# What’s Really in Our Water & How It Affects Your Longevity | Professor Ian Wright

An episode of [Project 100 with Mark Bouris](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1767053714), 12 Oct 2025, 1 h 07 min.

Audio: https://p.podderapp.com/2544644999/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/2fb3740d-3436-44af-8cc0-a91900716aa5/05ac4e52-79fb-46b8-849c-b305000bd6d0/24ac4f43-74ec-4cb0-9472-b372006908af/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=ef13e652-7a19-41fd-9d0f-b305000bd6dc

All content and media by Project 100 is created and published online for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice and should not be relied on as health or personal advice. **** We all know water’s essential — but how safe is it, really? In this episode, I sit down with environmental scientist Professor Ian Wright to uncover what’s actually in Australia’s water, how it’s being treated, and what that means for your long-term health and longevity. From desalination plants and rural water systems to the growing threat of PFAS contamination, Professor Wright explains the hidden chemicals, the policies behind them, and how they can impact everything from your metabolism to disease risk. If you care about your health, your environment, and the future of clean water in Australia — this one’s for you. One product I’ve recently added to my routine from the Bulk Nutrients range is their NMN Extend. It’s a science-backed blend of 10 powerful ingredients, including NMN, Resveratrol, and Hyaluronic Acid, designed to support everything from energy and muscle recovery, to skin hydration, joint health, and event mental clarity. Check out their NMN extend product here: https://www.bulknutrients.com.au/products/nmn-capsules Eight Sleep’s newest generation, Pod 5. isn’t just another bed-frame add-on; it’s a high-tech mattress cover that actively adjusts to your body temperature throughout the night, cooling, warming, and even elevating your body when needed, all based on real-time data. The new Pod 5 introduces for the first time, a hydro-powered blanket system, utilising the same technology as the cover to extend temperature regulation across your entire body, not just the mattress surface. Clinically proven to increase quality sleep by up to one hour each night, it’s basically like having an AI-powered sleep coach, personal thermostat, and advanced health tracker working for you while you rest. Head on over to eightsleep.com/project100 and use the code PROJECT100 (that’s Project one-zero-zero) and get up to $550 off your very own Pod 5. Trust me, your body will thank you for this investment in better sleep. The all-new WHOOP is here — now 7% smaller with 14+ days of battery life. New features like Healthspan show how your daily habits are affecting your rate of aging — and now you can check your blood pressure straight from your wrist. If you’re serious about performance, longevity, and actual progress — this is it. Sign up for a one-month free trial at WHOOP.com — or visit join.whoop.com/mentored for one month off your annual membership fee. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Professor Ian Wright. Welcome to probably one hundred mate. And
[0:04] Speaker 1: by the way, you are an associate professor of Environmental
[0:09] Speaker 1: Science at the University of Western Sydney or what do
[0:12] Speaker 1: you call themselves, Western Sydney University these days.
[0:15] Speaker 2: Yes, yes, slightly different. It used to be UWS is
[0:18] Speaker 2: now WSU. Is that right here? It is?
[0:21] Speaker 3: And I first studied there when it was Hawkesbury ag College.
[0:24] Speaker 2: It's gone back a while.
[0:26] Speaker 1: I'm getting on a bit because it's funny that most
[0:29] Speaker 1: people don't know this, but most or at least the
[0:31] Speaker 1: universities I know. I was at the University New South
[0:33] Speaker 1: Wales that was a tech college in the late sixties,
[0:37] Speaker 1: and when I went first to the university in seventy
[0:39] Speaker 1: three it became university was I think it only just
[0:43] Speaker 1: became a university uw UTS University Technology was a tech
[0:49] Speaker 1: in here in the city.
[0:50] Speaker 2: In the middle of the city.
[0:51] Speaker 1: And University of West Sydney is one of the great
[0:54] Speaker 1: universities in New South Wales as far as I concerned,
[0:56] Speaker 1: in the state of New South Wales or in this
[0:58] Speaker 1: country for that matter, I have a great lot of
[1:00] Speaker 1: affection for that university. Maybe you could just quickly tell
[1:03] Speaker 1: us a little bit about your research areas and your
[1:06] Speaker 1: current role.
[1:07] Speaker 3: Sure, so, I currently work in the School of Science.
[1:10] Speaker 3: I teach and I do research, but I'm into water
[1:14] Speaker 3: and any aspect of human relationship with water. Flood, drought,
[1:20] Speaker 3: pollution is a big thing, recreation, swimming, quality. Are just
[1:25] Speaker 3: fascinated by.
[1:26] Speaker 2: Water and people as in seawater as well seawater fresh water.
[1:30] Speaker 3: I love water. I'm a bit of a Labrador. I
[1:32] Speaker 3: love jumping in water.
[1:32] Speaker 1: Well that's amazing because Australians love water like we're surrounded
[1:35] Speaker 1: by water. We don't have too many inland rivers, or
[1:38] Speaker 1: we have some inland rivers, but we are the driest
[1:42] Speaker 1: continent on the world too, of course. But nonetheless you
[1:46] Speaker 1: so you cover all aspects of water and you teach
[1:48] Speaker 1: in relation to all aspects of water at university.
[1:50] Speaker 2: I do, yeah, I do it.
[1:51] Speaker 3: I'm from the water industry, so I spent nearly twenty
[1:53] Speaker 3: years working at Sydney Water and I worked in the
[1:56] Speaker 3: catchments Warrigor a catchment science labs. But I just I'm
[2:02] Speaker 3: fascinated by water and people and it is such a
[2:04] Speaker 3: big feature of the Australian culture anywhere, like people dying
[2:08] Speaker 3: to get a water view or drought defining you know,
[2:13] Speaker 3: whether the animals live or you know, people thrive. It's
[2:17] Speaker 3: just fascinating and.
[2:20] Speaker 1: I'm really interested to talk to you because you know,
[2:23] Speaker 1: this shows about longevity and you know, doing all those
[2:26] Speaker 1: things we can to do to give us ourselves a
[2:29] Speaker 1: fighting chance to live as long as we possibly can,
[2:31] Speaker 1: as well as we possibly can. And these are sort
[2:34] Speaker 1: of my private inquiries with experts like you about things
[2:41] Speaker 1: that may cause difficulty in relation to living along growl better.
[2:46] Speaker 1: And clearly we're made up of a lot of water
[2:49] Speaker 1: as human means, I don't know, seventy eight percent, whatever
[2:51] Speaker 1: it is, and lots of minerals that go into water.
[2:55] Speaker 1: It's not just water, it's not just H two, but
[2:57] Speaker 1: it's a lot of other stuff in there. But equally
[2:59] Speaker 1: a lot of other stuff in that that's not good
[3:01] Speaker 1: for us, absolutely, and I want to talk to you
[3:04] Speaker 1: about some of those things.
[3:07] Speaker 2: And let's just start with.
[3:11] Speaker 1: The quality of Australian water just generally, not let's not
[3:14] Speaker 1: pick on Sydney, just Australian water generally, and how does
[3:17] Speaker 1: it rank relative to the rest.
[3:18] Speaker 2: Of the world.
[3:19] Speaker 3: The big the big division is are you talking regional
[3:23] Speaker 3: or capital city that's interesting. There's there's there's the big difference.
[3:27] Speaker 3: Let's let's do metro metro okay, then, and then we
[3:31] Speaker 3: have another division. Are we talking South Australia, Western Australia
[3:36] Speaker 3: or just the southeast. So the water of Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney,
[3:41] Speaker 3: Hobart brilliant, absolutely brilliant. I have no hesitation on a
[3:46] Speaker 3: world scale, on a world scale, absolutely right up there,
[3:49] Speaker 3: right up there, well, South Australia a bit average, Perth,
[3:55] Speaker 3: very average, depending on the different supply districts. On Perth,
[4:00] Speaker 3: it's got two detail plants thirds about to start. They
[4:04] Speaker 3: run flat out.
[4:04] Speaker 1: So detail being salination plants. So they're not using damn
[4:09] Speaker 1: water accumulated from a rain or from whatever rivers. They're
[4:14] Speaker 1: sucking it out of the sea and they're taking the
[4:16] Speaker 1: salt and everything else out of and turning into drinking water.
[4:19] Speaker 3: Is that with that, you mean that they are unperthed.
[4:21] Speaker 3: I could talk for five hours on Perth. I mean
[4:23] Speaker 3: it's it's rainfall has dropped about ten percent, and that's
[4:26] Speaker 3: equated to roughly and eighty to ninety percent reduction in
[4:31] Speaker 3: stream flow because it's flat and hot. It's just changed
[4:35] Speaker 3: that balance. So the Perth surface water supply has done that.
[4:39] Speaker 3: It's dropped down and so population's gone up. And Perth
[4:42] Speaker 3: doesn't just supply Perth, it also supplies the gold fields
[4:47] Speaker 3: and the wheat belt town. They look after the region
[4:52] Speaker 3: and that is an economic powerhouse. So they have had
[4:56] Speaker 3: for Australia by the way, totally yeah, yeah, and we
[5:00] Speaker 3: want them to stay part of Australia. We can't afford
[5:02] Speaker 3: for them to seceed. But their water stress is enormous
[5:05] Speaker 3: in Western Australia in general, they're drinking water. Nearly everyone
[5:11] Speaker 3: in Western Australia would have a water filter. It's particularly
[5:13] Speaker 3: in red areas. It's extremely salty and there's all kinds
[5:17] Speaker 3: of other problems.
[5:18] Speaker 1: Can we just talk on desalination because I know we've
[5:20] Speaker 1: got a detail plant in a round down at Colonel somewhere.
[5:23] Speaker 1: We did have one. We still got many year because
[5:25] Speaker 1: I remember when I think it was about twenty nineteen
[5:28] Speaker 1: or two thousand and eighty and we had a fairly
[5:30] Speaker 1: significant drought and the war again Madam got very low,
[5:33] Speaker 1: yes somewhere what percentage of it was bad because I
[5:36] Speaker 1: remember you couldn't turn your hoses on the stuff that
[5:38] Speaker 1: the bank's correct and they started to about I think
[5:42] Speaker 1: that's when the detail plants started to be sort of
[5:44] Speaker 1: kick in a bit and they started about talking about
[5:47] Speaker 1: bringing another desalination plants in.
[5:49] Speaker 2: Is why is desalination water not so good for you?
[5:54] Speaker 3: They have to actually put minerals back in it because
[5:57] Speaker 3: it is so pure, there's so much H two Oh.
[5:59] Speaker 2: It's just issue I sort of thing.
[6:01] Speaker 3: Yeah, it is. It would actually demineralize us, so like
[6:05] Speaker 3: the calcium will actually leach from our teeth and bones,
[6:09] Speaker 3: so they have to it's actually quite aggressive water. There's
[6:13] Speaker 3: pure water that they produce, so they actually will put
[6:17] Speaker 3: more minerals back in, particularly things like calcium, and then
[6:22] Speaker 3: it's more healthy. But it provides if it's flat out,
[6:26] Speaker 3: it will provide fifteen percent of Sydney's water demand. It's
[6:29] Speaker 3: a tiny it's nothing like Perth. Yeah, but as our
[6:34] Speaker 3: former premier bobcar he called it bottled electricity. They use
[6:39] Speaker 3: gantuans amount of electricity to push that salt water through
[6:42] Speaker 3: membranes to get the pure H two O.
