Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 05-05-25_MONDAY_6AM

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

05-05-25_MONDAY_6AM

The Bill Myer Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at ClouserDrilling.com. Good morning. It's 11 minutes after six on Monday, the 5th of May. Cinco de Mayo. I don't really know what Cinco de Mayo is all about, but for some reason everybody gets excited about it.

I don't tend to celebrate Mexican holidays, but that's just me. We could talk about anything you feel like here for the next few minutes. I'm going to go around the various some of the headlines and such and talk about some things as I have observed it over the weekend. Ended up taking my mother to Providence's emergency room yesterday and yeah she's gonna be there for a day or two kind of a pump out some edema problems. You know, she's 85 and there sometimes are just some things that you just, um, you know, they're, they're beyond my amateur geriatric nurse capability. And then we, you know, go in there.

And so she doesn't like being in there and nobody ever does. But, uh, the thing is though, that the care is very nice, people very good. And I was mentioning, uh, yesterday on I was mentioning yesterday on Facebook how happy I was with what they were doing there. And Todd ends up kind of lambasting me saying, like, well, yeah, at least you shouldn't stop talking about the nurses' greed over at Providence. Hey guys, I never did that about Providence. My point of view, it was pretty consistent right from the beginning of the Providence Strike. This had to do with the Providence Strike. By the way, one of the nurses was wearing an ONA shirt. There was probably one that said, hey, how's that deal going?

Right? But I kept my mouth shut. But in all seriousness, I never had any problems with the nurses. I always figured the nurses, the doctors, and the CNAs, the techs and such, you know, you got a tough job there. And it is. But on the other hand, I also can read a balance sheet or, you know, can add and subtract. And I knew that what was being demanded by the nurses was also going to put Providence under big strain. And so, you know, to have a job, you have to have a healthy hospital system to have a healthy hospital system the intake in the outflow

has to kind of match and it hasn't been for a long time and and and and so that was my point you know the money has to come from someplace there is no magic pile of money and i know that a lot of people who were on strike back at the time was saying well look at providence's investment fund. Yeah, the investment fund is there not to give raises, it's there for capital expenditures for the companies, you know, build hospitals, get new equipment, you know, things like that. The actual hospital care is supposed to pay for itself, the people who come in and pay

and insurance, and it hasn't been paying the bills. In fact I go to the calls I'm gonna get to your call here in just a moment just on Friday I had saved this this article before I took my mom to Providence and it says it's from OPB by the way Oregon hospitals bleak financials leaves them vulnerable to tariffs when proposed Medicaid cuts. The new report from the Hospital Association of Oregon shows half of all hospitals in the state are in the red again, raising the stakes if the U.S. Congress makes cut to federal benefit programs. In other words, they're dependent on, once again, hot checks from Uncle Sugar, which are looking less and less likely, right? And oddly enough, I was just talking about Providence, right?

Two weeks ago, Providence CEO Eric Wexler sent an email to the nonprofit health systems staff describing a perfect storm threatening the organization's financial stability. Since posting a loss of $1.4 billion in 2022, the Northwest Health giant has been making strides towards seeing more patients reducing its costs and becoming profitable again. In other words, it hasn't made money. Even though it's a nonprofit, a nonprofit doesn't mean that you can afford to continue

to just lose money hand over fist, folks. And that's what I was trying to tell the nurses even back then, you know, you want, didn't they turn down a 30, 35% pay raise at some point? Say, hey, would have been nice. I get it. I would like everybody to have a pony too. But I was hoping that we would get a deal that both Providence and that the ONA could

be able to work with and live with. But it appears that Providence and many other hospital systems are in the same kind of boat right now. And their cost of their service, the reimbursement from Medicaid, which is Oregon Health Plan, I think it's only 50-60%. It is not very much, which means that everybody else has to try to make up the difference. And you can't charge everybody else who's actually paying for their own insurance enough to make up the difference and it's just a big mess. And I was just trying to be fair about this deal.

