Episode 8: Nursing and Environmental Health

Cara Lunsford, RN (08:13.061)
I love it. How are you Katie?

Katie Huffling (08:16.962)
What are these wild mornings?

Cara Lunsford, RN (08:24.443)
my gosh, well, it sounds fun that you're out on the... Did you say the outer banks or the... Where are you at? The Eastern Shore. Where on the Eastern Shore? Where...

Katie Huffling (08:32.396)
The Eastern Shore, yeah. Yeah.

Katie Huffling (08:39.266)
So, my friends own a farm in Chestertown, Maryland. So it's really nice. We're out here for the Memorial Day weekend.

Cara Lunsford, RN (08:50.051)
That sounds lovely. Amazing. I'm in Los Angeles. I'm on the other, I'm on the Western shore.

Katie Huffling (08:53.044)
Yes. Where are you located?

That's exciting. Yeah, exactly.

Cara Lunsford, RN (09:06.553)
This is a, so I'm really...

I'm excited to talk to you and also terrified to talk to you. And let me tell you why. I have been a head in the sand type of person when it comes to climate change. And when I say that, and I'm going to have you introduce yourself in a second, but when I say that, I mean...

I'm aware, I actively try to do things, I'm conscious, my son and I pick up trash at the beach. We're always, we have an electric car. There's an awareness and a consciousness to it, but I have not wanted to know how bad it is.

Katie Huffling (09:47.562)
Mm-hmm.

Katie Huffling (10:01.503)
Right, know, know, it's...

Cara Lunsford, RN (10:04.43)
Ha ha ha!

Katie Huffling (10:05.313)
there's kind of a piece in not knowing, right?

Cara Lunsford, RN (10:07.621)
Right. I was like, you know, if I just walk around the world and all of a sudden it's like, guess what? It's the end. And I'm not like that about a lot of things, but...

Katie Huffling (10:20.509)
Mm-hmm, yeah, yeah, I know.

Cara Lunsford, RN (10:28.657)
Somehow, I guess there's just something that I feel so unempowered around this in a lot of ways. Like, it's just, like, bigger than I can do anything about. So, before we jump into it, because we're gonna talk all about this, and I'm gonna get brought up to speed. Even though I don't want to.

Katie Huffling (10:34.987)
Mm-hmm.

Katie Huffling (10:46.46)
Ahem.

Yeah, yeah, we'll catch you there. It'll be a good place.

Cara Lunsford, RN (10:55.257)
Thank you. Take me in slowly, Katie. Just take me, gingerly take me through this. But tell us a little bit about yourself, just a little history of who you are, how long you've been a nurse, and how you got into this area.

Katie Huffling (11:09.579)
Mm-hmm.

Katie Huffling (11:17.012)
Yeah, so I've been a nurse for almost 25 years now, which I can't believe that the time has passed so quickly. And how I began my journey into environmental health. So I did my master's in nurse midwifery at University of Maryland in Baltimore. And at that time, they had the only nurse run environmental health center.

And the leader of that center, Dr. Barbara Sattler, came and did a guest lecture in one of my classes. And she's kind like the pine piper. She's very engaging and charismatic. And I was like, I didn't know this was something that nurses worked on, that they were thinking about how the environment impacts health. And I was just really interested in it. And so she was so kind.

talked with her after the class and she was like, I'm looking for a research assistant. Would you be interested? was like, yes, this is amazing. So I ended up working for her throughout my master's program. And as I was working as a nurse midwife, I was in a practice right outside of Washington, DC that had a predominantly lower income patient population. It was a very urban area and

I was seeing within my patients so many environmental issues, especially things that they had no control over. Just the fact that you're a lower income person, it can be really hard to reduce your exposures. For example, I would have patients that would come see me for a well pregnancy visit and they'd have to take two or three buses on a hot summer day to get to me.

And so they're standing on the street corner. The air quality is horrible. It's hot. It's just not a great time to be outside breathing in all the diesel fumes, the stuff they get into my office and they're wheezing. And they're like, I've never had asthma before or my asthma is usually really well controlled. Why am I breathing like this? And it's like, well, because of these systemic issues that you really have no control over, you should be able to go to your

Katie Huffling (13:45.033)
provider appointments or do the activities that you should normally be doing without having these issues because of air pollution. So I kept being really interested in this. And then I had the opportunity to come on full time with the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments and it just seemed like such a good fit. And so I made that change and I've been with the organization now for

I guess about almost 15 years. Yeah, so and it's awesome. I get to work with so many amazing nurses all around the world that are incorporating environmental health into their practice that are really seeing how into the holistic nature of nursing practice. It really lends itself to incorporating environmental health into it because we know that

Cara Lunsford, RN (14:17.283)
Wow.

Katie Huffling (14:42.569)
where people live, work, and play really impacts your ability to be healthy and to thrive. And so if we're not looking at the environment, we're really not helping our patients to live the healthiest, fullest lives that they can.

