Transcription
same logic applies to pesticides as to phalates in general, which is that they are in products and materials that we can't always see, so we have to remain vigilant about what we consume and how it affects our bodies.
In conclusion, while it's complicated to navigate all these endocrine disruptors in our environment, being proactive in understanding and changing our exposure can lead to better health outcomes. It's essential to become informed about what we put into our bodies and the products we use daily, to mitigate potential health consequences. Thank you for having this important conversation and for sharing your insights and research on this critical topic.
You want your pesticides to get into the plant right and to kill the bad stuff and insects.
So, the same property of phthalates that makes them good for pesticides also makes them good for our hand cream. Just mentioning absorption—anything that's absorbed in the body is going to have phthalates in it, and it also holds scent and color. So, it's added to those scents and it's also added to your lipstick and to your colored products, you know, whatever you put on your face and so on. Anything that holds scent and color is going to be...
Um, sorry. I've been accused online of being a sunscreen truther. I'm not a sunscreen truther. I'm going to keep repeating this as many times as I can. I understand that UV damage to the skin can cause certain cancers. I get that. I agree with that. The data are pretty clear to me based on having researched this pretty extensively and talked to many, many people, including dermatologists and oncologists, that mineral-based sunscreens like zinc oxide and titanium dioxide—certainly zinc oxide—are safer than the chemical sunscreens.
A lot of people get upset when I say that and they say, “Well, in Europe, there's tons of evidence that the chemical-based sunscreens are safe.” Okay, fine, you use them. I'm not going to. The point being that UV damage is bad. There are ways to protect ourselves from the sun, including physical barriers like clothing, hats, etc. But pretty much all sunscreen that I'm aware of is designed to be absorbed.
So what do we do if we want to get some UV protection from whatever kind of sunscreen we deem safe for ourselves, but we want to avoid these exposures to these other things? What do we do? Do we have to hunt really carefully for the right sunscreen?
Uh, yeah, I think that's a good idea. Are you familiar with the Environmental Working Group?
Uh, is another one out of the Bay Area...
No?
Oh, okay. I don't know actually where they are. They're pretty big. Sounds familiar, but I can't say I'm familiar with them. They have consumer guides, and in those consumer guides—you know, the Environmental Working Group—I'm not part of them, but I like their work. In these consumer guides, you can put in the product, and they have categories. You can put “sunscreen.” If we had time, we could do it right now, but then you can put the name of your sunscreen and it'll give you a number. If the number is less than 10, it'll tell you why.
Are they independent of any, like, funding? That question will probably come up for you too. People will say, “Where did she get her funding?” You know, people get very suspicious about this.
Yeah, that would be great!
Yeah, so I am a tenure professor at Mount Sinai. I get some salary there because I'm only part-time.
And I have a funder—one funder—who funded my sperm decline analysis and the publicity of my book. So he's a foundation...
I won’t say philanthropy.
Yes, philanthropy. Yeah, and it's actually not a lot of money. So no, there's no reason to think that anything that you're telling us is linked to, like, the food industry or an alternative product or anything. I'm very, very careful not to endorse any product because I don't want that complication.
Yeah, thanks for clarifying that. I wasn't suspicious, but I think nowadays people have just been taught to, you know, appropriately so, they've been taught to say, “Well, wait, where does this funding come from?” Because a lot of the studies about the... that led to the food pyramid, for instance, people were under the impression that somehow that was biased by companies that were funding the work.
I don't know. I haven't done the forensics on that. I don't have the time or the energy. All I know is that when it comes to what people eat, when it comes to what people put on their body, it becomes a very personal thing, and it's woven in with a lot of psychological and emotional issues.
Yeah, okay. What are a few things that you do and/or avoid in light of what you know about these endocrine disruptors? And by the way, it goes without saying that you're in spectacular cognitive and physical shape for any age, but it's really remarkable. I feel comfortable sharing this because someone else published it online recently. You are soon to enjoy your... what birthday?
89th.