I wasn't going to be a Providence Lick Spittle nor a ONA Lick Spittle. But I do know that there are some people working to decertify ONA in Providence, Medford because they think that the Oregon Nurses Association screwed them over by timing the outage, the work outage or work stoppage in a way that hurt Medford more than the other ones, the other hospitals. When it came time for getting back pay and contract pay etc etc. It's a lot of it's in the weeds I don't want to go into that but you know, it's just the money's got to come from something and And you can't make two plus two equal ten Although I know that there are especially public employee unions that think that there's a possibility of doing that. Let me go to dawn

Hello dawn. Thanks for all not a little bit I had to just address that a little bit my own personal thing over the weekend, but how are you doing sir? Rapidly healed can get out of the hospital Exactly whatever whatever you do. Hey the people at Providence were great. It was nice quiet day in the ER But I gotta tell you it's very stressful Place for anybody I would think well, let's take a moment and address the Sisters of Providence. Very committed, I love what they do, but where's the elephant in the room here on hospital costs, which are beyond monumental?

It's Donald Trump, Republican elephant. If you get the illegals out of the system, who have been ravaging our healthcare system in Oregon, Medford alone, then I'm not going to show you examples of what it's done to bloat health care costs here. But still, a huge percentage of people who are using the emergency room and other services have no insurance, have no nothing. And of course, many of them are, they're probably a pretty good percentage of them are not here in the country legally.

It's fair assessment. So just to say, I'll stay on topic a little bit. You know, concerning healthcare services, a few months ago, I had a house guest who needed an ambulance one night. Let's say 11 o'clock, I called the ambulance. They were here jaunty on the spot and two paramedics come in. They're helping my friend. Was it Mercy Flights by chance or was it like you know Fire Department or

something like that? It was Mercy Flights. Mercy Flights, okay. But regardless of that, in no time at all the big red popper truck from District 3 is here and four strapping young guys come in. They looked big to me. They all looked bigger than me. I looked up to them. They helped themselves in. Now I don't know what the four firemen are doing in their little jumpsuits.

They're all dressed the same. When my houseguest was able to walk out of the house, they didn't need six attendants. So now when you were young, is your mother, who's at topic, did they say, chew your gum with your mouth closed? Remember? Did she say that? Sure. Yeah.

Okay. I also have a sign here, no smoking. I can say that. When this goon is standing here, he's going smack, smack, smack. I said, like his mother didn't tell him, chew your gum with your mouth closed, at which point I, in my home, was backed up against the wall. I was assaulted. Really?

Yes. And it was a big ha ha. He smacked, smacked, smacked in my face, looking down at me. And I let this all cool. I didn't, I didn't hit him. I didn't push him back. I was against the wall. I could go back. Oh, so you, so you, you spoke impolitely to a hero, in other words. No, I said, I hate smacking gum. It's a personal thing. Okay, so, can you chew with your mouth? So, his behavior is very symptomatic of that many many firemen have, the district three here, they have

those wait rooms and they're ready rooms in all their firehouses. Maybe firemen isn't the right term. Maybe they're EMTs. Well, you have to understand, you were asking why they're showing up. Of course, I would ask if Mercy Flights was there, why they were showing up. But I have a feeling that maybe this has to do, and I'm just presuming, I'm not claiming to know, okay? Maybe it's one of those things where the fire departments, since they're doing so little fire fighting in many cases, except for wildfires things in the summertime, that you have to make the calls look right in order to justify existence. I'm just posing a question. I don't know if that's

the way this works or not. Okay, I drive a 36,000 pound pumper truck out. Then here's where it goes from this point. They all left. They let themselves in the house, by the way, and they were searching the house. One of them had some questions about the location of certain things. And so they were doing an illegal search, but here's the gravy on this story,

because remember, all politics is local. And besides that, I took an oath to when I served as an officer in the US military to to protect and uphold the Constitution the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic and this is very local so I marched into this district three fire station and three of those men recognized me it was was a big ha ha. They were laughing over the whole scene that night. It wasn't funny to me. I was assaulted under the legal... When you say assaulted, what? Pushed back against the wall? Something like that?