Cara Lunsford, RN (14:58.041)
Yes, yes, this is, is a

This is something that...

I feel like it's very near and dear to my heart also. I've worked in oncology, I've worked in pediatric oncology. There's always things that are looked at when a child is diagnosed with cancer, what's in their environment, where did they come from? Is there a lot of pesticides where they are? Is there water pollution? Is there trying to track and trace

some of those things to make sure like are there any areas that seem to be having a lot of for us it was more like a lot of pediatric patients coming out of that area and and why why are we seeing this like surge or hot spot in a way of of cancer especially when it comes to children because

Katie Huffling (15:43.614)
Mm-hmm.

Katie Huffling (16:00.442)
Mm-hmm.

Cara Lunsford, RN (16:06.337)
Children haven't had the opportunity to, many times, consume, you know, they're not smoking, drinking, they're not doing, they're not making lifestyle changes, right, that are affecting their lives and potentially causing cancer. So sometimes it is environmental, sometimes it's genetic, but then did the genetic stuff come from their parents being exposed to environmental factors, you know, so, right, so all of that.

Katie Huffling (16:14.93)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Katie Huffling (16:32.925)
Mm-hmm.

Cara Lunsford, RN (16:35.805)
So I definitely feel like I've touched on this a little bit throughout my own nursing career and it's kind of been at the, sometimes at the forefront of my mind. And I imagine that that's true for lot of nurses too, that are, especially who are in certain areas of nursing, like oncology, for example.

Katie Huffling (16:48.465)
Mm-hmm.

Katie Huffling (17:00.391)
Definitely. Yeah, and I think you make a good point. Children are kind of like the canary in the coal mine. They don't process things in the environment as well as adults do. They breathe in more air. They consume more by body weight. So if there's things in their environment that they could be exposed to, they're going to higher exposures in general than adults would.

And so, you know, a lot of times when there's issues with different chemical exposures, you're going to see them first in children, unfortunately, or they're going to have worse health impacts than adults would.

Cara Lunsford, RN (17:42.915)
That's really interesting. didn't realize that, but it makes sense. Not too long ago, maybe a couple weeks ago, I was watching, are you familiar with Dr. Mike? He's an Instagram, he's a YouTuber, he's an Instagram influencer, he's got millions and millions of followers, and you can't really pronounce his last name very well, so he goes by Dr. Mike.

Katie Huffling (17:49.447)
Mm.

Katie Huffling (18:11.782)
Yeah.

Cara Lunsford, RN (18:12.839)
And I got sucked into a podcast that he was doing with two physicians.

And I did not realize when I started the podcast at, I don't know, nine o'clock at night, that it was three hours. It was a three hour podcast. It was on YouTube. I, but I got sucked into it and I just could not look away. And so he was interviewing two physicians. One was a rheumatologist, who had a lot of experience with people who had chronic illness, auto-inflammatory diseases, et

And another physician who definitely was a scientist or researcher. don't know what area, I never picked up on what area she actually like worked in. She wasn't a rheumatologist, but she definitely was in this like science-based area where it's doing a lot of research. And they could not have been more...

different because the rheumatologist had written a book and had written book about chemicals, basically how to live in a more chemical free environment. And the other doctor felt that this woman had completely gone overboard. I felt like they were on completely opposite ends of the spectrum. And at first I leaned more towards the woman who was trying

Katie Huffling (19:38.862)
Okay.

Cara Lunsford, RN (19:46.833)
to bring more awareness around chemicals and being kind of free of those things. And I was leaning more towards her and really didn't like the other lady at first. And then, and then as I got about two hours into the podcast, I was like, I don't know, she's got some points. The woman over here on my right has some solid points. And the woman over here on my left, who, you know, I is more integrative and I want to lean more.

Katie Huffling (19:57.328)
Mm-hmm.

Katie Huffling (20:06.35)
huh.

Katie Huffling (20:16.741)
Okay.

Cara Lunsford, RN (20:16.813)
in that way just wasn't bringing the data. She wasn't bringing the trials and the case studies and she just wasn't bringing the numbers and the other woman just was, right? So I think it's really interesting from your perspective, like when it comes to things like that, to like the chemicals that are like in our water, in our air, in our like, what's your position?

kind of on this stuff.

Katie Huffling (20:45.776)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I mean, it can be really challenging to figure out, you know, looking at all of the data or lack thereof, like what is safe to use, what is not safe to use. there can be, you know, with unfortunately with the internet now, it's like you've got people that have no experience. They don't know how to look at data, you know, pronouncing all these different things that are bad for you or not bad for you.