89th birthday. Amazing! With all the talk about longevity—cognitive and physical longevity—everyone's thinking, including me, like, “What does she do?” Well, she avoids all these endocrine disruptors and she has a wonderfully rich life of curiosity and other things.
But yeah, what are some other things that you do and avoid in light of what you know, for which there may or may not be a controlled study? I think we're all just curious. We'll frame this as what you do.
So, water. I worry about the water. I studied water for a long time in my past life. So, we actually distill our water. We have a tabletop distiller. My husband, Steven, cleans it out. There's a lot of gunk in it, by the way, even though it's San Francisco that has clean water. At the end of the day, after you've distilled the water, there's a lot of gunk.
So you distill the water?
So, this is not reverse osmosis. Distilling.
Okay, yeah. So it’s steamed distilled, and then it condenses in a glass container. Then we put that in glass containers in the fridge. And it tastes really good, by the way—really, really good! Somebody was just over and he said, “This tastes like melted snow.” I thought it was lovely.
And you use that for drinking?
For coffee, for tea, for cooking too. If you make rice, you're using distilled...
Actually, no. No, but for ice cubes and, you know, whenever I can think about it. We can’t use too much because he’s too busy always, but he does it once a day since it's just the two of us. So water is important.
We try to leave our shoes at the door.
Tell me about that one.
Well, dust that you bring in contains a lot of the... particularly the phthalates and other chemicals. So that's actually... I'm not 100% good on that, but we try to do that.
And I'm careful with the products I put on my face. I check them out the way I suggested, you know, Environmental Working Group.
And I go to the farmers market. I always buy organic. Always buy organic! But I know that that's a cost issue for some people, and an availability issue for some people. But in San Francisco, you can do that.
Some areas where I don't do more of what I should—I think I'm starting to be aware of the chemicals in clothing. We haven't talked about that, but it turns out there’s a lot of... particularly in... it's a problem for workout wear because you're absorbing so much. You're sweaty, you're hot, and you're bringing these chemicals into your body.
That may be one of the interventions that we do. Get a bunch of athletes to use safe clothing and traditional clothing and see what their body burden is. That's how you know.
So, airing toward cotton as opposed to synthetic material?
Right, right. And the dyes are important. You want maybe plant-based dyes. It's not my area of expertise. I have a colleague who I work with on this and I'll go with her advice. But I'm just saying that's another area that I think people will soon be paying attention to.
There's also the area that is much more difficult, which is what's in building materials and furniture. A lot of these phthalates and parabens are in our furniture and in our building materials.
I'm trying to think about how to build... I was asked about safety in a new village that's being built in California, by the way, and it’s really challenging to think about if you were going to do this right and you were going to build a town that was toxic-free... how would you do that?
I'm thinking about that. I'm thinking about the opener of The Simpsons and doing the exact opposite. In the opener of The Simpsons, there's like a three-eyed fish and the chemical plant, and I'm just thinking you just look at the opener of The Simpsons and do the inverse of everything that's there—the inverse of everything that's there including alcohol intake.
You know, which is robust on The Simpsons.
Yeah, right. But interesting.
And when it comes to food sourcing—like, non-fruit, non-vegetable food sourcing—is there anything we can do?
I mean, it's so hard for people to get eggs from farms. I mean, you can if you go to a farmer's market, but this stuff can get pretty tricky and pretty expensive. Most people listening are not going to be living in Sonoma where they might have a neighbor that has chickens or something.
Yeah, it's a hard problem.
It is a hard problem, and I think maybe people asking for it more would help. I don’t know. I mean, in San Francisco, I’m lucky because I can just get, you know, just on the phone, Fresh Direct order the... and I know it's okay.
But I know that's not the case everywhere. So, I think being aware honestly is a really big step. If you're aware that this is something you want to change, you will find ways to change it.
