The Latest Science on Microplastics — And What They’re Doing to Your Body

Key Takeaway

Your plastic exposure isn't just about what you can see—it's in the water you drink, the air you breathe, and the products you touch daily. Start with one change today: switch to filtered or distilled water in glass containers. These chemicals, particularly phthalates, are linked to reduced testosterone, lower fertility, and decreased sexual satisfaction. The exposure during pregnancy is especially critical, as it can alter fetal development. You can't eliminate all exposure, but you can significantly reduce your body burden by being intentional about water, food storage, and personal care products.

Episode Overview

Dr. Shana Swan, reproductive epidemiologist and environmental health expert, discusses the pervasive threat of microplastics and endocrine-disrupting chemicals like phthalates. The conversation covers how these petrochemical-derived compounds affect human health—particularly reproductive health, fertility, and sexual function—and explores practical strategies for reducing exposure through water filtration, avoiding plastic food containers, and choosing safer personal care products.

Full Transcript

Transcript of The Latest Science on Microplastics — And What They’re Doing to Your Body from The Dr. Hyman Show. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

microplastics, which is something that's in the zeicist now as a problem and people are worried about, freaked out about, don't know what to do about. People have measured them in their blood. They've been measured in placentas. They've been measured in seinal fluid. They've been measured in breast milk. They're breakdown products, very small breakdown products of plastic and do harm in two ways. They carry the chemical. The chemical is piggybacked on the little particle. And then they invade the cells. And that invasion, their presence in the human body, in the cell itself causes harm.

It's not anything you have any control over really because they're so prevalent in our water and in our air and in everything we eat and smell and drink. Where are they coming from? Right? And the answer is everywhere. And that's kind of scary. Let's talk about the testing. Is it worth people doing the testing? If you want to learn what's in your body and then commit to go on and make changes in your life, you can. Today, I'm joined by Dr. Shana Swan to discuss the invisible threat of microplastics.

Her recent documentary, The Plastic Detox, highlights how three out of five infertile couples conceived after a 3-month intervention. We uncover the hitchhiker chemicals in your water and food and how to reduce your exposure. If you've been dealing with anxiety, low energy, or trouble focusing, and still feel like you're missing something, you're not alone. That's why I created the Brain Shaping Academy, a new program that looks in places most people never think to check, like nutrient deficiencies, the health of your gut, metabolism, your immune system, and lots more.

So, join the weight list and get special pricing at drimman.com/brainshaping. drimman.com/brainshaping. drimman.com/brainshaping. Dr. Swan, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I'm excited to talk to you about this topic of endocrine disruptors and more specifically microplastics which is something that's in the zeicist now as a problem and people are worried about freaked out about don't know what to do about and you recently were instrumental in a movie through your action science initiative called the plastic detox which is how to get plastic out of your lives and I think we're going to get into all of that but I kind of want to just start out by thanking you for your work and thanking you for highlighting the the the importance and the reality of these and disrupting chemicals and how they affect us.

And we're just chit chatting a little bit before the podcast and years ago, God, it must have been close to 30 years ago, I read this book called Our Stolen Future by Theo Coburn. And it it was kind of like a silent spring book. It was this book that kind of really kind of set the stage for how these environmental toxins were not just causing cancer, but were having huge endocrine disrupting effects on fertility, sperm count, hermaphroditism in animals, weird stuff that was going on that is so bizarre in in um affecting our reproductive health across all species including humans.

And I think um that work is only compounded and you've been you know instrumental in in unpacking some of that. So before we get into the whole world of microplastics, I'd love for you to share how kind of you got into this work, how you first came to understand that these compounds were ubiquitous, how they were affecting human health and particularly how they were affecting, you know, human reproduction and what kind of led you down that path? Yeah. So I um I was asked to join a committee of the National Academy of Sciences Sciences Sciences who was the committee was um asked to look at the question do chemicals in the environment that are hormonally active affect human health should we be worried about that kind of the same question we're asking today in some ways and um I joined that committee um as uh I believe they brought me on as a neutral they have usually neutrals and people on either side of the question.

And at that point, I didn't even know what an endocrine disrupting chemical was. So, I was definitely neutral, although I had looked at environmental factors that affected fertility for a long time. Uh, I hadn't looked at this question of endocrine disrupting chemicals. So, that's how I got into it. I went to the committee. Um the first thing they asked me to do was to look at a study out of Denmark um that claimed that springp pound had declined 50% in 50 years. Yeah, that was the Carlson paper.

And um that paper when I first looked at it, I thought uh probably not probably not going to hold up under scrutiny um because it was kind of thin. I don't you've probably seen it. Uh it doesn't have a lot of I remember that study. study. study. Yeah. So were you impressed by it? I'm curious. curious. curious. I mean it it certainly got my it certainly got my attention. Also the changing birth rates between male and female offspring was also really fascinating to me how that number was shifting.

Uh and and so that all kind of got my attention. This was and this was really around 30 years ago when I 1995 is when you joined the National Academy of Sciences and our stolen future came out in 96. So I was like oh wow this is a thing. this is happening. Right. Right. So what I did was um as you probably know I and my colleagues I had two colleagues that worked um for about a half a year uh trying to make that Carlson trend go away you know so we looked at things that might explain it like are there changes in smokings changes in obesity rates changes in how sperm count was measured and so on and so forth and put all these variables into a large model 61 studies we got you know all the data from put it in a big model ran the model and then the big surprise was that that didn't change anything.

Not to the first decimal place, place, place, the slope. the slope. the slope. And you're and you're a statistician by training. You got your PhD in statistics. So this is like you know this stuff. this stuff. this stuff. Yeah. I could not make it go away. That's what I was trying to do. I was trying to make this trend go away. I could not do it. And um and so I had to take it seriously. And that's when I kind of dove in to this question of is sperm count declining?

