Sex Toy Safety

  • The Smitten Kitten in Minneapolis is one of the adult toy retailers which has stopped selling certain kinds of toys because of questions about the chemicals used to make them. (Photo by Lester Graham)

(Listeners should be aware of the adult nature of this report. It includes
sexually explicit descriptions.)


Not everyone uses sex toys. But some people certainly do use them. The American
sex toy industry took-in more than one-and-a-half billion dollars in revenue
last year. But there are growing public health concerns about chemicals used
to manufacture some of the adult toys. No government agency regulates sex
toys because the adult toys are labeled as novelty items. “Novelty” means
these toys are not intended to actually be used. Kyle Norris reports some
retailers want the industry to stop using the potentially harmful materials in
the toys:

Transcript

(Readers should be aware of the adult nature of this report. It includes
sexually explicit descriptions.)


Not everyone uses sex toys. But some people certainly do use them. The American
sex toy industry took-in more than one-and-a-half billion dollars in revenue
last year. But there are growing public health concerns about chemicals used
to manufacture some of the adult toys. No government agency regulates sex
toys because the adult toys are labeled as novelty items. “Novelty” means
these toys are not intended to actually be used. Kyle Norris reports some
retailers want the industry to stop using the potentially harmful materials in
the toys:


(Readers should be aware of the adult nature of this report. It includes
sexually explicit descriptions.)



A couple of years ago, Jennifer Pritchett and Jessica Giordani opened up The
Smitten Kitten, a small sex-toy store. On the day that their first shipment of
adult toys arrived they excitedly gathered around. As they ripped open the
box, a noxious odor permeated the air. It was that new, vinyl shower-curtain
smell:


“And we saw these oil spots. That’s what it looked like oil seeping through
the cardboard boxes. We were a little concerned, obviously, and we opened
them up and each of the toys, almost down to every single one, was beading
some oil-like substance up on the toys, through the product packaging,
through the styrofoam peanuts, and then through the cardboard.”



The entire shipment of adult toys was ruined. Pritchett started asking around
to the folks she knew in the industry. Someone told her that the oils leaching
from the toys are called phthalates.


Cheaper-end sex toys are made with polyvinylchloride, or PVC. PVC is a
synthetic material used in tons of things like building materials, medical
appliances, everyday household items and children’s toys. And much like
the children’s toys, most of the cheaper adult toys are manufactured in
China. There are no regulations on the manufacture of the adult toys in
China, and no regulations on the imports of toys in the United States.


In order to make PVC softer and more flexible – which is a desired effect in
certain adult toys – plasticizers called phthalates are added. And a lot of
phthalates go into jelly toys to make them more jelly-like. In fact, the
leaching toys Jennifer Pritchett had ordered are actually called jelly toys. But
that very un-technical term did not sit well with Pritchett. She sent a few of
the best-selling toys on the market to an independent chemist. To see what
the adult toys were really made of.


For instance one of the most famous sex toys in the country is called “The
Rabbit.” Everybody knows about that. Sex and The City had a big episode
about the rabbit habit. Oprah Winfrey gave away one to every person in her
audience. They’re everywhere. And I sent that particular toy to a lab, and it
came back that 60% of the total weight of that toy, so 60% of the total
volume of material is a chemical called dioctyl phthalatem, which is a
known carcinogen and teratogen.


It turned out the rabbit toy was made with materials from a class of
chemicals that’s linked to cancer and birth defects. It’s not known whether
materials used in some adult toys are dangerous to human health or not.
Because no one is testing them on humans.


In 2006, the Danish Technological Institute did study the health risks of
chemicals in adult toys on lab animals. Researchers found that some
phthalates are harmful to mice and rats in large amounts. Pritchett says that
if the consumer public knew that the materials in their toys might be a risk,
they probably would not use them. She says that the big picture here is about
a lot of things. And one of those things is a culture’s discomfort with
sexuality:


“It’s about a regulatory system that can’t even say the words ‘adult toys’ let
alone regulate it like they do children’s toys. It’s about a market structure
where people can make thousands of percent profit on cheaply made toys
and nobody’s going to do anything about it.”