It's interesting because a few years back there was a lot of discussion about dyes in children’s toys in particular—toys from overseas, right? Remember, kids are not... you know, babies are always gnawing on stuff and teething, and there was a lot of attention like, “Hey, like what’s in these sippy cups?” And my understanding is—uh, toys and sippy cups—and my understanding is that BPAs were banned from sippy cups.
Excuse me, based on my work?
Based on your work! Thank you so much! Thank you for the clarification truly and for the work that led to that.
We have this innate, thankfully, innate reflex to protect our young, as does most every species. Thank goodness we know that baby skin is more absorbent than older skin.
We know. And so, there are literally laws in place and restrictions in place to make sure that this stuff is minimized in young kids. But then we sort of, after age 12, we’re kind of like, “Okay, well, it’s a free-for-all.” It depends on your budget, where you go, and so we can’t rely on governing bodies to do this.
But I think it’s a useful conversation, especially given your relationship to Scandinavia, which is a fun one to elaborate on to illustrate some of the discrepancies between the US and Europe.
What sorts of chemicals are banned in Europe—in food, in lotion, etc.—that you're aware of that are prominent here in the US? Maybe that's a good filter to put some of this choice-making through.
Europe has had a policy called REACH. Under REACH, you have to show that a chemical is safe before it’s put into the marketplace—not so here. The way our system is here is you put it in the marketplace, and then if somebody gets worried about it, they might do a study, they might find harm.
Remember how long it took me to find that phthalate connection? It was 10 years, two studies, $10 million, by the way. So if you’re going to wait for that, I don’t know what... given the number of chemicals out there—80,000 or more—forget it.
So, I think the REACH policy of testing before something’s put in the market is making a big difference in Europe. I think that's one reason why they’re much better off.
Are those animal tests or animal and human tests that they’re doing over there?
Whatever defines safety. It depends on the chemical. It depends on what the product is. I can't answer that in general.
So that would be a good avenue for changing legislation here, right? To install something similar to REACH?
Absolutely! But it's not going to happen, I don’t think.
No?
No, because there are too many forces against that.
It’s very, very hard for manufacturers to make changes. I’ll give you one example. You may or may not know, but you should know that phthalates are very prevalent in the hospital setting. If you think of a tube, you know, for dialysis, for chemotherapy, for IV, that’s all phthalates. That’s all phthalates.
Right, and that’s going into your body! There was a bill passed in California recently that DEHP could not be in IV bags.
That's fantastic!
Success in the actual bag?
Yes, the bags could not contain these endocrine disruptors, specifically DEHP—di(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate—the most anti-androgenic phthalate.
So that was a great step for... but that’s like one chemical in one product, and that was a battle! So you see how hard it is to do this?
Extremely hard! There’s a company—BBRW—which makes hospital products. They are very forward-thinking and they set up a factory in Florida to make alternative IV bags out of another product—poly (lactic acid)—and the problem is that we’re not sure about the safety of poly... so it gets really difficult.
You know, you can say remove DEHP, but now scientists have to say, “What does it mean for a chemical to be safe?” And we don’t know that.
I don’t mean to disillusion you and your listeners.
You know, that's a huge challenge that we’re up against. We know it's safer. We know what the bad actors are and we know things we don’t want to be exposed to, but we have to be careful when we think about what do we want to put in instead.
Yeah, I’m thinking about this... a former president of Stanford who also happened to be a family friend years ago—he’s since passed—Don Kennedy. When he retired as president, my understanding is that he went and directed the FDA. I was just thinking to myself, like, “When did this happen?” because I know he was super into health.
He was like an avid runner, he was very fit well into his 70s, had hip replacement, kept running—or maybe it was knee replacement. I don’t know. The guy was obsessed with health.
I don’t think that there’s a lack of interest in health at the level of things like the FDA. But there’s clearly a problem, and I’m just trying to think of solutions. It seems to all boil down to what we can take control of in our home. Like when we go to a restaurant, it's challenging to know what they’re doing in the kitchen.
At some point, it becomes neurotic. I know people that won’t go to restaurants where they use seed oils. There’s this whole new thing cropping up about avoiding seed oils.