[6:45] Speaker 2: So it's very inefficient environmentally.
[6:47] Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, yeah, very but it's like having a spare tire.
[6:52] Speaker 3: It's really good to have that when if you're in
[6:54] Speaker 3: an emergency and you need that. It's a great thing
[6:56] Speaker 3: to happen.
[6:57] Speaker 2: Well, that's interesting because when you look at some of those.
[7:01] Speaker 1: Arabic countries or in the emirates of those sorts of areas,
[7:04] Speaker 1: and you know, you go there and it's like desert.
[7:08] Speaker 2: They don't have a lot of rainfall.
[7:09] Speaker 1: They definitely don't have many mountains aneral rivers, and they're
[7:13] Speaker 1: probably one hundred desalination epect pretty close to that. And
[7:19] Speaker 1: and and what you're saying is actually, maybe think about something.
[7:23] Speaker 1: So when you let's call it filter water to take
[7:27] Speaker 1: the salt out for argument sake, Yes, so it's drinkable.
[7:32] Speaker 1: The filtration process of water effectively demineralizes the water and
[7:37] Speaker 1: just turns it into just like, let's call it pure.
[7:41] Speaker 1: You know, two atoms of hydrogen hydrogen, one atom of oxygen,
[7:46] Speaker 1: effectively two Now, if we drink pure water in its
[7:51] Speaker 1: purest form, in other words, no minerals tell me what happens.
[7:56] Speaker 1: You said, it starts to demineralize us. It's is that
[8:00] Speaker 1: because the atoms looking for other electrons in your body
[8:05] Speaker 1: and therefore find a carbon atom which has a few
[8:08] Speaker 1: electrons that can be donated to the oxygen or hydrogen.
[8:10] Speaker 2: Its actually sucks it away.
[8:12] Speaker 3: It's essentially like osmosis. So you've got almost no calcium
[8:16] Speaker 3: in that in that water. We have lots of calcium
[8:19] Speaker 3: in us, so it will start to go into the
[8:21] Speaker 3: water to equalize that that you know, reaction.
[8:26] Speaker 1: But why does why does the calcium leave my teeth
[8:28] Speaker 1: or bones for example, and go and attach itself to it?
[8:31] Speaker 2: Does attach yourself to water? Attaches itself to the hydrogen oxygen?
[8:34] Speaker 3: I guess it more equalizes the reaction of the calcium
[8:37] Speaker 3: in the blood and the calcium in the digestive system.
[8:39] Speaker 1: Right, it's not bones, it's coming out of the calcium blood, but.
[8:43] Speaker 3: Of your whole system. Right. Yeah, And because we're always
[8:46] Speaker 3: replacing calcium, it's it's a good thing to have plenty
[8:49] Speaker 3: of calcium in your diet. And most of our natural
[8:55] Speaker 3: water has pretty small amounts, but it's a really important
[8:59] Speaker 3: source of of calcium. So people that for example, have
[9:03] Speaker 3: triple desalinated water, and I read about these systems all
[9:07] Speaker 3: the time, they are advised to remneralize it with calcium magnesium.
[9:13] Speaker 1: What about the But then what about these people who
[9:15] Speaker 1: for example, have a filter water field at home, and
[9:19] Speaker 1: I've heard of this, and I'm about to put a
[9:21] Speaker 1: water filter in my housep home, but I'm on a
[9:25] Speaker 1: my office. I presume those filters probably take they're taking
[9:33] Speaker 1: out all the rubbish out or allegedly taking all the
[9:35] Speaker 1: toxins out, but they probably take everything else out as.
[9:37] Speaker 2: Well, do they?
[9:38] Speaker 3: No? No, day, No, A fairly fundamental filter will take
[9:42] Speaker 3: out you know, solid particles, even at really really small,
[9:47] Speaker 3: you know, micron sort of level. That's heavy metals, heavy
[9:51] Speaker 3: heavy metals and small cells of algae and things like
[9:54] Speaker 3: that that are naturally part of most most waterways. But
[9:58] Speaker 3: to do something like desalination, they use absolutely tiny, tiny
[10:03] Speaker 3: little holes that they basically push through. These are the
[10:06] Speaker 3: membranes they push water through, right.
[10:08] Speaker 1: So it's push you as opposed to sort of just
[10:10] Speaker 1: soaking through exactly.
[10:12] Speaker 2: It's pushing getting pushed.
[10:13] Speaker 1: It's getting forced through, which is probably where the power
[10:15] Speaker 1: is involved, because they've got a turbine or something pushing
[10:17] Speaker 1: it or turning it.
[10:18] Speaker 3: Absolutely so, I think I think a water field is
[10:22] Speaker 3: a good idea. But one of my most common complaints
[10:26] Speaker 3: when I travel around Australia is chlorine, and particularly if
[10:29] Speaker 3: you've got a countrytown you often smell it, you run
[10:31] Speaker 3: a shower, I can spell it on me. And if
[10:35] Speaker 3: you boil the water or age the water, even just
[10:38] Speaker 3: put it in a jug and put it in the fridge.
[10:40] Speaker 3: It's volatile.
[10:42] Speaker 2: It'll go to a gas form the chlorine.
[10:45] Speaker 3: The chlorine escape and escape, and then you're drinking much
[10:48] Speaker 3: much lower. And that's you know, it's largely the taste.
[10:51] Speaker 3: So it's largely the smell of chlorine, and smell is
[10:54] Speaker 3: associated with taste. But also you know, cloths not it keeps.
[11:00] Speaker 3: It basically kills pathogenic organisms. That's why we have it
[11:04] Speaker 3: in water. But you don't need it in the water
[11:08] Speaker 3: that you drink in the fridge. So even if you
[11:10] Speaker 3: just boil water or aged in the fridge, you.
[11:12] Speaker 2: Get rid of the chlorine.
[11:13] Speaker 3: Anyone that keeps fish knows about it. They know that
[11:15] Speaker 3: you do not feel a fish tank directly from the
[11:18] Speaker 3: tap right because of the sudden shock that the fish
[11:22] Speaker 3: can get from the chlorine.
[11:24] Speaker 1: Okay, that's very interesting, So I might just park, for
[11:28] Speaker 1: example for a moment. The example you just gave a
[11:30] Speaker 1: moment ago in relation to filtration, because I have heard
[11:34] Speaker 1: of filtration systems which actually reminimalize the water for you
[11:38] Speaker 1: once you've filtered it. But I want to park that
[11:40] Speaker 1: and come back to you and ask you that question
[11:42] Speaker 1: a moment. If we just go back to water, that's
[11:47] Speaker 1: we're not talking about desalination water. Let's talk about New
[11:49] Speaker 1: South whilst rugging's sake, Brisbane, Queensland, Victoria, where the water's
[11:57] Speaker 1: coming out of dams and rivers and what have you,
[12:02] Speaker 1: coming out of the sky, dropping down from the sky.
[12:05] Speaker 1: And I do want to park Tasmania from home, because
[12:08] Speaker 1: I do know that in Tasmania they have a CSRO
[12:12] Speaker 1: outpost there which measures the particulars in the sky in
[12:15] Speaker 1: a place called down the South it's Cape grim Yeah,
[12:20] Speaker 1: and they measure it there and allegedly the atmosphere has
[12:25] Speaker 1: the lowest amount of particulars of any place in the world.
[12:27] Speaker 1: I heard that, yes, And therefore, therefore, by expansion, any
[12:33] Speaker 1: rain that falls through that atmosphere could be the cleanest
[12:37] Speaker 1: water in the world could be. We'll come back to
[12:39] Speaker 1: that in a moment. So let's just look at New South, Wales,
[12:42] Speaker 1: Queensland and Victoria at the moment, and we understand that
[12:45] Speaker 1: desalination poses different issues. So the water falls from the
[12:50] Speaker 1: sky or runs off from the land as a result
[12:52] Speaker 1: of raining, or comes out of the river and sits
[12:54] Speaker 1: in a dam, and the water is in the dam.
[12:56] Speaker 1: And if I walked up to one of the dams
[12:58] Speaker 1: and just stuck me in and the water started drinking,
[12:59] Speaker 1: it wouldn't be that good idea, would it.
[13:03] Speaker 3: I think you'd be fine. Generally, No, it wouldn't be
[13:06] Speaker 3: a great idea. But if you were you know, if
[13:09] Speaker 3: you didn't have your water bottle with your it was
[13:10] Speaker 3: a hot day, I'd do it.
[13:12] Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd do it. Yeah, you would do it. Yeah, yeah.
[13:15] Speaker 1: So what are the things though that might be a
[13:18] Speaker 1: problem for me before the water comes as opposed to
[13:21] Speaker 1: water is coming out of the tap coming from wragamadan?
[13:24] Speaker 3: What do you even if in Sydney in the nineteen
[13:27] Speaker 3: nineties when we had the crypto incident, you remember that,
[13:29] Speaker 3: I do remember it. So Crypto spuridium a protozoan that's
[13:34] Speaker 3: sometimes called the bushwalking disease. So if you go to
[13:38] Speaker 3: a popular bushwalking area, they don't have a lot of
[13:40] Speaker 3: public toilets, so people take take a leak behind the
[13:44] Speaker 3: bush that you'd be exposed potentially to crypto spuridium, Gilladia,
[13:51] Speaker 3: those sort of and there's sometimes nearly all mammal species
[13:56] Speaker 3: have some kind of bug in them like that. So
[13:58] Speaker 3: that's why if you can boil the water, that's a
[14:01] Speaker 3: good thing to do, and that's.
[14:03] Speaker 2: What you're killing off. You're killing off the bacteria exactly.
[14:05] Speaker 3: It Yeah, the bacteria and other pathogenic organisms, right, viruses, but.
[14:10] Speaker 1: They're either are alive, yes, so the bopelling basically boils
[14:14] Speaker 1: and kills them.
[14:14] Speaker 3: But I did a bushwalk the other day in kring
[14:16] Speaker 3: Guy Chase, and you know, I knew the National Park
[14:20] Speaker 3: and was water dripping. Now, it didn't drink, but I
[14:22] Speaker 3: knew if I got if I needed to, I would
[14:23] Speaker 3: have I would have drunk that I would have been
[14:25] Speaker 3: taking a risk with cryptospridium. And I have had it
[14:29] Speaker 3: because my son had it about fifteen years ago. He
[14:33] Speaker 3: had kind of uncontrollable vomiting and diarrhea, so he had
[14:36] Speaker 3: it tested. He had it. I had the same disease.
[14:39] Speaker 3: I wasn't tested, but I know I had it. And
[14:41] Speaker 3: it's very very unpleasant, but it's more an unpleasantness rather
[14:44] Speaker 3: than something that seriously threatens your health.
[14:47] Speaker 1: So in other words, if you're like you desperately need water,
[14:49] Speaker 1: it's more important to get sick and drink the water
[14:51] Speaker 1: than it is to not have water whatsoever, because you know,
[14:54] Speaker 1: our body needs. We can go without food for a
[14:59] Speaker 1: while quite a few days, but we can't go without
[15:02] Speaker 1: water for many days.
