- What are the top three to five sources of endocrine disruptors that we have agency over? And let's forget about pregnancy for the moment since we're all out of the womb if we're listening to this. Some people will be pregnant as they listen to it, but would you say it's, you know, drinking out of plastic bottles?

Is it laundry detergent? Is it, you know, rubber tires that are cascading down on us through the air and we're inhaling them? I mean, presumably all of the above, but which ones that we have agency over do you think are the most, let's just say, concerning where people could make better choices?

- I would say foodborne exposures. Exposures in the food, in the food packaging, in the food storage, in the cooking utensils. We can go through the various things, but we're doing that all the time. We're eating all the time, we're getting food into us, and these are bringing in a very, you know, in a way that we have some control over, some agency over, you know, we can make changes in our foods.

Very close to that is drink, you know, food and beverage. Don't use any product with fragrance, for example. That's a major source of exposure to phthalates. - Any product. - Any fragrance product. If fragrance is added- - So no perfume, no lotions, soap with fragrance, even essential oil fragrances like lavender.

- Essential oil is a tricky- - Right, it's a mix. - It's a mix, yeah. So I'm gonna, that's guarded, but anything, you know- - Spray deodorants, roll-on deodorants. - Laundry detergent with- - Shampoo? - Yep, in shampoo. In any, if you can smell it, it's probably affecting your hormones.

- I'm so happy about this answer. Not because I have any stake in any company related to fragrance-free stuff, but I have a very strong sense of smell, and I either love or hate smells, and I hate synthetic smells. Like going through the duty-free, especially in a European airport with all the perfumes, and I'm just, "Oh, I'm gonna hold my breath." It feels like I'm breathing poison.

- I know. - Well- - Well, you are, actually. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. - In some sense. - And most soaps, right. - Yeah. - Super interesting. So that's your primary intervention, is to tell them to get rid of anything with fragrances. - No, that's only one thing we get rid of.

So then we talk about how the plastics that they use to store their food, food storage containers, try to get them to get rid of those if they're made of plastic. We try to get them to get rid of their nonstick pans because of the PFAS chemicals that are in those, and so on and so forth.

So we go through all steps of their life and try to tell them how to make changes that will reduce their exposure. - If somebody listening were having trouble conceiving for 12 months or more, are the sorts of replacement interventions, product interventions that you're talking about here, things that you would at least feel comfortable saying might be a good place to start or to explore?

- Absolutely, absolutely. There's no harm. None of the changes are putting people at risk or doing anything that could be harmful to them. I'm sure of that. We're very careful. - And some are going to be cost-saving. - Yes. - And I think that's where like drinking out of plastic bottles far less, if at all.

Just for reasons related to wanting to reduce waste, I use a Mason jar or I use these or ceramic. Although you'll probably tell me that the lining on the ceramic mug might have endocrine disruptors. No, I don't. Okay, great. Okay, well then I'll keep drinking. But it's very reassuring to me that there are things that we can do in terms of cost-saving elimination or replacement of consumables.

- Buying in bulk. - That can improve endocrine status, maybe fertility also. - If you can buy in bulk, bring a container to the store and fill it up, a glass jar, instead of buying something in plastic, you're winning on both ends because those bulk products are cheaper. One of the things I did with the couples was go shop with them.

And we went around and we looked at various products. And for example, we looked at the produce and there was the option to buy freestanding bunches of lettuce, heads of lettuce, or wrapped up in plastic bunches of lettuce. And I said, let's compare the price. I actually didn't know until we did it.

But that freestanding unwrapped lettuce was cheaper. And I think that's, you know, because that makes sense 'cause there's a work involved in wrapping it up and in the container and so on. And so not only are you getting something that's more toxic, but it's more expensive. - When it comes to reducing BPA exposure and some of these forever chemicals that you mentioned, seems like reducing fluid intake from plastic vessels is gonna be number one.

The primary source of BPA is in the lining of cans. So any drink or soup or anything that comes in a can is going to be-- - Any can, all cans. - Any can. Unless it's a high end, you know, elite company that's made the change from BPA to an alternative lining.

And they'll say that. So, and by the way, BPA has some bad relatives such as BPS and BPF. And maybe you'd be interested in this story. So when it came out that BPA was estrogenic, which is what it is. And by the way, it's kind of the evil twin of phthalates because phthalates are androgenic and BPA is estrogenic and phthalates make plastic soft and BPA makes plastic hard.

You don't want either. Okay, so when this came out that this was a bad thing, the manufacturers started selling things that say BPA free. I'm sure you've seen that. The trick is that instead of BPA, they use BPS. - Sneaky rats. - And BPF. And these are chemicals, these are lookalikes, they're analogs and they're just as harmful.

- Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it's just so dirty. It's so dirty. It's like, you know, right now is a really important time to be having this discussion because there's been a lot of movement on Capitol Hill and there's been a lot of movement on social media about trying to call attention to metabolic syndromes and highly processed foods and issues like this.

And it's become unfortunately politicized. I mean, I hear this stuff and I just think to myself, the only good faith that we can really trust is our own desire to be healthier and to have our families and friends be healthier and to try and consume and not consume things on the basis of that.

My belief is that we can't trust any larger agency to either protect or harm us. It's like, they're gonna do what they're gonna do. We just have to be informed. As opposed to trying to dismantle the systems that led to this, which just seems like infinitely complicated. Maybe you can do that, but I'm far less optimistic.

And now that I'm 49 years old, I can say things like, now that I'm 49, I feel like... - But what you're saying is really important. If I look at a can, it says BPA-free. Doesn't mean anything. It could have BPSs or other endocrine disruptors. - Right. - So drinking out of glass vessels, drinking out of ceramic vessels.

- Metal. - Metal, but not cans, not metal cans, not aluminum cans. - Right, not cans, no. - Goodness, okay. - You know, you can get a metal water bottle. It's not lined with BPA. - Steel. - Steel, yeah. - Steel. - And is it true that microwave safe means, it just means that the plastic won't melt in the microwave, but it's- - You never, never put plastic in a microwave.

So here's the story. The BPA, phthalates, plasticizers are added to the plastic, but they're not chemically bound to it, okay? So if you put anything in a container that has these chemicals in it, they will, and then put it in a hot environment, they will come out of the plastic and go into the food.

So if you, in a microwave, or you put your bottle in the car and the sun comes in, it warms up the bottle, and then the stuff goes into your water. You don't want to mix these chemicals and your food, but if you do, the worst thing is to do it in a heated environment.

- I think about all the food that was consumed in college in the '90s and 2000s, like the cup of noodles with the styrofoam, the, you know, things in packaging, stuff like that is pretty straightforward to eliminate once one understands and decides. Then we start getting into the more nuanced thing of like, okay, you can buy a really nice tasting anyway, grass-fed, grass-finished steak, but it's wrapped in plastic.

Well, or you can go to the butcher, but most people don't have time to go to the butcher. Or you can get strawberries at the farmer's market, blueberries at the farmer's market, which is what I try to do. But sometimes I buy strawberries at the market and they have those plastic flip-top things.

And of course I recycle the plastic. How bad is it if, you know, you rinse the strawberries off with good clean water that were in the plastic container? - We have to do that experiment, I don't know. - Yeah. - So I guess, so it sounds to me like not drinking out of cans, not drinking out of plastic bottles it's going to be not microwaving plastic ever.

And in general, just avoiding, avoiding plastic intake. - If you can afford it, buy organic. So you're going to avoid the pesticides and then phthalates are actually added to pesticides. And they're added because they increase absorption. So, you know, the, you want your pesticides to get into the plant, right?

And to kill the bad stuff and insects. And so the same property of phthalates that makes them good for pesticides also makes them good for our hand cream. Just mentioning, absorption, absorption. Anything that's absorbed in the body is going to have phthalates in it. And it also holds scent and color.

So it's added to those scents and it's also added to your lipstick and to your colored, you know, whatever you put on your face and so on. Anything that holds scent and color, that's going to be phthalates. - I've been accused online of being a sunscreen truther. I'm not a sunscreen truther.

I'm going to keep repeating this as many times as I can. I understand that UV damage to the skin can cause certain cancers. I get that. I agree with that. The data are pretty clear to me based on having researched this pretty extensively and talked to many, many people, including dermal oncologists, that mineral-based sunscreens like zinc oxide and titanium dioxide, but certainly zinc oxide are safer than the chemical sunscreens.

A lot of people get upset when I say that. And they say, well, in Europe, there's tons of evidence that the chemicals-based sunscreens are safe. Okay, fine. You use them. I'm not going to. The point being that UV damage is bad. There are ways to protect ourselves from the sun, including physical barriers like clothing, hats, et cetera.

But pretty much all sunscreen that I'm aware of is designed to be absorbed. So what do we do if we want to get some UV protection from whatever kind of sunscreen we deem safe for ourselves, but we want to avoid these exposures to these other things? What do we do?

Do we have to hunt really carefully for the right sunscreen? - Yeah, I think that's a good idea. Are you familiar with Environmental Working Group? - Is another one out of the Bay Area? - No. - Oh, okay. - I don't know actually where they are. They're pretty big.

- Sounds familiar, but I can't say I'm familiar with them. - They have consumer guides. And in those consumer, so Environmental Working Group, I'm not part of them, but I like their work. And in these consumer guides, you can put in the product and they have categories. You can put sunscreen.

If we had time, we could do it right now. And then you can put the name of your sunscreen and it'll give you a number. And then if the number is less than 10, it'll tell you why. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)