But maybe there are more significant issues—who knows? The seed oil crowd is pretty intense, and I like olive oil anyway, so I err to that.
But I think if people are interested in limiting their exposure to these endocrine disruptors, one of the key questions that's going to come up again and again, especially in light of PCOS and sperm counts, is we can’t control what happened to us during pregnancy.
Right?
But once we have some sense of agency over what we put into our body and how we put it into our body, do you think that there’s plasticity and resilience to this system?
So, you know, God forbid if somebody was exposed to a lot of these things early on, can they, you know, by making changes, can they rescue themselves to any degree?
No.
So it's really just dependent on what your parents did?
Yes. That’s not to say that your own exposure cannot change things further and make things worse.
But here’s a fact: if a male’s mother smokes when he’s in the womb, then he has—this is a Danish study, by the way—a 50% reduction in sperm count if his mother smoked while he was in the womb.
How much smoking are we talking?
I don’t know. I don’t remember.
But the reason I bring this up is that there’s nothing he can do to change that. If he smokes as an adult, he has, I think, a similar reduction in sperm count, but he can stop and his sperm will be restored. He can get sperm health back, but whatever happened in the womb stays in the womb, if you will.
It’s developmental—it’s not going to... you know, it’s going to be there for life, and that’s true of the brain as well.
So, I think anybody who’s thinking of conceiving a pregnancy or is pregnant has a responsibility to really learn how to reduce their exposure because these things are, by the way, passed on for several generations.
It’s your child and your child’s child because the germ cells for your grandchild are going to be carried in within your child. So, germ cells are not germs as in infectious germs. It’s the cells that will produce the egg and sperm that germinate—which is hence the word germ.
So, it’s a huge responsibility, and I think people should take it very seriously. They have... you know, they’re going to be affecting the health of subsequent generations. Some labs say it’s seven generations. I don’t know if that's true, but certainly, three generations are affected.
And I should mention my book. Can I mention it?
Please, I'll mention it!
Yeah, I believe I mentioned it in my introduction, but yeah, please.
So, in Countdown—two words, by the way! Because if you say Countdown one word, you won’t find it—but Countdown, we have two chapters on things you can do. Very practical things you can do, and also websites you can go to and links you can go to.
Now, this came out in 2021, so there are many more things now, but I think it’s a good start.
How lonely are you in this expedition of identifying endocrine disruptors in food, in pesticides, in the sorts of things you're talking about?
Is there a whole field of excellent people, or are you a small team of people that are against the grain?
I mean, I confess I don’t know many people doing the sorts of work that you’re doing, but you’re the most public-facing and prominent, and my question is like, is the NIH funding a lot of this sort of thing?
Absolutely! We’re an army, and it’s international. There is now a global plastics treaty under negotiation, by the way.
Tell us about the plastics treaty!
People are trying to create a treaty by various countries—an international plastics treaty. I can’t—I don’t want to talk a lot about it. I’m not involved in that process, but in the process, if you looked into it, there are hundreds of scientists and concerned citizens and activists and people in legislation who are working specifically on the chemicals in plastic.
Now, plastic is really a bad actor. But it is not the only bad actor. So, I want to just mention that plastic is really important, but you know, pesticides are not plastic and so on. There are many other classes that you have to worry about.
But certainly, controlling our exposure to plastic is huge.
And though you asked about scientists in this area, yes, there’s a huge amount of science going on for this in this. It’s funded by NIH and it’s funded by the EU, and primarily, I think those are the two funders. Scandinavia has funding within Scandinavian countries.
So there’s a lot of work and a lot of very good people working really hard, but it’s a huge problem. It's been here since plastic started to rise in popularity in 1950, so we have like 75 years to battle against and it's not going down anytime soon.
Lifespan is increasing pretty significantly, presumably in large part because of the reduction in smoking and control of infectious diseases.
But lifespan is definitely increasing, whereas the use of plastics has clearly increased.
