Avoiding PFAS in Consumer Products Virtual Workshop

Avoiding PFAS “Forever Chemicals” in Consumer Products and Keeping them Out of our Food Supply: A free virtual workshop 

Presented by Tracy Frisch, MS

Sponsored by Honest Weight Food Co-op, Albany, NY

6:30 – 8 pm, Thursday, January 5, 2023

Pre-register at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/avoiding-pfas-forever-chemicals-in-products-and-our-food-supply-tickets-493991761657

This workshop, sponsored by the Environment Committee at Honest Weight, will give you the tools to make more informed decisions to protect yourself and your family from PFAS exposure in your household. It will also provide background for safeguarding our food system from these highly toxic, persistent manmade substances. 

The workshop will offer a brief history of the PFAS class of chemicals and an overview of their characteristics and documented health impacts, which include cancers and kidney and liver damage. We’ll consider the surprising range of consumer products that contain PFAS and go over tips for avoiding PFAS-containing products. We will also review the routes by which PFAS pollutes the environment and review how we may be exposed. 

With that background, we will explore the potential sources of PFAS contamination in our food and in farm and garden soils and the actions we can take to protect ourselves and the food system. For example, sewage sludge-based fertilizers and composts are spread over millions of acres of farmland. However sewage sludge is contaminated with dangerous levels of PFAS, from the above mentioned consumer products and other sources. (The use of sewage sludge is prohibited in certified organic agriculture.)

About the presenter: Tracy Frisch has been an environmental leader and organizer for over 30 years and an independent journalist since the mid 2000s. She has been educating herself and others about PFAS “forever chemicals” since 2017. She is the co-founder and chair of the Clean Air Action Network of Glens Falls, which is actively working to prevent the first sewage sludge biochar project from being permitted in the Saratoga County town of Moreau on the Hudson River. As a member of the Farm and Food Committee of the Sierra Club, Atlantic Chapter (NY chapter), she is the lead author of the forthcoming briefing paper, “The Use of Sewage Sludge as a Fertilizer or Soil Amendment Endangers Human Health and the Future of Our Farmland.” Tracy joined Honest Weight Food Co-op in 1989 when she moved to Albany, NY. She currently lives in rural Argyle, NY.