so my Twitter handle is at smbrandor, E-R-A-N-D-E-R. So I try to post updates to research and studies there as much as possible as well. Wonderful. And if people are interested in supporting the kind of research that you do and answering these big questions about the real impact or the danger of these chemicals in our environment, how can they help? How can they do that? I really like to give a concrete answer on that. I really love a group called the Environmental Working Group. It's E-W-G-E dot O-R-G. And if you go to their website, they connect all of the latest research on impacts of chemicals, on impacts of microplastics, what have you, with consumer products. And so you can look up particular products that you're using and you can get a score as to how environmentally damaging that product might be or how great and wonderful that product might be. And so you basically get like a red or a green flag or somewhere in between. But it's a really, and I've shared it with a lot of friends and relatives. And I like it because it's easy for anyone to use and it makes you feel like you have a little bit more control over what you're doing in your own home or in your own life. Without having to read, you know, thousands of papers in the primary literature on, you know, what's dangerous and what isn't. Because I think it can be pretty overwhelming for people to try to figure out what, you know, you're at the grocery store and you have 18 different choices for toothpaste, right? Yeah. What do you do? So yes, Environmental Working Group is a really great organization and I think it's super helpful for those kinds of questions. Wonderful. Dr. Brander, thank you so much for joining me today. It has really been wonderful speaking with you, elucidating on so many levels. Thank you so much for having me. It was a lot of fun. And I'm glad, I'm glad the mode I've decided to stay on this time. I am too. Thank you, Technology, for making this interview possible. Everyone out there, I would love to invite you to watch other twist episodes on Wednesday evenings, 8 p.m. Pacific time at this YouTube channel or at twist.org slash live. You can also subscribe to the podcast, go to twist.org and find information there. I'm Dr. Kiki. Thank you so much for joining me today. And Dr. Brander, once again, thank you for joining me, everyone out there. Pay attention to this work because our environment feeds back to us. It is what, you know, it's all one big system and we need to be an active part of maintaining it. Thank you, everyone.