[15:03] Speaker 2: No, that's absolutely so we we and hydration.
[15:09] Speaker 1: Is probably one of the most important things for us
[15:11] Speaker 1: as humans. Yes, walk in a biological sense, complete hydration.
[15:16] Speaker 1: The water is at the dam, and you know if
[15:18] Speaker 1: you have to drink, you could drink it is to
[15:20] Speaker 1: get it and they have got mouthful of it. But
[15:23] Speaker 1: what do they do what a citny wa to do?
[15:25] Speaker 1: For example, what what do they add to that water
[15:27] Speaker 1: before it comes through our tap?
[15:29] Speaker 3: The big one is chlorine, right, and they often add
[15:31] Speaker 3: that with chlorine mixed with ammonia law amanation, and it
[15:36] Speaker 3: makes the chlorine last a long time because then once
[15:40] Speaker 3: and they filter it and they add floculence so that
[15:44] Speaker 3: that binds a lot of the contaminants that then fall
[15:47] Speaker 3: to the bottom.
[15:48] Speaker 2: Right, But so does that happen in the dam or
[15:52] Speaker 2: does it?
[15:52] Speaker 3: They have filtrassion plants, right, and they're basically they look
[15:58] Speaker 3: kind of like big giant Olympic swimming pools, big pools
[16:02] Speaker 3: of water. So that allows any solid particles to fall,
[16:06] Speaker 3: so sedimentation that says a result of floculation as they
[16:09] Speaker 3: assist that with floculation, and then they chlorinate, so then
[16:14] Speaker 3: it joins this myriad of pipelines thousands and thousands of kilometers,
[16:18] Speaker 3: some of which can be approaching one hundred years old.
[16:22] Speaker 3: And they had a bit of chlorine so that if
[16:25] Speaker 3: anything enters that, any contaminated particle, the chlorine.
[16:31] Speaker 1: Will kill it, right, And what's the property chlorin that
[16:33] Speaker 1: it kills live contaminants.
[16:38] Speaker 3: It is a toxin, but it's a toxin. We are tough.
[16:42] Speaker 3: Humans are a tough species. We can cope with, but
[16:45] Speaker 3: organisms can't. And it's one of the things that has
[16:48] Speaker 3: allowed us to live in big cities. You know. We
[16:51] Speaker 3: only work this out from about the eighteen fifties, the
[16:55] Speaker 3: germ theory of disease. Doctor John snow In the cholera
[16:59] Speaker 3: outbreaks of London worked out it wasn't the odors of
[17:03] Speaker 3: contamination that was making us sick and giving people cholera.
[17:07] Speaker 3: It was contamination in the water and specifically human waste,
[17:10] Speaker 3: fecal waste, and chlorine was something that we learned to
[17:15] Speaker 3: add in the early nineteen hundreds that has enabled us
[17:18] Speaker 3: to grow really big, and so it helps control any
[17:23] Speaker 3: possible contabulation you to it. Yeah, population because prior to
[17:27] Speaker 3: that we really couldn't live in cities. Once they got
[17:30] Speaker 3: to about one hundred thousand, disease spread like wildfire.
[17:33] Speaker 2: Wow. And chlorine was the big solution, big part of that.
[17:37] Speaker 3: Absolutely clean and separating clean water from waste water, you know,
[17:41] Speaker 3: both rubbish, food scraps, human waste, animal waste, keeping the
[17:45] Speaker 3: to as far apart as possible.
[17:47] Speaker 1: So reducing the likelihood of the probability of some of
[17:51] Speaker 1: these wastes actually getting into the water, notwith seeing the
[17:54] Speaker 1: fact that chlorine could probably clean it up, but just
[17:56] Speaker 1: separation of the two.
[17:59] Speaker 3: Absolutely so you know. So this is a really old
[18:01] Speaker 3: part of Sydney Darlinghurst. I've got pictures of the water
[18:06] Speaker 3: supply prior to eighteen eighty eight was often a tank.
[18:10] Speaker 3: We didn't have highly advanced tanks, so they're often barrels.
[18:14] Speaker 3: So people often dug holes, so they dug wells and
[18:18] Speaker 3: often they had right beside it that'll train, so there.
[18:22] Speaker 2: You had and the latrain then was a hole on
[18:25] Speaker 2: the ground.
[18:25] Speaker 3: The low train was a hole on the ground like
[18:27] Speaker 3: a septic tank without any of the engineering, so they
[18:31] Speaker 3: didn't know that. The germ theory of disease wasn't really
[18:34] Speaker 3: accepted until the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds.
[18:40] Speaker 3: And then we keep it too, as separate as possible,
[18:43] Speaker 3: which is why most of our water catchments are very
[18:45] Speaker 3: controlled in terms of keep them as naturally vegetated and
[18:50] Speaker 3: as much waste out of it as possible.
[18:52] Speaker 2: As in a long way away from all that sort
[18:54] Speaker 2: of stuff.
[18:54] Speaker 3: Exactly.
[18:55] Speaker 2: Yes, then they can ask you this question.
[18:59] Speaker 1: So the waters, the water's damned, you know, there's potential
[19:05] Speaker 1: for different bugs that being that water, they hit it
[19:09] Speaker 1: with a bit of chlorine. In these settlement areas, the
[19:14] Speaker 1: all the bad stuff sinks to the bottom and they
[19:16] Speaker 1: clean that out or whatever, and then the stuff that's
[19:18] Speaker 1: sitting at the top.
[19:20] Speaker 2: We'll come back to what other things that might be
[19:21] Speaker 2: added to water. But that water then goes along the
[19:24] Speaker 2: pipe system.
[19:25] Speaker 1: And let's say we're here in Darlinghurst and it was
[19:28] Speaker 1: you know, darling is one of the earlier parts of Sydney.
[19:31] Speaker 2: The pipes were made of what.
[19:33] Speaker 3: Uh, some of the pipes were made from wood, believe
[19:36] Speaker 3: it or not.
[19:36] Speaker 2: Wood, but yeah, timber, Yeah, timbers. There were yeah, And I.
[19:40] Speaker 3: Worked at Sydney Water for a long time, so often
[19:43] Speaker 3: Staff magazine there was footage of another timber water pipe.
[19:47] Speaker 3: Some of the big reservoirs around here, like Centennial Park,
[19:51] Speaker 3: some of those have timber timbers basically holding the roof
[19:58] Speaker 3: of reservoirs. It cast iron was extremely popular. Cast Iron
[20:04] Speaker 3: is actually brittle, but very strong and long lasting. And
[20:08] Speaker 3: then you know steel pipes.
[20:12] Speaker 2: So the pipes, so the pipes come into this building,
[20:14] Speaker 2: for example, would.
[20:15] Speaker 3: They be steel or certainly yeah, and often lined in
[20:19] Speaker 3: plastic or even concrete. Whole series of things. The science
[20:25] Speaker 3: of what creates a pipe that can last decades and
[20:28] Speaker 3: decades and decades is quite well advanced. And you know,
[20:33] Speaker 3: once they cracked that in about the eighteen eighties, we
[20:36] Speaker 3: had a fantastic water supply. And here Darlinghurst, I mean
[20:40] Speaker 3: we're not far from the Tank Stream. Then Centennial Park
[20:45] Speaker 3: that was called Buzzby's Bore and it was dug by
[20:48] Speaker 3: convicts from the swamps of Centennial Park and it came
[20:51] Speaker 3: pretty much along Oxford Street and then Botany Swamps near
[20:56] Speaker 3: the Airport Sydney. You still see it basically the golf
[21:01] Speaker 3: course water traps and then they went Upper Nepean and
[21:05] Speaker 3: water gravitated from the Napeon River with a series of
[21:09] Speaker 3: incredible engineering canals Siphons tunnels still works today eighteen eighties,
[21:16] Speaker 3: gravitates all the way from the upper Napean River, not
[21:19] Speaker 3: far from Appen.
[21:20] Speaker 2: It doesn't need to be pumped.
[21:22] Speaker 3: Absolutely incredible, still works today. Incredible engineering. And then we
[21:26] Speaker 3: started building dams. Because the technology of building dams, they
[21:30] Speaker 3: need to be really safe, so they you know Avon, Cataract, Cordo,
[21:35] Speaker 3: war Anura and then eventually Warra Gamber in nineteen sixty
[21:39] Speaker 3: was built, totally pushed concrete to the limits and at
[21:44] Speaker 3: the time they were some of the biggest water supply
[21:46] Speaker 3: dams in the world because most parts of the world
[21:48] Speaker 3: just extract water from the river. But because we don't
[21:51] Speaker 3: have reliable flow, Australia had to rely much, much, much
[21:55] Speaker 3: more on storage dams.
[21:56] Speaker 1: And that water is flying through perhaps concrete or stell line,
[22:04] Speaker 1: the conuert perhaps places it's already got the chlorine in it.
[22:10] Speaker 2: Are there any other points at which.
[22:15] Speaker 1: Contaminants can get into the water, or is there is
[22:17] Speaker 1: it pretty much contained at the at the damn level
[22:19] Speaker 1: so to speak. In other words, there or is de
[22:22] Speaker 1: risked in terms of contaminant has been getting into the
[22:25] Speaker 1: water between that and the time you turn on your tap.
[22:28] Speaker 3: The whole series of points, it's a really it's a
[22:29] Speaker 3: really good point. You've got a lot of protected catchments,
[22:33] Speaker 3: particularly the best water in Sydney, but hot lies between
[22:37] Speaker 3: here Sutherland and Yeah, but the southern suburbs of Sydney, Sutherland,
[22:43] Speaker 3: warren Oora Reservoir and then Avon Cataract Quardo. That is
[22:48] Speaker 3: mostly protected catchments between us and Wollongong, right, and they
[22:54] Speaker 3: have there mostly naturally vegetated. People are fenced out. You
[22:58] Speaker 3: can only go in with permission to do that unless
[23:03] Speaker 3: you're a coal mine. I'd rather not talk about that.
[23:05] Speaker 3: But those catchments just keep providing water. It's like the
[23:11] Speaker 3: ultimate natural recycled product.
[23:15] Speaker 1: You know. It's because it soaks through the ground or
[23:18] Speaker 1: whatever you call it and ends up in the dam
[23:20] Speaker 1: agent and.
[23:22] Speaker 3: Then there's you know, evaporation, clouds rains that purifies that
[23:26] Speaker 3: water cycle purifies it each time. And so controlling the
[23:31] Speaker 3: catchment is one controlling access, keeping it as natural as possible,
[23:35] Speaker 3: keeping any pollution creating activities out of there. Then it
[23:41] Speaker 3: goes into the pipeline where it is treated and with chlorine,
[23:46] Speaker 3: with chlorine filtered. And its next part is monitoring all
[23:52] Speaker 3: the way.
[23:54] Speaker 1: There'll be monitoring places like every however, many kilometers wherever
[23:58] Speaker 1: it is, just to see what the caller is.