What? Yes. Yes. He wanted me to hit him or shove him back. Now you have battery. I would have been arrested. You follow this? Okay, now what was your house guest having? Was your house guest having a problem with drugs or something? Was there like some assumption? Indigestion. And he was, and then he picked him up at Providence hours later.

So I'm not gonna talk because of HIPAA rules, I can't really tell you who or what. Now, here's the thing. I marched into the station over here and they stopped laughing very shortly. I had some questions for them. They recalled and then they became very hyperprofessional. But his behavior is that of someone on what are called anabolic steroids, become super masculine and aggressive.

Have you seen the symptoms of these steroids on people? Yes. Okay, that's what I see. Yeah, I know my brother took them unfortunately for a time when we were kids. I remember that. Yeah, he's bulking up. So I've waited another six weeks and no one from the station has contacted me, nobody in the administration, no chief. I know they hushed it up down in the barracks. So I am talking to you because my duty, having taken the oath against illegal searches and the way they entered the house and to be intimidated by a public servant in this way, because the servants are becoming the masters at every level.

And thank you for Doge, President Trump, and ferreting out a wasted trillion here and 400 billion there. These are real liabilities to your grandchildren's future. Let me take it back to the situation. If you truly feel that you are treated improperly, is this something that you might have you talk to an attorney if you thought your rights were violated? I'm taking all the right steps right now, Bill. I've gone to the station with a calm head.

Cooler heads must prevail, theoretically. And they had a chance to to man up and admit what's going on. We also know the things I want to know is are they carrying body cams like cops? I want to know if they're armed. I want to know if I had shoved back from being cowered in the corner, just shoved right back in the corner. If I had pushed back, do they have handcuffs? Am I being led away? So, you know, I don't know what the police powers of firefighters are. What I would be curious to know is if for some reason they have,

you know, right of search, or maybe if you allow someone in, they have an implied right of search. I don't know, and I'm sorry to admit I don't know this, I've never really considered this possibility. Because I got to tell you, most of the time when the firefighters showing up here, in my experience, Don, we're thrilled to see them. It's usually a really, really bad time. You know, it's not the same thing as when you have, you know, a sheriff's deputy or a police officer show up, usually. The two ambulance drivers operate, the EMTs, you know, very professional, jovial, happy, they were dressed in white and the four firemen came in ready for action. What are they going to do? There was only one body and it was like we had a... Well, you know what I would do,

I would continue to press and see if you can get some satisfaction from management Okay, I really would be reporting back and now let's don't forget about VE day Okay, victory over Europe day is today, right? Oh, you mean it's not just Cinco de Mayo De Mayo rather a drinking holiday. Yeah, there's something more to this It's so free make the schizophrenia of the Mexican regime because that's not even the current government's holiday. Okay, that was a previous administration, a previous government, a different Constitution. But it's a nice happy time to do happy things. Hey, thank you for listening. I will report back.

That's what I'm here. I'm here to listen and interject. Thank you. Thank you, Dawn. It is 625. Wow. Betty writes me just a moment ago. I was talking about my mom, you know, being in the taking over to Providence yesterday, and she says, Bill, so your mother needed a diuretic. I can't believe that she was already on one at her age. Yes, she is. She is a Betty, you know, quite a bit. And that was the problem because in spite of the diuretics, there was some… She's having problems. It's the varicose veins and what do they call it?

Cellulitis, I think, and probably getting more into…what is that term that they talk about? into lymphedema. It might be going more into that situation. And so, more diuretics don't necessarily take care of that problem. So, these are, hey, it was just maintenance that was beyond my capability. Not that I want to talk about my mom's hospital experience. They treated her very well. That's all I was saying. Yet at the same time, I can still look at the nurses and look at the contract and say, okay, Providence is still broke from the looks of it. It's kind of like the country in a strange way, isn't it? The hospitals, the doctors, the food, the federal government, the entitlements, the Medicare, the Medicaid, all of this. Everything works until it doesn't. And I'm just

hoping that we can have cool heads to make sure that we don't get to that part where it doesn't work anymore. That's kind of what I was getting at. Betty, I appreciate you emailing the Bill Meyer Show. It's a email bill at Bill Meyer show dot com. Over the last 40 years, a lot of very beautiful homes have been built in our area. And our homes are the souls of our neighborhoods. Hi, this is Mark from J-Off and I'm on KMED. 630 KMED 993 KBXG. I appreciate you being here, waking up on Cinco de Mayo or Victory in Europe Day, as Don was kind enough to remind me of just a few minutes ago.