And so, I guess one could argue that we’re living longer, but we are less robust than we were—less reproductively competent, is that...?
The people reflected in that longer lifespan were not necessarily exposed early in life, which is when it’s most critical.
I was born in 1936. There was no plastic then, you know? And there were other things, of course, but not as they are today.
So, I don’t think that you can make the inference that because we’re living longer, the growth of the plastics industry is somehow driving that longevity.
Absolutely not!
Absolutely not. I think what it’s driving is the decrease in fertility.
What’s happening is that the shift in populations is pretty dramatic. You know, the pyramid used to be like this—I’m making a triangle with my arms showing very few people on top and a lot of people on the bottom—but what’s happening is that that's getting inverted.
So we’re getting more and more people on top and fewer and fewer people on the bottom. Birth rates are way down.
Birth rates are way down, and this is an enormous problem for societies because the people in that small support group at the bottom can’t drive the society to support the large growth on top.
Is this true in other countries as well?
Yes! Absolutely!
It’s all over the world, and the decline in fertility, in my mind, is probably one of the biggest challenges we’re facing now because it’s everywhere. It’s very acute, and there are only limited things we can do to counter it.
There’s a wonderful website—it's by the World Bank—put out by the World Bank, called Fertility Data. If you go in there, you can see what is the fertility rate every year, but you can plug in a country or a year and see what the fertility rate is in each country in the world, each year.
What you see is a decline about the same rate as sperm decline, by the way—about 50% in 50 years. The critical point for fertility is “two.”
So what does that mean? That’s called replacement. That’s two people replacing themselves with a total fertility rate of two—actually 2.1 because you have a little bit of loss—but 2.1, you're good to go.
When you fall below that, you’re shrinking, and there are many countries in the world that are below that, including the United States.
For example, the worst I’ve seen is actually South Korea, which is at 0.78.
Wow, Japan is at one.
Wow. So large parts of the world are just not replacing themselves, and why that is, is maybe another discussion, but we can talk about it.
I don’t know if you want to go into that, but it’s not just sperm count for sure.
Yeah, along those lines, let’s talk about egg count and quality. You mentioned the PCOS results earlier.
Before we were on mic, you mentioned an interesting study that you did about the use of electric blankets and assessing whether or not the use of electric blankets had impacted egg number or quality in women.
And the answer is...
What we looked at in women—I'm sorry to correct you—but was the outcome of their pregnancy—their fertility—and how they turned out if they got pregnant.
Excuse me!
Thank you for that clarification. But, um—I'm sure there will be a lot of other studies that have looked at that. You know, I just have been away from that field for a long time.
But so far, I don’t see convincing evidence that the use of cell phones or other exposures to electromagnetic radiation are affecting our pregnancies and our fertility.
That's not to say it’s not happening, but I have not looked at it, and I don’t like to make statements about things I haven’t looked at.
My understanding of the cell phone data for sperm count and motility, a.k.a. quality, as I discussed in the meta-analysis covering this on the podcast previously, is that there are some heat effects of cell phone use and keeping the phone in the pocket that may—careful here—impact sperm count and motility quality.
But direct effects of EMFs on sperm—there’s no evidence that it is disrupting sperm, at least to my knowledge.
Honestly, I have to say—I just going to say I don’t know. But I do know that heat is related to fertility and sperm count, right?
You can look at the birth rates as a function of the month of conception, and you can see that, for example, in warm climates, there’s less... yeah.
So heat does play a role, but how much that's tied to cell phone use, I think that’s something that’s now under investigation by a lot of groups, and we’ll see what they find.
Yeah, the data on sitting more than a few hours a day on having legs that are very large as a consequence of obesity—or even just legs that are large—heating the scrotum, and those data are fairly, I would say, solid in terms of the relationship to reducing sperm count.
Heat is not good for sperm, which is why the scrotum has its features that it does—to move the testicles further or closer to the body.
Getting back to egg count and quality, there’s some evidence that girls are entering puberty earlier but that women are also undergoing perimenopause and menopause earlier.