[24:00] Speaker 3: Absolutely and for something sounds really crazy, but one of
[24:04] Speaker 3: the main qualities of water that's measured is the clarity
[24:07] Speaker 3: clear water. The clearer it is, it needs to be
[24:10] Speaker 3: really really clear. We call that turbidity, which is a
[24:13] Speaker 3: scattering of light really clear water. That's like a fantastic
[24:17] Speaker 3: surrogate for the health of the water. So they even
[24:20] Speaker 3: would study that continuously at multiple points. And if the
[24:24] Speaker 3: water goes cloudy, bang switches off battery of tests what's
[24:28] Speaker 3: going on here?
[24:29] Speaker 2: Right?
[24:29] Speaker 1: And so when it arrives it comes out your tap.
[24:35] Speaker 1: What are the things that would make us sit up
[24:38] Speaker 1: and go, well, hang on a minute, the water's no good,
[24:41] Speaker 1: whether there's something wrong with the water.
[24:42] Speaker 2: I should get this water tested. What would you what
[24:44] Speaker 2: would you say if that happened to your tap.
[24:47] Speaker 3: I'm really used to working in rural Australia, so I
[24:50] Speaker 3: see bad water all the time, the nose, the big
[24:53] Speaker 3: run and also the site discoloration or a funny odor.
[24:58] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not just a lurie smell. It could be
[25:01] Speaker 1: a sulfur a sulfur smell, yes, yeah.
[25:03] Speaker 3: And if you go to small country towns, you will
[25:07] Speaker 3: often find and everyone there might locally know, oh yeah,
[25:10] Speaker 3: we've just got We've got, you know, sort of a peaty,
[25:12] Speaker 3: swampy sort of system. So it's got a bit more
[25:14] Speaker 3: of an earthy smell like wet Heshian or something like that,
[25:18] Speaker 3: sulfur if it's closer to the coast. But yeah, that
[25:23] Speaker 3: you know. I also study water tanks in farms, and
[25:28] Speaker 3: million people in Australia use water tanks. They have massive variation.
[25:34] Speaker 3: And my mum used to have a farm until ten
[25:35] Speaker 3: years ago and it was the color of dilute tea,
[25:39] Speaker 3: so it was still drinkable. We started to bring water
[25:43] Speaker 3: from Sydney and it really offended mum and it wasn't
[25:46] Speaker 3: enough of a son to clean out her water tank
[25:49] Speaker 3: on the farm. I was usually doing other things, but
[25:52] Speaker 3: sometimes we started to get a bit sick. And then
[25:56] Speaker 3: one day we went with my wife's dog and the
[25:59] Speaker 3: dog got diarrhea. I thought, that's it. I'm not drinking
[26:01] Speaker 3: this water anymore.
[26:02] Speaker 1: See, is that water when you if you shower it.
[26:04] Speaker 1: You don't drinkt's see, you don't drink, but you shower it.
[26:08] Speaker 1: It can through osmosis, you get affected by those that
[26:11] Speaker 1: sort of water it can somehow get through your skin
[26:14] Speaker 1: into your system.
[26:14] Speaker 3: Probably not, that's a good question. Water was actually, you
[26:19] Speaker 3: know it was, Yeah, beautiful fields to shower in. Actually,
[26:25] Speaker 3: most tank water is incredibly dilute, sort of soft, very soft, exactly,
[26:31] Speaker 3: very very soft water. But most water tanks, most and
[26:38] Speaker 3: I published research on this, no one tests their water
[26:41] Speaker 3: in rural Australia. Generally, very few people clean out their
[26:44] Speaker 3: tanks or their gutters.
[26:46] Speaker 2: And because the water has come from the roof and
[26:48] Speaker 2: the gutter into the tank.
[26:49] Speaker 3: Absolutely yeah. And I know enough now that if I
[26:53] Speaker 3: go to a farm, I have a quick look at
[26:55] Speaker 3: the roof and it's got a tree overhanging it, I think, oh, yeah,
[26:58] Speaker 3: birds roosting in. Yeah, that's going to go on to
[27:01] Speaker 3: the tank.
[27:03] Speaker 2: That's interesting.
[27:04] Speaker 1: So just for the same people who do have tank water,
[27:07] Speaker 1: I mean, what technologies should they be looking at in
[27:10] Speaker 1: relation to the water once before it comes out of
[27:12] Speaker 1: the tangle, before it goes into the tangle, once it's
[27:14] Speaker 1: in the tank, are the technologies around now that they
[27:16] Speaker 1: can use to effectively purify their water.
[27:18] Speaker 3: Yeah, there's heaps to do. There's heaps you can do.
[27:21] Speaker 3: Water filters are a good idea, but there's also a
[27:23] Speaker 3: fantastic thing that it's like a first flush diversion. So
[27:29] Speaker 3: after a heavy bit of rain, essentially that flushes the
[27:32] Speaker 3: whatever dust might build up on the roof or leaves
[27:34] Speaker 3: the gutters, and that will then divert that away from
[27:38] Speaker 3: your water tank and then flick to the first lot
[27:41] Speaker 3: gets thrown out exactly absolutely, and then the rest goes
[27:46] Speaker 3: into the tank. But people should get their tank cleaned
[27:49] Speaker 3: out every five to ten years and attend to the gutters,
[27:53] Speaker 3: remove any branches that are overhanging the roof. And I've
[27:56] Speaker 3: done a lot of that with are the pills or
[27:59] Speaker 3: whatever you want to some sort of thing you should
[28:01] Speaker 3: be throwing into the water as well. I have heard
[28:03] Speaker 3: of people that have done that. Often your local council
[28:08] Speaker 3: can give advice on that. I have heard of some.
[28:13] Speaker 3: Even if it can breed mosquitoes, believe it or not,
[28:16] Speaker 3: people actually used to pour a bit of kerosene on
[28:17] Speaker 3: the top of water tanks because that's where the massis
[28:20] Speaker 3: are that's where the maises are and the kerosene's lights
[28:22] Speaker 3: so it floats.
[28:23] Speaker 2: Above so the top it's light in the water.
[28:24] Speaker 1: But if the level goes down drinking kerosene, and can
[28:29] Speaker 1: I just talk for a moment, because I just give
[28:31] Speaker 1: you one example and if you know mine for a second.
[28:33] Speaker 2: So either farm and my farm. Fortunately for me, the
[28:38] Speaker 2: town water tank.
[28:43] Speaker 1: Is just on the other side of the road above
[28:45] Speaker 1: me my farm, and they have an easement through my
[28:49] Speaker 1: property down to the town, which is like, you know,
[28:52] Speaker 1: eight nine kilometers away, fortunately for me. So then so
[28:57] Speaker 1: through that that there's big water pipe go through my
[29:00] Speaker 1: joint and so I'm connected to town water effectively connected
[29:04] Speaker 1: to that water tank, but my but my house is connected.
[29:10] Speaker 2: The connection is a rubber hose.
[29:13] Speaker 1: It looks like plastic or rubber something like that, and
[29:17] Speaker 1: it's probably about probably about sixty centimeters wide, and it's
[29:22] Speaker 1: a blue and black type of stripe type thing. Anyway,
[29:27] Speaker 1: it sits under the ground, but I noticed part of
[29:31] Speaker 1: it was exposed to sunlight.
[29:34] Speaker 2: I don't know what the reason for that was, But.
[29:38] Speaker 1: Do I run any What are the sort of risks
[29:41] Speaker 1: profiles I should be thinking about in relations to that water,
[29:44] Speaker 1: particularly if I drink it, you know that we're going
[29:47] Speaker 1: through a plastic hose.
[29:49] Speaker 2: Is there's some issue about the plastics.
[29:52] Speaker 3: That's actually a really good question. We have replaced a
[29:56] Speaker 3: section of water pipe at home from a copper pipe
[30:00] Speaker 3: too plastic, and I've had the same question. I don't know,
[30:04] Speaker 3: I don't know. It's a really good question, just.
[30:05] Speaker 2: Something you should worry about or think about it, or
[30:07] Speaker 2: therefore or maybe not worry about. Just put a filter
[30:09] Speaker 2: on the end of it. Because because we keep hearing
[30:12] Speaker 2: about plastics in our.
[30:13] Speaker 1: Water and whenever everything pretty much and I mean, I know,
[30:19] Speaker 1: I keep it going to obviously gravity fair because you know,
[30:22] Speaker 1: I'm at the sort of halfway down the mountain and
[30:24] Speaker 1: the walls flying through, and I just keep imagining water
[30:28] Speaker 1: rushing through this pipe, plastic pipe, and you know water.
[30:33] Speaker 1: I don't know whether or not it has any like
[30:38] Speaker 1: erosion type qualities, but I imagine it does. And if
[30:41] Speaker 1: there's little bits of plastic that can rode off, the plastics,
[30:44] Speaker 1: particularly if it's exposed to the sunlight, whether or not
[30:47] Speaker 1: it's ending up in my into my tap and therefore
[30:51] Speaker 1: into my system, should we be thinking about just as
[30:54] Speaker 1: a safety And of course you should people think about
[30:56] Speaker 1: perhaps having a filter and can you effectively filled out microplastics?
[31:00] Speaker 3: Yes, you definitely can. I'd have to say my gup
[31:03] Speaker 3: feeling it would be the lowest risk I could think
[31:05] Speaker 3: of with the plastics. And I think because many water
[31:11] Speaker 3: pipes actually start to film, they call it a biofilm,
[31:14] Speaker 3: small cells of algae and even minerals build up on
[31:20] Speaker 3: the inside, they'd start to line it. I am more
[31:25] Speaker 3: concerned with things like and I've seen the data, but
[31:29] Speaker 3: things like copper pipe, so I've been sampling them in
[31:33] Speaker 3: the middle of publishing a paper right now on home
[31:35] Speaker 3: water tanks, and copper is often leitched out of copper pipes.
[31:39] Speaker 3: That's the basis of our household pipes at very very
[31:44] Speaker 3: high levels. Yes, but I wouldn't open your tap and
[31:48] Speaker 3: put it into a fish tank. It probably killed the fish.
[31:51] Speaker 3: So we see from a water tank we see the
[31:54] Speaker 3: concentration go up. That's not the problem. The problem is
[31:57] Speaker 3: the solder that was often used is made out of lead. Right,
[32:01] Speaker 3: And even if you've got a galvanized iron roof, when
[32:04] Speaker 3: they mind the zinc used for the galvanizing, lead comes
[32:07] Speaker 3: with it, right, and the flashing you know at the
[32:10] Speaker 3: top and around chimneys and things that's pure lead.
[32:13] Speaker 2: Yeah, so I do have a chimney. I don't have
[32:18] Speaker 2: tank water, but you're right.
[32:19] Speaker 1: If I had tank water, it'd be running off the
[32:22] Speaker 1: off the lead, like dripping off, flashing off, the flashing
[32:26] Speaker 1: after the lead, flashing where the chimney is and going
[32:31] Speaker 1: into the gutter and then going from the gutter into
[32:34] Speaker 1: the tank and then from the tank into me.