Hey, coming up, we're gonna be talking with Sharon Udaisen and Rachel Frazen. You're gonna join me at 6.40, about 10 minutes from now. And they wrote about an article, or about an issue rather, that I've been really interested in for two or three years ever since I first started reading about this and it has to do with PFAs, the so-called forever chemicals.

Polyfluorocarbon hydrate or something or other, whatever it is. PFAs is how you see this. And a lot of things like the Teflons in nonstick cooking and chemicals which are in flame retardant clothing, all sorts of things like that. And there has been a growing body of evidence that indicates that this is an issue of some import in the environment. You know, a real issue in the environment. Yeah, it's another one of those chemicals, which is another

endocrine disruptor, which tends to screw with the body's metabolism in one form or another. And this all started, I think this was about during the COVID BS time there, I want to say maybe two, three years ago when I first brought to your attention an article that I had read that had talked about farmland out on the East Coast someplace. I don't have the article in front of me. I could probably search it out in my record someplace. But it had to do with farmland that had had sewage, sewage sludge from the sewage treatment plant, local sewage treatment plant that had been taken and put on the ground of these farm, of these pieces of farmland. And then they ended up being declared, well, you can't go there anymore. You can't grow crops on it because of the existence of PFAS. And I remembered back when I was a rock

and roll DJ, back before I went on the talk radio, that we're talking back in the 1990s. In fact, I was still on this signal at that time. It was KZZE in those days. And it was playing rock. And in the morning show at that point, we had been making fun of activities in Ashland because we were just doing comedy and believe me, with Ashland there was always a lot of comedy. in Ashland because you know we're just doing comedy and believe me with Ashland there was always a lot of comedy and we had talked about affluent effluent because they were spraying sewage effluent on some parcels of land around

Ashland and this was all about finding a better way to use the sewage sludge I believe and to also fertilize the land know, get rid of the sludge and fertilize the land. Well, it now seems apparent that these PFAS, these forever chemicals, go into sewer or are concentrated in sewage sludge through the sewage treatment process, like anything else. Kind of like how the prescription drugs they find showing up in the sewage too. And then I got the bright idea. Well, certainly the DEQ, Department of Environmental Quality, you know, has found a way to shut so many other businesses down. Certainly they're taking a look at this, right? And this was during the time in which you almost couldn't get an answer from

anything out of the DEQ. And I sent them two, three emails about it and never heard one thing back. They wouldn't return calls. I called the office. And now I know that there has been talk in the legislature about coming up with rules and regulations, more rules and regulations for this, but I was asking about that two, three years ago. And now there's a body of evidence which is starting to raise more of the alarm. You know, things that people didn't really think.

Okay, all right, so you take the sewage sludge things that people didn't really think, okay all right so right you take the the sewage sludge and you spray it on particular land what could go wrong, you know that kind of thing. There were certain things that we weren't really checking for and I was just wondering if DEQ was not checking on that or checking on PFAS. This was you know three years ago when I first read this story and given the fact that they didn't want to talk with me about it, sort of tells me that no, the DEQ wasn't paying attention to that. There was probably carbon dioxide that needed to be reduced because we all know that it's not PFAS that's causing trouble, it's carbon. Carbon dioxide exhaled from humans and from SUVs going into marijuana greenhouses. That's causing the climate change.

I'm being sarcastic, pardon me. I can't help myself sometimes. So we'll have a little talk about that here in the next few minutes. Well, kind of a rough weekend for Chris Barnett, Josephine County Commissioner, Oregon Supreme Court, reported in the Daily Courier. I got a copy of the decision on Friday, but I did not have given. I was taking care of

mom over the weekend. I didn't have time to really dig into this. But Daily Courier reporting divided three, four, three opinion issued Thursday. Court rejected an appeal by Barnett and upheld the verdict of a Coos County jury, which found a company owned by he and his wife Stephanie liable for elder abuse and breach of contract. Now this had to do with when they bought the Osprey Point RV park. And this is over in Lakeside, about 20 minutes north of Coos Bay. And apparently about six dozen people in their 70s or older had bought what were called lifetime memberships. And the way I'm looking at this, some of the people lived at the park full-time.