And so it can be really challenging even for nurses and other scientists, you know, trying to figure out what does the data say? What can be really challenging with chemical exposures is you're not able to do a study where, you know, you're like half of this group is exposed to this chemical and half is not because it's really unethical. You can't do like a randomized control trial with chemicals and

And so we're dealing with a lot of epidemiological data. It can be really challenging to pull out some of that information because we are exposed to so many things. However, there are certain chemicals we do have really good data on. And those are the ones where I'm like, that's where you really, if you're your first line of things to avoid. So for example, lead, we know that there's no safe.

level of lead. So you want to make sure your kids aren't being exposed to lead. There's from paint or water, different things. One of the chemicals that folks are hearing about a lot in the news right now is this class of chemicals called PFAS. And they're these fluorinated chemicals.

Katie Huffling (22:29.861)
They're actually a really cool chemical because you can use them in different products and they're very oil resistant, water resistant, stain resistant. So you find it in things like Teflon and, know, stain guards. might be in your rain gear. But that property that makes it really cool to use actually makes it kind of a bad chemical because when it gets in the environment, it doesn't break down. They call them a forever chemical.

And what we're finding, because it's been used in so many products, both with things that the public uses, but also by industry, it's actually used quite a bit in healthcare, in different things that we might be using, that pretty much all of the population in the United States is being exposed. There's significant water contamination, and it's linked to a variety of issues, like

elevated cholesterol, vaccines may not work as well, we're not quite sure why, elevated risks of certain cancers. But we're still kind of at the early stages of finding out what are those exact risks? We don't quite know all of them, but we know enough that we're like, there's definitely problems with this and we should be reducing our exposures.

Cara Lunsford, RN (23:53.701)
Do you think we see this more in developed countries where we have access to some of this stuff? Because I'm thinking about countries where maybe they're still using cast iron or something. I don't know. I I use cast iron. But.

Like that's what I am wondering is that like, are there some countries where they just don't have access to some of this stuff? They're still maybe like cleaning their clothes in the river. I mean, they've got different problems that they're having.

Katie Huffling (24:20.354)
Yeah

Katie Huffling (24:25.284)
Yeah, you know, I think pretty much every country in the world has some environmental problems. I think they just vary depending on the country. You know, for example, in a lot of Latin America, they have a real problem with plastic waste. They don't have good disposal systems. You have a lot of individuals or communities, they burn that plastic waste, like open burn pens, which is

incredibly polluting. And so while they may not be having, say, the PFAS contamination, they're getting it from a different source. And so I think as nurses, depending on the country or the geographic location of where you're working, you're going to have different environmental issues that are more pressing in your community than others.

Cara Lunsford, RN (25:22.757)
Are they able to use, because to your point earlier, that you can't really take a subset of people or a bunch of babies and be like, okay, well, these babies, we're not gonna expose to anything. then these babies, well, you're gonna get it all. You're gonna get all the gross stuff. That's not ethical. Moral or anything.

Katie Huffling (25:40.235)
Right?

Katie Huffling (25:48.076)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Cara Lunsford, RN (25:53.551)
But there's certainly like tribal people. There's certainly people that are like the Aborigines or like that maybe they're being exposed to things in the air, right? I mean, that they can't get away from and maybe even some stuff in their water.

Katie Huffling (26:11.074)
Mm-hmm.

Cara Lunsford, RN (26:16.005)
But they're probably not cooking on it and they're probably not washing their clothes with it and they're probably not. Is there, has there ever really been kind of a study of people that maybe are more indigenous, more tribal?

Katie Huffling (26:35.127)
You know, I don't know. I don't know of any study off the top of my head. However, there is a really awesome movement within the climate change community to be, you know, really listening to Indigenous voices and to be following their guidance because in many ways they've got, you know, a much closer connection to the earth.

than many others do. And so really listening to them, like how do we move forward in a way that supports the earth, that supports the people and the plants and the animals that are on the earth in a way where we're all going to thrive. There's a really great paper by Butterfield et al on nursing action around climate change and they specifically call

know, listening to Indigenous wisdom that nurses, you know, all of us need to be taking that into account as we're addressing climate change.

Cara Lunsford, RN (27:42.213)
I think that's amazing. I love going back and looking at what was old is new again and trying to incorporate the things that were working. Those people are our subject matter experts. I think when it comes to having a reverence,

Katie Huffling (27:52.407)
Hmm.

Katie Huffling (28:02.199)
Exactly.

Cara Lunsford, RN (28:07.979)
and appreciation for our environments, our mother earth and the climate. So, dare I ask? See, I've been skirting around this issue because like I said at the beginning, I don't want to know. But I know that, I know that I, but in my heart, I know.

Katie Huffling (28:14.551)
Mm-hmm.

Cara Lunsford, RN (28:33.837)
Right? I know things are not great. so from your perspective as a nurse, as someone who's worked in this area of environmental health and climate, where are we right now? How are things looking for us, Katie?

Katie Huffling (28:34.593)
Okay.