[32:37] Speaker 3: It builds, yes, and it builds up at the bottom
[32:39] Speaker 3: of tanks. There's this layer. I've sampled hundreds and hundreds
[32:43] Speaker 3: of tanks now, this sediment layer, and it's between probably
[32:47] Speaker 3: three and forty mills deep. And if it stays there,
[32:52] Speaker 3: that's fine, but just about anyone in Australia would know
[32:55] Speaker 3: that as it gets dry, like as we came up
[32:58] Speaker 3: to the black summer, levels drop and then if you
[33:01] Speaker 3: expose that and think about rainfall coming pouring in, it
[33:04] Speaker 3: stirs up. So my mum had a farm near Orange
[33:08] Speaker 3: and you couldn't keep clothes white in a drought because
[33:12] Speaker 3: the sediment and a tank was stirred up and everything
[33:16] Speaker 3: went like a mild ochre color. And I've detected lead
[33:21] Speaker 3: concentrations in this water sediment mixed down the bottom of
[33:25] Speaker 3: tanks over a thousand times the guideline. And lead is
[33:29] Speaker 3: really dangerous, particularly for children, because it's a cumulative neurotoxin,
[33:35] Speaker 3: so it will reduce the IQ of developing brains. It's
[33:39] Speaker 3: a horrible it's really horrible stuff. And even the washes,
[33:44] Speaker 3: like galvanized iron roofs often had lead washes, believe it
[33:47] Speaker 3: or not, Actually didn't know this untill a couple of
[33:49] Speaker 3: years ago where the screw went into the into the
[33:52] Speaker 3: frame and it was lead because that was inert and
[33:56] Speaker 3: it didn't react and then rust out, rusty. The trouble
[34:01] Speaker 3: is that builds and builds and builds and builds, and
[34:03] Speaker 3: we have it's a real point.
[34:05] Speaker 1: You've got and you've got hundreds and hundreds of these
[34:07] Speaker 1: washes because they're washes, they're fixing the roof, the steel
[34:12] Speaker 1: roof or wherever it is in lots of different places.
[34:14] Speaker 1: Just doesn't fix ones, it fixes hundreds of places all
[34:17] Speaker 1: over the joint.
[34:17] Speaker 3: Absolutely. And I've gone I've sampled hundreds and hundreds of
[34:21] Speaker 3: tanks now and often the older tanks, the outlet is
[34:24] Speaker 3: right at the bottom.
[34:25] Speaker 2: That's what I just thinking, that's where, that's where that
[34:27] Speaker 2: stuff is, so.
[34:29] Speaker 3: I'm working on that at the moment, and I'd rather
[34:32] Speaker 3: not name the town. It's Inland, New South Wales. But
[34:34] Speaker 3: we've picked two towns that are in mining areas, just
[34:38] Speaker 3: concerned about dust metal impacts from dust on the roof,
[34:42] Speaker 3: and there is a relationship with that. I share this
[34:48] Speaker 3: stuff with the EPA and health and council communities. But
[34:52] Speaker 3: we went to a non mining town with no mines
[34:55] Speaker 3: anywhere near it, and we've got huge concentrations of leading
[34:59] Speaker 3: this set of water layer and so we've now got
[35:03] Speaker 3: to go back and tell people you've really got to
[35:06] Speaker 3: spend I don't know how much, probably five hundred dollars,
[35:09] Speaker 3: and it's a bit like vacuuming a pool. They can
[35:11] Speaker 3: clean out your tank without having to pump out the
[35:14] Speaker 3: water tank. But one of these towns has a town
[35:17] Speaker 3: water supply that most of the locals told me they
[35:22] Speaker 3: don't drink it and they don't even put it on
[35:24] Speaker 3: their plants because they will weather and it's salty, so salty,
[35:29] Speaker 3: it's very salty. So one of them said, we only
[35:32] Speaker 3: in I've seen the wreck I was looking at the
[35:34] Speaker 3: other day. We only use town water to flash the toilet.
[35:36] Speaker 3: We only drink tank water.
[35:38] Speaker 2: Wow. And there is sold is because the water table.
[35:43] Speaker 3: Ground ground groundwater is generally more more salty. And if
[35:47] Speaker 3: you go to Northern Territory or Northern Wa chronic chronic problem.
[35:51] Speaker 2: Wow.
[35:52] Speaker 1: If and if in terms of the lead issue, are
[35:59] Speaker 1: they filtration systems that will filter let out?
[36:04] Speaker 3: That's we have to go reverse osmosis, right, So that.
[36:08] Speaker 2: As your filtration system as opposed to a filter.
[36:11] Speaker 3: Yes, and there's good luck buying a filter because the
[36:14] Speaker 3: marketing behind it is pretty confusing totally.
[36:18] Speaker 1: That's will ask the question because I've been watching and
[36:20] Speaker 1: looking at these things and I get a bit confused.
[36:23] Speaker 3: I personally would go for reverse osmosis and a cartridge
[36:28] Speaker 3: that you could change. Yeah, maintenance is really important, but
[36:31] Speaker 3: there are fantastic resin based filters and carbon based filters,
[36:35] Speaker 3: but that's kind of not my my specialty. The boy boy.
[36:41] Speaker 3: The marketing is strong totally.
[36:45] Speaker 1: So if we come back to the metros, then for example,
[36:48] Speaker 1: where we're not, we're not don't have to deal with tank.
[36:51] Speaker 2: Water, although I guess perhaps some people probably do try to.
[36:56] Speaker 2: They're probably are people who do.
[36:57] Speaker 1: There are still tank water these days in particularly new
[37:01] Speaker 1: new development because they want to. They don't want to
[37:03] Speaker 1: use town water. But let's assume most people don't do
[37:07] Speaker 1: that at the moment. But most of us are drinking
[37:10] Speaker 1: water out of the catchments. And you know, we have
[37:12] Speaker 1: agyometrical chlorine which is there to kill all the various
[37:15] Speaker 1: bacterias and things that.
[37:18] Speaker 2: Can hurt you.
[37:19] Speaker 1: But chlorine doesn't get rid of pesticides, herbicides, other things.
[37:25] Speaker 1: What other things apart from bacteria that can harm us?
[37:28] Speaker 1: What other things that we're looking at that could be
[37:30] Speaker 1: in the water.
[37:31] Speaker 3: Big one is metals, But that's that's tested and with
[37:36] Speaker 3: all the filtration, dilution and the test results.
[37:40] Speaker 1: Well, when you say metals, it sounds it sounds like,
[37:43] Speaker 1: you know, I'm going to I'm going to get a
[37:44] Speaker 1: bit of a spoon or something. And we're talking about
[37:48] Speaker 1: and where does this come from? It's minute micro level.
[37:53] Speaker 2: What are we talking about? Lead? What are we talking about?
[37:56] Speaker 3: Lead, mercury, cadmium, zinc. Where they come from a lot
[38:02] Speaker 3: of it comes from in the Earth's crust, so naturally. Yeah,
[38:07] Speaker 3: So the beautiful colors of sandstone around Sydney, that's iron
[38:10] Speaker 3: and manganese and a bit of aluminion. That's really really
[38:14] Speaker 3: common in the earth's crust. Even some stuff like barium
[38:17] Speaker 3: and strontium quite common. So with you know, it's a
[38:21] Speaker 3: dusty country with that dust that whether it goes into
[38:25] Speaker 3: roofs or into the just the And yeah, as a
[38:30] Speaker 3: lot of our water filters down through groundwater and then
[38:33] Speaker 3: comes out of spring. So we've got lots of metals
[38:36] Speaker 3: and it's fine. I mean, it's good we've got in
[38:38] Speaker 3: our blood because that's that helps us get the oxygen around.
[38:41] Speaker 3: That's why it's red. So a lot of metals are good,
[38:45] Speaker 3: but some of them, like lead, really bad. Mercury bioaccumulates
[38:51] Speaker 3: really really bad. Others even like manganese at high levels
[38:56] Speaker 3: that's bad, but nothing like the concentration of lead because
[39:01] Speaker 3: lead mercury, we bring it in to our bodies very
[39:06] Speaker 3: hard to excrete it.
[39:07] Speaker 1: And so if and does the water service that people
[39:12] Speaker 1: who look after water in our case Sydney water for example,
[39:15] Speaker 1: do they extract that or is there a little bit
[39:17] Speaker 1: of that in your tap water anyway?
[39:18] Speaker 3: Oh, they'll be a little bit there, but then measure it.
[39:20] Speaker 3: And I'm the sort of geek that looks that stuff
[39:23] Speaker 3: up and the levels are so so low.
[39:27] Speaker 2: Is it a matter of though low levels is okay
[39:29] Speaker 2: or is it a metal?
[39:30] Speaker 3: Or is it or is it?
[39:31] Speaker 2: But I'll put this to you, it's a matter that
[39:33] Speaker 2: no level is good, you.
[39:35] Speaker 1: Know, because like we used to get told it's okay
[39:38] Speaker 1: to have one or two glass of wine a day,
[39:40] Speaker 1: you know, and it's sort of good for you.
[39:42] Speaker 2: Now they're saying no alcohol, you know. And I've talked to.
[39:45] Speaker 1: Lots of neurologists and people cardiology, neurologists, et cetera, and
[39:48] Speaker 1: have one sitting right there last week effectively said no
[39:52] Speaker 1: amount of alcohols or all right for you. It's it's
[39:55] Speaker 1: poisonous and it's a poison. And I guess, no, man,
[40:00] Speaker 1: lead's good for you because there's a poison.
[40:03] Speaker 3: You're exactly right. And there is a bit of a
[40:06] Speaker 3: game of tennis going on with guidelines. So at the moment,
[40:09] Speaker 3: I know, our guideline and Australia for lead is ten
[40:13] Speaker 3: micrograms ten parts per billion micrograms per letter. For Canada
[40:18] Speaker 3: it's five. They generally only you know, the more we learn,
[40:23] Speaker 3: the more we realize, actually that is a bit more
[40:25] Speaker 3: dangerous than we realized. Lead. I think the USCPA have
[40:30] Speaker 3: recognized that there is no known safe level of lead.
[40:33] Speaker 2: It's in other words, zero is better. Yeah, and you
[40:36] Speaker 2: know because it accumulates exactly.
[40:40] Speaker 3: Yes. I mean we had leaded petrol up until nineteen
[40:43] Speaker 3: eighty five phased out and I thing about nineteen ninety
[40:46] Speaker 3: and I can't imagine what my IQ would have been
[40:49] Speaker 3: if we didn't have leaded fuel. It reduces IQ. It
[40:55] Speaker 3: has a very negative effect on the developing brain. But
[41:00] Speaker 3: we only know that after we've had lots and lots
[41:03] Speaker 3: of people live and go through their lives, so we.
[41:05] Speaker 2: Don't as a result of longitudinal studies exactly. So therefore, and.
[41:11] Speaker 1: Is it fair to say then, irrespective of what's an
[41:15] Speaker 1: acceptable level at a government level, even though and given
[41:21] Speaker 1: that other government in other places, probably through abundance of
[41:24] Speaker 1: caution of reducing what is acceptable, we might be playing
[41:27] Speaker 1: catch up?
[41:28] Speaker 2: Whatever, is it better off to say? And I don't
[41:31] Speaker 2: know if it's.