Why is it declining? Where is it declining? And um that wasn't specifically focused on any particular chemicals. But um then uh the next big jump for me was when I was traveling with a chemist friend to Japan, John Brock, and he said, "Shauna, you should look at phallites." So that kind of another big change in my life and I said John why should I look at phalates because I had never heard of them. Okay. So right right right what a naive question. Right. And and so he told me two things.

First of all, he said they were in everyone in the United States as far as they could determine at CDC because they had the NHANES study that sampled a representative sample of the US population and you could see that it was positive. It would was detected in the sample almost 100%. And then he said, and this was kind of the thing that got me most interested, he said that his colleagues in the National Toxicology Program had shown that when a pregnant rodent rat or mouse was exposed to phalates that their male offspring developed atypically.

And what they did was they had a less mas male typical genital tract. genital tract. genital tract. And we can talk about that some more. I'm sure we will. But they gave this the name the phallid syndrome. And this was very interesting. I didn't realize this till much later. But this is the only environmental chemical that has a syndrome named after it. Okay. There's al there's fetal alcohol, but that's not an environmental chemical. So this was really kind of you know changed the whole field in a way.

Now we yeah we started having to look at like what what are these and and are there others you know that um and it raised the possibility you see that a prenatal exposure to a man-made chemical could change the life passage the lifelong development of a of an offspring. an offspring. an offspring. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And and so Kind of wild. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of wild. So that got me into in a big way into looking at this because what I then asked was uh is it happening in humans?

And that was kind of the big breakthrough for me when I found we can talk about how I did that if you want but I did find the phot in humans. So before before you go on what are phalates and where are they found and how are we exposed to them because I think people have heard that term they might not know what it is just like you didn't know what it was it's likely that people like what is that anyway actually in in Europe they're banned there they're in Europe they're banned there and they're like the little rubber duckies that uh you know babies were playing in the bathtub chewing on rubber duckies here too they are they're now they are but they weren't weren't weren't that's right so what are they so um these are um chemicals that are added to plastic.

And um by the way, they're derived from fossil fuels, which is interesting to keep in mind. Yeah. They have uh a lot of interesting properties. They that that they lend to the plastic. So they're put in to give it properties and the phalates are put in into the plastic to make it soft and flexible. And um they're very it's a large class of chemicals. They're fairly diverse. And um they're measurable in the human body pretty easily which makes my work much easier because they're water soluble and being water soluble they get into the urine and what as metabolite they're metabolized and so we measure metabolites of phallids in the urine fairly easily.

Everybody listening can do this. They can get their body burden of phalates by peeing into a container and having a test. Yeah. Yeah. So, so that makes it very accessible. Um, the the company that I use is called Million Marker, but there are other companies that do that, I believe, and certainly the government does it. So, so it's now measurable. Once we know this, we know it's measurable and we know something about what it does because of those animal studies. But let me just add that it does other things besides making plastic soft and flexible.

for example, um it helps the absorption through a skin barrier or other barriers of of chemicals. And so for it's added to um hand lotion and it's also added to pesticides. Now, this is so interesting because if if you're going to increase absorption, you would like that pesticide to go into the plant, right? So, it's it's added as so-called an inert ingredient, although it's not inert. Um and um it another important thing it does it re helps u retain scent and color. So it's added to makeup.

So um you know lipstick um and products you put on your skin as well as fragrance. It's actually in all fragrance products and that's a pretty big exposure. Yeah. because it helps and everything's sent. Everything's sent to to to everything, right? Your laundry detergent, your you name it. So, so it's banned in rubber duckies, but it's in everything else and it's still there. Yo, yeah. Yeah. So, I just want to say about the banning. Um there was a lot of discussion um about what should be banned or whether they should be banned after our studies and others came out.

And um finally they decided that they would ban it in children's toys. That's the rubber ducky. But I've always been upset about that because a pregnant woman, particularly if she has no kids in the house, is not handling children's toys. That's not how she's getting. getting. getting. But she's put on makeup and lotion, right? And she's eating food that's been stored in phallet contain, you know, phallet containing containers, soft plastic containers, and and and so on and so forth. Um so um she's not being you know protected by this legislation of 2008 consumer protection act of 2008 did not protect pregnant women and we still don't have good or the or the rest of us or the rest of us.

Right. Right. But the but for me the pregnant woman is uh particularly critical um you know because of the phalate syndrome because um the fetus is you know particularly vulnerable uh especially in the first trimester or the first part of the first trimester and I'm sure we'll talk about that in more detail but that's when the the pathway for the phalate syndrome is laid down at that time research on the microbiome has made it increasingly clear just how central the gut microbiome is to overall health.

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And because they're chews, not pills, they're convenient and delicious. Perfect for your bag, your desk, or wherever the day takes you. If you want a simple way to support resilience, energy, and focus this summer, try HTB immune energy choose. Go to bigbalth.com/drheimman. bigbalth.com/drheimman. bigbalth.com/drheimman. That's Dr. Hymn, and use the codeman 15 to save 15% off your first order. Yeah, I think this is important. And I think you know the doorway into understanding this for you was understanding the role of phalates in animal reproductive health and then human health.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Phalates are just one of thousands of petrochemically derived compounds that are in everything everywhere all at once. And what's interesting to me is that you know in medicine we're taught that the dose makes the poison, right? This is Paracelis's, you know, famous line. The dose makes the poison. You know, have one glass of wine, fine. If you have a two bottles of wine, probably not so fine. However, in in the realm of what we call these xenobiotics, which are foreign compounds that have biological effects and particularly they have estrogenic effects.

Um, they seem to be causing harm at very low levels and from my understanding understanding understanding they're not additive. So 1 plus 1 isn't two. 1 plus 1 might be a thousand. And there's thousands of these that are in and on and around us and that are affecting us. So can you kind of unpack how these are where where these all are found, what they are, and and how they're synergistically affecting us and the kinds of things we're seeing in the science over the last 30 years about how they really truly impro impact all aspects of human health, not not just reproductive health.