And all of them had the right to use it as their home for a significant part of the year. So anyway, the company that owned it before the Chris Barnett folks ended up buying it, they put it up for sale and apparently they put it up for below market, below its appraised value of $2.8 million. Actually, it was appraised here according to the article of $5.9 million, appraised value of $2.8 million. But anyway, we'll talk more about that here in a little bit for sure. It's $635 million at KMED, 99 993 KBXG. Oregon Supreme Court ended up reinstating the verdict. At this point, he's on the hook for quite a bit of money and some interest too. We'll tell you more on the way. retailer it's time to switch to Dish. If you have DirecTV or CableTV call me today

to see how I can save you money plus I'll lower your internet and cell phone bills. And those on the back when they return it for recycling the fee increases part of a plan to raise money for fighting wildfires. Bill London KMED. Good morning this is News Talk 1063 KMED and you're waking up with the Bill Myers show. Like I mentioned before the news break here we're going to talk about PFAS a little bit something I was trying to get to the bottom with our own Department of Environmental Quality they never got back to me and there's a book that is digging into this pretty seriously it's called Poisoning the Well and joining me are co-authors Sharon Utison. Sharon's an award-winning staff reporter for The Hill and Rachel Frazen. I hope I got that right Rachel. She covers energy and

environmental policy for The Hill. Good morning Rachel. How are you? I'm doing well thanks. How are you? Alright, fine. And Sharon, it's great to have you here too. Sharon, why don't you start if you could. For those that don't know, I tried to explain a bit of this probably inelegantly a moment ago. In poisoning the well, what are the PFAS, the forever chemicals? What are they? It's a whole range of chemicals from what I understand. It's an acronym for a whole group of compounds. Scientists estimate that there are about 15,000 of them at this point, but it stands for perUR and polyfluoroalkyl substances. And they're in many household items that we have such as

waterproof fabrics, nonstick pans, cosmetics, and certain firefighting foams that were used to fight jet fuel-based fires. These chemicals are incredibly convenient because of their water and stain resistant properties and that has also made them useful in things like medical devices, first responder gear, and semiconductor. So Rachel, I'll turn it... Go ahead, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, please. No, you're good. I just wanted to add that unfortunately these chemicals have also been linked to a wide range of health problems including various cancers, including damage to the kidney, the thyroid,

the liver, as well as fertility issues and immune system problems. Okay, so there's the good side, the bad side, and how prevalent are they in the overall United States environment? Maybe you can tell us where we're more likely to find the problem areas. So, unfortunately, they have become very widespread, not only in the environment, but also in human beings. The US Geological Survey has estimated that they are in the tap water of 45% of Americans,

and that's sort of across the board, and regardless of whether you are on a private well or whether you are on a public water system. They are also in, basically all of us, the CDC estimates that they can be found in the bloodstream of at least 97% of Americans. One major source is, and this is of interest I know in Oregon because there was recently legislation introduced to look into this, the presence of PFAS in biosolids, which is a nicer word for sludge. And sludge are basically semi-solids left over after sewage treatment

that have in many cases been spread on agricultural fields because they were billed as nutritious fertilizers to farmers, kind of as a win-win between states who want to get rid of these waste products that would otherwise fill dump space and for farmers who would then have more nutrients for their crops. So that's yet another source that leaches right into the groundwater and food supplies. Yeah, thank you Sharon. You know, Rachel, I was just bringing this up that back in the late 90s when I was on a rock DJ here in southern Oregon, they were doing this to an area of Ashland and we were making fun of it because it's a very affluent community.

