Oh Poop - It’s worse than I thought | Stella Bowles | TEDxMSVUWomen
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eixJeqke2M Video ID: 7eixJeqke2M ============================================================ [Music] I'm gonna start off by telling you a little bit about my family so I grew up in a house with no gender barriers my dad was my primary caregiver so when I was born he stayed home with me and my mom went back to work my dad also makes supper every night because my mom can't cook sorry mom science is a huge part of my everyday life so when I was younger and even now my dad and I make a whole bunch of fun things like a magic pickle machine so we had electrodes you plugged them into a pickle and the light bulb comes on and I thought that was the coolest thing we also make rockets and launch them off in the backyard I didn't realize that girls and boys had different roles in society until I went to school so my story starts in the fall of 2015 so this is my family we have my mom Andrea my dad Lennie my little brother will and that's our dogs Zappa my mom's family has lived in our home in uh Perla --have for about a hundred and sixty years that's a pretty long time about seven years ago my great-grandfather installed a septic system in 2015 our septic system collapsed because it got old and there were we had a bigger family so it was being used more so we had the gentleman come in to assess our situation tell us we needed to get a new septic system and he told my mom we had three months to fix it and she said well excuse me we have three months to fix our septic system but our neighbors are flushing their sewage directly into our river illegally and he said don't worry no one checks so that night at the dinner table my mom was on a bit of a rampage she was angry she was saying I can't believe no one checks and that's gross so I'm gonna come back to my first science fair project in a bit but this is my second my second science fair project so at the dinner table we were talking about septic systems and I was 11 at the time and I looked at my mom and said well mom what's a straight pipe and that's when my entire life changed she explained to me that it is a pipe from a homes toilet directly into a waterway with no filtration so if you flush toilet paper that is going into our beautiful waterways I was really really upset and actually started asking a lot of questions you can see a picture of a straight pipe along the wave in the presentation so some of my questions were what do you mean people flush their septics into the river is that legal how many houses do this is it safe to swim in the river and people know this is happening I had so many more questions but these were the main few that I kept repeating as I kept repeating all my questions I kind of annoyed my parents into finding answers and helping me figure out if I could swim in the river because I really want it to so my parents got in contact with a local organization called coastal action foundation and they led me to dr. David Maxwell who became my science mentor and taught me how to test the LaHaye River for fecal bacteria in my kitchen so we didn't need a fancy laboratory we did it right in our home and we're actually the only hosts on the street that grows fecal bacteria in our basement my mom told me I should stop telling people that my overall question was is it safe to swim in the LaHaye River because as an 11 year old self that's all I wanted to do I chose four locations to test during the summer of 2015 where I saw people swimming including my little brother will and I tested the water monthly so this is a picture of the LaHaye river so we have our town bridge water at the top we have de spring which is a boat launch upper LaHaye v' which the dot is right on my house and the Yacht Club these are the four locations where I saw people in the water so limits based on Health Canada standards so if there are more than 70 blue dots enterococci per 100 milliliters you should not swim in the water and if there are more than 170 blue dots per enterococci 100 milliliters you should not get the water in contact with your skin all right so 70 don't swim 100 don't let the water get in contact with your skin I'm gonna show you some pictures of my results and I'm gonna get you to actually guess how many dots you see on the cards so anybody have a wild guess about how many dots are on this card just shout it out all right so this one is 67 at 70 you should not swim but these are surface water testing so if you're going to go in the water like anyone the kid you're gonna run in the water you're gonna stir up the bottom and your results are going to get higher so this is in front of my home anybody have a guess of how many dots around this card this is 273 also service water testing so if you go in and you stir up the bottom it's going to get worse and that 70 you should not swim the next one is going to be multiplied by five because we use 20 milliliters of water instead of 100 to make it easier to count so you're going to guess how many dots are here and multiply that by five take a wild guess this is 610 at 70 you should not swim and the next one is our town bridge water and you're also going to multiply this number by five I hope you're ready this is the state of our town is not disgusting it's thousands we didn't count this it's pretty much a visual representation that you should not swim there or get it in contact with your skin and whenever I do testing we always do control so this is a run-through of my equipment to make sure that everything