Phalates are a a class of several chemicals which have a similar structure and similar effect. And by the way, the phalates are androgen lowering. They're anti- androgens. Okay? So, they're particularly important for things that affect the male side, but the females are also of, as you know, of course, the females need their testosterone also. Um so um and and by the way just a little aside in one of our studies we asked women about their sexual satisfaction and frequency and women who had higher levels of phalates had lower satisfaction and lower frequency.

So interesting which lowers testosterone. Yeah it's that is through the testosterone. There are other chemicals that affect other hormonal systems and a really important one for me studying environmental health are the uh the bisphenols. So I think everyone knows about BPA and that's one bisphenol bisphenol A. Um there are many others and um they're in the market now uh at bisphenol S and bisphenol F because there was concern about A. So the manufacturer said, "Oh, okay. We'll just swap out A for these lookalike chemicals just feel F and S and then we can put on our bottles BPA free." But they didn't remove the risk.

Okay. So just as a little aside, that's another class. There's another very large class which are the POS chemicals, so-called the forever chemicals. And these are affecting the um immune system and uh in important ways. And this is kind of scary because they're Whoa. They're in so much that we use every day. They're in any, you know, the Teflon pans. They're barriers. I think of them as barrier chemicals. They lay down a barrier in your in your frying pan, in your pizza box, in your rain jacket, in your uh if you play sports, in your sports clothes, sports clothes, sports clothes, in your Lululemon outfit.

Well, I don't I try not to I try not to, you know, mention brands, but but um I I'm happy to Because what what are they doing? They're putting a barrier between the dirt, you know, and your skin or the rain and your skin or, you know, so they're they're laying down a protective barrier. That sounds good, but in fact, they're conveying harm because they interfere with your antibbody response to vaccines, for example. You know, they're actually pretty powerful. Um, and and there are arguably 80 hormones in the body.

I'm not sure. I'm not a an endocrinologist, but there's a large number of hormones, probably more being discovered all the time, I don't know. But um and so when we talk about um a hormone altering chemical, we're talking about something that can affect very very many things in the body. And these are critical because the hormones are signaling agents that transport information from one gland to another and keep your body running. So if you're going to mess with those, you're going to mess with everything in the body.

That's pretty overwhelming. Yeah. Yeah. So, it's not it's not just reproductive health. It's it's pretty much everything. And they're linked to cancer. They're linked to heart disease. They're linked to obesity. They're called obesogens. They're called autogens. They cause autoimmune disease. They're called obesogens because they cause obesity. So, you know, they're look it looks like they're affecting cognitive health. Things like Parkinson's diseases certainly linked to these environmental chemicals. Some depression, mood disorders. I mean you go through the spectrum of all chronic illnesses in some ways all of them can be triggered by some levels of environmental toxins and what's happened in over the last you know 150 years I mean when you were you were born in 1936 which is amazing you're going to be 90 probably when this podcast comes out so happy birthday you know when you were born like everything was organic there was no uh conventional sort of industrial agriculture there there there weren't these chemicals everywhere and everything all the time and we We've done this to ourselves over the last, you know, 100 plus years.

And and you know, now we're in this pickle where we're finally discovering the science of how these things impact us. And the question is, how do we go about addressing this? Clearly is is having affecting fertility, sperm count, sexual function, and all these other things that are quite concerning. But but I I kind of before we get into sort of what to do about it, I really want to kind of go into this world of microplastics because it's something that's currently in the zeitgeist. People are talking about it, concerned about it, want to test for it.

I had my microplastic tested. I don't know if it was a good lab or not, but it was like off the chart. And I'm like, God, I don't I cook. I have only glass containers. I try not to drink out of plastic bottles. I mean, I do my best and I know what I'm I'm kind of aware. I filter my water. I'm like I But it's it's frightening to see what was going on in my body and and how and how I might be affected by this.

So, and it was a sort of a seminal paper that came out in the New England Journal of Medicine which talked about microplastics in the atheromomas or the plaques and arteries and how that was linked to increased risk of cardiovascular events. And that was that was a pretty compelling bit of data. So, can you talk about what are microplastics, nanoplastics, where are they found? What's the difference between microplastics plastics and plasticizers? And like what's the science about these things in human health? health? health? First of all, when we started studying when John Brock said to me, you should study phalates, he wasn't thinking about didn't know about microplastics.

That was not a thing that and that's a relatively new area of work. Um and um but there's a lot of overlap. And let me just say we didn't know about microplastics, but we knew about particles harming us. And you know and you as a physician you know that um we have uh aspesus asbestous were particles that went into the lungs and caused aspostosis and they also had caused chemical harm. So they're similar um and um you know silicone also silicosis. So, so, so it's not let that the um phenomena of particles carrying chemicals and themselves being harmful.

We know this, but we didn't know it about the endocrine destructing chemicals until recently. So, um it's they're breakdown products of of of very small breakdown products of plastic and that do harm in two ways. They're at least whether may we may find more but they uh convey they carry the chemical. So their the chemical is piggybacked on the little particle and then they invade the cells and that invasion their presence in the human body in the cell itself causes harm uh that is different than the chemical harm.

Right? So um so that's that's that's you know microparticles 101 or something but um the the other thing to know about them I think really importantly is that um measuring them is extremely difficult and expensive and you have you were able to get measured I don't know what tissue you measured but blood in your blood yeah yeah blood test yeah so people measured them in their blood they've been measured in placentas they've been measured in seinal fluid fluid. They've been measured in breast milk. They've been pretty much any fluid that's gone through the body.