Katie Huffling (28:58.687)
Yeah, I always say when I talk about climate change, climate change is currently the biggest public health threat that we currently face. However, it's also the biggest opportunity that we have to support health because no matter what patient population you work with, no matter where you live around the

Climate change is impacting you in some way. But if we collectively work on climate change, we have such an amazing opportunity to improve health. Across the board will be less kids with asthma attacks, less people with heart attacks, more babies born at the time they're supposed to be born, because it impacts many things, less people with cancer.

I try to think of it as instead of like this horrible, you know, too big issue that we, you it's just too big. You're like, can't even tackle it because it's too big and overwhelming. It's like, no, there's so many things we can do. And especially with nurses collectively, you know, there's what 25 million nurses around the world. It's, if we collectively are

addressing climate change, we can have a transformative amount of change happen. Like it could be really incredible.

Cara Lunsford, RN (30:32.485)
Yeah, so I like to give people digestible pieces of advice, right? Where you say, look, here's something that you can do daily. Here's something that you can do every time you go to work. When I used to go, when I was at the hospital,

I would come home and be like, wow, I made so much trash today. So much trash. Just me. Just me by myself. With my patients. With my four patients. And...

Katie Huffling (31:13.171)
huh.

Cara Lunsford, RN (31:15.287)
And again, I would just kind of put my head in the sand because when I would do the numbers in my head and I thought, then there's me times 25 million people around the globe and every day for two shifts a day. And then I do the math, right? I do the math and then I'm like, don't think about that. That's terrible because there's nothing I can do. I don't know what to do. So what are some things that...

Katie Huffling (31:33.383)
Right.

Cara Lunsford, RN (31:43.087)
for nurses that are thinking about that, who are thinking about the impact that they're having and how they offset that impact in some way. What are some things?

Katie Huffling (31:52.202)
Yeah, there are so many things that nurses can do. So look, I'd say the number one issue that nurses come to our organization about is about waste. Like, across the board, everyone's horrified by the amount of waste in health care. And nurses, you know, as the largest portion of the health care workforce are the ones that produce the most waste, too. And so you just feel awful about it. You're like,

I don't want to be producing this wave, but I don't know what to do. And so there's lots of things that nurses can do around this. And it's a really great opportunity for nursing leadership. So, you know, in your healthcare institution, if they have a green team, I recommend joining those because they have lots of activities that they're working on, on ways to reduce waste or other sustainability issues within the hospital. But just like thinking about your unit,

I was talking with a nurse who works in sustainability the other day and she was like, you know, look at your staff room at change of shift. And a lot of them, you'll have just a ton of, you know, single use plastic water bottles and then they all get thrown out at the end of the shift and they're not emptied. So you're paying to throw out water. So I was like, I never even thought of that. Like this is horrible.

You know, it's like thinking about in your where you're working, like what are some of these like kind of low hanging fruit? You know, when you come into work, instead of using disposable silverware, bring in reusable silverware. Like think about how you can be a role model and talk with your other nurses and other folks working on your unit. One of the nurses that we work with, they had noticed with the red bag waist that

You know, stuff that should not be going into the red bag was going in there on some of the units. you know, red bag waste is exponentially more expensive to dispose of. It's in the way that they have to do it. It's not always environmentally friendly either. So the more you can reduce red bag waste, the better. And so they were able to change from, you know, a big kind of bucket in each room to these little wall mounted

Katie Huffling (34:19.197)
receptacles, they worked with their, their waste supplier and they've saved their hospital gobs of money and significantly reduced their red bag waste. And it was just like training the staff. Like, here's the new thing. Don't put anything in here that you shouldn't. And, you know, it's like a win-win for the healthcare system.

Cara Lunsford, RN (34:42.681)
Yes. I mean, even when it comes to things like sharps, right? Like, I can't tell you how many people I used to see would take the needles on the syringe and they just put the whole syringe and the needle in. I'm like, you only need to put the needle. You do not need to put the entire syringe.

Katie Huffling (34:44.787)
and

Katie Huffling (35:02.356)
Exactly.

Cara Lunsford, RN (35:08.483)
you if there was even a way to like, cause normally, you know, you kind of pull this down, you drop it in, you close it. And, but if it was maybe a smaller hole where only the room, there's only enough room to put in the needle, right? Like if there's only enough space to put a needle in, then you're not going to be able to drop an entire syringe in there.

Katie Huffling (35:15.604)
Okay.

Katie Huffling (35:29.256)
That's it.

Katie Huffling (35:33.597)
That sounds like a great idea for a nurse to work on, know, like nurse innovation. Totally. We actually, my organization will be releasing in probably a month and a half, two months, a new toolkit for nurses on sustainability and healthcare. So it'll have lots of how-tos on how to get started. Like what are some of the easy things that you can tackle?

Cara Lunsford, RN (35:37.785)
Yeah.

Katie Huffling (36:02.9)
We'll have nurses that are doing this work that have successes talking about it, but also talking about like what didn't work? What did they have a hard time doing? You know really sharing information so that'll be coming out hopefully in about two months now Yeah Yeah, so our website is environment.org it's like environment and RN squished together

Cara Lunsford, RN (36:20.621)
And where can they find that if they want to?

