Regina Barber

I'm Regina Barber, and you're listening to ShoreWave, the science podcast from NPR.

Melissa, you've been looking into like different ways firefighters could have gotten PFAS into their body.

Let's start with their occupation.

Where are the PFAS coming from on the job?

And in your study, when you're like analyzing how PFAS might be getting into the firefighters, how are you doing that investigation?

How are you getting this data?

And

We should say that this paper, it follows a similar paper in Australia where they're looking at levels of these chemicals in firefighters' blood.

And they found that firefighters that donated plasma and blood had lower levels of PFAS than ones who didn't.

And your study is kind of like a start of that work here in the U.S.

So how does this research compare?

How do you hope all of this research helps firefighters in the future?

Yeah, I was going to say, like, if I'm not a firefighter, I know many people aren't, should our listeners be concerned about PFAS levels, like, in their daily life?

Yeah, those are also bad for your health.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What are these recommendations?

Oh, we're going to get mail now.

Melissa, thank you so much for talking to me about PFAS.

I'm a hypochondriac and you actually made me feel slightly better.