Uh a body that's been contaminated by plastic will pick up these little particles. And um but the measurement of these will also reflect the particles in the surrounding environment in which they are measured. So if they're measur if you collect them in a um autopsy, you collect them in um uh a place where you know in a hospital where women are giving birth, you're going to get lots and lots of microarticles from the environment. And this is makes it very difficult a challenge to measure these without contamination contamination contamination because they're in the air is what you're saying.

they're in the instruments that are used to collect the sample from you know the whatever placenta and and so um this is this is a big challenge to the field and it it's also makes it very expensive so um just it's very easy I told you for you to get your urinary metabolites of chemicals measured by sending in your urine it is not easy to get your microplastics measured uh it's a much harder process yeah and more expensive Where where do we find these things? Where are they?

Where are we getting the most exposures? most exposures? most exposures? Well, that's a great question. Everybody wants Yeah. Where are they coming from, right? And the answer is everywhere. And that's kind of scary. Um we're uh but I would say, you know, think about how can things get in the body, right? You can take them in through your mouth. That's ingestion. So food, drink, very important, perhaps the most important. I I can't be sure. And then we get them through inhalation. through inhalation. through inhalation. We breathe them in.

So in our air um and then we get them through our skin and that's the through our absorption. And there's another route which is not very common not studied very much which is if you enter the skin say you get a a shot or you get blood drawn that will introduce um some as well. But getting your blood drawn, just having a needle in your arm will I I haven't seen a study on that, but I've seen that written up that that is possible. Yeah. Because um you're breaking the barrier.

All of these are breaking barriers in a way, you know, there. Yeah. So it's another where you think about how do things get in the body? Those are all that people have mentioned. Yeah. So, um, but the thing to remember is it's not anything you have any control over really. Um, because they're so prevalent in our water and in our air and in everything we eat and smell and drink and you know that it's very hard to think about how we could defend ourselves against them.

Um I I mean I would suggest taking a lot of care with your water because that is a very common source of exposure. Um in my house we um actually distill our water which sounds as complicated but it's not hard and it's not expensive. It's free actually once you buy the machine. Make sure you buy the thing plastic free. Okay. And then there's filtering and you have to worry about plastic and the filters and changing the filters and so on. And um uh there's reverse osmosis RO which is you know all of these things are technical.

They take machines. They take you know effort and and allow for possible additional contamination. I would say you have to be careful of that. But but water is really important and bottle water is not great. Just not great. Not great. So filtering your water or distilled water if you can. Right. And does reverse osmosis filter actually work for removing microplastics? microplastics? microplastics? Well, I can't say about my It works for keeping out exposure. Whether it keeps out all microplastics, I can't I can't say. I don't know.

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I want to go back to the sort of biological impacts of these things and what do we know now in and what do we know now in 2026 2026 2026 about what these microplastics are doing to human health. But I have to say I'm not distinguishing the harms from the plasticizers and from the microplastics. Okay. There are there are like are like are like you see them as a continuum of harm. Not so much a continuum as inseparable in a way because um if you're going to be getting the plastic pieces in your body, you're going to be have the hitchhikers there too, right?

The the chemicals that are riding along with them that you can't keep them out. You can't have, you know, the microplastic without the without the hitchhikers. and and and so um I mean I've done lots of studies on phalites and I've been studying the phallite urinary metabolites but undoubtedly all of those people that we studied also had microplastics which we did not study right so it's it's very hard to separate them uh they're kind of a yeah you have to take them together so so in that whole category like what what are the human harms what are the human harms Like what are the things that people should know that they might be causing or that the data suggests that they could be causing the outcomes or the um exposure?

Yeah. Like Yeah. Like what do they do? I mean, we talked about reproductive health, health, health, sperm count, fertility, you know, changing the genitals, all kinds of weird stuff. But, you know, what else is it doing to human health? Well, first of all, I have to say, uh I'm a reproductive epidemiologist. where I live, if you will, is in the reproductive system. And so that's what I know best. Um, I also uh read a lot. So, as you do and other people do. So, I'm not I'm not sure that my expertise is I'm not the right person to talk about um obesity.

You should talk to um the author of obesogens or you know, uh I haven't studied those specifically. Um you know, their relationship to cancer. A lot has been written on that Parkinson's there are experts in each of these areas and I I would be reluctant I I would prefer to talk about reproduction because that's what I know but also saying that yes the harms are widespread and probably in every system in the body. Yeah, I agree. And I think I think from my perspective looking at this more as a doctor from the high level like looking at all the different things that it can affect, it's clear that the underlying drivers is is inflammation, oxidative stress, immune dysregulation, endocrine disruption, and it kind of also like this Trojan horse as you mentioned for all these other chemicals that come into our bodies, cardiovascular health, obesity, diabetes, autoimmune diseases.

So, we're seeing a rise of all these things. And I think it's not the only reason, but it's clearly a major reason that hasn't been looked at. And I think that that from my perspective, like people are thinking, okay, well, what do I do? Like, how do I find out if I have them? How do I test for it? What can I do to protect myself? Am I just going to be at the mercy of this? And what needs to happen also on a regulatory level?

So, maybe you can kind of talk about about what what what the the diagnostic sort of framework is around this. Is there worth is it worth look trying to find out what your levels are and then follow on a protocol and then retest or is it just sort of should we just be focusing on reducing our exposures? Help us kind of think through this cuz I people are listening are probably like freaking out and I'm like yeah what the what do I do? You know one thing I would say is watch the plastic detox plastic detox plastic detox um the movie because there's it's on Netflix right Netflix movie now.

It came out in March and um it's very widely uh watched seen shown and um uh that's just kind of an introduction and I think it's uh it will give people uh hope because what happens in can I just say briefly what happens in the film? Yes, please. I'll just tell you what what what the this is an we conducted an intervention where we changed things in people's lives to in order to change their health. The things we changed was um exposures to these chemicals we've been talking about and what we hoped to change in their lives was their reproductive health.