Cara Lunsford, RN (36:31.413)
Envi- Envi- Envi- Envi-RN.

Katie Huffling (36:33.843)
Exactly. It'll be available. Correct.

Cara Lunsford, RN (36:38.905)
So, envirn.org. That's such a cool name, enviren.

Katie Huffling (36:48.283)
I was the the any an he.org. Somebody already had that for like, what else can we use for our website? Thanks.

Cara Lunsford, RN (36:59.789)
I like it. That's fun.

So, okay, so they can find that information there. We'll make sure that that's also on the landing page. for anyone who's wondering, we always put stuff on the nurse.com forward slash podcast landing page so that we know you're driving and doing other things. if you're listening right now and going, well, how do I write that down? Yeah, don't get into a car accident trying to write that down. But so,

Katie Huffling (37:07.763)
Mm-hmm.

Cara Lunsford, RN (37:33.093)
I think that that's really amazing because I think that you've brought up a lot of good points. You can bring a reusable water bottle with you to work. I think more and more we're starting to see filling stations where you can fill your water bottle, or you can fill your water bottle in the patient water filling room.

Katie Huffling (37:55.954)
Mm-hmm.

Cara Lunsford, RN (37:59.171)
When I was a, and I hate to say this, but when I was working in the hospital, we would like take those graduated cylinders and fill them up with ice and drink, you know, out of, and people would put, this is the weirdest thing, but we would, and you've probably seen this, put like a paper towel over the top of it and then we'd stick a straw through the paper towel. It was like so weird. I don't know what we were, like suddenly we didn't have access to water bottles. Like, I don't know.

Katie Huffling (38:09.188)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Cara Lunsford, RN (38:29.113)
why we were drinking like this. But think about the number of graduated cylinders that we were tossing out at the end of our shift. There was no reason to even be using it for that reason. But it was just something we did.

Katie Huffling (38:41.734)
Mm-hmm.

Katie Huffling (38:46.47)
Yeah, I mean, think I did the same thing too. Like, I think every nurse of a certain generation and beyond has done that. yeah. But I think beyond these things that we can do in our healthcare institutions or we're doing at home, with climate change, it's such a big issue that we really need nurses to be advocates.

And nurses, you we're the most trusted profession. And we advocate all the time. I mean, that's a core part of nursing practice. We're advocating for our patients to make sure that they're getting the best possible care available. And so we just need to kind of translate that skill that we already have into a broader sphere. And so whether it's talking in your community with your local elected officials,

you know, all the way to the federal level. Like we need nurses talking about how climate change is impacting their patients. Those personal stories are so powerful. And, you know, we really need our government to be leaders in addressing climate change. It's not going to go away if they're not addressing it. Like we can't put our head in the sand and we need large scale action. Like we can't individually do it ourselves. Like we really need

governments and businesses to be taking the lead. I take nurses on Capitol Hill all the time and it is amazing. Elected officials really listen to nurses and having that combination of the science with those personal stories, it's really amazing.

Cara Lunsford, RN (40:36.655)
That's, I think that that's really important to note that our voices do matter. I think sometimes we forget that. Sometimes like within our organizations that we work in or this industry, we feel like we're shouting into the void, right? Or we've been yelling about things for so long that we just.

Katie Huffling (41:00.753)
Thank you.

Cara Lunsford, RN (41:04.469)
shut off and go home and watch Netflix. Because we're tired. We're tired of yelling about things, you know, whether it's about safe staffing or whether it's about, you know, workplace violence or whether it's about there's just so many things that I think nurses have been so overwhelmed by that at some point you just you get tired.

Katie Huffling (41:10.971)
Mm.

Cara Lunsford, RN (41:33.166)
You're like, you know what, if no one's gonna listen, then I'm just gonna, I'm gonna go home and, you know, turn on the TV. I'm gonna zone out, you know?

Katie Huffling (41:43.441)
Totally. I really get that. In some of our work with other organizations around climate change, one of the things that we'll hear very frequently is like, okay, climate change, yeah, it's bad, but what about staffing? That's the thing that I'm really worried about now. And so we've been able to talk climate change impacts staffing. You don't think initially that it does.

But if you're like in Florida where they have hurricanes, hurricane comes through, it has major impacts on staffing. If you're in an area with wildfires, you may need to evacuate your hospital. But then also, climate change causes more flooding, more poor air quality days, things where you might be seeing spikes in ER patients. And so that impacts staffing.

It impacts in ways that you might not think are obvious, but can really have significant impact on the quality of life for nurses and for the patients that they take care of.

Cara Lunsford, RN (42:53.999)
Yes, yes. So you gave a few real world scenarios where you could make small but measurable impacts, especially over time, because even making small changes, I feel like there's gonna be a lot of banging. I know, I was like, no, no, it's okay, it's okay.