There’s a lot of money in sex toys. Carol Queen is the staff sexologist at
Good Vibrations, a well-established California sex store. She says that
people have worried about phthalates in the toys that children suck on, like
pacifiers. In fact in Europe, children’s toys with dioctyl phthalate and other
kinds of phthalates have been banned. Once people started worrying about
children’s toys, they soon started to wonder about adult toys.



“In terms of the dildos and the insertable vibrators, at the very least, those
things are going to and on the mucosa, and if somebody’s having fun it’s
staying there for a little while. There’s friction, there’s the possibility of
leaching. And all of those things are potentially correct. The problem with
the discourse is that so far no one has had the opportunity to truly understand
what the implications health wise and otherwise might be for these materials
on human body. Because people don’t test sex toys.”


The big concern here is that sex toys directly touch mucous membranes. And
this contact is not buffered by any layer of skin. So the materials used in an
adult toy can potentially more easily be absorbed into the body.


For this report, I contacted more than twenty medical and health
professionals. They were the heads of research universities that specialize in
sexual studies. Or OB-GYN doctors, or the directors of sexual health clinics.


None of these health professionals were willing to be interviewed about
what can happen to someone’s body when they use adult toys made out of
potentially hazardous materials. They just don’t have the information about
it. Although when I spoke with them, the majority of those health
professionals were curious to hear this report.


We finally spoke with Dr. Susan Ernst. She’s the director of the Gynecology
Clinic at the University of Michigan’s student health services. She confirmed
that this topic is not on the radar for many health professionals:


“It hadn’t come up as a topic with patients. It hadn’t come up in any of the
medical conferences that I had attended. It hadn’t come up in the medical
journals that I have read. So I am embarrassed to say it came up through the
lay press bringing it up as an important issue.”


Dr. Ernst says that if a patient is using an adult toy that is potentially
dangerous, then health care professionals need to be knowledgeable about
this topic.


Jennifer Pritchett of Smitten Kitten says friends sometimes mention rashes
or burning they experience when using adult toys. They’ve been to the
doctor. But physicians often wrongly assume that it’s an STD or a toy that’s
not been cleaned properly. And the problem doesn’t go away.


The doctors don’t think about a connection between the chemicals used to
make the toys and how they might affect the body.


Pritchett says when she mentions that possible connection to a friend, she
can see a light-bulb go on over their head. Now that’s speculation of course,
but she thinks people need to put all of the pieces of the sex-toy puzzle
together. That’s why she stopped selling the jelly toys that were leaching
phthalates:


“We have to say we know the chemicals in these toys are dangerous. We
know they’re dangerous in other respects. We know if children put these in
their mouths, it’s dangerous. I think we’re going to have to extrapolate and
say well if adults put these in mouths or other parts of their body it’s also
dangerous. We’re just going to have to make a little leap there. But the
industry who is invested in keeping toxic toys on the market hides behind
that. They hide behind the novelty use only. The ‘nobody’s proven that this
specific toy causes cancer.’ I think it’s a cheap argument and I hope it doesn’t
stand up for too long.”


Pritchett says it’s not as if people are only buying adult toys as gag gifts. But
because the toys are so controversial, nobody expects the government to test
the safety of them anytime soon. But people are starting to talk about the
issue. A few months ago an adult toy trade magazine did a cover story called
“Attack of the Phthalates.” And one of the biggest adult toy retailers recently
announced it was phasing-out products that contain phthalates. Because
more people who use these toys are becoming concerned about whether
they’re putting themselves at risk.


For the Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

Related Links

Discouraging Bottled Water

Over the last six years, bottled water consumption has gone up 60
percent in the United States. That means a lot of plastic bottles are
being thrown out. As Brad Linder reports, businesses and local
governments across the country are trying to encourage people to cut
back on bottled water:

Transcript

Over the last six years, bottled water consumption has gone up 60
percent in the United States. That means a lot of plastic bottles are
being thrown out. As Brad Linder reports, businesses and local
governments across the country are trying to encourage people to cut
back on bottled water:


Environmentally-conscious restaurants around the country have begun
removing bottled water from their menus. And the city of New York has
launched a new advertising campaign to convince citizens to drink tap
water. They tout it as “fat-free,” and “delicious.”