So to do that we enrolled and this is very small this is a very small pilot okay we enrolled six couples one of whom dropped out for personal reasons so uh very small we enrolled them at the beginning of a three-month intervention and then we got information about them we got a lot of information we got a semen sample using a atome collection kit by fellow meat fellow is the company uh worked very well Um we also got their urine using um million marker and then we asked them lots and lots of questions and million marker has a team that's trained to ask people about their exposures and to inform them about what the risks of these exposures are.

So it's an educational component too. the educational component and the testing component in their in their serum, sorry, in their urine. We got um the levels of the metabolites. So, we knew what their exposure was when they started and we repeated that halfway through which was 6 weeks and then we repeated it after 12 weeks was the which was the end of the intervention. So, here the picture is pretty clear. You start out, you know what's in their body, you tell them how to reduce it, they try, they reduce it, and then we get their levels at the end.

As far as their health goes, we get their sperm motility, morphometry, count, concentration, all these good things at the beginning, at the middle, at the end. And then uh we see who gets pregnant. Now, who were these people? These were people who had been trying for more than a year to get pregnant and they had no obvious causes of their infertility. So idiopathic infertility and they had to be willing to do this and be willing to be filmed which is a pretty big bar and wanting to wanting to do this.

Um and but you don't if you're listening you don't need you know this intervention. You can do your own intervention which is really interesting. And several people I've talked to, you know, hosts of shows and reporters are doing this now. You could do it if you want. You know, it's very easy uh to get a kit, send your urine in, have it tested, try to lower your exposure following the tips in the film. Uh deplastic unplasticyourlife.com will give you a lot of tips. I'll give you tips.

Um and and then try that for three months. And why three months? Well, it's because it takes 70 days to make a sperm. So, we are approximately, you know, giving a little window there and um of course the uh exposure to both the man and the woman matters. So, um you know, and then you see what happens. You see, have your levels gone down? Has your sperm count gone up? And then if you add, which we hope to do, serum testing, home serum testing is more difficult than home urine testing.

Yeah. But we are um adding that and hoping to get hormone um levels as well. So that's kind of the it's not rocket science. It's pretty simple. And what did you find? And did you see after 3 months of doing kind of a plastic detox that people's numbers improved? improved? improved? Absolutely. Absolutely. And their sperm function function function to non-detect from a quite high levels and that's shown in the film. And we also published a paper uh containing a scientific paper in a peerreview journal with these data.

And um so their levels went down went down went down and the main the main imps went down. But were the main health impacts related to the sperm function, motility, morphology, did that change? Yes. Yes. Their semen parameters change. That's really helpful. Yes. I Yeah, I'm I'm excited. I'm thrilled actually to to have this for the small sample having this stronger result. And then we have um several pregnancies as well. Um and um three three of the five and were these in couples that were struggling to get pregnant?

These were absolutely couples that had tried for more than a year, some as much as 10 years to get pregnant and and um yeah, it's it's it's quite encouraging actually because it was not hard. Now, this was a particularly intense intervention in the sense that they talked to million marker once a week. I went to their homes twice even though they were spread around the whole country because I wanted to see their homes and meet them and talk to them one-on-one and and um you know it was it was so gratifying to get to know them and and see uh see them go through this journey.

It was thrilling to them and for me actually to know that we can do this. Everybody can do this. These were not like specially chosen people, you know, they raised up their hand. They said, "We'll do this. We're infertile and we'll try." And they did. That's amazing. And Mill and Million Marker is a consumer environmental exposure testing company that looks at endocrine disrupting chemicals and it it uses urine. It can take plastics and personal care products. And they're looking at things like bisphenols like BPA, BPS, BPF.

These are, you know, BPA might, you know, be reduced in certain products, but they replace it with alternatives that are just as bad or maybe worse, who knows? And it looks at phalate, metabolized, parabens, which are in a lot of skincare creams, sunblock, oxyenzone, which is actually in a lot of sunblock. So, people are using all these things that think they help to help themselves, but they're actually potentially harming themselves. And so can you talk a little bit about um some of these these chemicals like bisphenol A bisphenol A BPS BPF and and some of these compounds that that are part of this whole microplastic family?

Well, we've talked a little bit about phalates and um the other sort of big uh elephant in the room if you will for me is because of my focus on reproduction um is the bisphenols and the bisphenols. So I think abysphenols and phthalates is um kind of evil twins. One of them the phalates makes plastic soft and flexible and it lowers testosterone and the other one makes plastic hard firm hard and raises estrogen. So they're kind of no and um so we're we I talk quite a bit about the the but the bisphenols are very very prevalent and every time you go to the store and get a receipt you know would you like a receipt um I say no thanks and you shouldn't be touching that either because I make a pest of myself because it's um they just say send it electronically why would you touch it because you when you touch that we've done a sh study which shows they touch that particular you have hand cream on you're getting a lot of bisphenols into your body and every cashier gets a lot so all those credit card receipts yeah don't touch the receipts the ATM receipt the ATM receipts the gas station receipts right receipts right receipts right right I mean have them sent electronically so and then um bisphenol lines a lot of things and I think whatever everyone here listening would do well to pay attention to is that it lines tin cans.

It lines all your tin cans unless there's a specific effort by the company to say they are not using benile in their linings and you can look for that usually on the package read that because it's a you know they have to make that effort and pay for that you do this in a different way and that's you know uh something to call attention to. So choose try to choose tin cans which are not lined with bisphenol of any kind A B F whatever alphabet soup you know you put in there anything that starts with bisphenol BP but but does that mean you can't have things in cans you can but you need to look for companies that package their food in cans that are not lined with bisphenol there are alternatives but um again I don't mention brands but you can look it for that on the package Or you could go to environmental working group for example um and look at how they rate these things.

Um there are other companies like Claria um um and so on that you can go to to check out um Claria is an app you can use it to scan a bar you know on the on the thing you're buying you you scan that barcode and you can see what's in it and including in the past and it's called Clear Clear. Yeah. C L E A R Y A. Yeah. It's an app. That's helpful. Put that in the show notes. You know, there was there was interesting.