We called it affluent effluent. They were going to bottle it and give it to the tourists. It's how we were having fun with it at the time. But it ends up being no laughing matter. And I asked our own Department of Environmental Quality about two, three years ago, are you keeping track of this? And I could never get a call returned, nor could I get any emails returned about this. And has there been a lot of up to this point maybe just circling the wagons and trying

to hide from it? Or maybe did people just not know about it until more recently? Certainly a little bit of both. The corporations had evidence of the toxicity of these chemicals dating as far back as the 1960s. They had, you know, manuals calling it hazardous or warning that it could be harmful to companies that make these chemicals. The federal government was not alerted until much later. In the 1980s they were made aware of studies finding birth defects and rats and it was not until the late 1990s that they were told that this could be basically in all of us. When you have a chemical like this, these various classes of chemicals here,

Sharon I'll direct it to you, when you have it that are so useful and have been used for so many years, is there a way to use them that they do not leach into the environment or by their very nature are they going to get into it one way or the other? Do we know at this point? Well, there are scientists working on various things. Some have already advanced to being on the market. There's methods that actually remove the PFAS from drinking water, three different popular methods, but then you are still left with concentrated PFAS because it just removes

it from the water. It doesn't destroy them. Fortunately, there are scientists that are also working on methods to actually degrade them, to break them apart. And there are some that are now emerging on the market. And I do believe that some will be, some of the byproducts could then be reused again for critical things like medical devices and semiconductors for which there are no replacements as of yet. But I do want to point out that a lot of things like the toxic AFFS firefighting foam, there are replacements that people are using on

military bases at this point. So I think the hope is that safer replacements will be the answer rather than continuing to use these substances. Sharon Utison and Rachel Frazen with me and they have a really thought-provoking book called Poisoning the Well. Rachel, is this book available everywhere at this point in time or just through maybe a website where people can find out more? Could you tell us a bit about that? Yes, absolutely.

If you'd like to learn more about these forever chemicals, you can find the book in most places where books are sold. That is including on websites for Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and bookshop.org. You can also go into your local bookshop and ask if they have it. If not, you can ask them to order it. Now, what about, Rachel, I'll keep this with you here for just a moment, what about, we heard about filtering of drinking water. That would be important if you have a well or something that would have this. Are we testing for this in most wells

in public water supplies right now? Do you know? Yes. So in public drinking water systems, they are testing for it at the water utilities. In 2024, the Biden administration finalized a rule that basically required public water systems to test for these chemicals. And if they find it, filter it out by 2029, not totally clear what the Trump administration

is going to do, whether they'll keep that in place, change it or get rid of it entirely. But as of right now, water systems are being required to at least test for them. But that also only applies to people who are on public drinking water systems. It does not apply to people who are on private wells. So that might be a little bit more case by case. What about the- I'm just asking very quick to that, that some of the, say the case by case stuff does apply at a state level.

Because I want to give some credit to New Jersey here, which is actually my home state and is incredibly polluted by PFAS. They actually have a private well testing act and now landlords need to test every five years and provide results to tenants even in private well situations. So again, that's not a federal requirement and so really depends on where you live but just wanted to point that out in New Jersey. What happens to the lands that were sprayed with sewage sludge and like I had talked about some have this happened in Ashland there were some in

Sam's Valley, Oregon if I recall correctly and you're right it was being presented back in the day as this is a win-win. We have sewage sludge that needs to go someplace. Instead of trucking it somewhere, we can put it to use. What happens with these lands? Are all lands going to be poisoned by this or laid fallow, I guess, by it? What happens? Well, so the biggest effects that we've seen right now are on the actual dairy operations that happen on these lands because cows will consume contaminated water, contaminated hay that grows in that ground and then it really poisons the milk and then shudders dairy businesses.

As far as the land itself goes, cleaning up PFAS from soil is much more difficult than from water, although there are methods now that scientists are working on like washing soil basically and then what they do is essentially like try to wash the PFAS off the soil and then, um, use the same methods that they use with drinking water to remove it from the water. But it's far, far behind, far behind where we are with cleaning water because it's just much, much more difficult. So yeah, I'd say for now, a lot of these places are really still contaminated and so farmers

are looking for alternative uses of their land, like building solar panels, like large scale solar stuff on top of their land so that they're not actually contaminating any consumers. I would add that while research is still emerging, there is some evidence of sort of it getting taken up into plants as well, including vegetables. So this is something which is of growing concern. Now is it fair to say that PFAs overall are that class of, they could also be considered endocrine disruptors. Would I be right and correct in saying that?