Susan Neely is the president of the American Beverage Association. She
says these campaigns miss the point:


“We need clean, accessible, safe tap water. But there’s great advantages
to bottled water, too. It’s portable, it’s convenient. And we can more
easily do what doctors and nutritionists are telling us to do, which is to drink more
water, particularly in these hot summer months.”


Neely says plastic bottles make up only one third of one percent of the
nation’s waste, and that’s not including the bottles that are recycled.


But not every bottle gets recycled. And it takes both energy and
petroleum to produce and distributed bottled water. That’s why cities
like New York are promoting tap water as an environmentally-friendly
alternative.


For the Environment Report, I’m Brad Linder.

Related Links

Windmills Generate Jobs and Power

  • A windmill blade nearly 150 feet long is slung gently onto a flatbed at the Duluth port. A modified trailer is needed to transport the blade. (Photo courtesy of Stephanie Hemphill)

U.S. demand for clean energy is growing fast. In fact, wind energy developers are ordering so many windmills, they’re running into a supply problem. Windmill manufacturers overseas have been shipping their products to the booming U.S. market. That’s already created some jobs, and now there are plans to build factories to produce windmills here. It’s all happening in spite of inconsistent federal support. Stephanie Hemphill reports:

Transcript

U.S. demand for clean energy is growing fast. In fact, wind energy developers are ordering so many windmills, they’re running into a supply problem. Windmill manufacturers overseas have been shipping their products to the booming U.S. market. That’s already created some jobs, and now there are plans to build factories to produce windmills here. It’s all happening in spite of inconsistent federal support. Stephanie Hemphill reports:


At the Duluth Port Terminal, the BBC India is tied up to the dock. Two giant cranes slowly lower a silvery propeller onto a waiting truck. The blade is half as long as a football field. The extended bed of the eighteen-wheeler isn’t long enough to hold the entire length. A padded steel structure cradles the narrow end above the ground. There are 66 blades on the ship, three blades for each of twenty-two towers.


“The three blades will bolt into a hub, and then the hub attaches to the nacelle, the generator package, that’s the actual turbine, and the nacelle sits on top of the tower.”


Andrew Holdrup is the port captain for the shipping company. He was here in Duluth a year and a half ago, when the port handled its first ever shipment of windmills.


Holdrup says the demand for windmills is huge in the U.S.


“We have four ships; all they do is run from Denmark to Houston with Siemens windmills. We discharge them in Houston, the ship sails back empty to go pick up the next lot. Multiply that by all the other ports, and all the other windmill manufacturers, and it’s a huge business.”


It’s great business for Duluth’s port. Unloading the windmills requires iron workers to cut the steel where the pieces have been welded to the ship, and crane operators, and longshoremen. And truckers are staying in town waiting to pick up their loads. They’ll haul the windmills to wind farms being built in Mower County, Minnesota, and Oliver County, North Dakota. The port has also handled equipment for wind farms in Manitoba.


The boom in wind was primed in the early 1990s, when Congress set up a production tax credit for wind power. It allows a 1.9 cent-per-kilowatt-hour tax credit over ten years, for electricity produced by wind.


But the tax credit only runs for two years at a time. Ron Johnson is in charge of marketing for the Duluth Port Authority. He says that on-again, off-again approach has made it hard for businesses involved in wind energy to plan and grow.


“It’s kind of start up again, stop, start up again, stop. If you’re a trucking company with these specialized trailers, you don’t want to go out and buy fifty more of them if there’s a chance your whole fleet’s going to sit until Congress decides what to do.”


Johnson says there’s a lot of support in Congress for the tax credits, and he expects them to be renewed.


Steve Stengel works for FPL Energy, the company building the wind farms where these windmills are headed.


“It is part of the business, we understand that. And it does cause kind of starts & stops, if you will.”


But he says it’s possible to work around the periodic breaks in the tax credit because it takes a long time to plan a wind project anyway.


“Permitting issues, land lease issues, transmission issues. We have to plan as if the tax credit is going to be there.”


In fact, wind is growing dramatically in spite of the iffy nature of federal support. Several states now require utilities to invest in renewable energy, or offer incentives for wind power development. And as the cost of fossil fuels goes up, the relative cost of wind goes down.


It all adds up to a lot of demand, and recently, tight supplies.


The American Wind Energy Association’s Susan Sloan says orders are already in place for 2008 and beyond.