There was legislation introduced by Dan Feinstein in 2009 called the Ban Poisonous Addives Act, which meant to really limit and phase out BPA in food containers, beverage containers, can linings, and um other FDA kind of regulated food contact materials, but it was defeated because of the industry's massive investment in fighting it and lobbing against it. Where are we now with legislation around this? Where where are we in terms of you know having consumer protection against these toxic chemicals? Not very far in this country. Um I want to mention two things.

One is we know how to regulate products because the FDA does it and they do it well. They've done it for a long time and they did it in response. I'm sure you know but the your listeners won't know uh response to two very dangerous chemicals in in drugs. One of them was theomide that caused children to be born without arms and legs and one was dees dial still which caused cancer in the children born to women who took it during pregnancy. Um these were these are historic they're old but they're really impactful because they changed the process of the FDA.

FDA responded immediately to the dees information and took dees off the market within six months of the publication of Herp's paper showing that causes cancer. So that was responsive. It was quick and they kept on and and so we know that government can respond quickly. It can regulate well, but in this case, it's not doing it largely due to the pressure of the industries that are involved. And ultimately, and it's not just one drug. It's like it's the entire chemical industry. It's not just like one molecule that we're trying to ban.

It's it's a whole class of things that are used in in everything that we consume and use every day. It's quite huge. And I think you know is is there kind of any kind of current legislation on the books in Congress or in state legislatores that are trying to to address this? Yes. Um let me just say first I would say that are the best you know most successful has been uh the EU with uh uh REACH is a program that was um put in place by the EU.

The reach legislation. Yeah. breach legislation. And it has the really important um caveat which is um if you want to bring in a new product and put it in commerce, you can't do that until it's tested for safety first. We don't have that. We have that for drugs, but we don't have it for other products in our daily lives. So, um that's really what one of the major things that has to change. And there is a TUSCa um is under revision now and that will uh depending how that goes that could help but um it's a very difficult uphill battle and there are wonderful groups working on this without very much funding of course and and you know fighting very big big giants of industry uh it's it's a very slow and difficult process.

I mean, yeah, we all in America bought the line better living through chemistry and it, you know, with I remember being I'm I'm you might remember this, but I was in New York City. I lived in Queens in 1965 during the World's Fair and and you know, there was such a big celebration of chemicals. Dupon had a whole little, you know, dance of routine and song and literally song and dance about better living through chemistry. And we're all so naive at that point. and and I think Rachel Carson had sort of brought up some of these issues around pesticides and herbicides, but in terms of the rest of us, it wasn't a thing.

You know, it really needs to be, I think, legislation or even litigation that helps to sort of move this industry out of this because it it's only getting worse. And I'm seeing it in my practice as a doctor, the effect of these. And I actually measure these things. I look at urine, I look at blood, I look at like burden, body burdens of toxins, look at cell membrane levels of these things. Great. And it's it's quite staggering how much of a a problem is when you start to look.

Le let's talk about, you know, the testing. Is it worth people doing the testing? Is it something they should think about doing and then reducing their exposures and then retesting? Is that is that a worthwhile endeavor for people who want to like find out where they're at? It costs money, you know, several hundred. I don't remember the cost right now to do the whole program. And that's one thing I should point out that this is a a problem that affects people people of lower SCEs more than higher SCEs because they can afford to be tested.

They can afford cleaner products which are always more expensive. They can afford to shop in organic stores. Uh we haven't talked about pesticides but those are also endocrine disrupting. um and um they can't afford the time if they have, you know, working two jobs, three kids. I mean, who's going to take the time to check out the labels and and you know, worry about what they're putting on their it takes time, it takes energy, it takes money. So, you know, there's this this is not an equal opportunity hazard for everybody, right?

But um yes, I think if you can afford it, uh and if this will help you change your behavior, if you're going to go into it and say, "Well, I just want to know, but I don't want to do anything about it." Then don't waste your time. I mean, why do that? Um if you want to learn what's in your body and then uh kind of commit to go on and make changes in your life, you can. You can, but you have to make the effort and you have to put in, you know, you have to do it and you have to want to do it and then you can do it.

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You mentioned a few things like you know distilling water, filtering your water. You talked about the exposures in air. Should we have air filters? I have air filters in my house, in my bedroom, and in the place I spend most of my time. I try not to buy things in plastic, but it's almost impossible, you know, like how do how do people go about really reducing their exposures in their home, in their skinincare products, in the environment that they're in, in their food, um, and how how do we think about creating a systematic approach to reducing exposures because I think that's all we can really do at this point.

And then you know the second following question that we can talk about in a minute is is there a way to get rid of this stuff? Like besides just reduce your exposure, can you detoxify from it? So why don't we start out with like how do we reduce our exposures? So I would say watch the plastic detox. You get a good idea. Watch the plastic detox. Okay. That's on my watch list. Okay. Make a commitment to do this. uh actually what you're doing each little thing is not going to be that important but but having a commitment to reduce your exposure in your life and in your family's life um matters because it takes an effort.

You're going to have to take an effort to do this. Make an effort to do this. And um I would say I would start with your food. I think food and drink is probably the easiest and the most important perhaps target. And so that starts in the store. When I was doing the movie, I went around with Cecilia, who was a 12-year-old daughter of one of the couples, and um and it was really fun doing this with her, pointing out where the plastic was, and then looking at how we could avoid it in the store, you know, so looking, you can look, you know, get bulk uh instead of wrapped production of of of of flour and spices and so on and so forth.

Um, and then even, you know, you know, vegetables. Some places have vegetables laid out, not wrapped. You can pick a like several near me because I live in San Francisco, but you can pick out a head of lettuce and pick out a whatever you're buying. And what I did with Cecilia, I said, "Let's let's see if if what this costs." So, we looked at the cost of the unwrapped and the wrapped. And guess what? The wrapped costs more. We did it with fish. We did it with other things.

