Persistent and Pervasive: Feminists Take on Toxics Sally Edwards, Anna Mason
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- Society & Culture
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A crash course in feminist environmental health! Learn with us through case studies of products marketed to women and girls including cleaning products, cosmetics/personal care, menstrual/intimate care products and more. We discuss the health effects of toxic chemicals in these products and hear from feminist scientists and activists who are designing creative solutions by raising awareness, advocating for policy reform, and community organizing for action!
Contact:PersistentandPervasive@gmail.com
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The Beast in Beauty: Toxic Chemicals in Hair Straighteners
Many hair care products marketed particularly to Black women and girls contain chemicals that are endocrine disruptors and thus may interfere with the body’s hormone system. Some of these chemicals are also known to cause asthma or cancer. In this episode, we explore the chemical and cultural issues around Black hair care and interview scientists and activists who are working to ensure that safer products are available.
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Advocating for Safe and Just Cleaning
In Part 2 of our mini-series on toxic chemicals in cleaning products, we focus on the efforts of organizers, domestic workers and scientists to strive towards safe and healthy working conditions, as well as job security and benefits for those in the cleaning work sector. We speak with an organizer with the National Domestic Worker’s Alliance, a chemical engineer working to ensure that safer chemicals are used in consumer products, and a founder of a worker-owned cleaning coop. All of these solutions combined are helping to ensure that domestic workers are respected and treated with dignity, have safe working conditions, and have a path to build economic security for themselves and their families.
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Cleaning: A Stained Industry
The cleaning products in your home are not as safe and healthy as you think — especially for domestic workers who have to use them day in and out! This is Part I of our cleaning products and domestic workers series. Our conversation explores the toxic chemicals in cleaning products, who does most of this country’s cleaning work, why that is, and how domestic work conditions – including the use of unsafe products — have come to be.
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Trailer - Persistent and Pervasive
An introduction to the new podcast series, Persistent and Pervasive: Feminists Take on Toxics!
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Toxic menstrual and intimate care products are wrong. Period.
Our pilot episode centers on toxic chemicals in menstrual and intimate care products. We give a brief history of the market and then interview experts about the toxic chemicals in these products, disproportionate exposures, and the ways that feminist scientists and activists are creating solutions.
Customer Reviews
Great take on environmental health issues
“Persistent and Pervasive” are words highly used in the environmental health sciences field to describe chemicals of concern, but are apt descriptors for the kind of chemical exposures many people, and certainly many women face daily due to their jobs, product targeting, racism, sexism, and other factors. The hosts of this show do a great job at explaining the issues and interviewing those involved on both the research and solutions oriented sides. Looking forward to listening to future episodes!
So informative!
This podcast takes on topics that are so important but not often given the attention they deserve. It is well researched and includes all kinds of voices to really look at each topic from many angles.
So needed right now
This podcast brings together so many powerful and insightful voices of women — workers and grassroots activists, scientists and policy thinkers and more — all speaking to domestic workers’ rights, the toxic cleaning products they are forced to use, the industries(and profit making) behind those products and the growing grassroots organizing work led by domestic workers and calling for the policy changes needed to end worker exploitation and to remove these toxic products from all households and work places. I can’t wait for the next episode — I learn so much with each one!