“Because of this boom and bust cycle but also because of this new acceptance of wind, we are seeing a tighter supply, and we need to have the manufacturing capabilities catch up.”


And that’s what’s happening.


It took two weeks for the Siemens windmills to sail from Denmark to Duluth. Now the company is building a factory in Fort Madison, Iowa. Siemens says it will employ 250 people, and start producing in the first half of 2007.


And in Pipestone, Minnesota, Suzlon, a company based in India, is about to start producing three blades a day, and the nosecones to go with them. The company plans to manufacture the electronic controls, and eventually employ up to 300 people. Suzlon says it has orders for the next two to three years.


For the Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Related Links

Windmills Generate Jobs and Power (Wrap)

  • A windmill blade nearly 150 long is slung gently onto a flatbed at the Duluth port. A modified trailer is needed to transport the blade. (Photo courtesy of Stephanie Hemphill)

US demand for clean energy is growing so fast, supplies of generating systems are getting tight. Stephanie Hemphill reports on a challenge that could lead to more jobs in the US:

Transcript

US demand for clean energy is growing so fast, supplies of generating systems are getting tight. Stephanie Hemphill reports on a challenge that could lead to more jobs in the US:


Overseas manufacturers of wind generating systems are shipping them here as fast as they can. Now, several companies are building wind generator factories in the US.


Siemens is building a plant in Iowa. Suzlon is about to start production in Minnesota. Plants in Texas produce blades and towers.


It’s all happening in spite of inconsistent federal support. A production tax credit is in place, but it expires every two years.


Ron Johnson is with the port of Duluth, which handles windmill imports. He says the on-again, off-again support makes it hard for companies to plan and grow.


“Well, the deadline’s coming at the end of next year, and people are planning their projects, so we’re all anxious to see what Congress does.”


The American Wind Energy Association says producers are installing enough wind power this year to power the entire state of Rhode Island.


For the Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Related Links

Recycling Unused Medicine

Across the country, nursing homes destroy thousands of dollars in medicine at each facility every day. The medicine is still good. But destroying the drugs has been the traditional way to keep prescription medication out of the wrong hands. A new federal directive might encourage more nursing homes to recycle unused medicines for the use of the poor. The GLRC’s Lisa Ann Pinkerton reports:

Transcript

Across the country, nursing homes destroy thousands of dollars in
medicine at each facility every day. The medicine is still good. But
destroying the drugs has been the traditional way to keep prescription
medication out of the wrong hands. A new federal directive might
encourage more nursing homes to recycle unused medicines for the use
of the poor. The GLRC’s Lisa Ann Pinkerton reports:


In her nursing home room, Genevieve Barns gazes out the window. A
black rosary is draped over her lap. She’s 94 and an oxygen
concentrator, bubbles behind her to help her breathe. She says even this
late in life she’s still abiding by her mother’s lessons.


“It’s a matter of how we were raised, you never wasted anything.”


Barns was on a common medication called Mucinex, to keep her
throat clear, but her doctor took her off of it. Normally, her unused
Mucinex would be sent back to the pharmacy for destruction, but Barns’
nursing home contributes it to a so-called ‘drug repository.’ Barns says it
was a simple choice to give medicine she can’t use to needy seniors.


“Well, everything is so expensive, and when you waste… you’re just
squandering things that should be used by someone.”


Four years ago, Ohio became the first state to recycle sealed, unused
medicine to seniors in need. Ever since, its two drug repositories have
struggled to get more participation. The drugs can’t be redistributed until
there’s enough of any one drug to make a 30 day supply. Then it’s made
available to seniors who otherwise couldn’t afford it.


At Genevieve Barns’ nursing home, the administrator, Denise Day,
collects the drugs in a blue plastic tote…


“We don’t have a huge cliental in this building at this time, but the
amount of medications that get sent back is still quite incredible.”


The bin in Day’s office is filled with pills and bottles sealed in their
packaging. She says what’s here comes from patients covered by
Medicaid; unused medicines covered by Medicare or private insurance
must to go back to the pharmacy for incineration before patients can get
their refund. Day says still, about 2-thousand dollars worth a month,
from just 34 patients, are recycled by the group called Serving Our
Seniors.


Its director, Susan Daugherty, says if every nursing home in her county
donated from just half their patients, the results would be astounding.