So, I would say right there when you're buying the product, try to buy it not wrapped in plastic. And if you're doing jars, do a glass jar rather than a plastic jar. And and so on and so forth. So, have your eyes open in the store when you're shopping. Okay? Then, when you bring it home, don't put it in plastic containers because you're just undoing that good work you just did. Okay? And yeah, so put it in a glass container. You can put it in ceramic.

I save all my glass jars and reuse them and you know why not? And um and then um worry about it when you're cooking. You know, you don't we haven't talked about POS very much, but I think everyone knows that Teflon is a something to be avoided and black plastic and so on. So, think about what your food is touching on the way from your shopping bag to your stomach. You know, try to keep plastic out of the picture as much. So, like cast iron, stainless steel pots.

Yeah. Aston is great. It's cheap and it's a little heavy. That's the I would say the drawback. But yes, it's we have many have many have many good for strength training. I use it for strength training. strength training. strength training. Double double benefit, right? Um and and it's let me just say here, it's kind of trit by now, but do not microwave food in plastic. Never, never, never, never. because that's um you know what happens is that the the plasticizers which are added to the plastic are not tightly bound to that matrix and so you heat it the particles get active they hop out of the plastic they hop into your food they get into your body so don't do that avoid that if you can that's a no no microwave in plastic don't store your food in plastic I mean that's the problem with takeout and delivery right because it's all in plastic really bad plastic the containers.

containers. containers. I don't know how to um I don't know how to um get at that because a lot of the restaurants that are sending stuff out can't afford, you know, high touch containers. So, you know, they're going to do what's cheap and quick and and and then we get that exposure that way. And the food is put into the containers when it's warm, so it's going to absorb more of the Yeah. So, that is a problem. and and uh taking out from restaurants is is also Yeah.

It's same problem. Warm food, bad containers. Yeah. No. No. Okay. So, we've got, you know, filter your water. Maybe air filters in your house. When you shop, don't buy stuff wrapped in plastic. Buy in glass if you can. Don't cook with cookware that's got coatings on it that is nonstick. That could be teflon. I don't know if all nonstick is bad. Ceramic maybe. probably not bad and that's more of non-stick. There are options, but be smart about it. Um, and don't definitely cook anything in the microwave and plastic.

Uh, watch out for your skinincare products, right? I think this is really important. important. important. That's the next level. Yeah. The environmental working group has a a great website uh ewg.org and they have a an app called Skin Deep. I'm on the board of the Environmental Working Group and they and they have a really good resources. You can actually see what's in it. So, you know, you might not know oxyenzone is actually a toxic plastic that's in almost sunscreens or parabens as in most skincare products.

So, it's, you know, unfortunately often are more expensive and they're more challenging to get. But, but I think if you're doing something every day to your body like that's putting stuff on it, your your skin basically what I what I what I say to people is if you wouldn't eat it, you shouldn't put it on your skin skin skin because it goes through your skin. It goes through your skin. You're absorbing it. We we I mean we know in medicine we deliver all kinds of medicines to the skin.

We have estrogen patches. We have nitroglycerin cream and paste we put on people and they come in the emergency room with a heart attack because it works so fast. It gets absorbed right in the skin. We know we know this is possible. So I think those are those are really important simple things you can do. Um and and what what else are you would you say suggest that people might think about besides those things that we just talked about? Fragrance. I would I would ask people to um think about fragrance.

Uh again in our studies we asked women what they used. These were pregnant women that we were interviewing by the way. We asked them what they used in the last 24 hours. And then we asked was it fragranced and the when the women reported use of fragrance products, their levels of several chemicals were higher, particularly the phalates in their bodies. And and so this is not just perfume, it's also your laundry detergent is fragranced. Um candles are fragranced. Um uh you know, plugins in the wall.

uh things you hang in your car. There's a little pine cone, you know. Um know. Um know. Um yeah, don't do that. Don't do that. If you can smell it, um and maybe even if you like it, you like the smell of it, um don't use it. And that that's one of the things that was hardest for participants in the in the film, by the way. But there are but there are some natural fragrances, right? There's uh essential oils that people use. So there are things that are okay.

Beeswax is great. If you like the smell of beeswax, that's that's a really nice smell. smell. smell. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there are there are brands like that. I I wonder what you think of these that are like quote organic or more natural brands that like for example laundry detergent. There's a bunch of them. There's EcoB, there's Seventh Generation. Are are those are those okay if they're fragranced or are those also probably probably probably I don't know. I don't know specifically that. But um I I mean you know what's would be great if you weren't sure if you had the time to ask them manufacturers if they got a lot of questions from people saying um what is the fragrance in here and and is it safe and you know that kind of question would really I think make a difference pile up if enough people did that.

So if you don't know I would ask all right well this has been such a fascinating conversation I'd like to ask you a set of rapid fire questions. Are you up for that? Sure. Okay, th this one's obvious. You're turning 90 this month. Like, what's your longevity tips? You're sharp, you're smart, you look beautiful. Like, I don't get it. What are you doing? doing? doing? And how do I subscribe? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Um, I I would say be interested in what you do.

Um, and um, exercise, watch what you put in your body, and have a friends, friends. And I have a wonderful husband. and I have wonderful family, so that's great. I'm really lucky. Um, I don't know. And jeans. I I couldn't control my jeans, but I'm sure they matter. matter. matter. Well, I think those are all really important, simple, but obvious tips that actually make a difference. So, it's not any secret sauce. It's just the foundations. Um, okay. What What's the number one thing in terms of all these exposures that people can do?

Like, if you had to pick one thing, what would it be? be? be? Uh, food. Uh, food. Uh, food. Food. So, watch your exposures in food. Okay. And then people, you kind of see these cans that say BPA free and it gives this aura of being safe. Is it safe? Are they safe? No, not necessarily. Probably not. Probably if they took the trouble to put BPA free on the label, they've already put in an alternative like BPF and BPS. That's the problem. It's like they add other stuff that is sounds better, but it's not.