Do we know what that is a consequence of?
There are several new papers, actually, on the menopausal age showing relations to a number of chemicals, but I can't quote them to you right now. I don't remember which class it was that they looked at, but I think that's right.
There is growing evidence that earlier—it's also called premature ovarian failure—so that women are just not producing the eggs as long as they used to.
But, um... I just want to say something about fertility.
Can we go back to fertility, please?
So when this comes up—I'm sure you've seen the literature—there’s a lot of literature on this that says fertility is going down. You know, fewer children are being born. People say, “Well, that's a good thing because it's less of a load on the planet,” which is another discussion.
Then they say, “Well, this is due to choice—that people are choosing to have fewer children and they’re choosing to delay childbearing until they’re no longer as fertile. They’re using more contraception, women are more educated, they’re entering the workforce.” All these social factors are given as the reason for the decline in fertility.
And I just need to point out—whenever I hear this—that it’s not just human fertility that's declining. The number of species that are becoming extinct is increasing rapidly, and there have been for at least 40 years evidence that those pesticides that affect us are affecting animals as well.
So the decline in fertility in non-human species cannot be attributed to delayed childbearing or use of contraception.
Right, right.
It's interesting because we usually hear first about species that are about to go extinct, that are badly endangered.
I don’t know what the proper language is, but species that are about to go extinct—like the Florida panther, right? Or, you know, we hear that species like... there’s a very small subset of them left—the black-footed ferrets in Montana.
I think one ferret's name is Scarface.
Right!
Something like 300 left. Then they started outbreeding—because if you do too much inbreeding, obviously it’s not good.
But then they were able to at least partially recover, maybe fully recover those populations. And people forget the domino effect of these ecosystems—when one species is compromised.
Like when the black-footed ferrets—I know it might sound kind of silly, but when they were compromised in terms of their populations, the prairie dog population went up. The grasses were getting eaten far more.
Then there's all these downstream consequences. You know, and I'm not an expert in this, but one doesn't have to be an expert to understand—you move one pin here and the whole web moves.
Or you move one node and the whole web reconfigures. And that's what nature has been doing for millions of years, right?
But at some point, it is conceivable, no pun intended, that we are going to be the species on the endangered species list, right?
I mean, that's not like an outrageous sci-fi movie.
At some point, humans might be added to the endangered species list, with the exception that we’re very clever, and so we’ve found a lot of ways to do medically assisted, you know, conception.
Right?
IVF—the literally gentle grabbing of one sperm and forcing it to fertilize the egg—this is something we've covered on this podcast in our fertility episode with Natalie Crawford in a solo episode that I did.
There are questions that people have reasonable questions about whether or not the offspring of those types of scenarios are the same as… the genetic probability experiment we mentioned before of having 200 million sperm and then letting nature select the one that is most robust in that environment.
And you know the number of technologies is increasing. We’re a very clever species.
For example, I don’t know if you’ve heard of gamogenesis.
It is now possible to create an embryo from a sperm cell from a skin cell. A skin cell can produce a sperm cell and an egg cell. You give it the right transcription factors and you can...
So this is kind of interesting, exciting, and scary, right?
This is like the... um... what is it? I think the vultures—the female vultures—there's some way in which two female vultures, or maybe a single female vulture can create offspring in the absence of a male.
There's also a three-party IVF I don’t know if you’re aware of this, where this was developed—where there’s a mitochondrial disease.
You can take the... two eggs, one from the intended mother. You take the nucleus, so you get the DNA. You put it into an egg of somebody that where the DNA has been removed but where the spindles, which are rich with mitochondria, are from typically a much younger host, and then you use a sperm.
So it’s actually three parents. It’s the spindle of one mom, the DNA of another mom, and a sperm. They do this in the UK for mitochondrial disease.
It's still illegal in the United States, as far as I understand, and it's done in other countries.