Is that part of this? Yeah, they are. Okay, all right. So when we hear about the other things like bisphenol, BPA and all the other things, it's not the same class of chemicals, but many of the same effects. So yeah, it is a real thing. And before we take off, did this all start with what, what was going on in Maine or the East Coast? It's the first article I read about it

a number of years ago. Is that what started this for you? You mean for our reporting, I think, well, I got it more from a federal perspective. I've been sort of covering, you know, environmental policy here in Washington. And believe it or not, it actually is a bit of a hot topic here.

And it is something that you do see a lot of policy makers talking about even if regular people are not necessarily aware of it. But the contamination has sort of occurred sort of concurrently around the country. You've got industrial pollution from factories where PFAS containing products are made. You've got military pollution coming from the use of firefighting foams, especially at Air Force bases. You've got this farm pollution like we've been talking about, so it's sort of all been happening altogether and all at once.

All right. Very good. I know you have other people to talk to. I appreciate taking a few minutes to talk with me this morning. Sharon Utison and Rachel Frazen. The book is Poisoning the Well. I'll put all the information up on my blog today. Thank you so much for the good work on this.

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This is the Bill Meyer Show on 1063 KMED. Call Bill now, 541-770-5633. That's 770 KMED. 652, in a conversation with the two co-authors of Poisoning the Well about the Pifa as the forever chemicals. They're starting to find out more. It's usually not really good. And the tragedy about it is that the chemicals are very valuable, you know, fire retardant, foam and insulation, all sorts of things. It's used a lot in medicine too.

But the escape into the environment not so good and it does tend to concentrate in sewage sludge and various other things. Poisons water supplies is what they get concerned about or contaminates not poison. It's not like you drink the water and you die. But the forever chemicals, the Teflon type chemicals of the world can be somewhat problematic in the environment. And like I had mentioned, I had reached out to the DEQ, never heard anything back, and I thought, okay, well, they must be on it. Well, I guess they are finally coming up with rules, which tells me that, no, nobody was looking at things like this over the years. And back when the Mail Tribune was still printing, and it

existed, I remember, you know, reading the the articles and like I said, we made fun of it. In Ashland they were spraying it on some test fields around it, spraying the sewage sludge there because you needed to get rid of it. And I remember some farm fields in Sam's Valley, if I recall correctly, that were also part of these experiments. And I get that, you know, it needs to go somewhere. Sewage sludge, there is nutrition to it or bio-nutrition. You're thinking what a great way to fertilize crops. All right. And maybe, maybe not so good, right? And I had a person who wants

to be known as B who wrote me this morning saying, Hey Bill, they pumped for years and years out of the old mint farm in Josephine County. Farm used to be about a thousand acres. It's where the Applegate meets the Rogue. It's now a winery with cattle. Also pumped off of the upper river road near Pinecrest for many years. So yeah, there may be more of this going on over time. Chris for many years. So yeah, there may be more of this going on over time. And you know, I'm starting to wonder, will it end up being now when you sell a large plat of property or a large bit of property, will we end up having to start doing some

disclosures and things? All right, did you ever pump sewage sludge? All right, great. If you put it on this land, maybe you're going to have to have it tested to see if there are PFAS there or PFAS within it. What is a standard? What is a safe standard? You know, it's the one thing I should have asked them. I forgot about that in all my other questions that I had for the two authors, but I do have a copy of the book. So I'm going to dig into that. Maybe I can get a little more clarity. Interesting, interesting, interesting. 770-5633-770-KMED. Jeff writes me out of Selma says, Bill the fire service. Bill, ten years in the fire service here and the firestorm shall ensue. The line is busy. The reason for the big fire truck is because medical care is administered by Mercy flights while medical assistance is provided by Fire District 3.