Um, what's the biggest myth about plastics that people believe? I think that it's recyclable. that it's recyclable. Okay, say more. Well, Well, Well, we all put our plastic in the recycle box back then, right? Me, too. But very small percent of that is actually recycled and um it's dumped uh in far away places that we don't have to worry about um and does harm there to the land landscape and to the people who are going through it and handling it. Um don't just don't assume that you once you throw it away, it's you don't have to care about it anymore.

you do have to care about it. Uh it's not gonna disappear. disappear. disappear. I think that's important. A friend of mine started a company called Hero Technologies developing mushrooms, different strains of mcelium that actually can digest and break down mushrooms in landfills. And they they're starting with diapers, but it's like it's a kind of a cool idea. So, what's the what you mentioned food, but what's one other thing in your home that people could immediately remove that would make a difference? a difference? a difference? I would say after food, it would be your water.

cleaning up your water because there's so much exposure to water. And then third would be air, filtering your, you know, using a hepailter would be good. good. good. So there are things you can do, water, air, food. I think those are important. What's worse, heating and plastic or storing in plastic? Oh, heating and plastic. No question. Heating. Heating. Heating. Heating and plastic. I that was clearly the answer. the answer. the answer. What's the What's the biggest mistake people make in their kitchen? I think the biggest mistake is probably storing in plastic because so much is stored in plastic.

so hard. Uh I have plastic in my kitchen. I have true confessions. I don't I'm not my kitchen is not plastic free uh completely and and so that's it's just really hard and it's non-stop, you know, it's coming in when you do takeout and it's coming in when you shop and it come you know so you know it's just a hard to think of getting ahead of it. What do most people do every day they're not aware of that increases their exposures? exposures? exposures? Well, we didn't mention clothing.

Um but okay okay okay yeah that's something that we you know we're just coming to belatedly I would say awareness of uh the the the chemicals and there are many many uh plastics in in fibers and dyes and in our clothing and it's everywhere you know it's on our beds it's on our sofas it's you know on our bodies and um and it's particularly concerning uh if you use use use clothing that's has barriers like attendance, flight attendants, uh firefighters, firefighters, firefighters, um sports wear, children's school uniforms, all POS are was the class of chemical I'm talking about that's added to uh all of these um and uh it's invisible to us.

We had So stick with stick with natural fibers. Natural fibers, wool, cotton, silk, linen. Right. Right. When you can. Yes. What's worse? It's a plastic straw or plastic fork. Oh boy. I don't know. I think you'd probably use that plastic fork more. Um, and I don't know how they compare in terms of exposure. I don't know more than that. than that. than that. Okay. If you were the environmental zar for America and the world, what would be the policy you would put in place to make things different?

I would um I would solve um $2 million questions. moonshot questions. One is how do we make plastics out of safer products rather than fossil fuels? So we we know that there are plastics made of plants. There's potato based plastics right now. They're kind of niche items. They're expensive, but I think money should be put into that. Um we should um then solve the problem of how to get rid of the plastics once we made them. and and on the pol on the policy front it's it's actually investing in those things.

One more just to add to that. We need to be clear about what it means for something to be safe because we need to say safe for whom, at what age, for what systems and so on. Testing for safety is very difficult because it's easy to say it should be t tested for safety before it's put out there. But think of all the tests you have to do. You know, um, you know, test all these systems in the body and so on. So that's very difficult.

It's all a hard problem. And by the way, it shouldn't be consumer's problems. It should be government's problems. government's problems. government's problems. No. No. No. And manufacturers. Manufacturers. I agree. And we didn't we didn't really kind of dive into this, but you kind of hinted at it. In in Europe, they follow something called the precautionary principle, which is something's guilty until proven innocent. In America, it's innocent until proven guilty. So, we introduce all these toxic chemicals. We don't make the manufacturers prove they're safe. We let them be in the marketplace.

We let people be exposed. We let people get sick. And then maybe 10, 20, 40, 50, 100 years later be oh wait, we have a problem. And you know, and I think that's not a good framework for policy. It should be prove it, not you're given a hall pass and like let's see what happens. And I think that's that's really important. The last question is what's the most surprising thing you've learned in your long and varied career? varied career? varied career? Wow. Wow. Wow. I know that's a hard one, right?

I I would say because I am an optimist, I I learned that we can make a difference by our action, that we can clean up our act and that really people want to and and so I want to make help make that happen. Thank you. That's amazing. Okay. People can find out more about you by going to your website which is go to shanaswan.com. You've got unplasticlife.com, unplasticlife.com, unplasticlife.com, right? Unplastic right? Unplastic right? Unplastic your life. That's not mine. That's the film. For additional help, I would suggest you if you want to test your sperm, you go to um Meet Fellow.

If you want to test your urine, you go to a million marker. And there are other companies be coming out all the time. So, this these are not going to be the only ones. But I think the question is, do you want to know? Do you want to know what's in your body? Do you want to Men don't ever know their sperm count, by the way. They just don't. They don't. So if you want to know about what's going on in your body and in your home, then dive in.

Don't be afraid and yeah, do it. it. it. But we actually did a podcast on, you know, uh sperm as a biomarker for health. You know, I think that's important. People don't understand that. So um this is amazing. Thank you for your work. I hope you get to go for another 90 years. And uh I look forward to your next your next chapter and what you're going to help us understand about this very frightening world. but uh hopefully with some some optimism and how we can protect ourselves and how we can push our governments to do the right thing.

So, thanks so much for your work and for being such a light in this whole dark space. dark space. dark space. Thanks for having me so much. I really enjoyed talking to you and you know together we can make a change. If you love that last video, you're going to love the next one. Check it out here.