“Honestly we could meet and probably exceed the need of older adults
who’ve needed access to drugs that are common to the aging
populations. It could do a whole lot of good with a whole lot of waste.”


The drugs in this region are taken to Buderer Pharmacy. It’s become the
local drug repository. In the backroom shelves of medication go all the
way to the ceiling.


Matt Buderer is the pharmacist. He says the drugs are checked for their
expiration dates and whether they’re eligible for donation.


“And then what we want to do is take these drugs and poke them out of
this thing into a bottle. Making sure that what goes on the bottle is the
lot and expiration date.”


Seniors who’ve signed a waiver and received a card from Serving Our
Seniors can then buy any medication for a flat fee of 7 dollars and 40
cents.


“You can dispense one tablet. You can dispense 15. You can dispense a
billion for $7.40.”


Ohio’s not the only state with a drug repository program. At least
nineteen other states have mimicked the idea. Some states have had
more success than others.


In North Carolina the Board of Pharmacy says it recycles 5 to 6 million
dollars of drugs paid by tax payers every year. That’s a lot more than
Ohio’s program.


Buderer says his state could be matching those numbers, if only there
were more participation.


“There’s good public knowledge out there that large quantities are picked
up daily and incinerated that could be used. So I’m sure that a large
institutional pharmacy knowing that… certainly isn’t saying ‘well, we
don’t care.'”


Buderer says liability is often the reason given for not participating in
the drug repositories. The state’s largest nursing home corporation and
wholesale pharmacy. Both declined to comment for this story.


But now, there might be a bigger incentive. In April, the federal government
announced it will hold nursing home facilities financially accountable for
medicines going unused by patients. The states can still redistribute medicines,
as long as documents show the federal government isn’t paying for the same item
twice, and this acknowledgement of waste with in the system, might just be the
national push drug repositories need to move into the mainstream.


For the GLRC, I’m Lisa Ann Pinkerton.

Related Links

Affordable Housing Goes Green

  • Here is what a solar electric system looks like when it is mounted on a home. The panels are grid-connected and the system has backup battery. (Photo courtesy of NREL)

Often only pricey homes benefit from energy efficient and environmentally friendly technologies such as solar panels and completely non-toxic materials, but that kind of green technology is finding favor with non-profit groups that provide affordable housing.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee looks at why many non-profits are trying to do good by building green:

Transcript

Often only pricey homes benefit from energy efficient and
environmentally friendly technologies such as solar panels and
completely non-toxic materials, but that kind of green technology is
finding favor with non-profit groups that provide affordable housing.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee looks at why many
non-profits are trying to do good by building green:


Holly Denniston’s got a tough job. She’s the real-estate director for a
non-profit housing agency. Denniston’s got not one, but two, bottom
lines to watch. On the one hand, she’s trying to build affordable housing
for thousands of low and moderate-income families in Chicago. On the
other hand, it’s not enough to develop a cheap house and walk away.


As a nearby commuter train rolls by, Denniston explains she’s got to
make sure families can afford to stay in these homes.


“We want affordable housing in the long run. When heating costs rise, when
electricity costs rise, we don’t want our homeowners to have to move
out. We want them to live in these houses for thirty years or for as long
as they want and be able to raise a family here without spending all of
their dollars on housing.”


That means the best fit for struggling families are homes that are cheap
to buy and cheap to live in.


Denniston leads me up the stairs of a nearly-finished town home she says
fits that bill.


(Sound of steps and door)


Inside, it’s not much different from high-priced town homes sprouting up
in most cities, but Denniston says I probably missed the most notable
feature of the building: a roof made of solar shingles.


“If you would take down the ceiling from the second floor, you would
see a spider web of lines coming down, leading down to the back of the
house, and then leading to an inverter in the basement.”


The shingles and power inverter generate electricity. The system’s
simple and needs almost no intervention by the occupants, but more
importantly, it’ll save the family thousands of dollars in power
bills in the next few years, and Denniston says this isn’t even their most
efficient home.


Some of their homes consume less than three hundred dollars worth of
energy per year – even with cold Chicago winters, but building homes
like this isn’t cheap.


The solar shingle system added thousands of dollars in up-front building
costs. So, how do groups like Bethel build green while trying to keep
their own costs down?