The vehicle is cost driven. To have a rescue unit would mean an additional vehicle with all of the maintenance associated with it. Every call is an unknown as to what assistance will be required. Therefore, you show up with everything instead of being short-handed in personnel or equipment. As to behavior, disciplinary actions is definitely in order. One statement in fire training is, always keep in mind is that this person is having the worst day of their life. This is from someone who did the job. Jeff, I appreciate you let me know about this. The public servant in question shows he has zero respect for the persons of whom he is supposed to serve. Personally, I can't imagine what someone with his attitude is even doing in the fire service.

As to searching, one former chief I was under said during one training that we need to look around to see if there was anything illegal lying about. This was vehemently opposed by many of us in the Department of Fire Service because the Department of Fire Service is not law enforcement, nor do they not have any law enforcement powers. If they do, I have not heard anything of the sort engaging in such activity as a violation of privacy. If there is a law anywhere that allows such, I would certainly like to see it. If it is a policy of the department, then the chief needs

to be publicly exposed and taken as a task. That's Jeff Inselma. You know, Jeff, I'm going to give you an email of the day on that. Emails of the day are sponsored by Central Point Family Dentistry and Dr. Nelson. It's next to the Mazatlan Mexican restaurant in Central Point. And being a patient at Central Point Family Dentistry has some real perks too. Whatever dental hygiene products are recommended and sold to their patients are sold at cost. Electric toothbrushes, water picks,

prescription toothpaste, dry mouth products. They don't make any money on selling these because when they recommend something it's because the patient really needs it. It's not to sell you dentistry. Centralpointfamilydentistry.com. It's a very good good good take on that Jeff and I will I will defer to your experience in the fire service. Okay that That would make sense, because I know that generally speaking, the fire departments like to have, you know, they're people when firefighters show up,

everyone's kind of like going, oh great, thank goodness, please come in, so and so, grandma fell out of the bed, or someone's having a medical emergency, et cetera, et cetera. And so they're not, you would think ideally they're not paying attention to the illegal stuff that is for

law enforcement and getting warrants, etc. Yeah, I get that. I know some people may not like that. I guess in some respects, if a firefighter were to come into a house because of a medical emergency and you see somebody tied up in a kidnapping, human trafficking kind of thing, maybe you could say something, right? Is that kind of where you're coming from? That'd be an interesting way. What do you say? I mean, it's one thing privacy, but you don't have to cover up the crime.

You know, a big serious crime being committed at that time. I don't know where you go on that, Jeff. Just raising the issue. You know, I'm just thinking about that clown that got sent to prison for a while. Remember the Klamath Falls thing? If there had been a fire at that place where the guy had kidnapped that woman and kept her in that storage area for a while, she got out, thank goodness. Oh my goodness. And she lived. You know, she lived through it. But if a firefighter had shown up and seen this, would they? No, I don't think they'd look the other way. I think they'd say, all right, this may be policy, but yeah, we're calling someone,

you know? And then, you know, big burly people, maybe just beat the living daylights unofficially out of dirtbag doing this to some poor female. Just saying, alright. 770-5633-770K-MED, alright. Okay, we're going to check the latest from Town Hall News in just a moment. Also have the Hannity update on the way. And then State Representative Duane Younger will join me. And Duane is being investigated by the state. Why is Duane being investigated by the state. Why is Dwayne being investigated by the state?

Why? Because he had the temerity to read children's books that Democrats want in all the libraries with nasty sex scenes and sordid content and all the other things under the guise of, well, I guess, placating the island in misfit humans and diversity and inclusion and making sure your kid knows how to go about the genitalia removal, all that kind of stuff. This is all inclusion. And so he reads these scenes from the books on the floor of the State House.

And some people are complaining that it made a hostile work environment. Hostile work environment! Oh my goodness! Yeah, so we're going to talk about this investigation. Yeah, State Representative Dwayne Younger has the right enemies apparently, but I think we're going to need to to get in this fight and push back against this nonsense of a hostile work environment for having to listen to the scenes out of books that Democrats don't want questioned in school libraries. We'll have a conversation about that and more, a whole coming up in about 10.