Katie Huffling (43:08.687)
Yeah.

Katie Huffling (43:20.752)
I'm so sorry. They're doing construction next door.

Cara Lunsford, RN (43:25.925)
no, it's fine, it's fine. It was like, but it was really quiet for like a long time. So I think, I think we got, we got really lucky for a while. So it's okay. The one thing that might be helpful, I think we have different tracks anyway, so it's fine because your track won't overlap with my track.

Katie Huffling (43:31.93)
I know, I don't know what he's doing.

Yeah.

Katie Huffling (43:42.691)
Okay.

Katie Huffling (43:47.663)
Okay.

Cara Lunsford, RN (43:47.717)
So that's a good thing. if I'm talking, don't worry about it. And you can always pause. If it's really loud, you can pause and you can restart your sentence when it gets a little quieter. And then that way, my wife who is doing the editing and she's our producer, she won't be like, okay, I cut around or I have to minimize that. It's okay. I've listened to a million podcasts where people are like,

Katie Huffling (43:53.944)
Okay.

Katie Huffling (44:01.581)
Okay. Okay.

Katie Huffling (44:08.674)
Awesome.

Katie Huffling (44:13.58)
you

Cara Lunsford, RN (44:17.475)
there's gonna be some crazy background noise and that's just part of the podcast and like who cares? So I just wanted to like, I wanted to put your mind at ease, like don't worry about it, we'll figure it out. So I'm gonna go back really quick and say that I think that you have given some really doable

Katie Huffling (44:21.582)
Ha ha!

Yeah, yeah.

Katie Huffling (44:29.903)
Okay, thank you.

Cara Lunsford, RN (44:44.869)
things or made some suggestions around what nurses can do to feel like they're making an impact or that they're, you know, just, you know, taking a little, you know, piece out of this like giant thing that we call climate change. And any type of thing that we do has an impact, right? Like, especially if we all do it, if everybody does it.

Katie Huffling (45:01.678)
Mm-hmm.

Cara Lunsford, RN (45:13.793)
It has an impact. And that's, think, kind of your point is that nurses have the ability because they're trusted by so many people that they have the ability to be real advocates of change and that the public will listen to them, that senators or Congress, they'll listen.

lawmakers, that that's where we probably should really be using, like that should be the biggest thing is that to educate ourselves on these areas where we can have an impact and then share that information, share it with our patients, share it with each other at work, share it. Does that, is that kind of, am I?

Katie Huffling (45:53.187)
Okay.

Cara Lunsford, RN (46:10.521)
Am I on the right track?

Katie Huffling (46:10.873)
Definitely, mean nurses, totally, nurses can be such amazing leaders in this space and know, patients are going to listen to us. You know, you can incorporate it into your patient teaching and to the evaluations that you're doing with your patients, talking with colleagues, talking with friends and family. You know, you're a trusted friend. I everybody calls you with their weird health issues. It's like,

Now it's payback. You you caught me with the health issues. I'm going to tell you some other things about how to, you know, positively improve your health, improve the health of your communities. And I'm just going to pause.

Cara Lunsford, RN (46:49.091)
Right.

Katie Huffling (47:02.67)
There we go.

Cara Lunsford, RN (47:03.013)
It's okay. Don't worry about it. We've had all kinds of things on this show. I We've had crying babies barking dogs You know woodpeckers like I mean we've had you name it trash trucks Anything you could like sirens all kinds of stuff has happened on on this show and and we just kind of we work around it because that's the nature of

Katie Huffling (47:18.392)
That's awesome.

Katie Huffling (47:29.27)
Yeah, that's what nurses do. Yeah.

Cara Lunsford, RN (47:31.705)
That's what nurses do. We just, we just, we yell louder than the noise that's around us is what we do. We're just like, yeah, you're going to bang? That's okay. I'm just going to yell louder than you're bang. And that's, that's what we're, that's what we're getting from this. But you know, I think that's...

Katie Huffling (47:37.016)
Yeah.

Cara Lunsford, RN (47:54.937)
I think that that's what you, what you, a lot of what you're saying is, is that we have an incredible opportunity to be the leaders, to be the champions here, right?

Katie Huffling (48:08.877)
definitely. You know, and there's a lot of polling that has been done looking at what messages resonate the most both with the public and with elected officials around climate change. And the number one message across the board, any of these polls that have been done, it's the health message. People want

to healthy, they want their families to be healthy, and they want their communities to be healthy. so nurses can expertly talk about that. Like you don't even need to like bone up on anything, you're just gonna be able to talk about health. So I think it's like the perfect opportunity for nurses to both be showing that nurses are leaders within this field and within this area, but then also to really use our trusted voices.

Cara Lunsford, RN (49:06.265)
Yeah, and you know, I think when I was watching this podcast episode with Dr. Mike, I wish I knew the name of it, but I'm sure you could find it if you went onto his channel. One of the things that...