was sterilized properly so if there are any blue dots so colonies of fecal bacteria then we're going to have to redo the whole process so here's a chart of four months of testing you can see the vertical line or horizontal I'm sorry 70 you should not swim and 170 we should get the water in contact with your skin it's pretty alarming so my findings is it safe to swim in the LaHaye River no please please do not based on Health Canada standards the LaHaye River is not safe for swimming and some testing suggests you shouldn't get the water in contact with your skin I wanted to warn people that the rivers not safe for swimming so I told my mom and wanted a Facebook page but she looked at me and said no you're 11 that's not happening I said well why not said no that's not happening so we compromised and we put up a big sign right in front of our home on our busy street and I said this river is contaminated with fecal bacteria after we had media at the door and neighbors at the door asking what the sign meant mom agreed that we could have a Facebook page and run it together I won at Facebook because that tends to be where the older population is and those are the voters thank you my project became so much more than a poster board social media made a huge difference this project would have just been a poster board ten years ago I stayed positive in my posts my mom would help me draft what I was going to write because I had quite a large following and she'd have everything so negative and I just tear it apart and say no mom I'm not posting that we have to be more positive I stuck to scientific facts I went to a Katie Ann University in the lab and I did Graham standing I've done duplicate testing parallel testing with an accredited lab all of this to back up my science you can't really argue that straight pipes are a good thing they're 100% illegal and a hundred percent really gross so to make a long story short the community came together along the LaHaye River all three levels of government came together and now there's a fifteen point seven million dollar cleanup plan to rid the --have river of straight pipes many people wanted to clean up the river for years but it just wasn't getting the attention it needed as an 11 year old little girl I made this all come together since my project began a lot has happened I've won many awards these are three top ones I have the Western Youth Innovation Award from the Ontario Science Center I have meritorious service medal from the governor-general Canada Julie Payette she was an astronaut she's been in outer space I can also sign my name's Stella Bowles MSM which I like using on papers at school and I have the community here award from the Canada Walk of Fame thank you I've had the opportunity to travel I've been many places including all over Canada Sweden I went to Ecuador for ten days when I was 14 my parents sent me alone in the jungle I had no Wi-Fi and no parents it was great and I went to a two-week summer camp in New York the past summer that was a lot of fun I was the only Canadian out of 50 youth around the world so they called me Canada and I'm even going to San Francisco next week I've met so many inspiring women my mp Burnett Bernadette Jordan who is now our Federal Minister of Fisheries oceans and the coast guard Elizabeth May it was a leader of the Green Party and so so many more women that have showed me how to be confident and helped me along the way I do so many presentations I love sharing my story it's one of my favorite things to do I actually even got to speak directly to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau I trained youth to test their own waterways which is a lot of fun I really love showing other kids that science is so much more than the four walls of a classroom and then it's more fun than just a textbook it can be hands-on and meaningful my science fair project I got to go to Canada wide science fair in Saskatchewan and I want to over metal that's where my project was called Oh poop it's worse than I thought so my very first science fair project it was a grade 5 it was on bubbles my dad and I we built a bubble machine you pull up the stick you get a sheet of bubble if you wet your hand then you can shake other people's hands through the bubble it was pretty cool and I was really excited to show it but it wasn't allowed to show it because the bubble solution would ruin the gym floors it almost made me not want to do science anymore I heard that girls should be teachers I heard that girls should be nurses I heard that girls should not like hands-on science I heard so many misconceptions thankfully the adults in my life reassured me these ideas were ridiculous my River project wouldn't have happened if I listened to all these stereotypes my parents didn't allow me to buy into these ridiculous ideas always encourage girls to be curious find mentors to help do hands-on science all of our communities have mentors we can use facts are easy to find now and kids need critical thinking skills for inquiry based learning like science fair I'm so thankful my parents encouraged me to be curious and continue science we need to encourage kids to question and do science overall the river project is not my win it's the wahey rivers win we all benefit from a healthy clean river I want everyone to know that we individually have the power to create change I'm going to leave you with one final statement can you imagine if every young girl was encouraged to take on a single cause like I did I'm proof that one little girl can create change thank you [Music]