In theory, this would allow women of any age, provided they still have eggs, to have their DNA propagated forward because the DNA can be put into a younger egg that has the spindle quality that allows for, you know, the production of more cells.
I mean, this has been done in humans.
Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, you and I won’t think of all the things that will be developed, you know, in the next 10, 20 years to meet the challenge of declining fertility by ordinary conception.
I think that’s how we’re going to solve this problem for us. We’re going to just be smarter and smarter about how to do medically assisted conception.
And then the question is going to be—and it’ll take time to know this—is whether there are effects in the offspring; adverse effects in the offspring.
It’s a little tricky because, for example, if you use the sperm of an infertile couple, and you see—let’s say the son is sub-fertile—that’s born that way.
But you do it, you know, in a test tube or whatever. Then you can say, “Well, maybe that’s because the father was infertile, and he’s got inheritance from his father.” You know what I’m saying?
So you can’t know whether if you see an adverse effect in the offspring, you have to be very careful that it's not something that they’ve gotten because of problems that led the couple to seek assisted reproduction.
You see?
You follow me?
Yep.
Yeah. Super challenging, fascinating problem!
So in anticipation of this sit-down together, I put a question out on X, formerly known as Twitter. I let people know that I was hosting an expert on endocrine disruptors, phthalates, and pesticides, reproductive implications, etc.
I asked for questions, and they came up with a huge number of excellent questions—many of which you've already answered.
Things like, “Is tap water safe? What can we do to our tap water?” You mentioned you distill water. My understanding is that reverse osmosis, provided there’s remineralization—excuse me, difficult word to say—can also be effective, etc.
There were a lot of questions about cosmetics and laundry detergents.
I don’t know if we discussed laundry detergents. What do you use in terms of laundry detergent?
Or that is presumably one can find?
I don’t even remember.
Okay, don’t go by my product!
For one thing, I’m not going to be pregnant anytime soon!
No.
The, uh—I believe there are some solutions related to the, like, instead of bleach, people can use hydrogen peroxide.
Can’t speak about specific products, actually. You know, I can tell you who can. You might like to talk to her.
So remember I mentioned Million Marker? The company that did the inventory—not the comp—well, they are a company.
But so they look at Million Marker. I think you’d be interested.
Okay!
Yeah, and the person who runs it, Genoa, is a Chinese-American who’s a friend of mine, and we’re going to be writing a grant together.
She participated in the film, so our participants send their... so what if you go to Million Marker, you log on, and if you agree to pay whatever it is—$199? I think you send your urine in. They give you a kit, you send your urine in, and they test it for all these things in your urine.
So you know what's in your body. You might want to think about it. It might be interesting.
And then if you pay another hundred, I think you get this counseling and so on. But she knows all about products.
I don’t know about products, because it’s a moving target. I don’t—and also, I don’t like to talk about product names because it sounds like I’m endorsing them.
Right, and we won’t expect you to give product names. I will follow your recommendation that you just gave.
Somebody asked about food dyes—just generally the dyes in foods.
I saw an incredible study recently that Science Magazine covered. Science Magazine, very reputable, of course. Yellow number five—I forget what the precise name is—but the thing that makes Cheetos really bright?
They put it on the bellies of adult mice and it literally makes them translucent.
Oh yeah, I saw that!
You can see the organs.
It’s wild—it's so scary!
I sent it to Rogan and he... uh, I won’t... he was like, “Whoa.” His version of “Whoa.”
I was like, I also said “Whoa!”
He probably said “Holy...”
Right?
No, I'm not going to say what he said, but it was... he didn’t curse.
There were a number of questions about household items. Again, not looking for specific products, but for instance, soaps, body wash, cleaning sprays, floor cleaners, laundry-related cleaners... do any or all of these contain endocrine disruptors unless one is careful to find the ones that don’t?
Uh, yes!
So, and my suggestion is just ask for an electronic receipt.
And then you don’t have to deal with it!
Yeah, but they’re definitely absorbed into your body.