[41:31] Speaker 1: Possible, but to put a filter system that just filters
[41:34] Speaker 1: it all out or is that possible?
[41:37] Speaker 3: It is? It is possible, Yeah, And I think you
[41:40] Speaker 3: can get double and even triple desalination units. It's a
[41:46] Speaker 3: big market out there. You've got some that will plug
[41:50] Speaker 3: in and sit on the bench, some that connection home
[41:52] Speaker 3: to them at home or put into under the sink
[41:55] Speaker 3: by a plumber so that you could have a little
[41:57] Speaker 3: tap just for drinking water. That rub or triple desalinates.
[42:01] Speaker 1: That designer mean demineralized, demneralized. Yes, taking all these metals out.
[42:07] Speaker 1: It's not salt because it's not salt comes out to Yeah,
[42:11] Speaker 1: but it's a but when you say desalination is not
[42:14] Speaker 1: take salt at so much as you're using the desalination,
[42:17] Speaker 1: let's call it process to take metals out as well anything.
[42:20] Speaker 2: What are they call it heavy metals?
[42:22] Speaker 3: It's it's just metals.
[42:24] Speaker 2: Yeah, but what do they call it heavy metals? I
[42:26] Speaker 2: mean heavy metals.
[42:27] Speaker 3: So it's like they're heavy like some are like like
[42:30] Speaker 3: lead and iron, but then you've got some really light
[42:32] Speaker 3: metals as well, like aluminium and lithium, so.
[42:35] Speaker 2: Which you probably don't want in there either because so
[42:39] Speaker 2: so this sort of brings me to the topic.
[42:42] Speaker 3: Of PFAS prefas.
[42:44] Speaker 2: Yes, what the hell is p fas? What are we
[42:47] Speaker 2: talking about it?
[42:48] Speaker 3: What? It's a mad main it's a it's a. It's
[42:50] Speaker 3: a it's a it's a group of man made chemicals.
[42:53] Speaker 3: They're synthetic chemicals. They're made in a lab an industrial process.
[42:57] Speaker 3: Thousands and thousands and thousands of them, and they're everywhere,
[43:02] Speaker 3: and they've got the brilliant creatures of the lab and
[43:08] Speaker 3: industry because they're heat resistant, moisture, grease resistant, long lasting,
[43:15] Speaker 3: and they're in nearly everything.
[43:17] Speaker 1: But what pfast is it plastic? I don't even know
[43:21] Speaker 1: what it is?
[43:24] Speaker 3: Look good point. Probably the only one that we can
[43:26] Speaker 3: all visualize would be teflon. So teflon is a type
[43:30] Speaker 3: of prefas.
[43:31] Speaker 2: It is a group of.
[43:32] Speaker 3: Man made chemicals as the stuff from your fright pan
[43:34] Speaker 3: fry pan, yes, non stick fry pan, and they're a
[43:38] Speaker 3: small chain of carbon atoms coupled with florine and it's
[43:43] Speaker 3: one of the strongest bonds. Brilliant had its intended purpose,
[43:48] Speaker 3: but as a waste product, it doesn't break down and
[43:50] Speaker 3: a bit like lead, bioaccumulates and it's got this other
[43:55] Speaker 3: thing again, like lead and mercury, it biomagnifies. So the
[43:59] Speaker 3: further you go up food chain, the higher the concentration,
[44:02] Speaker 3: and humans are right up the food chain.
[44:05] Speaker 2: It's in all of us and is it in our water?
[44:10] Speaker 3: Yes, But there's limited data and in fact, in Sydney
[44:15] Speaker 3: it only started they only started testing for it middle
[44:17] Speaker 3: of last year.
[44:18] Speaker 1: Because if I read somewhere and I don't know if
[44:20] Speaker 1: this is great, it could be in great, But the
[44:22] Speaker 1: US has a much lower tolerance to pfas in the
[44:25] Speaker 1: water than we do.
[44:26] Speaker 2: They do, so what does that mean is just explain
[44:28] Speaker 2: that one.
[44:29] Speaker 3: Oh, this is just I find this absolutely fascinating. They
[44:35] Speaker 3: lead the world in awareness of prefas, they lead the
[44:39] Speaker 3: world in terms of monitoring and treatment, but probably because
[44:42] Speaker 3: they've also led the world in the degree of contamination.
[44:45] Speaker 2: Because they probably reduced most of it.
[44:47] Speaker 3: Yes, they're companies, and the two big companies three M
[44:50] Speaker 3: and DuPont. There's other companies involved, but they produced all
[44:54] Speaker 3: these products and because they had the manufacturing, these are
[44:59] Speaker 3: hot spots of waste that radiated out and it's an
[45:04] Speaker 3: extraordinarily dangerous substance. And the concentration, even at the most
[45:09] Speaker 3: incredibly low levels, it's really dangerous.
[45:13] Speaker 2: What sort of things is it going to? Does it
[45:15] Speaker 2: do to us?
[45:16] Speaker 3: Like the list is fairly long, but it has an
[45:21] Speaker 3: effect on It's been associated with an effect on the
[45:24] Speaker 3: immune system, a whole series of cancers, changes to reproductive cycles,
[45:31] Speaker 3: changes to birth weight, cancer risk, It goes on and on.
[45:37] Speaker 3: But it also depends on who you ask. So if
[45:40] Speaker 3: you ask some of the medical establishment and bureaucrats in
[45:43] Speaker 3: Australia is not as dangerous as the literature and the
[45:49] Speaker 3: policies from America suggest. It is truly a bizarre space
[45:55] Speaker 3: and the policy of this is changing very very quickly.
[45:58] Speaker 2: So do you use of right pan with non stick?
[46:00] Speaker 2: We used stainless steel or something or ceramic? What do
[46:05] Speaker 2: you use?
[46:06] Speaker 3: I don't want to start a domestic dispute, but there
[46:08] Speaker 3: was one in our house that rage. We got rid
[46:10] Speaker 3: of of our teflong coded frying pan, so I've got
[46:13] Speaker 3: stainless steel, but we do still have some teflong coded.
[46:18] Speaker 3: We've got a sandwich maker and it's just brilliant, so
[46:21] Speaker 3: that still has taflong on it. So Scotch card. I
[46:24] Speaker 3: got a car around the late eighties and I had
[46:26] Speaker 3: the Scotch card put on it. That's a type of peace, really, Yeah, of.
[46:30] Speaker 1: Course it does because it resists water and stuff like that.
[46:33] Speaker 1: It's basically a sealant, exactly what teflon is.
[46:38] Speaker 2: Te seals.
[46:39] Speaker 3: Yes, it seals, and it resists, it resists staining, It
[46:44] Speaker 3: resists greeks and heat, it's a brilliant substance except when
[46:49] Speaker 3: it gets into water or food, and it's in all
[46:54] Speaker 3: of us. Yeah, beware of statistics. Believe it or not.
[46:57] Speaker 3: Produced May this year they've got the results of six
[47:01] Speaker 3: or seven thousand Australians and it's building up in all
[47:05] Speaker 3: of us. So you can test in the blood and weed.
[47:08] Speaker 3: We lacked that reference data, so you can do a
[47:11] Speaker 3: blood test. Medicare won't pay for it, Health funds won't
[47:15] Speaker 3: pay for it. It costs about five hundred dollars. And
[47:18] Speaker 3: the only communities I know that have been tested are,
[47:21] Speaker 3: for example, the Victorian firefighters because occupationally they trained with
[47:25] Speaker 3: firefighting foam and got covered in it. And I think
[47:30] Speaker 3: he's in a commissioner now, Mick Tisbury of the Victorian firefighters,
[47:33] Speaker 3: worked out there was like a cancer cluster, wellnillless cluster,
[47:38] Speaker 3: went to a lot of firefighters funerals and then realized, Hey,
[47:41] Speaker 3: this chemical they're talking about in the States is in
[47:44] Speaker 3: the firefighting foam. And that's the only population I know
[47:48] Speaker 3: that has systematically been tested for prefas chemicals.
[47:52] Speaker 1: ANDAs is not a chemical, is a bunch of chemicals,
[47:55] Speaker 1: a group, it's a group of things thousands and a
[47:58] Speaker 1: big group of things. And I didn't realize you could
[48:01] Speaker 1: get tested for that. I get a blood test for that.
[48:04] Speaker 1: Obviously Medicare is not gonna pay for a better That's
[48:05] Speaker 1: one worth thinking about.
[48:08] Speaker 2: In terms of.
[48:10] Speaker 1: Prevention of p fas, apart from sort of maybe ditching
[48:13] Speaker 1: your teflon coated you know, fry pans or whatever. Does
[48:18] Speaker 1: it include, for example, plastic utensils?
[48:21] Speaker 3: Is that a that's a good question.
[48:23] Speaker 2: PFAS.
[48:24] Speaker 3: I don't, I don't, I don't know. I do know
[48:27] Speaker 3: that it was used in a lot of takeaway coffee cups.
[48:31] Speaker 3: Yeah again, heat moisture, grease resistant, take away pizza boxes.
[48:38] Speaker 3: It was used in shampoos, a lot of health care products,
[48:42] Speaker 3: really cabling.
[48:43] Speaker 2: And shampoos, shampoos.
[48:46] Speaker 3: It's got so.
[48:48] Speaker 2: Many porus, which is it's a real problem.
[48:51] Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
[48:52] Speaker 2: Look.
[48:53] Speaker 3: The big one though, without any doubt, is water and
[48:55] Speaker 3: drinking water, right and again that comes from the States
[48:59] Speaker 3: because a lot of their water is from groundwater, and
[49:04] Speaker 3: it heads once it gets into the groundwater, it's incredibly
[49:09] Speaker 3: difficult to get rid of. It binds to soil, blinds
[49:13] Speaker 3: to clay, binds to proteins in US, in US, but
[49:17] Speaker 3: in the environment as well. So I've sampled it up
[49:20] Speaker 3: in Medlow Bath where the Blue Mountains has been contaminated.
[49:24] Speaker 3: And John d local campaigner who's sort of leading and
[49:32] Speaker 3: helping the community, he's tracked that contamination back to a
[49:36] Speaker 3: truck crash in nineteen ninety two.
[49:38] Speaker 2: Wow.
[49:39] Speaker 3: And it's not the fault of the firefighters. They were
[49:42] Speaker 3: doing the right thing to put out. It was a
[49:45] Speaker 3: petrol tanker that crashed just outside on the Great Western Highway,
[49:49] Speaker 3: just outside of Medlow Bath. I was just looking at
[49:51] Speaker 3: the pictures this morning. So to put out a fire
[49:55] Speaker 3: of burning fuel, thousands of leaders, tens of thousands of leaders,
[50:00] Speaker 3: foaming agent helps smother the fire. And his picture shows
[50:03] Speaker 3: that keeps oxygen out. It keeps the oxygen out and
[50:06] Speaker 3: forms of seal water will just run off, but it can. Yeah, exactly.
[50:11] Speaker 3: But that contamination, it's a hypothesis because we don't have data,
[50:15] Speaker 3: but that contamination is still contaminating the local waterway to
[50:20] Speaker 3: such a level that they've taken it out of the
[50:22] Speaker 3: Sydney water supply system. And I don't think we'll ever
[50:25] Speaker 3: drink from that dam ever again.