I think one of the areas where the woman who was the rheumatologist and she was obviously very integrative and holistic in her thinking, she had written this book, and I think where she lost me.

was in this area of, I guess in her book, and I didn't read her book, but clearly the other woman did because she had some serious notes. But she was, I think she highlighted it because she was over in the corner rolling her eyes and like, you know, opening the book up and, you know, saying, pointing to this and pointing to that. But.

Cara Lunsford, RN (50:09.145)
One of the areas that I think she really lost me was that she would say things like, well, if you can take out all the PVC in your house, you know, or if you can remove all the. And I think the other woman who was more of like the scientist, she's like, well, that's not even possible for a lot of people. And so you're fear mongering, you're you're creating fear that's going to have its own. Problem.

Katie Huffling (50:37.612)
Thank you.

Cara Lunsford, RN (50:37.707)
if you create fear.

where people don't feel like they can do anything about it, but now they're fearful of it, right? They're living in their own house going, how do I, wait, all my kids are getting poisoned, I'm getting poisoned. If I just had the money and the resources to take out all this PVC in my house, I would do it, but I don't. So that makes me a bad mother or that makes me a bad father that I can't do these things. So what do you say to like kind of that striking

Katie Huffling (51:04.341)
Hehehehehe

Cara Lunsford, RN (51:10.435)
balance, right? Like not living in fear all the time.

Katie Huffling (51:13.023)
Right. Right. Oh, totally. You know, and I think folks that are like that do a real disservice because just like you were talking about with climate change, you get so overwhelmed. You're like, I can't do anything because it's too much. you know, we don't want parents feeling horrible that, you they could have caused their kids cancer because they didn't get our PVC pipes. I mean, it's much worse.

cancer causation is much more complex than that. But I always say, do what you can. What are some things that you can do? For example, environmental working group has this really great shopping list. They've got the clean 15 and the dirty dozen. So the clean 15, those are the fruits and vegetables that have the lowest levels of pesticides on them. So if you're wanting to buy organic,

reduce exposure to pesticides, but you know, can't buy everything organic. The Clean 15, buy the conventional of those. They have hardly any pesticides or no pesticides on them. The Dirty Dozen, those have the highest levels of pesticides or the most number of pesticides on them. And so those are the ones if you're really needing to focus with your budget, buy those organic.

And like one of the things that on them is strawberries and everybody that has strawberry living kid knows they can eat their weight in strawberries. And so they would be getting a huge dose of pesticides with those strawberries. So that's the one where you're like, I'll use my limited resources to buy organic strawberries. So there's things that you can do.

Cara Lunsford, RN (52:58.551)
It's so fascinating that you bring this up because in that episode, I think there was probably at least an hour of the three hours was them going back and forth over pesticides.

It, it, I was like, am I for it? Am I against it? Should I eat organic? Is it okay? Is it not okay? Is inorganic pesticides different than synthetic pesticides versus organic pesticides? And they both had...

really strong points on both sides. There was like, you know, well we've done this study with agricultural workers and you know and

Katie Huffling (53:37.023)
Mm-hmm.

Cara Lunsford, RN (53:43.481)
this is a safe amount of pesticides, but they're not doing enough studies on organic and what is used in organic, which might be considered organic pesticides versus, you know, and I learned more than I wanted to ever learn about.

Katie Huffling (53:57.94)
Mm-hmm.

Cara Lunsford, RN (54:03.937)
organic versus not organic and the dirty doesn't and the clean 15. I mean, she, I don't even think that I walked away from that conversation with a clear answer. I really didn't. So I'm appreciating hearing this from you because I do trust that nurses kind of understand this process and they understand the science also.

Katie Huffling (54:17.713)
Okay.

Katie Huffling (54:32.606)
Yeah, you know, I've worked with groups working with messaging like for low income residents on how to kind of reduce exposures in your homes.

Katie Huffling (54:53.674)
And so one of the things that, you know, the feedback that they got from a lot, like their focus groups related to this messaging was that in my apartment building, they spray every month for pests. There's nothing I can do about it. So they're going to spray.

Cara Lunsford, RN (55:01.221)
Go!

Katie Huffling (55:21.258)
Well, there's ways to reduce your exposures to pesticides. When your home is being sprayed once a month for pests, it's like, don't leave food out, don't leave the kids' toys out, so that you're not, you're being exposed to much less doses of those pesticides. So there's things that you can do to reduce exposures and reduce the possibility of health impacts. And I think just broadly, that's kind of what we.

need to be talking with our patients and really pushing for is these kind of, I'd say like common sense ways of reducing exposures without being fear mongering.

Cara Lunsford, RN (55:57.711)
Yes, yes, and that's exactly it. That's the stuff that I think when, and again, we're gonna put resources on the landing page that people can find all of this. That.

you can that there are very real world things that people can do. Like you said, if you're getting if your apartment complex is getting sprayed, you don't you don't want those things landing on your kids toys or things that they stick in their mouths or stuff like that. It's like, what can you put away? What can you?