Any impact of endocrine disruptors of the sort we’ve talked about today on the thyroid system?
Yes, presumably in the bad direction.
Not... yeah. I mean, this is an interesting point. Let me just say another word about it.
So, there was an ongoing study in the Faroe Islands off Denmark and they studied phthalates and showed that people who fished there—there were fisher people—and they ate the fish. They were getting high levels of phthalates in their body and had...
This has been published—effects on their immune response.
So, my concern—and I don’t know if anyone’s looked at this—is given everyone’s vaccination, like is our response to vaccination now altered by these chemicals?
I don’t know, but I think it’s a really interesting question.
But there is a whole field on the effects of these chemicals on the thyroid system, and there’s a lot of evidence that it’s adverse.
Can these endocrine disruptors be detoxed from the body? Is there anything that we can do? What are the quickest ways?
Things like sweating... Are there ways to improve liver clearance of these endocrine disruptors?
That depends on the class of chemicals! So the chemicals that are water soluble, in particular the phthalates and bisphenols leave the body in a matter of hours.
You don’t have to do anything; you just have to stop taking them in.
Right? The forever chemicals, the... um... phthalates, pesticides—so it has to do with how they’re handled by the body.
Are they put into the... you know? If they’re water soluble, you pee them out. If they’re fat-soluble, they’re going to be around for a long time.
So it just depends on the chemical structure of the compound.
There was a question about non-stick pans. You covered that earlier.
If someone had to pick between non-stick coated pans versus seasoned iron pans, no question—iron!
There’s no risk associated with seasoned iron pans.
A number of other questions—such as why does Europe have such more stringent laws, etc.
Um, lots of questions about atrazine, questions about ointments and fragrances.
You've covered—and I must say that, as I scroll through these hundreds of questions, if not more, you’ve done an amazing job at clarifying for us what’s known, what is not known, and essentially what we should probably avoid, definitely avoid, and that we just don’t know.
Right?
Well, you know, I have to distinguish between “we don’t just don’t know” and “I just don’t know.” It’s not... I mean, there are many things that I don’t know.
Sure, it’s a huge field.
So, you know, maybe with some—ask the question of ChatGPT.
Yeah, we’ll be certain to ask ChatGPT, and we will be certain to ask other experts in these areas.
But I just want to make very clear I, and everyone listening and watching, truly appreciate the work that you’ve been doing in this area for a number of years.
We’re so grateful that you took that airline flight with your chemist that you mentioned, that you stored the urine of those pregnant women that you analyzed, and that you’ve gone down this path of exploring things that are really disruptive to our health and potentially to the existence of our species.
As we talked about earlier, there is the possibility that we go extinct—not because of a meteor, but because we fail to replace ourselves, and that we fail to replace ourselves because we destroy our biological ability to replace ourselves.
I think it’s hard for people to internalize that very real possibility because we feel ourselves sitting in traffic with thousands of other people, and go, “There are too many people,” this kind of thing.
But I want to thank you for the work that you’ve been doing and continue to do, for your willingness to write books, and to educate the public on podcasts like this and others because these are topics that are pretty emotionally loaded for people.
I don’t think anything gets people quite as inflamed as the idea that what they’ve been ingesting and exposed to, especially in terms of consumables that they've spent their hard-earned money on, have been harming them... harming them and their offspring and generations to follow.
That’s something that really lands deep in that way.
But you’ve also offered us a lot of possibility and a sense of agency over these things, and I love that you weave your math, and statistics, and probability theory background into all of this because what comes through is intense curiosity, intense rigor, and a real desire to do good.
So thank you so much for joining us, and please come back again as you make more discoveries.
It’s been really fun. Thank you for joining me for today’s discussion with Dr. Shauna Swan.
To learn more about her work and to find a link to her excellent books on these topics, please see the links in the show note captions.
Also, I should mention that if you’re interested in learning more about microplastics and endocrine disruptors, I did a solo episode of The Huberman Lab Podcast on that topic, and that is also linked in the show note captions.
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