Well, usually, they get help.


“Basically I think we can say that all of the affordable housing projects
that are doing this are doing it because they’re subsidized by either state
or utility programs.”


Edward Connelly is with New Ecology Incorporated, a group that studies
and promotes green affordable housing.


“The up-front cost is generally not in within the budget of an
affordable housing developer for photo voltaics, because they tend to be
expensive.”


Reliance on government or utility company subsidies can cause
problems. Connelly says some states make these subsidies available to
everyone, not just non-profits.


That means non-profits have to compete with traditional homebuilders
for the money to build green, and the subsidy programs sometimes
run short of demand.


“The utilities this year have run out of money for the energy star rebates
in Massachusetts because so many people took advantage of them, and
that’s not just in the affordable realm.”


Affordable, green housing faces other problems, too.


These projects sometimes move at a snail’s pace. That’s because
agencies often have to juggle several funding sources. Each government
agency or utility adds its own requirements, and managing all of them
consumes a lot of time. That means people who need affordable housing
have to wait longer, but when these groups do get the required funds, the
long-term benefits for low-to-moderate income families are impressive.


Chicago architect Susan King’s developed several green affordable
housing projects. She says non-profit projects benefit from energy
efficient technology, but their social missions push them even further.
They include features that go beyond just saving money.


“It’s an easy sell because they really do care for the life of the building,
whereas the for-profit developer just cares about that bottom line.”


She saw that attitude develop in her latest building.


It’s energy efficient and has solar power, but the non-profit also wanted
paint that wouldn’t pollute indoor air. King says, for now, housing
groups build more environmentally friendly homes than market rate
homebuilders with similar budgets, but she predicts that gap will narrow.
Average homeowners will soon demand more environmental amenities.


“I think the not-for-profits are setting an example that the for-profits are
going to follow, but they’re not going to follow it because they’re shamed into it.
I think they’re going to follow it because in the end, it’s going to make economic sense.”


Back at the energy efficient and environmentally friendly town-home,
Holly Denniston says some day, most of the features here will be
standard in the home industry, but she says non-profits will keep adding
additional value to homes even if that means spending more money up
front.


“To non-profits, that’s alright; we’re not looking for the highest return,
we’re looking at sustainable community.”


So, Denniston says a project like this shows affordable housing isn’t
about cheap housing. It’s about building homes where people can afford
to live.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Epa to Tune Up Fuel Economy Estimates

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to change the way it calculates fuel economy estimates on the window stickers of new cars and trucks. Consumer and environmental groups have been arguing that the estimates don’t match up to real world driving. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to change the way it
calculates fuel economy estimates on the window stickers of new cars
and trucks. Consumer and environmental groups have been arguing that
the estimates don’t match up to real world driving. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams reports:


The current EPA tests assume cars and driving conditions are the way
they were in 1985. The tests don’t factor in air conditioning, driving in
cold weather or driving any faster than 60 miles an hour.


The EPA says the new methods will lower the miles per gallon estimates
on most vehicles. The city estimates for conventional cars and trucks
could drop 10 to 20 percent. For hybrids, the city estimates could drop
up to 30 percent. A hybrid’s fuel economy is more sensitive to cold
weather and air conditioning.


Consumer groups say the new tests will give buyers a more accurate
picture of the car they take home.


Susan Pikrillidas is with AAA.


“We do honestly and truly believe that accurate labels will cause people
to buy more fuel efficient vehicles particularly in light of the high
gasoline prices.”


Under the proposal, the new test methods will begin with 2008 models…
so you could see the new stickers on cars as soon as fall 2007.


For the GLRC, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Court Decision Gives Renewable Energy a Boost

Coal fired power plants produce two-thirds of the nation’s electricity. In the process, they emit millions of tons of carbon dioxide and other air pollutants. But a recent court decision in Minnesota may provide an incentive to embrace cleaner energy sources. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Steve Frenkel has more:

Great Lakes Stories – Two Teens

There are hundreds of environmentalists, scientists and government bureaucrats who spend their time working to improve or protect the environment of the Great Lakes. Why do they do it? What is their personal connection to the Great Lakes … Today two teenagers talk about why they’ve become interested in environmental issues. The first is Nicki Marsh, the second is Susan Schulte: