Dhru Purohit Show - The Worst Cookware Lurking In Your Kitchen and the Safer Swaps We Can Use with Environmental Toxins Expert Lara Adler

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

This episode is brought to you by AquaTru and Lumebox.  Environmental toxins, such as PFAs present in nonstick cookware, pose significant health risks, including increased risk of chronic diseases, fertility issues, hypertension, and thyroid complications. These kitchen toxins are particularly concerning as they can infiltrate our bodies through the food we consume, food preparation surfaces, and even our drinking water. By understanding the impact of these hidden chemicals and their common sources, we empower ourselves to make informed consumer choices, minimize exposure, and foster better health outcomes for ourselves and our families. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with environmental educator Lara Adler to discuss environmental toxins in our home. Lara shares the top sources of plastic and toxic cookware in our kitchens and how we can reduce our daily exposure without feeling overwhelmed. Lara Adler is an Environmental Health Educator and Science Communicator who teaches health professionals and individuals with health-based businesses to better understand the role of environmental chemical exposures in causing or contributing to chronic health issues so they can more comprehensively support the clients/patients they serve. In this episode, Dhru and Lara dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): What cookware we should absolutely avoid (00:00:15 / 00:00:15)  What the PFA’s in nonstick cookware are linked to (1:10 / 1:10) Particles released by nonstick cookware and what we should focus on (3:23 / 3:23)  What should we move towards in cookware (9:37 / 8:03)  Top sources of plastic in our homes and how to reduce our exposure (16:13 / 14:39) Preventing cancer through lifestyle practices (22:14  / 20:52) Cocktail effect (27:20 / 26:06)  Easy swaps at home (36:15 / 32:35) What to do about plastics we can’t avoid  (42:55 / 39:50) What to look for in cleaning products (48:42 / 44:56) The impact of toxins on sperm (57:12 / 53:48) Food, water, and plastics as priorities to focus on (1:04:07 / 1:00:45)  Toxins in ultra-processed foods (1:08:56 / 1:04:55)  The importance of clean water (1:18:56 / 1:15:37) Also mentioned in this episode: Lara’s Shopping Suggestions  AquaTru is a countertop reverse osmosis purifier with a four-stage filtration system that removes 15x more contaminants than the bestselling water filters out there. Go to dhrupurohit.com/filter/ and get $100 off when you try AquaTru for yourself.  Lumebox is offering my community $260 off their FDA-registered portable Red Light device!  That's over 50% off! Go to thelumebox.com/dhru and get your Red Light device.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Laura, welcome to the podcast. Today, we're talking about the hidden sources of toxins lurking in our home, especially in our kitchen. My number one question is, what is the absolute worst cookware that we should not be using when it comes to our kitchen? For me, it's nonstick coated cookware, which is so pervasive. I don't know anybody that, you know, the average person will undoubtedly have some non-stick coated cookware. wear in their homes, whether it's a frying pan or a stock pot or their cookie sheets that they're baking cookies on. All of those are non-stick to the most part. And so this is something that is absolutely qualifies as a relatively simple and relatively low cost sort of intervention to reduce

exposure to some of these persistent toxic chemicals, these P-FAS chemicals that a lot of people are learning about now just for the first time. And so, yeah, absolutely nonstick cookware is where we should start if we're looking to minimize chronic exposures. And what is nonstick cookware and the Phaas that are inside of it? What have those been linked or connected to when it comes to different ways of making our body say, ouch? Yeah. So I'll back up a little bit before I get to that answer. So the PFS stands for per floral alkal substances. It's an immediate. enormous class of chemicals. It's estimated that there's over 14,000 different chemicals in this class. Not all of those are used in cookware. There are certain specific chemicals that are used in

cookware. Unfortunately, scientists, we don't know anything about the vast majority of those 14,000 chemicals. We don't even know their molecular structure. We are just completely in the dark. The primary chemicals that are used in the manufacturing of non-stick coatings are some of the most studied P-FAS chemicals around because they've been in use since the 1950s, really. So we have the most data on those types of chemicals that are used in non-stick cookware and other applications. They're found in fire-fighting foam and stain-resistant treatments for your couch and your raincoat and things like that. So they're not just in our cookware. But we do know that these chemicals are linked to a wide variety of serious health issues, everything from fertility issues, pregnancy-induced hypertension, cholesterol issues,

alterations to our immune systems that make vaccine response weakened. So we have a weakened response to beneficial vaccines that we need to get. So that's concerning. there's an increased risk of certain types of cancer for these PFS chemicals. I can keep going. There's associations with liver damage, with thyroid disease, with risk of asthma. So like there's a lot of health effects that are associated with exposure to PFS chemicals, which is why I think it's on the top of the list of exposures to work towards minimizing.

Well, something mind-blowing, and I recommend everybody here follow you on Instagram. something mind-blowing that I learned from your content is that non-stick cookware releases over 9,000 P-FAS particles. And the scarier part is a broken or scratched pan can release more than 2 million nanoparticles, right? That to me is super scary. Why should we all be a little bit afraid of that exposure that comes in? Well, I think it's scary and it's not. So I do want to contextualize. Please, that's why we brought you on.

Yes, that figure. So, like, those are high numbers. But I think we have to look at those types of exposures of millions of nanoparticles of PFS from a single scratch on a piece of non-stick cookware and compare that to say all the other exposure sources that we're getting. Like, the number is big, but how does that big number compare to other exposure? We know that a lot of cities around the country, the last cities around the world have PFS in the drinking water.

That's an immediate ingestible source. There's PFAS particles, probably in the air that we breathe, just because they're being released from, you know, your cookware or your stain-resistant treatment on the couch. So when we're talking about P-FAS exposures, I don't think there's, aside from an occupational exposure, which you're going to be getting a significantly higher level of exposure. I don't think that there's any single source exposure, whether that's from cookware or

from drinking water, that is the boogeyman here. It's just all PFAS exposures across the board should be minimized. I do love that we have research looking into sort of the practical way that people interact with materials like cookware and saying, hey, you know, every Airbnb I've ever stayed in that has cookware and you open up the cabinet. It is like the absolute dregs of the worst. It is like a 10-year-old scratched, cheap, non-stick pan. I've done Instagram stories where I'm like, oh, God, I have to cook on this because I'm traveling. And so, you know, yes, that's not ideal. But in the grand scheme of things, you know, it's an avoidable source and we should look to avoid it. But I don't think that anybody needs to panic over this. I think the

reality is around the environmental toxicity conversation is that for better and worse, mostly for worse, in my opinion, a lot of the way that the information about toxics is presented, especially on social media, is in this very kind of overhyped up, sensationalized manner. Everything is a four alarm fire. Everything is something that we need to panic over. And in my mind, from a practical perspective, I'm like, look, it's 2024. We are all stressed out. We do not need more things to panic over in our lives. That doesn't mean that we don't need to pay attention. And that doesn't mean that we don't need to

take action. I think we do. But my, I feel like a big part of my job is actually tempering people's anxiety, educating, making them aware, and then tempering the anxiety that comes. So, yeah, I do think it's super concerning that we are using nonstick cookware. Most people do not follow the manufacturers' instructions of only using wooden utensils and silicone soft. They're using metal spatulas. They just are. This is the reality of it.

Every Airbnb nonstick scratched up nonstick pants tells me so, right? So the reality of how people are using it doesn't jive with what the manufacturer. are telling us to do. So I do think research into that space is enlightening and it can help us shift our buying patterns and buying better and safer cookware. This episode is brought to you by Aquatru. I've talked to so many experts about the importance of clean water as a foundation for great help. And this makes total sense because our bodies are mostly made up of water. So if we don't get enough, they literally, our cells literally can't function right. But tap water is no longer an option. Most of it is full of toxins like microbes, pesticides, and plastics,

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Everything is tested. Everything is reviewed by the FDA, which is actually not true. We're going to get to that in a little bit. And so we need a little bit of a balance that's there sounding the alarm, which I like to do on this podcast, but then saying we don't need to get anxious about anything. And in fact, providing people with the often low cost solutions that are there that can help them do better. So let's start off with that. the topic of cookware. If cooking with non-stick is, you know, the worst option and choice that's there, but we don't need to be anxious about it. What should people be moving towards that is a better

solution and also could be a low-cost solution for themselves? Yeah. I mean, stainless steel and cast iron are going to be my sort of ride or die for cookware. They are both inexpensive. You can go to home goods or to Walmart or to Costco or for Target or any of these big box stores and find perfectly good, inexpensive stainless steel cookware that doesn't have any kind of coating on the inside. It's not non-stick coated. And you can similarly find cast iron cookware. I think the resistance to using those materials comes from people not actually knowing how to cook, which is a different problem in and of itself, right? So non-stick cookware means that there's a way larger margin of error in cooking. You can burn something a little bit and it's still not going to stick. And so

some of it is a learning curve. Like you do have to learn how to use stainless steel cookware and how to use and clean and care for cast iron cookware. Whereas, you know, non-stick cookware is kind of lazy in that way. Like it's easy to clean. And, you know, and it's easy to use. And so a lot of it is cooking technique. But stainless steel and cast iron are readily available and really inexpensive. I've had the same lodge cast iron griddle, just a flat pan. I've had that for 25 years and it cost me $18 when I bought it.

I'm still using the same cookware that my father bought me as a gift in college that's stainless steel. I think what happens is, again, because of cheap materials and people not really taking care of them or knowing how to use them, they get scratched up, people throw them out, they buy new, the same thing happens. Non-stick coatings, same thing with the newer, and we can certainly talk about these, the ceramic, quote-unquote ceramic coated cookware, is that these coatings don't last and people are buying cookware over and over and over again. you should buy cookware one time. Get good cookware and then you literally never have to buy it again. Totally. So it's not just about, you know, finding the best solution. It's finding the most economical solution that people are going to stick with for the long haul, right? And sustainable, right? Because all of those scratched nonstick pans and all of those ceramic coated pans that have worn off, they're all just sitting in the landfill somewhere, millions and millions of them.

You go to the manufacturers, the websites of the companies that manufacture non-stick coatings and ceramic-coded cookware. And you'll see, on average, the lifespan of these pans at most is three to five years. They say that right on their websites. I can tell you from my Instagram comments when I posted about these types of cookware items, in particular, the ceramic-coded. Sometimes they last six months, one year, and people are replacing them. And to me, that's just such a colossal waste of money and resources. it's not sustainable. So stainless steel, a great option, cast iron a great option.

Those are going to stick with you for a long time. Is there a splurge option for people who are like, hey, listen, I'm still a little bit concerned. I know the data is not fully shaken out, but I've heard people say things like stainless steel. There might be heavy metals that are there. Do those heavy metals end up into some part of our body or brain? is there a splurge option that again is not going to be the thing that we recommend for most people they just need good enough and they just need to exercise stay away from ultra-processed foods get great sleep have great community and just even eat more at home in the first place your life is

going to be radically better than 99% of the population right so let's get that out of way but is there a splurge option that's out there yeah i mean there's things like titanium cookware um that have a pretty high price tag in my opinion, so they're not accessible, very accessible to people. But if people have those kind of resources and they want to spend more, something like a titanium cookware is not going to have those type. It's not going to release any of those type of heavy metals that, or metals that can be present in something like a stainless steel. So stainless steel will have some percentage of chromium and nickel. There is evidence that scratched stainless Steel, which is, you know, you can still scratch stainless steel, can release some nickel or

chromium, unless somebody has a severe nickel allergy, which certainly some people do, and they will know how to navigate shopping to avoid that. The 1810 that you often see as a designation for stainless steel is a reflection of the percentage of chromium and nickel. So it's 18% chromium and 10% nickel. You can get 188, 18.0. which has no nickel. And so those options are out there. They're harder to find. They're a little expensive.

But on the whole, sort of in the grand, I have a tendency to both zoom in and zoom out. And if I'm zooming out and I'm looking at what researchers refer to as the exposome, which is the sort of totality of our toxic exposures, the chromium and nickel that we might get from our stainless steel pans is so low on the list, on the priority list. there are so much bigger fish to fry, and I don't want people getting lost in the weeds and focusing on this minute aspect of exposure that, like, we just don't have a lot of

evidence to say it's linked to all of these serious health issues when we do have that evidence for things like Pthas. Oh, that's super helpful. Well, you're taking us on the tour of the kitchen. Today's episode is about the kitchen and the top sources of hidden toxins that are out there and how to both be aware, but not have anxiety and then take action towards better solutions. Another area that you have been sounding the alarm on is often these cheaper plastics that many of us are using in our home to both store food in, to microwave food in, and to sometimes even, you know, heat stuff up in,

which is kind of crazy, right? So talk to us about plastics and what are. are the top sources of those toxic exposures that come from plastics? Yeah. So it's a big conversation, and I'll say this, that the chemicals that are found in plastics that migrate out from plastics in our food, they're also found in many other places, right? So if we just avoid, so for example, like Fallates, Thalates is a plasticizer. It's used to make certain types of plastics more soft and flexible and resilient. So things like a garden hose or a shower curtain, or say, a squeezable ketchup bottle or a squeezable, you know,

I don't know, what else do you squeeze out of a plastic jar? Maynays, I guess. Manees, mustard, ketchup. Yeah, mayonnaise mustard, all those things. And so phthalates are used there, but phthalates are also in your personal care products. They're also in all your scented household cleaners and your perfume and your scented candles and your air fresheners. So there's multiple sources of these chemicals.

And so sometimes, you know, from a practical lens, I do think going room by room and kind of going through this checklist and saying, okay, cookware, done. Food storage, done. Food, done. And you can from a practical level kind of move through that list. It's too hard from an individual level to say, I'm going to start addressing the phallates in my life. Because we don't, there's hundreds and hundreds of different exposure sources. It can get a little overwhelming. It can get so overwhelming. And so, like I said, from practical lens, I just think it's easier for us to move kind of room by room or category by category if our goal is to sort of strategically minimize our exposures. Generally speaking, I encourage people to start using the framework of like what's free and what's easy. And cookware certainly making those changes isn't free, but it's easier, right?

It requires some degree of investment, but it doesn't have to, it does not have to. have to cost a lot of money. Same thing with plastics. What we're wanting to do is minimize our direct food contact with plastic. We're never going to eliminate plastic entirely from our losses. My headphones are made of plastic. My computer, my monitor, all these things are using plastic. And so I'm not trying to make Luddites out of everybody and push us back to like the Middle Ages. But when it comes to food contact or anything that we ingest, food, liquids, whatever, that's really where we want to prioritize minimizing our toxic exposure because of direct ingestion of these chemicals.

And there's hundreds and hundreds of chemicals that are released from plastics. And it depends on what type of plastic it is. Styrofoam, for example, is technically a type of plastic. And the chemicals that are released from styrofoam, styrene, are not. not the same types of chemicals that are released from, say, a P.E.T. Polyethylene-Theraphthalate plastic bottle, which is your standard, like, drinking bottled water, like a Poland Spring bottle. So different chemicals are going to release from different plastics. But we're looking at things like phallates, styrene, bisphenols that are going to release. And these are,

styrene is a carcinogen. Thallites and bisphenols are endocrine disrupting. They can mess with hormones and we are exposed to these chemicals from so many different sources. As it pertains to plastics, we do know that there are, that plastics will leach chemicals regardless. If they're just like sitting on the shelf existing in space and we're not interacting with them, over time they will release these compounds. The molecules of these chemicals that are used to give plastic their distinct properties of rigidness or softness or whatever, they're not molecularly bound to the matrix of the plastic. So they just kind of fall out. A example of this is if you've ever seen like a vintage, like an old lamp with an electrical cord and it's brittle and it cracks,

or if you're looking at an old car from the 60s and the dashboard is brittle. And the reason why it's brittle is because the plasticizers that have lent that plastic softness and resiliency have just migrated out over time. So we know that to be true. We also know that things like heat, oil, acidity, abrasion, all things that plastics encounter when we're putting food in them or heating them increase the speed, the rate at which these chemicals migrate. And that's why it's concerning for plastic use in the kitchen, for storing leftovers, for heating food in the microwave and plastic. I mean, that message about don't heat plastics in the microwave

has been going on for decades now. For a long time, the idea was or the thought was that, like, oh, it might cause a fire. It's bad for the container. Not that it's bad for us. So when you see the words microwave safe plastic on a plastic container, that doesn't mean it's, it just means it's not going to melt and catch fire. That's all that means.

It's a microwave safe. People look at the word safe and not like that. See for me. But that's not the case. And so, again, we just want to be minimizing our exposure to these chemicals that are coming out of our plastics as much as possible. Let's zoom out a little bit big picture because we know that some of these plastics and the broader topic of environmental toxins, that there is some links to some of them. being connected to, you know, things like cancers in the environment, right? In fact, you had a great post just a few days ago.

I took a screenshot of it. I'll have our team put it up on here so that people can watch it on YouTube. In that post, you wrote, cancer is one of the leading causes of death. Yet evidence suggests that lifestyle modifications can prevent 30 to 50% of all cancer cases. I don't think that most people know that statistic, right? 30 to 50 percent. Obviously, it's much broader than just plastics. We're talking about lifestyle habits, exercise, which has a lot of demonstrated ability to help us prevent cancer, being metabolically healthy. But of course, the environmental toxins conversation also plays into this.

Do you want to talk about that too? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, to your point, only a small percentage of cancers have a genetic component. And when we know that, we know that the remaining cancers are environmental. And to your point, environmental means not just chemical exposures. It means do you smoke? What's your metabolic health? All those things. And we know that those are preventable. And even with the genetic component, we do know through the field of epigenetics that we can sort of dampen some of the expression of those genes associated with disease by modifying our lifestyle. So doing all of the, you know, very typical eating well. sleeping, managing your stress, all those things that sort of generic health guidelines,

we know that that can sort of dampen the expression of some of these cancer-associated genes. So lots of reasons to adopt a healthy lifestyle. But yeah, the toxic chemical component is, I think, just overlooked. There are so many different exposures to carcinogens that we get. there's also exposures to chemicals that aren't directly classified as carcinogens, but can have downstream consequences that can lead to cancers as a result. So, for example, prenatal fallate exposure, phallates are, again, that plasticizer, they're an endocrine-disrupting chemical. Prenatal fallate exposure and exposure as a young child for girls can introduce their body to these synthetic estrogens, which phthalates can behave like a synthetic estrogen,

for a long period of time. And we certainly know that a woman's lifetime exposure to estrogen is directly related to her risk of developing breast cancer. And the more years that she has exposure to estrogen or synthetic estrogen, because our bodies cannot tell the difference, the greater the risk of her developing breast cancer in the future. So, like, there are things like that where phallates aren't classified as a carcinogen per se, but we do have evidence of downstream cancer-related consequences. And I think that's, you know, there are, look, there's 350,000 chemicals and chemical mixtures registered for use around the globe.

This, we only, this a recent number, I think from 2021 analysis that was three times the previous estimates, meaning like we don't really know what is going on globally. Like we're only just being like, hey, maybe we should pay attention to this. It's kind of gotten out of hand, right? So I think I'm from New England, so I always think of analogies. Like in the fall when you're trying to rake leaves and the big gust of wind blows and it's just all. And I feel like this is us chasing individual leaves that are just blowing. all over the place, untethered, unregulated, uncontrolled.

And we're just like, we're picking up this leaf and going, is this leaf okay? Meanwhile, there's like a tsunami of leaves behind us, right? So we just have this sort of flawed approach. But, yeah, so like there's these massive quantity of toxic chemicals, or I should say chemicals, we don't know if they're all toxic. Certainly many of them are not, that are in commerce. and we know that toxic chemicals specifically touch every single organ system in the body.

No tissue is spared from some downstream consequence of those exposures. And we're still learning what those consequences are. And so cancer is absolutely going to be on that list of endpoints for a lot of the chemicals that we are exposed to on a daily basis. You know, yeah, on the topic of cancer, you shared in incredible post just the other day saying featuring a new study showing that 921 chemicals are linked to breast cancer which is first of all mind blowing right and all this every week there's a new headline nanoplastics in bottled water you know that was one that recently came out every year

we're learning more and more and this is all showcasing the idea that even though people in the industry say that hey look these things are regulated they're safe the truth is and this is what you you're trying to highlight through your work is that we actually don't know, primarily because there's no long-term studies. That's one thing. But then there's something else, which is called the cocktail effect that you talk about. Can you talk about the cocktail effect and how it really shines the light of why we as consumers need to be proactive about the combination of all these things. Yeah, so I'll just back up to contextualize. So the vast majority of the time, when chemicals are studied, they're studied in isolation. And this is just because the less number of variables

in any type of experiment or study, the easier it is to translate the data because it's very clear that there's just this one component. And so the vast majority of research that we have on most things, but certainly on chemicals and chemical exposure, are happening on single chemicals. What happens if I give rodents? Because we don't test chemicals on people. Historically, there have been some incidences of this, which are not good, but as a general rule and ethics, we don't test chemicals directly on people. I do have an interesting study I can share with you. Can you remind me that we did and got some interesting results? But as a general rule, we don't test chemicals on people, we use animal models for that, and then there's also some

computer modeling that we can use. And so what we're looking at in rodent studies is, you know, oftentimes they're really, really high doses of exposure. They're just trying to ascertain like, hey, what is happening here? And ideally, if it's a well-constructed study, researchers are also exploring what are referred to as background exposures or environmentally relevant exposures, which are really just parallels to what humans are getting just by living our normal everyday lives, like the levels of chemicals that are showing up in us, researchers are now starting to examine those levels in rodents in other animal models. And so we look at the animal model research and we draw some conclusions and we hopefully will figure out what is the

mechanism here, how is this exposure causing metabolic disease or cardiovascular disease? And then we look in human epidemiological data, which is just population-wide studies of people, and we say, hey, let's see how much PFS or how much PFS or how much bifes or how much phthalates are showing up in the population. And what are the associations to these various health effects? And oftentimes what we're seeing is we're seeing an exact mirror or a very close mirror in human populations of what we know to be true in animal models. And this is the way that science is conducted in this arena.

And so, yes, there are going to be people out there that are still kind of poo-pooing this whole topic and kind of not taking it seriously enough. But the reality is that we now have decades, 50-plus years of studies. And like you said, the volume of studies coming out is increasing exponentially for folks who are PubMed literate, they want to go into PubMed, search for, say, endocrine disrupting chemicals, and PubMed will show you a timeline of studies that kind of are flagged by that keyword search. And it's like this, the graph just goes sky high because the volume of research has just escalated because people are learning more and they're more aware. And so all of this,

going back to your question about the cocktail effect, is now we're starting to see, okay, what happens or can we do research that might reflect, again, that exposome, the totality of our exposures? And we're starting that process by looking at what is referred to as the cocktail effect, which is specifically when we are exposed to multiple chemicals at the same time, which is the reality. How do those chemicals interact in the body with each other and with our physiology. And that's much harder research to do, but we are learning, for example, that with endocrine disrupting chemicals, the chemicals that can alter and interfere with our hormones, is that the effect of exposure to multiple endocrine disrupting chemicals at the same time can be

amplifying. So one plus one may not equal to, one plus one may equal five or ten, meaning when we're exposed to multiple of these endocrine disrupting chemicals, the effect can be way more amplified, and we can't just make these general assumptions that one plus one equals two in these situations. And this is, again, why I think it's so important that as a species, frankly, in the absence of more stripped federal regulations around the world, because I'm not going to wait for that to happen, that wheels of progress move incredibly slowly.

In the absence of federal regulations, the onus does really fall on the shoulders of the consumer to be as proactive as possible. And again, the goal is to reduce as many of those exposures that we're getting in as many places as possible while also being a human being on the earth and not trying to... This is where I usually use the plastic bubble joke.

I think of like the bubble boy from Seinfeld. But for me, the plastic bubble joke is like, well, what kind of plastic is it? And it's a plastic off-dassing, ha, ha, ha. But, you know, like, we can't live in that bubble. We have to live in the world. And to my point earlier about, like, people getting really stressed out and anxious, is we want to find the balance between taking action and being proactive, minimizing our exposure, and then also not amping up our own anxiety and stress and

panic because stress is also toxic. Stress is also incredibly detrimental to our overall health. So it is a balance. It's an important balance. And I think like I, we said before we started recording, I think a lot of the conversation on social media in particular is not balanced. And it's causing anxiety. It's causing panic. And that's that's not it for me at least. This episode is brought to you by Lumebox. One of my favorite. favorite daily practices is using red light therapy. There are thousands of articles and studies published in PubMed on its efficacy and its ability to improve all sorts of aspects of life, like improving our skin, helping with chronic inflammation. The list goes on and on. Many experts

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which are the tiny energy factors that our cells need to survive and thrive, and they're super sensitive to light. I use red light therapy every single night before bed to wind down, true story, and I've noticed huge improvements in my sleep and skin since I started doing it, including less inflammation and less redness. Studies actually show that red light therapy can improve acne, scars, improve wrinkles, fine lines, and collagen production. That's why red light, light therapy is something I'm committed to, and if you're committed to doing it and you want to step into it, right now is the perfect opportunity to take advantage of this deal from LoomBox. Loombox is offering my community $260, $260 off their portable red light device. That's over 50% off.

All you need is a special link. Just go to the loombox.com slash D-H-R-U, Drew, that's me, to get your device and start stimulating your mitochondria today. That's the T-H-E-L-U-M-E-B-O-M-E-B-X. dot com slash d hr u that's me to get $260 off this portable red light device that i recommend and yeah and that's exactly what we want this conversation to be today we don't want it to add to the anxiety we want it to take away from anxiety knowing that there's a lot of solutions on the topic of plastics what are the main sources that you see every day when you walk into somebody's home and they ask you hey you know what should i be removing again going room to room and we're in the kitchen what are the things that people can make easy swaps for in their home? And what are the key ways of using,

especially these lighter plastics in the home, that we want to greatly minimize? Yeah, I mean, I think the, we just want to start with food storage. You know, what are we storing our leftovers in? That's really easy. And we just want to move to a glass container. You know, 10 years ago, 10, 12 years ago when I first started doing this work, the only glass containers I could find where like fall mason jars, which are great. I have a whole covered filled with like dozens and dozens of mason jars. They make great storage. They're inexpensive. Target sells them. Walmart sells them. Hardware stores sell them. They're really accessible. Now there's more and more on the shelf at all these big box stores on Amazon, wherever you want to order from, glass food storage

containers. Some of them are going to have a plastic lid, and that's okay. My recommendation there, just again from a practical perspective is just don't fill it up so that your food's touching the lid, that's all. Just leave a little bit of space so that your food isn't directly touching the plastic lid. That's going to be a better solution. But these are really inexpensive. And, you know, for people that might be on a really restrictive budget, you know, reuse a glass pickle jar or a glass pasta sauce jar. Like there are, I mean, I did that, you know, 15 years ago. That's what I was doing. I just saved all my jam jars and put all my leftovers in those types of jars. So there are more accessible options.

But, you know, a case of, you know, a dozen quart-sized mason jars is like $15. So, you know, less just over a dollar a jar is a really inexpensive and really versatile way to swap out plastics when it comes to putting our leftovers in. And then the number two thing is, you know, the plastic plates and cups, especially for kids, they don't need those. You can get stainless steel plates if people are concerned about breakage. You can get, there are some companies that make, I'm blanking on the name of it right now, that make like the borosilicate glass plates that are like pretty shatterproof. Like you can chuck it across. I know because I'm a little bit clumsy. and I've dropped them myself a number of times and I have those and they just bounce.

And so there are safer options that are inexpensive that aren't plastic. I see a lot of people that have kids where they have plastic drink cups, plastic plates and bowls, plastic utensils. I think that's just an unnecessary exposure. Children are the most vulnerable when it comes to toxic exposures because their bodies are still developing. And so we want to prioritize minimizing exposures for that. This is also true for anybody that's pregnant in the preconception planning space.

That is the most vulnerable population. So the things that we eat and drink on in terms of plastic containers, as an exercise, I encourage people who are maybe just starting on this journey to go into their kitchens and just open up all the cabinets. You don't have to do anything. Just open the drawers and cabinets and observe. How much is plastic? Is your pasta strainer plastic?

Are your mixing bowls plastic? Are all of your cooking utensils? Those black nylon plastic, cheap plastic utensils that melt if you leave them to, you know, in the pan too much. And just start making a mental checklist of like, okay, what are the items that I use the most? And just start swapping those out with better materials, stainless steel, glass, you know, for dishware, ceramic instead of plastic, you know, metal utensil. pencils are totally fine to use if you're not using a non-stick cookware, which hopefully you're not. Right. And so that's really sort of step two in the process. It's just eliminating the plastics that you're using. Step three, which is a little bit harder and certainly comes with a degree of privilege, is looking for foods when you're grocery shopping that are preferentially packaged in glass over plastic.

So that means ketchup comes in a glass jar. Your sauerkraut is packaged. glass versus plastic. This is sort of the extra step. And I also, you know, want to be clear that just for the sake, I'll use as an example like sourcrowd or fermented foods. Like we know those are super beneficial to our health. We want people to be eating more for more fermented foods. And if the only type of fermented food that somebody has access to, either because that's

what their store sells or what their budget allows, comes in plastic, still eat the sourcrow. Like, still eat the fermented food, right? This is not a race or a competition to perfection. This is also something that I see parroted a lot on social, is the sort of positioning of health as something that only, like, affluent people have access to, and I have a real problem with that, because the people that are most disproportionately exposed to toxic chemicals are people that are lower income, that are black or brown, and living in disadvantaged communities. they often have those higher exposures. So a big part of doing this work and having this conversation is to make accessible recommendations.

And again, keep that sort of balanced thread. But yeah, so get rid of your plastic food storage containers, then look at all the plastic items in your home and start phasing those out. If that happens over time, if that takes six months or a year for people to kind of work through that process, fine. The important thing to remember when it comes to these toxic exposures that we're getting every day is that it's the long-term exposure that matters more than our short-term exposure. So it's okay if you have to keep using the plastic that you have for the next month or six months. When we're looking at multiple years of exposure and use, that's where the kind of red flags come up. That's great. And what a great reminder.

on the topic of plastics, there's this whole category that you've written about extensively, extensively. And it's the plastics that are a part of our normal day-to-day life that actually make it easier to do things. And when it comes to the kitchen, they're going to be things like blenders, food processors, etc. You had this great post recently. I'll share it on the screen over here. It's called What to Do About the Plastics We Can't Avoid. And, you know, slight spoiler alert, there are things that we can do. Because these tools, these things that we use, obviously, plastics have made the world a better place in many aspects of life.

One being, you know, ease of use in sort of the kitchen. In the medical field, of course, we're super relying on plastics. But again, it's about minimizing our direct exposure. So when it comes to these plastics that we can't avoid, the blend of the food processor that are there, what's most important for people to know? And then what are the suggestions and recommendations you have? Yeah, I mean, I think the most important thing that I would encourage people to remember is the things that increase the rate at which chemicals migrate out. So that's heat, oil, acidity, abrasion. So let's talk about a food processor and something like a high-speed Vitamix, blend tech, whatever, these like, you know, multiple $100 blenders.

First of all, if you're spending multiples of hundreds of dollars on a blender, you're probably somebody who's a foodie who is, interested in health, you're not throwing, you know, ho-hoes and twinkies in a blender and saying, calling it like, you know, a gourmet soup. So you're not putting junk food in these high-price point blenders. And so we still want to use these kitchen appliances if it helps to facilitate cooking at home, which is a great way to minimize exposure to P-FAST, for example, and other chemicals because we have more control. And so we still want to use this. these, but we want to consider heat oil acidity and abrasion. And so if we're looking at like grinding nuts or grinding something that's hard and abrasive,

that is something that, you know, we might want to consider. Just you don't have to not do it. Just be aware of it. I think the thing that we don't want to do, and I see this a lot, is don't go making your bulletproof coffee in your blender. Don't go putting a hot coffee with fat. that's heat and oil in your blender and blending it up and then drinking it. You don't need to do that.

You can buy a really inexpensive like immersion coffee frother. They cost like less than $10. Coffee shops use these to just put a nice froth on your coffee. Simple switch like that. Similarly, if you're making a puread soup, don't put hot soup into your blender. Either let the soup cool or use a sauce. a stainless steel immersion blender. These are $20 or $30.

So we just want to avoid using, and I think, using those types of appliances, like a plastic blender and a plastic food processor in that way. So for example, I love pesto. I make pesto a lot. I will use my food processor to grind the pine nuts and the garlic and the basil. But when it comes to putting the olive oil in, I actually will scrim. scrape the food processor bowl, move it into another bowl, and then I'll add the olive oil because I just don't need, it's just unnecessary. Also, it makes your cleaning a lot easier

because you can just rinse it out. But there's just small behaviors like that. And then at the end of the day, you know, we don't want to be putting these plastic appliances in the dishwasher. dishwashing detergent is very custic, and it's literally designed to dissolve crusted on food. And so if there is no food, crusted on, it's just really, really, really hard on plastics. We see plastics that have been in the dishwasher for a long time, and they're foggy and scratched up. Why? Abrasion. Abrasion. So the surfaces are abraded.

That just is increasing the rate of these chemicals that are migrating out. So we just kind of have to care for these plastics a little bit differently. So hand wash them, use a soft sponge, don't scrub the inside of your food processor or blender. There are some companies like Vitamix does make a stainless steel carafe for their blenders. It's like a $200, $250 replacement carafe. So it's, again, not cheap. And if somebody doesn't need a super, you know, ultra horsepower, a blender, you can still find blenders that have glass, a glass carafe.

So, you know, we just, again, we just want to kind of behave differently around these materials. That's great. No, super helpful. And it's even an important reminder for people like myself. I am lucky, you know, enough to have somebody who helps, you know, come once a week or twice a week to come and clean a little bit in the house. I'm busy. I'm running a bunch of companies.

I'm trying to do my podcast. I want to put my time in that area. And I've forgot to tell this individual that, oh, my gosh, you know, the Vitamix, it'd be great if we can actually just wash my hand or even sometimes when I make my wife a smoothie or she makes me a smoothie. It's sometimes just easy to think, oh, we're just going to dump it in the, you know, dishwasher. Again, like you said, it's not the end of the. world, but as we're on our mission to minimize our overall exposure to in totality limit our exposure of these environmental toxins, little tiny steps go a long way, right? Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. And there's another category of things as we go around the kitchen and we're looking at a few different areas. Another category is, you know, so many people not only use cleaning products in their kitchen, but they often store a lot of their cleaning products in the kitchen as well. well. So that's where a lot of our storage ends up being. There's been an explosion of sort of green cleaners, better alternatives, natural cleaners that are out there. And I think that a lot of people

feel like, okay, I'm buying things that are at least maybe a little bit better and a step in the right direction. But what's important for us to know about cleaning products, especially in the kitchen when it comes to reducing our environmental exposure? Yeah, I think, you know, look, we all want have a clean kitchen, myself included. And, you know, for a very long time, and like you said, things have shifted. For a very long time, if you looked at the marketing around cleaning products, it was always, you know, industrial strength, super strong, new and improved. Like it was this, you know, pull out the big guns and kill everything. It kills 99.99% of bacteria. Excuse me. And so, like, that's the marketing angle. Is that like it kills everything. And,

first thing I want to say when it comes to household cleaners is unless somebody is like immunocompromised, that degree of sanitation and disinfection is typically not necessary even in a kitchen. Like, yes, we want to clean our cutting boards that had chicken and meat and, you know, raw, raw meats on them. Yes, we want to do that. Yes, we want to, you know, make sure that we don't have, you know, mold and bacteria and stuff, but as a general rule, we don't need to bring out the big guns to disinfect the hell out of everything. It's just unnecessary. And, you know, we do have some research that suggests that overdoing it when it comes to disinfection and sanitizing surfaces could possibly be a detriment to our health. And so there is, you know, we don't have conclusive sort of data or

stance on that. But, you know, we don't need a lot of the cleaners. Additionally, when you go to the grocery store and you go down that cleaning aisle, this is like a whole aisle. There's like hundreds of products there. The formulas of products are all kind of fundamentally the same. They're not so dramatically different. Like nothing bad would happen if you used a bathroom cleaner in your kitchen or vice versa. You know, like nothing's going to happen to you. It's okay in terms of like, not crossing any weird and visible marketing lines. And so to that point, we can use, we can, one, simplify our cleaning routine. You know, you average American, you go under their kitchen sink and there's like 28 bottles

of stuff under there, and each one has a separate job. This one's for the toilet, and that one's for the sink, and this one's for the tub, and that one's for the counters. And it's like, it's marketing. It's a waste of money because it's unnecessary. So one, again, we can save money. by just simplifying or cleaning routine. Two, in terms of the toxic chemicals,

a lot of cleaning products, whether they're using heavy-handed with fragrances, or they have ammonia, or they have other volatile organic compounds, a lot of these cleaners contain solvents, which are carcinogens. They have and release a lot of toxic chemicals into the home, into the air that we breathe. we have to remember that when you, when chemicals are released into our home, they don't just evaporate and vanish. They're molecules. They're like physical molecules. They don't just go away. They actually settle in our homes. They settle in our house dust.

And so this is, you know, one of the, one of the sort of free and easy recommendations I often make for people is just open your windows in order to help some of those chemicals dissipate. And so these volatile chemicals, these carcinogens, these endocrine disrupting chemicals like the fragrance mixtures, aren't helping anybody. They aren't adding anything to anybody's health. And they are linked to respiratory issues, to endocrine disruption, to hormone-related endpoints. They can be linked to cancers. There's also no requirement that all the ingredients on those products be disclosed.

So the consumer is a little bit kind of taken people's word for it as it pertains to like the label. And that's not really fair, I think, for consumers to kind of be in a marketplace where we're just like, it's that they have to accept the trust us, it's safe kind of marketing line because why would I trust you? Why would I trust you? You've given me no reason to do so for a lot of these companies. or industries. And so for cleaning products, I think it's, you know, we don't need the big guns. We do want to be careful of all of these fragrances and volatile compounds. Certainly for anybody living in a home that has any kind of respiratory issues or asthma,

these can be respiratory and airway irritants. Certainly for anybody who's living in a home with anybody on the autism spectrum who might have some, sort of sensory issues, right? Because this is a constant exposure to fragrances and to chemicals that might be triggering to them that other people are just kind of like whatever about. The good thing is we don't, there are many, many, many inexpensive, some are more expensive cleaning products that don't have as a point of their company don't have any of these really concerning toxic chemicals. They don't have fragrances. They don't release toxic chemicals. They don't have fragrances. they don't release toxic VOCs, they don't have any fragrance at all, and they're not caustic.

And I think if we can, we want to move towards these things. We don't need, for example, like a scrubbing bubbles, right? I think of that product. I haven't actually shocked for anything in any of these cleaning aisles in like 20 years. So I'm dating myself with a scrubbing bubbles reference. I don't even know if it's still a product that's for sale. But in the 80s, scrubbing bubbles commercials on TV were like a big deal. But we don't need to use a product like that.

That's a time saver for sure. We can literally just use baking soda as a mild abrasive or something like Bonami, which is another non-toxic mild abrasive. You can get a canister of Bonami usually for like $1.29. It's really inexpensive. It's a basic all-purpose abrasive. Some people certainly can go the vinegar and baking soda root for cleaning. I don't like that because I hate the smell of vinegar.

And vinegar acetic acid is an irritant. So for people that have respiratory issues going the other end of the extreme of the all natural, maybe that's not it either. But thankfully, like you said, there's been this explosion of better brands and safer cleaners. I think as it pertains specifically to the household cleaner conversation, but certainly similar and lots of other facets of the toxicity conversation, things exist on a spectrum of like good, better, best. And I don't think we all, like, if people can afford best, this goes to your like a splurge

cookware titanium topic earlier. If people can afford a splurge, great, do branch basics. It's $50 a bottle of their concentration. It's a really great all-purpose cleaner that does laundry and toilets and kitchen sinks and everything all at once. And so we have those options, but we don't have to splurge on our household cleaners. There are better options out there. No, I think Branch Basics is great. And I know you're a big fan of them too.

Yeah, I love their stuff. We'll link to your page. I think you have some coupon codes and other recommendations of individuals that are looking for like household cleaners. And you have a whole shop section on your website, which I've found very helpful. So we'll link to that in the show notes. And people can find that. You know, one of the areas, you know, zooming in, zooming out that we're in particular on this podcast, we're also sort of sounding alarm on is that we are actually dealing with, you

know, a global fertility crisis. And in particular in that category, and there's a lot of nuances to it. When I come to men, we've seen a major decline in sperm count. and the health of the sperm. And in some instances, maybe even the, you know, health, which also would include motility. And that's one of the things that's obviously playing a part in this. You know, what do we know about environmental toxins and potentially a lot of these ones that are lurking in our kitchen?

You know, could some of those things be impacting or contributing to some of the environmental toxins that we know that are harming, you know, healthy levels of sperm in men? Yeah. I mean, certainly there's the, keep going back to the, you know, the big ones, the phallates, the bisphenols, the PFAS chemicals. And I keep bringing those up for a reason, for a couple of reasons. One, because people, possibly, more likely have heard of BPA, they've heard of phallates, they've heard of PFAS.

But also, when we look at the human biomonitoring studies that are looking for levels of toxic chemicals in the U.S. population, for example, 93% of people, this is based on data from like a decade ago, so the number could be higher. 93% of people have metabolites of bisphenols in their body. 97 or 98% have levels of phallates in their bodies. Both of those chemicals, by the way, are non-persistent. That means that they don't build up in our bodies. They actually have a very short half-life.

They get metabolized within 6 to 12 hours. That means we pee them out. The reason why the levels are so constant, 93, 98%, is because we have so many exposure sources and we're taking them in faster than our bodies can break them down. So we're always, I always use the I Love Lucy on the chocolate conveyor belt as the example. Like we just don't know what to do with them. So our bodies are just hanging on, stuffing them in our shirts and in our mouths, so to speak.

And PFS, we know that 99 plus percent of people have PFS in their bodies. So I keep going back to those chemicals because they're ubiquitous. We all have exposure and we all have them in us to some degree. So we do have research showing that, certainly among other things, diet, nutrition, obesity, smoking, that these toxic chemicals can, in fact, affect fertility. And some of that can actually happen when a person is in utero. And exposure is happening in utero. So if, I'll use this as an example, if a woman is pregnant or when a woman is pregnant and she has a female baby. It can also, it doesn't really matter, can be a male fetus.

And she's exposed to a toxic chemical. There's actually three generations of people that are being exposed. The pregnant woman, her developing fetus, and the germ cells and stem cells that will become sperm and ovaries for that fetus are all being exposed at the same time. And so when we see effects in individuals population-wide, like the sperm decline, yes, we can attribute some of this to all the same lifestyle stuff that we talked about earlier. The opposite, I guess, the not eating well and the not taking care of yourself and smoking and all that stuff. We know that that has a contributory effect, but so to do these toxic chemicals that were exposed to ubiquitously. And if we had an exposure in utero, which we all have, right, we're all

affected. And then we also get our own exposures throughout our lifetime compounded on top of that. Over time, this is going to lead to a significant issue, both in chronic disease and lowered fertility. I don't know, Drew, if you've ever read Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale that was published, I think in 1982 or 1983, I read it as a kid, and then I read it again a number of years ago. Do you know the premise of that story? I'm very familiar with the premise. I have not read the book, but of course, you know, the TV show that ultimately became part of it. I've seen it.

But yes, please continue. Yeah, so the origin story, and I don't remember that this is referenced in the TV series, but in the book, specifically the reason for declined fertility, which is why the whole forced reproduction storyline exists in that book was because of toxic chemicals. Wow. Wow. So, like, you know, like it's a little prescient, unfortunately, to have been written in the 1980s. And so, you know, we do have enough data. Certainly, we need more like always, but we do have enough data that these environmental

exposures are playing an enormous role in both male. male side fertility issues as well as female side fertility issues with egg implantation and increased miscarriage and early onset menopause. Like there's lots of different factors, but definitely as it pertains to sperm count, environmental chemicals are something that are contributing. And so if somebody is in a relationship or just trying to have a child and it's that much more important for that population to really prioritize lowering their exposures, both from a improving fertility outcome and just for having a healthy offspring, for having a healthy child at the end. And not just immediately healthy, like 10 fingers, 10 toes, hearts pumping well,

but a long-term health, right? So there is an area, sort of a subset of research in the environmental health space that references the fetal origin of adult disease. And it's exploring are the origins of cardiovascular disease and metabolic disease when people hit their 40s and 50s, could that have been a product of something that they experienced in utero? And the research is saying like, well, yeah, in some instances, yes, we do have a lot of research that suggests that prenatal exposures are, in fact,

a contributing factor to adult disease. So there's lots of reasons during that vulnerable time of preconception and planning and trying to get pregnant to focus on environmental exposures. You know, zooming out for a second, and we still have a couple more categories we want to get to, but zooming out for a second, if we had to prioritize, right, top one, two, three, and maybe even four things, in the kitchen especially. that deserve our attention and our higher sources of potential toxic exposure, right? What should we be prioritizing top line?

Yeah, food, water are always going to be first. Food first, water second. Maybe those are sort of take equal footing. And then it's all the other things that we've talked about about our cookware and our plastics. I think that if we just did those four, we'd be good. So let's talk about food and then we'll come back to water. what are the connections between environmental toxins or toxic exposure and food? How do you look at it as somebody who's deep in this space?

Yeah, I mean, the primary lens is going to be pesticides and herbicides used in conventional agriculture versus the way that organic agriculture is produced. And so we do know that there's pesticide and herbicide residues on conventional produce. We have seen this. There's lots of data that shows this. the sort of prevailing wisdom is that the low levels of exposure are no big deal. We have thresholds. These are regulated.

All of the residues that are showing up on our fruits and vegetables and our meats and dairy products are well below the threshold. And I can come back to why that doesn't really mean anything for me with an understanding of how chemicals interact with our biology. So on the one hand, like we are getting food is our problem. primary exposure outside of occupational exposures to pesticides and herbicides. We have lots of data that supports this. And we also know there are multiple studies, at least five or six, they have all come to the same conclusion, is that by prioritizing a mostly organic diet,

which I know is a very privileged thing for people to have access to and not everybody has access to that, but prioritizing a mostly organic diet, we can reduce the circulating levels of these pesticides and herbicides by 80 to 90% in a three to five day window. Wow, that's huge. We're really short, and that's because they're non-persistent, right? They don't build up in the body. So it's the same concept as those BPAs and the phallates is they're not persistent. And so if we just give our body the opportunity to do what it does, which is metabolize and excrete these toxic chemicals,

we can have a huge impact just across the board. And so that's, you know, that is a meaningful exposure source to these pesticides and herbicides, which in and of themselves are linked to everything from cardiovascular disease and metabolic disease and cancers to behavioral issues and developmental issues in children, birth defects in children. So like, again, every organ system has some, end point that can be affected by these pesticides and herbicides. They're neurotoxic, specifically to children. And even if, even if the amounts that were in our food were like no big deal, no health effects, we cannot ignore the people that are occupationally exposed

to much higher levels of these pesticides and herbicides as part of their job. The people that grow, and package food. And who are those people? Typically, black and brown people that don't have access to health care. So it is not okay for us to just say, well, I'm not affected because it doesn't matter because I'm protected, because other people are not. And I think that we have to consider the environmental justice lens of this conversation. So I often will push that back on people that argue that the low amount of pesticides that we get in our food on our tomatoes and on our lettuce are no big deal because you cannot argue that those high levels of occupational exposures are also no big deal. That's an important point. Thank you for bringing that up.

Have you seen any data about how ultra-processed foods in particular can end up being concentrated sources of pesticides? I feel like I saw some data that was out there, but I wasn't able to reference back to the paper. And the theory and the idea was that at every stage, since ultra-processed foods have so many different areas of interaction, processing, et cetera, we're not talking about processed foods, almond butter, you know, things like that. We're talking about ultra-processed foods, which have so many stages that there's more likelihood that there's pesticide exposure along the way. Have you seen anything like that? I haven't seen anything specifically about concentrated pesticides. But I do know that, for example,

if we think about an ultra-processed food and we think about the factory setting, you know, there's whatever the food is, it's a puree, it's got to get cooked, it's got to get chopped, it's got to get moved from over here to over there, the amount of plastic that that food encounters in its manufacturing process is high. At every point along the manufacturing and packaging process, plastics are playing a role. Many of those plastics can be coated with PFAS chemicals. Why? because it renders the plastic as non-stick. And so their food won't be stuck to the conveyor belt or to the tube. Even if we think about something like dairy, which is very low processed, right?

It's not an ultra-processed foods. When a cow is being milked, what is the milk passing through to get from the cow to the storage container, a soft, flexible plastic tube that has phallates in it. And so one, like all food that is processed is going to have some degree of phallates or other plasticizer chemicals, bisphenols, P-FAS chemicals, and this is an unfortunate and currently an unavoidable exposure source until we change food manufacturing. And there's not even a movement to do that at this point, right? There are what I referred to as FCMs or food contact materials,

and there is research exploring, hey, maybe we need to revisit some of these materials. But I think probably when we're looking at ultra-processed foods, they are going to very likely have a higher sort of toxic load because it's going through so many different steps and stages in the processing process for to be rid of that makes total sense you know you mentioned water and we're going to jump into that in a second but i actually want to just take a moment to talk about you and your background tell our audience how did you become so passionate about being a defender of not just you and your family

but coming out publicly and sounding the alarm on many of these hidden sources. sources of toxins that were all being exposed to. Yeah, it sort of, I say it sort of happened on accident and the sort of is a thumbtack. So I was always somebody in my youth that was, you know, kind of counterculture. I grew up in the punk rock, indie rock, hardcore music scene in the like late 80s, early 90s. That was what I was always into. So it was kind of a, a F-the-man kind of vibe, if you will. And, you know, I professionally, I took a different path. I spent many years in a, you know, stock photography industry unrelated to this. But I was always a foodie. I was always obsessed with food and nutrition. I was attending like mushroom growing

workshops like right out of high school and into college. Like I was the farmer's market person. I was the pick your own organic produce person. Like that was just who I was. And it wasn't until many years after I was in this other career that I was like, you know, maybe I can do something with this obsession that I have with food and nutrition and just sort of this space of wellness. And so I went back to school to become a health coach. I started doing that work, health coaching.

This felt like a bigger contribution. like a better, more positive contribution to the world than like sitting in a fluorescent, light cubicle selling stock photographs to book publishers. Like that wasn't it for me. And no shade to that industry. It just wasn't it for me. And so I started working in health coaching and helping people who were struggling with some metabolic issues who wanted to lose weight.

And at no point was toxicity at this point really on my radar. But I had a couple of clients. that were really, really compliant. They did all of the things that I knew to make recommendations on in regards to weight loss. They ate better, they moved, they managed their stress, they slept well, all those sort of basic foundation pieces. But nothing happened. They didn't lose any weight.

And they were frustrated, and I was frustrated. And so I started digging into the literature around resistant weight loss. Like, what am I missing? I'm obviously missing something. And it was sort of through that exploration that I discovered this topic. of obesity genus, abysogenic chemicals, chemicals that can alter our metabolism in ways that can lead to increased weight gain, to insulin resistance, to diabetes, to obesity. And it was like a record scratch for me because I'd spent, you know, the previous 10 or 15 years reading everything I could

get my hands on in regards to health. It spent, you know, a year going back to school to become a health coach, nobody was talking about these obesogenic chemicals, these chemicals that we were exposed to that were linked to metabolic issues. And it just was this big kind of aha moment for me where I said, this is fascinating. Like, I just want to do this. I just want to talk about this. I want to learn about this. I want to research this. And that's what I did. I spent a couple of years. I was living in New York City at the time. The New York Academy of Sciences is there. The Children's Environmental Health Center run by Phil Landrigan, who's an absolute, you know, legend in the environmental toxicity space. He was instrumental in helping get led out of gasoline in the 1970s.

And so these were the people that I was learning from as I was attending, you know, the conferences and symposiums and lectures. And I did this for a couple of years before I realized I need to share this. I can't just know this for myself. And so in 2000, I started teaching the colleagues in the health coaching space about this. And then it expanded to nutritionists and then nurses and naturopathic doctors and medical doctors. And I have been doing this now for 12 going on 13 years. And it's been really exciting to do this work. The interesting hitch in this story is two things.

One, a couple of years ago, I guess about six years ago, I went back to my childhood home. It was my dad's 80th birthday, so I went back to home. And you know what, as an adult, you go back to your childhood home and you like poke around at all the things that were left behind in your bedroom that you didn't care enough about to take with you in your adult life? Well, I found in the closet a box of index cards from a paper I wrote in high school on a vegetarian diet. This was in 1992.

And I randomly pulled an index card. There's a photo of it somewhere on my Instagram, but it's like from a way back. And it was a quote. And this was bibliography when we had to do a written bibliography on the index cards. And it was just a quote about, you know, more and more people were turning to a vegetarian diet in part because of the toxic chemicals. And I was like, what? Wait, what? It just, yeah.

So, like, that was a bit of an aha moment. The other thing is not ironically. or ironically, I guess it depends on how you look at it. My father has worked in the non-stick coding industry for probably the last 30 years. And so when I was in college, long before any of this professionally was on my radar, I was emailing my father articles about non-stick cookware and what's called Teflon toxicosis or polymer fume fever,

which is when birds, the typical canary in the coal mine, birds have a really sensitive respiratory system and they can literally just drop dead if they're exposed to fumes from nonstick cookware. So bird owners generally know you're not supposed to have any nonstick in the house. And I was sending these articles to my dad who was then forwarding them to the president of the company. So I've been a thorn in the side of this industry since I was in my early 20s. So it's kind of like, I don't know how else I could have done anything. different than this. It was, it was, it was destiny in a way. I think, I mean, it's, I don't know if I believe in destiny, but I definitely feel like, huh, I guess there is some degree of some degree of something like

that because I could not fathom doing anything else. Powerful story. Thank you for giving the background. And, you know, just a little plug for, you know, your website and all the great work that you do. We have a link in the show notes. You know, they can visit you at Laura Adler. dot com. We have the link of the show notes and you have a ton of incredible courses. You do some consulting. There's a bunch of free resources that are there. And again, my favorite section is you have a shop section. And you can go through on that shop section. You can go to skin care, makeup, hair, hair care, menstrual care, household cleaners, cookware, which we talked about earlier, mattresses, books, et cetera. And you can find all sorts of resources that are there when people

are just like, look, you've done the work. Just tell me what to buy. I don't have hours and hours necessarily to research, but I know it's an issue. What can I get? So thank you for making such a friendly website, and I really encourage people to check it out. Okay, I want to come back to the water story. I asked you, what are the handful of areas to prioritize? And you said, while cookware is important, and we started there because my community has a lot of questions about it, and plastics are important. We went to that next. You know, it's really food, which we just covered and it's water. You know, there's been so much conversation about water and there's a lot more awareness that's there. And yet, I know that the awareness hasn't, you know, gotten high enough yet

because I still go to people's homes and I see them either drinking through the tap, right? Just traditional tap water, even in places like here in Los Angeles, New York City, or they're using things like, you know, Brita filter, not to pick on that company. And I know they've come out with some other, you know, slightly better options than their sort of standard one, which is mostly focused on just improving taste by focusing on just like chlorine, right? Tell us about why those solutions of just drinking tap water and relying on a traditional sort of basic filter, why are they not getting to the root of how bad this problem is? Yeah. And I'll also, add bottled water because a ton of people are just going to Costco and buying absolute, you know,

like a pallet worth of bottled water to drink thinking that it's better. And it's bottled water in plastic. Yeah, it's not better. It's just not better. Yeah. But in some cases, it actually could be worse. Absolutely. Yes.

So, you know, look, if you live in a developed country, water in countries like ours, is going to be better from the standpoint of we're unlikely to develop dysentery or cholera, do these communicable diseases. We've conquered that, right? And so our water is considered clean from that sort of bacterial contaminant perspective. But that doesn't mean it's clean. It just means that it's safer from that perspective. And so, and we achieved that through things like disinfection.

So disinfecting the water through chlorination or chlorination, and this is just widespread. There's very few, I think there's two cities in the United States that have a pass in terms of disinfection because their source water is very good. But the rest of the country and the developed world is disinfecting their water. And that has pros and cons. The pro, we don't have cholera in our water. We're not having outbreaks of disinfecting. Dissentary. Although I did think, I did think I heard something in L.A. actually, that there was a spread of dysentery. Yikes.

It think. Maybe it was a while ago. Anyway, so, you know, it is clean from that perspective. That's the pro. The con is that we have now these disinfection chemicals in the water system. And they don't just evaporate, right? They don't just disappear. And those disinfection byproducts, these disinfection chemicals can react with organic matter that's just naturally present in the water and create what are called. secondary byproducts or disinfection byproducts. And these are carcinogens. These are highly toxic. And so we have that in our water. We also have chemicals, unregulated chemicals. We have PFS in our water. We can have heavy metals in our water. Flint, Michigan is a really good example of that instance. There's all kinds of pharmaceuticals and plastics. There's tons of different chemicals. There's been over 300 that have been measured through the federal agencies that are monitoring this. And the challenge here is that our federal drinking water standards only regulate about 90 different contaminants. And so we have hundreds more that are actually in the water that are not regulated, which means that they're

technically legally allowed to be there. They're not violating any rule because there is no rule. And even of the roughly 90, 91 contaminants that are regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act, many municipalities are in violation of those standards regularly. So just because the standard exists doesn't mean that these chemicals aren't showing up in the water. Additionally, the levels that are permitted under the Safe Drinking Water Act are not health levels. They're not the level at which health epidemiologists and experts are saying, ah, that level is safe. It is a negotiation between health experts and infrastructure experts that say we don't have the budget to require every water municipality, every water service system in the United States to meet this standard because their ability to filter out arsenic or microplastics or PFS, for example, is costly. And if you are talking about a impoverished city

in an impoverished state, where's the money going to come from to optimize their water filtration system at the city level to meet that standard? This is actually what's happening right now with the PFS regulation. The federal government is proposing extremely strict levels of two PFSOA and PFOS and a couple of other ones that are slightly less strict. But the level is basically zero, right? It's basically zero. And now the question that that regulation is proposed and hasn't fully passed yet, the question is how are cities going to meet this regulation? Where's the money coming from? Without federal support? Without federal support, right? Without federal support, where's the money coming from? I just saw an article that Florida is one of the first states

that is going to be implementing a PFAS filtration process. I don't know if it was just in a specific city, but it was like, oh, yeah, it's going to cost the population of Florida like, you know, $200 billion over the next 20 years. You know, like that's a lot. And so, you know, we have this water system that has a tremendous amount of harmful chemicals. Some cities will fluoridate their water. That's another contaminant of concern. Some cities don't fluoridate their water, but they're getting their water from a aquifer that has fluorine in it, because fluorine is an element.

It's natural. Same thing with arsenic. So we have different varying levels of arsenic. I live in New Mexico. Parts of this state have high levels of arsenic in the geography. And so the water here can have higher levels of arsenic. Arsenic is one of the most toxic metals. It's linked to skin cancers and other serious, serious health effects, metabolic disease, diabetes.

And it's challenging to filter out. And it's not going to get filtered out necessarily well at our utilities. And so this is why tap water, again, it's not terrible as it pertains to bacterial issues, but it's not good as it pertains to the contaminants that are present. And so this is where people will often turn to bottled water. But we have to know that bottled water, for the most part, is just municipal tap water. Sometimes it's undergone a little bit of treatment. But what people are paying is, I think it's a nine-thousal.

thousand percent premium. I think that was the figure that I remember reading. Now, like, why? Why? It's not better. And then to your point, bottled water very often has microplastics, and now we know nanoplastics as well. And so those are another exposure source. That brings us to then filtration. And I think probably the number one question I get in my business and on my social media particularly is, hey, Laura, what kind of filter, what are filters should I get? And I cannot answer that question. Because like everything, it depends. What's your budget? What contaminants are in your water? What are your health concerns? How much space do you have in your kitchen? I lived in New York City for 10 years and I had 24 inches of counter space. There was no room for any kind of

countertop filter. I was a renter. I couldn't install an under sink filter. So I had a rid of filter, right? And so maybe it wasn't the best, but it was the best for the situation I was in at the time. So there is no perfect filter or filtration technology that will work for everyone. What we need to figure out or what are the contaminants that are in our water in the first place. And then we can make our filter buying decision based on that. It would be like going to a doctor and saying, well, and them saying, well, we're just going to be able to be able to. bunch of medications. We don't know what's wrong with you yet, but we're just going to give you a bunch of medications. Okay, can I ask a question about that? Yeah. I do agree with that big picture,

you know, the personalization. The challenge is sometimes even getting accurate information. And then the part that we didn't talk about is sort of that last mile sort of impact. You know, the pipes in your building, how old it is, the contamination from, you know, the water leaving the municipality to go to your place. So, you know, in a way, unless we're doing a home test, which I feel is kind of out of reach for a lot of individuals, they're not that costly. It's more about the time and the effort that goes into it than being able to read the report. I guess I'm sort of in a friendly way trying to push back and say, is it actually truly necessary for us to know how contaminated our water here in the United

States? Or can we give general recommendations either based on price point or based on sort of, you know, you're single, you have a family, you have this thing. So just in a healthy way, I'm just genuinely asking. You don't have to agree with him. No, no, no, no. I mean, I don't disagree with you. It's like most topics in this space, it's a yes and, right? It's a yes and. Or it depends. So yes, as a baseline, any filtration is better than no filtration, period, end of story. So somebody can, yeah, if somebody, if all somebody can afford as a verdict, great, do that. Get that. Just change the filter. frequently because the amount of carbon in that cartridge is so small, it's going to get exhausted

very quickly. So you just want to change it frequently. So baseline, any filtration is better than no filtration. A step up from there, if you don't want to get your water tested, if you don't care necessarily to dig into the minutia, but you just want something that's better than nothing, and you want something better than something like a pitcher filter, then you're going to be looking at some type of multi-stage under sink filter. This is what's referred to as point of use. So unless your kitchen sink itself has lead soldering, it doesn't matter what's in the house and in the plumbing from the street to the house because the point of use, it's getting filtered right where it's coming out of the faucet. So that is the last entry or the last, you know, sort of

place that it is encountering anything is the filter itself. So a multi-stage filter, which is usually, you know, one of the stages might have a pre-filter and then there's a carbon filter of some sort, and maybe there's a third component that has some other type of media that is specific for certain types of metals or certain type of chemicals, then that is going to, again, it's going to produce even better water for you. You still, might be missing some things. And the reason why I think this matters, specifically for people who might be dealing with some type of chronic health issue, is that let's just use fluoride, for example. So we know fluoride is thyroid suppressing. So if somebody is dealing with autoimmune, Hashimoto's,

thyroiditis, or some other type of thyroid issue, and they just go out and they buy some generic three-stage under-sync filter, and they're like, cool, I did a great thing. But that filter doesn't remove fluoride because fluoride is notoriously difficult to remove, yeah, okay, you're taking out all those other chemicals, but you're still exposing yourself every day through a chemical that we know can have thyroid suppressing effects. So a question on that. Yeah. A question on that to sorry to interrupt. Would it typical, you know, when you're saying these multi-stage under the sink, is another name for that also reverse osmosis? Or you're saying that some of them could be and some of them may not be reverse osmosis. Yes. So reverse osmosis is a very specific.

type of filtration, reverse osmosis will also have multi-stages, right? Because the membrane in a reverse osmosis filter is very delicate. And so you have to make sure that you're kind of removing the things that might damage that filter before the water gets to the filter. So all reverse osmosis units will have one or two stages prior to going through the membrane. To me, reverse osmosis is a last resort filter. And I say that because primarily, so reverse osmosis will remove the most of contaminants of any type of filtration system. So if somebody's just like, mine, my water's awful, I don't want to have to go into the minutia. And I want the best of the best. They're going to, you know, maybe spend a little bit more, a couple hundred dollars

more. Reverse osmosis systems aren't exorbitantly expensive. And they might get that. Now, there's two downsides to that one more important than the other, and that's a little subjective. So one is it is removing all of the beneficial minerals, the magnesiums and calceums in our water that give our water a taste, a nice taste. And we don't want to long-term drink this sort of deionized, stripped water that doesn't have any minerals in it. Many reverse osmosis systems will have a final stage that essentially adds minerals back to the water that were removed. And if a system has that, great, you're good to go. The other issue and the one that's more concerning to me is reverse osmosis systems are wasteful. The process of producing, say, a gallon of drinkable reverse osmosis filtered

water can sometimes take two to three to four gallons of water to produce one water to drink. So that means three to four gallons are going down the drain. We are fast approaching a time on this planet where water scarcity is going to be an enormous problem and isn't going to be an increasing problem. I live in the desert, so water conservation is a big deal. So for me, getting a reverse osmosis system is a worst case scenario, meaning my water has contaminants that can only be removed through this technology. Okay, fine. But I think it's overkill for a lot of people. So what kind of filter do you use? I live in New Mexico. There's arsenic in my water sometimes,

so I do have a reverse osmosis system. Yeah. Got it. And I don't like it, but it's what I use. Totally. And I feel the same way. You know, I am not happy that I'm using, you know, something that I use reverse osmosis. I've used it for years. Yeah. I am concerned about water, conservation. And I'm more concerned about, you know, my family's health is just the honest truth. Yeah, sure, of course. Living in Los Angeles and knowing that things like hexachromium five or six, whatever it's called. Yeah. Right. And all these other things are lurking in there. You know, I have to believe that by me, my wife, our future baby, my family that visits, guests, et cetera, by making sure that we have access to, you know, clean water and people, you know,

raising awareness about how important this is, you know, that we will ultimately, I am a techno optimist and I do believe that technology used in the right way will help us solve a lot of these solutions. So I do understand that, you know, there's no best option that's there. But for a lot of people who are just like, hey, look, I have some resources, what should I do? I often default to reverse osmosis because we all live in big cities with all sorts of crazy stuff that's in the water. Yeah, I mean, it's, and that's fine. You know, again, if at the end of the day you're getting people to filter their water in a, in a comprehensive capacity, great, keep doing that. And again, this is one of those things where the onus should not be on the individual to have to do this.

But currently it is. Yeah. Because we're not going to solve this problem. I mean, currently, you know, President Biden has, you know, issued this or put forth this proposal to remove, you know, the millions of lead pipes. They're still in the ground in this country. I mean, the water infrastructure in this country is crumbling at best. The American Society of Civil Engineers, which is the group that, like, gives our bridges and our roads, like a score, grade of how good it is or how not. good it is. They give our water infrastructure in this country. I think it's like a C, a C grade.

It's not good. It's, this hasn't proved when I first started researching that it was a D. So it got a little better. But it requires billions of dollars in investment to modernize. Our water treatment plants really have a lifespan of 20 to 30 years. And many of our water systems that are in use right now date back to the 60s and 70s. So like their useful life has passed. And it's just being kind of held together with, you know, duct tape and a hope. And so we need to modernize the infrastructure. And that's the only way we're going to make it real dent in the problem with water

contamination. And we need more regulations. Totally. And those are all big picture things. And they all need attention. But it first starts with us becoming. educated ourselves and making the changes in our own family, which obviously you agree with, which is why you do the work that you do.

Yes. And when we become that example and we start spreading the word, we tell one other person, they come to our house and they're like, oh, you know, your water tastes, you know, better. It's really interesting. My water tastes super weird. It's like chlorinated. What do you guys use? And you tell them about the filter and some of the changes that you're making and why it's

important to you and you're, you know, being cautious. You're not being an extremist. You're not going crazy with things and your family is normal and you live a happy life and you have cheat days and you eat stuff that's there. But you've made these little changes that you feel are protective measures for you and your family. That's how the message spreads. And that's actually what's happening right now. People are doing these things. And health has become one of the main sort of priorities for people, especially those in the 40 plus.

category because people are realizing we're in this sort of perfect storm. Things are getting worse. There's more and more chemicals that are out there every day, but there's more and more better solutions that we can use that don't have to break the bank that can protect us and our communities. And then that message has that sort of ripple effect. And you know, you've been a huge part of that. And I want to acknowledge you for all the incredible content that you've put out over the years, Laura. It's been fantastic. You've inspired so many people and even people like myself who live and breathe this, there's changes that I've made of like, oh, you know what? I didn't think about that aspect, but that's an easy switch for me to make. So I want to acknowledge you and thank you

for coming on the podcast today to share your message with our, with our audience. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I, you know, I like I, I hope it's obvious and very passionate about this topic. And, you know, my big goal here is, you know, to help people understand the scale of this and to take it seriously and to take action. Although my Instagram is sort of accessible information for everyone, the core aspect of my work and the courses that I teach are for health professionals because I want there to be more health professionals who can dialogue with their clients and patients and customers on these topics.

It's a much more efficient way for me to spread this message to work with providers that they themselves have a much larger audience. and an audience of people that are dealing with health issues that might be more motivated to take this stuff seriously. So important. Can you just mention the, I know there's a couple of courses that are there. Can you just mention them and we'll link to them in the show notes below? Yeah, absolutely.

The flagship course, which is where most of my students start, is a five module, 10-hour course called Talking Toxins. And this really covers, first of all, covers a lot of those sort of topics that we've covered in this interview. It covers what are the low-hanging fruit places where if you're having the conversation around toxics with your clients or patients, start with these areas because these are the most accessible and have the most frequent exposures. And then, you know, I have advanced five-month certificate course in environmental health

for health professionals who really want to make the toxicity conversation a more meaningful part of the work that they do. So people can just check out those courses on my website and feel free to message me if you're a practitioner and you have a question. Incredible. Well, we'll link to those below. And today was so amazing. You took us through a tour of the kitchen.

We hope to have you back in the future and maybe we'll go into the bathroom and the bedroom where a lot of these hidden toxins are lurking in the cosmetics that we're all using on a daily basis. So open invitation. and I look forward to that opportunity. Anytime. Amazing. Well, people can follow along.

Your Instagram is fantastic. We have a link in the show notes below. Laura, thank you for being on the podcast today. Yeah, thank you so much for having you, Drew. Hi, everyone, Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app.

And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is, Share with a friend. Share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter, and it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy-to-digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and social.

so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free and get my weekly step-by-step protocols for whole body health and optimization, click the link in the show notes that's called Try This or just go to Drew Perot.com. That's D-H-R-U-P-U-R-O-H-I-T-com and click on the tab that says, try this.