Katie Huffling (56:33.618)
Mm-hmm.

Cara Lunsford, RN (56:38.437)
make sure isn't gonna have stuff just landing on it. And I think what you're pointing to is that it's just an awareness and getting people to be more aware of their surroundings. And it's like, if you smell something and it smells weird, for example, I bought something that cleans your pots and pans. I'm not gonna say who.

Katie Huffling (56:41.896)
Exactly.

Katie Huffling (56:53.288)
Thank

Cara Lunsford, RN (57:07.673)
probably not good. But anyway, I sprayed it and immediately I smelled it and I was like, that doesn't smell safe. It doesn't smell like something that should be in my water. It doesn't smell like it should be on my sponge. It smells chemically. It smells bad. It smells like it's bad for our health. So I think that there's a little bit of that too. like, know, does this even

Katie Huffling (57:16.284)
Okay.

Katie Huffling (57:27.88)
Mm-hmm.

Cara Lunsford, RN (57:37.045)
We innately are built to know that when you're pregnant, your sense of smell is so strong. And I think that that's something to keep you safe, to keep us safe, is to go, that's bad. That fish is bad. This chemical doesn't smell safe. So I think that that's also something that we can probably be aware of too, just from an awareness perspective.

Katie Huffling (57:50.067)
Mm-hmm.

Katie Huffling (58:07.676)
And I think in our culture, we have a...

I think over the past few years, we've gotten into this antibacterial, antimicrobial, use the biggest guns, strongest cleaning products. But for most applications, really simple cleaning products are all you need. Exactly.

Cara Lunsford, RN (58:26.041)
Mm-hmm.

Cara Lunsford, RN (58:32.345)
Yeah, vinegar and water. Vinegar and water is like a really great option and I've started using more, and by the way, vinegar and water cleans windows amazing. Better than anything else, better than that crappy stuff that I was buying before.

Katie Huffling (58:42.514)
Mm-hmm.

Katie Huffling (58:49.32)
Yeah, and what I like about some of these things, know, like vinegar and water and baking soda is they're really inexpensive. So, you know, no matter what income level you're at, it's something that you can access because I find it really frustrating that so often like the, you know, cleaner alternatives are really expensive. You know, we've just as an example with baby

Cara Lunsford, RN (59:10.565)
Mm-hmm.

Katie Huffling (59:18.408)
car seats and strollers, many of them contain flame retardants in the patty. And it's like, why do you need flame retardants in there? Is the baby smoking? No, we don't need flame retardants in these baby products. And so finally, some...

Cara Lunsford, RN (59:32.525)
Yeah, I mean, like if your car catches on fire, you have bigger problems than...

Katie Huffling (59:37.743)
Yeah. so and and finally some manufacturers started to take the flame retardants out of these products, but they were they're all super expensive. If you're a low income parent, they're out of your price range. There's no way you can use them. So it's those types of things that really bother me. like, everyone should have access to these cleaner products, to these things that lower exposures. It shouldn't be just because you're wealthier that you have access.

Cara Lunsford, RN (01:00:07.299)
Right, absolutely. Well, Katie, I feel like I could talk to you for days. Honestly, this was a lot. It was not nearly as scary as I thought it was going to be. I feel like we probably just scratched the surface of so much of this, but.

I want to make sure that, you know, like everyone who is listening to this, that we will make sure that you have access to where you can get more information, reliable places, organizations you can join, and we'll make sure that all of that is there on the nurse.com forward slash podcast landing page for this episode.

Katie, I've enjoyed having you on this podcast so much. I really appreciate you being here with us.

Katie Huffling (01:01:09.539)
Thank you so much for having me. This is really great. I'm always wanting to get more nurses involved in environmental health. So I in this podcast, I hope. Yeah.

Cara Lunsford, RN (01:01:21.673)
I'm gonna let you say that last part. I'm gonna let you say your clothes without someone banging you out of here. I feel so bad for you right now because I've been on the other side of that. Okay, go!

Katie Huffling (01:01:40.426)
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. This has been a real pleasure and I'm just, you know, always wanting to get more nurses involved in environmental health.

Cara Lunsford, RN (01:01:49.381)
Well, we've so much, we've really enjoyed having you on and I'm excited to stay in touch with you and learn more and we will, I'm sure we'll talk to you more soon and maybe we'll even do a webinar, who knows? So let's...

Katie Huffling (01:02:09.968)
That would be amazing. We'd love it.

Cara Lunsford, RN (01:02:11.011)
Yeah, let's stay tuned. All right. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful weekend. It is a long weekend. This episode will go out later, but we recorded it just before Memorial Day weekend. have a wonderful time. Thanks, Katie. All right. I'm going to stop really quick.

Katie Huffling (01:02:31.088)
Thank you, take care.