[50:27] Speaker 2: Wow.
[50:28] Speaker 1: So anything, we should be conscious of it. And then
[50:31] Speaker 1: in terms of our drinking water relative to say p FAS.
[50:34] Speaker 1: I mean, should we be looking at again filtration? Is
[50:37] Speaker 1: there something we should be doing?
[50:38] Speaker 3: I look to be honest igiousness in many ways, we
[50:43] Speaker 3: should be able to leave that. If we're in a
[50:45] Speaker 3: town water supply, we should be able to leave that
[50:47] Speaker 3: to the authorities. They're pretty good at what they do.
[50:51] Speaker 3: They had I can't explain why, but there was a
[50:53] Speaker 3: blindness to prefas, a blindness so Sydney Water didn't test
[50:59] Speaker 3: for PFAS in our water supply until last year.
[51:02] Speaker 2: June last year. Wow. And during twenty twenty.
[51:05] Speaker 3: Four, I'm talking twenty twenty four, my god U s
[51:09] Speaker 3: CPA changed the guidelines and I got asked in the
[51:11] Speaker 3: press should we do the same. And I came up
[51:16] Speaker 3: against one of my heroes, doctor Kerry Chant, chief help
[51:19] Speaker 3: OFSSIPH remember health officer during the COVID period, and she yeah,
[51:22] Speaker 3: WHI she was a fixture of our society. And she said,
[51:25] Speaker 3: there's no known hotspots in the Sydney water supply system.
[51:29] Speaker 3: And I knew there was because I had a PhD
[51:32] Speaker 3: student that founded in Platypus.
[51:34] Speaker 1: Plato some platypie or Platypus had yep, p fask contamination.
[51:39] Speaker 3: So in its liver. Well, we were we were getting
[51:43] Speaker 3: hold of dead platypus from Troonga Zoo that were handed
[51:47] Speaker 3: in by people. We didn't kill any platypus, but it
[51:51] Speaker 3: builds up in our liver, builds up in their liver.
[51:53] Speaker 3: And we found one at winjy Caribee River, Berrima Away. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
[52:00] Speaker 3: and it had actually the very populard down there platypus.
[52:03] Speaker 3: It is a hot spot of platypus, which is sensational.
[52:06] Speaker 1: I know that because I probably down there. I remember
[52:09] Speaker 1: there were a lot of platypus down there. But it's
[52:12] Speaker 1: absolutely beautiful water water down there was had Biga said it.
[52:15] Speaker 1: Because that amazing because I was always thought that.
[52:17] Speaker 2: Would be like the purest water of every fair assumption.
[52:21] Speaker 3: And I'm a water scientist. I worked in the catchment.
[52:24] Speaker 3: I know the place really well. I was surprised we've
[52:26] Speaker 3: actually done testing. But Sydney Water made that claim without
[52:32] Speaker 3: testing the water, which I find I still find unbelievable.
[52:35] Speaker 2: Now, how'd you go up against Kerry Chant? Though doing
[52:39] Speaker 2: the debate I made.
[52:40] Speaker 3: I would never say anything bad about Kerry chand my
[52:44] Speaker 3: line was she had been poorly advised right, and then
[52:48] Speaker 3: the bad news came in July that Sydney Water did
[52:54] Speaker 3: test and low and behold, the concentrations were extremely high
[52:59] Speaker 3: up around right from the storages. There's a series of
[53:03] Speaker 3: five storages between black Eath and Katomber Upper Mountain supply,
[53:07] Speaker 3: which was within the then guidelines but way way way
[53:11] Speaker 3: above the US guidelines.
[53:14] Speaker 1: And this has been This has been in the media too,
[53:16] Speaker 1: by the way it has been in the media, which
[53:18] Speaker 1: is one of the reason I wanted to talk to you,
[53:19] Speaker 1: because I was following it and I thought it was SOLF.
[53:21] Speaker 1: I need to talk to an expert on this, and
[53:24] Speaker 1: I mean, I guess what we want to know is
[53:25] Speaker 1: do we need to worry about it?
[53:28] Speaker 2: What do you think?
[53:28] Speaker 1: I mean it just I'm not You're not here to
[53:30] Speaker 1: bag anyone or have a crack at Do you worry
[53:33] Speaker 1: about it and you're an expert.
[53:35] Speaker 3: Yes, I do. I find it bizarre that we didn't
[53:38] Speaker 3: test out water supply like nineteen ninety two. If we
[53:42] Speaker 3: accepted that the and New Southwest Far and Rescue agree
[53:46] Speaker 3: it probably was that. I think there had been another
[53:48] Speaker 3: truck crash where prefas chemicals were used. Either way. How
[53:54] Speaker 3: bad has that been? How long have people had that
[53:57] Speaker 3: in their water supply? I think I think that is
[54:00] Speaker 3: unforgivable that we hadn't known and people have been exposed
[54:04] Speaker 3: for a long time. Should we worry? I worry about
[54:07] Speaker 3: that population up there. I've talked to them. I volunteer
[54:12] Speaker 3: and help groups out all the time. I don't make
[54:15] Speaker 3: any money in this space. It's not it's going to
[54:19] Speaker 3: monetary interesting, none at all. But I've been to two
[54:23] Speaker 3: community meetings, I mean regular contact with John d who's
[54:26] Speaker 3: an incredible and wonderful leader of the community. They won't
[54:32] Speaker 3: new Southelles government will not agree with testing the blood
[54:36] Speaker 3: of people that have been drinking that contaminated water. I
[54:39] Speaker 3: think that is wrong. I think any area where they
[54:42] Speaker 3: have unwittingly become exposed, whether that's an occupational group like
[54:46] Speaker 3: firefighters or in the manufacturing industry that perhaps was making
[54:49] Speaker 3: pizza boxes, or communities that have been drinking it, we
[54:53] Speaker 3: should test it and we should then get the medical
[54:56] Speaker 3: system to track them. Your longitudinal study epidemial one O
[55:00] Speaker 3: one is what Kerry Chin does.
[55:03] Speaker 2: That is exactly but at.
[55:05] Speaker 3: The moment they're advising the medicos not to do it
[55:08] Speaker 3: and I don't agree with that. And if it isn't
[55:11] Speaker 3: a problem, we can learn from it and we can
[55:15] Speaker 3: go well, we were right, it wasn't a problem. There's
[55:17] Speaker 3: other things to worry about, you know, get your weight down,
[55:20] Speaker 3: be fit. Avoid salt.
[55:23] Speaker 2: You can't.
[55:24] Speaker 3: It's not like tobacco or alcohol. If it's in the drinking,
[55:28] Speaker 3: what do you can't avoid that? And particularly I've never
[55:32] Speaker 3: actually looked at people before, and parents in particular and
[55:36] Speaker 3: seen that. Look like I came up here to give
[55:39] Speaker 3: a clean life to my kids and family and we've
[55:42] Speaker 3: been drinking this contamination.
[55:43] Speaker 2: Does that does the water from those catchments?
[55:46] Speaker 1: Would that make it to say, other parts of city
[55:48] Speaker 1: or just sits in those only the Blue House it's
[55:50] Speaker 1: sort of restricted, so to speak, but it possibly up to.
[55:53] Speaker 3: Eighty thousand people, so it can come down as far
[55:56] Speaker 3: from Mount Victoria, consumer as far down as what a
[56:00] Speaker 3: time from time to time, but it's particularly went with
[56:04] Speaker 3: falls to Mount Victoria. Katomber is the central point.
[56:08] Speaker 2: So you're quite relaxed about the water and the rest
[56:10] Speaker 2: of Sydney.
[56:11] Speaker 3: I've seen the data.
[56:12] Speaker 2: Yes, that's pretty good.
[56:14] Speaker 3: It is good.
[56:15] Speaker 2: And if we but if we say.
[56:18] Speaker 1: One quick question for you, if you don't mind, professor,
[56:21] Speaker 1: if we say, if you're someone like me is a
[56:25] Speaker 1: bit obsessed with things, so okay, I want to eliminate everything.
[56:28] Speaker 1: I don't give a shit. I'm just going to eliminate everything,
[56:30] Speaker 1: just in case means wrong. Is there a situation because
[56:35] Speaker 1: you said something really interested the beginning about pure H
[56:38] Speaker 1: two pure water pure pure H two. Is there a
[56:44] Speaker 1: way of remineralizing water once you've cleaned it up and
[56:49] Speaker 1: put in back in the minerals back in there that
[56:51] Speaker 1: you that we need to have absolutely is yeah, you can.
[56:55] Speaker 3: You can remineralize it. I don't know the technical processes.
[56:59] Speaker 2: There's probably some sort of contraption you could buy it.
[57:02] Speaker 3: It's like pellets, you can, you can pass it through
[57:04] Speaker 3: and it will get a nice electrolyte balance, a bit
[57:07] Speaker 3: like those you know, those energy drinks, a lot, a lot,
[57:11] Speaker 3: a lot like that. But what I'd be worrying about is,
[57:15] Speaker 3: I mean, do you like seafood? I do? Yeah, seafood
[57:18] Speaker 3: is associated with very high pfas.
[57:20] Speaker 2: Really yes, we need way more.
[57:24] Speaker 3: I don't want to give you bad news.
[57:26] Speaker 2: But but I've thought about it. I thought about it.
[57:29] Speaker 2: I actually have thought about mercury seafood. Yeah, because they did.
[57:32] Speaker 1: The doctors do tell pregnant women at a certain stage
[57:35] Speaker 1: stop beating seafood.
[57:36] Speaker 3: And particularly things like tuna, you know, the predatory fish.
[57:40] Speaker 3: But I love seafood. I've still eat it, but I'm
[57:45] Speaker 3: much less to be honest, and we don't test it.
[57:48] Speaker 3: So we have, for example, New South Wales Food authorady
[57:50] Speaker 3: we should be regularly testing everything in our food chain.
[57:55] Speaker 3: The ABS data shows it's throughout us. We don't know
[57:58] Speaker 3: how it's getting into a lot of the population. Is
[58:02] Speaker 3: it coming from Scotch guarded clothes tefline pans. I think
[58:06] Speaker 3: it's mostly water.
[58:07] Speaker 2: And food, right for things consuming water.
[58:11] Speaker 3: And the other scary thing is there's a chance the
[58:14] Speaker 3: peak has passed of prefas. There's a chance it was
[58:17] Speaker 3: actually worse in the seventies and eighties because they didn't
[58:20] Speaker 3: started banning the chemicals and we're actually probably we're probably
[58:25] Speaker 3: looking at something way in the past.
[58:28] Speaker 2: So just on fish though, just go bat to fish
[58:31] Speaker 2: for a second, because you've got me now. It's funny.
[58:35] Speaker 1: When I buy fish, I tend not to buy the
[58:37] Speaker 1: tunas and salmon's for a different reason. Ten to buy
[58:41] Speaker 1: because it's farmed, but I try to buy court fish
[58:45] Speaker 1: for a start. Yes, I try to buy fishes bought
[58:48] Speaker 1: further out away from the coastline.
[58:52] Speaker 2: I try to buy nothing brought in the harbor.
[58:54] Speaker 1: And for all the obvious reasons, and not we seeing
[58:58] Speaker 1: the city hub it was quite clean, real sipally speaking
[59:00] Speaker 1: to other harbors in the world. But still we don't
[59:03] Speaker 1: know what's going on the bottom of the ocean where
[59:04] Speaker 1: everything's sort of harbor, where everything's sitting. And then often
[59:09] Speaker 1: I think about things like I try to buy smaller fish.
[59:13] Speaker 2: Is there some sort of.
[59:16] Speaker 1: Best practice around this sort of stuff? Should you be
[59:18] Speaker 1: buying smaller fish and buying it from New Zealand or something.
[59:24] Speaker 3: It's a really interesting debate.
[59:25] Speaker 2: I don't know.
[59:26] Speaker 3: Every now and then I'll look through the science literature.
[59:29] Speaker 3: There's much more on this in the States, and I
[59:32] Speaker 3: think I think your principles are sound though, keep keeping
[59:35] Speaker 3: out of the estuaries, definitely keep away from fresh water.
[59:40] Speaker 3: I help study the Billabula River their orange and the
[59:43] Speaker 3: locals found one of the prize fish there is murray cod. Yeah,
[59:47] Speaker 3: one of the great eating fish of Australia.
[59:49] Speaker 2: Quite early but quite a good fish to weak.
[59:51] Speaker 3: Yeah, they had the EPA got fisheries to test it
[59:56] Speaker 3: in January of this year. They released the result in August.
[1:00:00] Speaker 3: I don't know why that was a delay, but I
[1:00:03] Speaker 3: got the results through the community and the media through
[1:00:06] Speaker 3: Gipper friend of information that you could safely eat about
[1:00:11] Speaker 3: ten grams of that not much before you went above,
[1:00:14] Speaker 3: So keep out of keep away from freshwater fish. I
[1:00:17] Speaker 3: would just wouldn't touch anything because it's so we don't
[1:00:20] Speaker 3: we lack the dilution of the ocean. Yeah, and I
[1:00:24] Speaker 3: think your principles are good. Really we need some testing here.
[1:00:30] Speaker 3: It would be good to have something like the Food
[1:00:34] Speaker 3: Authority or the industry just regularly test prons, for example,
[1:00:39] Speaker 3: their durine. They're generally got high p fasts based on
[1:00:42] Speaker 3: the American results. I love prawns.
[1:00:45] Speaker 2: I just Australians are broads. I'm going to get in summer.
[1:00:50] Speaker 3: I get in trouble for saying this because I get
[1:00:52] Speaker 3: told by government that I'm making people nervous. Don't talk
[1:00:55] Speaker 3: about it.
[1:00:57] Speaker 1: But it's actually important to talk about these things, which
[1:01:00] Speaker 1: is what this whole show is about. Because I mean,
[1:01:02] Speaker 1: we want to live longer, we want to live better.
[1:01:05] Speaker 1: We don't want to have the effects of things that
[1:01:08] Speaker 1: have accumulated in our body. Like even though I might
[1:01:10] Speaker 1: not kill us, we don't want to have the effects
[1:01:12] Speaker 1: of it could cause us, right, so who knows what's
[1:01:13] Speaker 1: going to cause could affect our eyesight, could affect us neurologically,
[1:01:18] Speaker 1: we might become you know, we might suffer from demension.
[1:01:21] Speaker 1: We've got to give ourselves a fighting chance. And the
[1:01:23] Speaker 1: problem is, you know, a lot of us, not you,
[1:01:28] Speaker 1: not me, but a lot of people just don't want
[1:01:29] Speaker 1: to know about it. And the point of this whole
[1:01:33] Speaker 1: show is so that people know about it and then
[1:01:37] Speaker 1: and then if you know about it, you can do
[1:01:38] Speaker 1: something about it. And it's funny, you know, you talking
[1:01:40] Speaker 1: about fish. And I got to a point now where
[1:01:44] Speaker 1: I try to drink water out of plastic bottles. I
[1:01:46] Speaker 1: try to drink water out of glass bottles if possible.
[1:01:49] Speaker 1: I try to drink field water if possible. And you
[1:01:51] Speaker 1: can get a bit weird about it. But now, one
[1:01:53] Speaker 1: of the things I was thinking about the other day,
[1:01:54] Speaker 1: and we talked about earlier on.
[1:01:57] Speaker 2: Beef or cattle that eat grass that are grass fed.
[1:02:05] Speaker 1: At Cape Grim. Maybe the best sort of protein you
[1:02:10] Speaker 1: can get, you can get I don't know it's straughenough.
[1:02:12] Speaker 1: But then someone will say you shouldn't need too much
[1:02:14] Speaker 1: red meat because I had I had a specialist, medical
[1:02:19] Speaker 1: specialist in here last week. You said you shouldn't do
[1:02:20] Speaker 1: too much red meat unless you slow cook it. He said,
[1:02:23] Speaker 1: because there's a problem when you grill meat. And he
[1:02:27] Speaker 1: said it because it's castogenic, the so called crust. Yes,
[1:02:32] Speaker 1: it is carstogenic. And he said, so if you're going
[1:02:34] Speaker 1: to eat red meat, it don't need it too often.
[1:02:36] Speaker 1: When you do it, it is slow cooked like they
[1:02:38] Speaker 1: used to cook it back in.
[1:02:39] Speaker 3: Don't barbecue.
[1:02:40] Speaker 2: It don't barbecue.
[1:02:41] Speaker 1: And I think, oh my god, So like it's getting
[1:02:43] Speaker 1: to a point like where there's nothing I can do.
[1:02:46] Speaker 1: And fish, you know, we live in Australias. We love
[1:02:48] Speaker 1: fish and we love it and we love our prawns.
[1:02:50] Speaker 1: And then but but I think the point here is
[1:02:54] Speaker 1: is that we shouldn't panic. Everything's pretty good here in Australia.
[1:03:00] Speaker 1: But at the same time we should be aware, and
[1:03:03] Speaker 1: we should where we are aware, and if we can
[1:03:06] Speaker 1: reduce let's call so called risks, we should attempt to
[1:03:10] Speaker 1: reduce those risks.
[1:03:12] Speaker 2: Without letting it, without letting it dominate our lives. Absolutely
[1:03:16] Speaker 2: for something like you, it must be.
[1:03:19] Speaker 1: Real headspin because you sometimes know too much about the
[1:03:23] Speaker 1: topic and you can do You find that sometimes even
[1:03:27] Speaker 1: someone like you, you can overthink the issue absolutely yeah,
[1:03:31] Speaker 1: and get over worried.
[1:03:33] Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely. But your knowledge is power. And also if
[1:03:39] Speaker 3: you're concerned, talk to people, debate it, talk to your elected.
[1:03:44] Speaker 2: Are there any forums should go to good point around
[1:03:48] Speaker 2: pfas For example, I.
[1:03:50] Speaker 3: Encouraging you to talk to your elected representatives right and
[1:03:53] Speaker 3: I found that really interesting and watching what happens with
[1:03:56] Speaker 3: the politicians local, state in federal.
[1:03:58] Speaker 2: Don't you think they know enough about it it all?
[1:04:00] Speaker 3: No, they don't know. And I've been lucky to be
[1:04:02] Speaker 3: part of a couple of parliamentary inquiries. New South Wales
[1:04:06] Speaker 3: is just partly reported on one the Commonwealth is about
[1:04:10] Speaker 3: to report so they're seeking that that information. But you know,
[1:04:16] Speaker 3: particularly if you if you live regionally, ask your counsel.
[1:04:19] Speaker 3: They because they run the water supply and they're struggling
[1:04:22] Speaker 3: to meet the highest standards. And some of the towns,
[1:04:25] Speaker 3: like you know up up in the Warrialda, up in
[1:04:28] Speaker 3: the Inverail area, they have high pfase detected. They're struggling.
[1:04:33] Speaker 3: They're really struggling to produce high quality water that we
[1:04:35] Speaker 3: take for granted. But talk to elected officials where you
[1:04:39] Speaker 3: buy your product, ask them what has this been tested?
[1:04:42] Speaker 1: And do you do you do you do either like
[1:04:45] Speaker 1: mail ads or do you do do you run a
[1:04:47] Speaker 1: website or do you do a like a information forum somewhere?
[1:04:52] Speaker 3: No. I tend to do science and publish it, and
[1:04:54] Speaker 3: then I work with communities. So, for example, one of
[1:04:58] Speaker 3: the communities and I'd rather not name where they're from.
[1:05:01] Speaker 3: The farmers are really concerned about this in their product,
[1:05:05] Speaker 3: and they don't want to let on too much because
[1:05:08] Speaker 3: the property value or their product value could plummet totally.
[1:05:12] Speaker 3: How and cattle can't take much. There's been a study done.
[1:05:16] Speaker 3: They can't take much before it contaminates their meat. You're
[1:05:19] Speaker 3: quite You're quite right about that. And how do we
[1:05:22] Speaker 3: know because EU tests for it. We don't necessarily test for.
[1:05:27] Speaker 2: It here the European Union European Union.
[1:05:30] Speaker 3: So to export a lot of our food is tested internally,
[1:05:34] Speaker 3: it's not tested to the same degree. But farmers are
[1:05:37] Speaker 3: very concerned and it is out there in a lot
[1:05:40] Speaker 3: of agricultural rivers, and it does not take much before
[1:05:44] Speaker 3: it builds to what is regarded as a hazardous concentration.
[1:05:49] Speaker 1: Wow, this is scary. I mean, I guess over the
[1:05:52] Speaker 1: next you know, as our population grows, as we get
[1:05:54] Speaker 1: more intense farming, as you know, there is overflow from
[1:05:59] Speaker 1: population growth in the next twenty thirty forty years could
[1:06:03] Speaker 1: potentially the risk, unless it gets managed, could actually exceed
[1:06:09] Speaker 1: the benefit of even eating meat for example.
[1:06:11] Speaker 2: Like you just don't know.
[1:06:12] Speaker 1: But this has been really good, Professor in Wright. I
[1:06:15] Speaker 1: really appreciate more importantly, most importantly your honesty, Thank you,
[1:06:19] Speaker 1: and the integrity you bring to this. But the integrity
[1:06:23] Speaker 1: being scientific integrity, not scared mongering, but scientific integrity based
[1:06:27] Speaker 1: on publications and your own research.
[1:06:29] Speaker 2: There's been fantastic. I appreciate it.
[1:06:31] Speaker 3: Thank thanks so much. And I appreciate you just on
[1:06:33] Speaker 3: the topic and asking me a lot of really difficult questions,
[1:06:37] Speaker 3: very challenging. I've got homework to do.
[1:06:40] Speaker 1: Good to be finance something we didn't we didn't get
[1:06:42] Speaker 1: an answer, probably please let us know and we'll put
[1:06:43] Speaker 1: up on our website.
[1:06:44] Speaker 3: Fantastic. Yeah, plastic pipes, I've got to work on that.
[1:06:47] Speaker 3: Thanks professor right, thanks so much.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.