How to Reduce Chemical Exposure in Your House | Dr. Shanna Swan & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | - What are a few things that you do and or avoid

00:00:05.000 | in light of what you know about these endocrine disruptors?

00:00:13.920 | And by the way, it goes without saying

00:00:15.820 | that you're in spectacular cognitive and physical shape

00:00:20.080 | for any age, but it's really remarkable.

00:00:22.520 | I feel comfortable sharing this

00:00:24.200 | because someone else published it online recently.

00:00:26.300 | You are soon to enjoy your what birthday?

00:00:29.560 | - 89th.

00:00:30.440 | - 89th birthday, amazing.

00:00:32.200 | And with all the talk about longevity,

00:00:34.560 | cognitive and physical longevity,

00:00:35.840 | everyone's thinking, including me, like, what does she do?

00:00:38.480 | Well, she avoids all these endocrine disruptors

00:00:41.600 | and she has a wonderfully rich life

00:00:43.240 | of curiosity and other things.

00:00:45.720 | But yeah, what are some other things that you do

00:00:48.480 | and avoid in light of what you know,

00:00:51.160 | for which there may or may not be a controlled study,

00:00:54.100 | but I think we're all just curious.

00:00:55.720 | We'll frame this as what you do.

00:00:58.220 | - So water, our water, I worry about the water.

00:01:02.540 | I studied water for a long time in my past life.

00:01:05.960 | So we actually distill our water.

00:01:09.040 | So we have a tabletop distiller.

00:01:11.980 | My husband, Steven, cleans it out.

00:01:14.080 | There's a lot of gunk in it, by the way,

00:01:15.680 | even though it's San Francisco that has clean water,

00:01:18.020 | at the end of the day, after you've distilled the water,

00:01:20.580 | there's a lot of gunk.

00:01:21.420 | - So you distill the water, so this is not reverse osmosis.

00:01:23.920 | - No, distilling.

00:01:25.200 | - Okay.

00:01:26.040 | - Yeah, so it's steam distilled

00:01:27.640 | and then it condenses in a glass container.

00:01:30.440 | And then we put that in glass containers in the fridge.

00:01:33.200 | And so, and it tastes really good, by the way,

00:01:36.160 | really, really, somebody was just over and he said,

00:01:39.160 | "This tastes like melted snow."

00:01:41.320 | - Hmm.

00:01:42.160 | - I thought it was lovely.

00:01:43.000 | - And you use that for drinking, for coffee, for tea,

00:01:45.160 | for cooking too, if you make rice, you're using distilled.

00:01:47.400 | - Actually, no, no, but for ice cubes.

00:01:49.720 | And you know, whenever I can think about it,

00:01:52.280 | we can't use too much 'cause you'd be too busy.

00:01:55.400 | You always did.

00:01:56.240 | - Right.

00:01:57.080 | - But he does it once a day, it's just the two of us.

00:01:59.520 | So water is important.

00:02:01.360 | We try to leave our shoes at the door.

00:02:05.920 | - Tell me about that one.

00:02:07.000 | - Well, dust that you bring in contains a lot of the,

00:02:11.060 | particularly the PFAS chemicals.

00:02:13.200 | And so that's actually, I'm not 100% good on that,

00:02:18.200 | but we try to do that.

00:02:20.860 | And I'm careful with the products I put on my face.

00:02:25.280 | I check them out the way I suggested,

00:02:27.760 | you know, environmental working group.

00:02:30.280 | And I go to the farmer's market.

00:02:32.640 | I always buy organic, always buy organic.

00:02:36.320 | But I know that's a cost issue for some people

00:02:38.720 | and an availability issue for some people.

00:02:42.120 | But in San Francisco, you can do that.

00:02:44.360 | Some areas where I don't do more of what I should,

00:02:51.040 | I think I'm starting to be aware of the chemicals

00:02:54.960 | in clothing.

00:02:56.380 | We haven't talked about that, but there's a,

00:02:58.760 | turns out there's a lot of, particularly in,

00:03:01.120 | it's a problem for workout wear

00:03:03.320 | because you're absorbing so much,

00:03:04.800 | you're sweaty, you're hot,

00:03:05.880 | and you're bringing these chemicals into your body.

00:03:08.160 | And that may be one of the interventions that we do,

00:03:10.880 | get a bunch of athletes to use safe clothing

00:03:15.880 | and traditional clothing

00:03:18.040 | and see what their body burden is.

00:03:20.240 | That's how you know.

00:03:21.240 | - So erring toward cotton as opposed to synthetic materials.

00:03:26.240 | - Right, and the dyes are important.

00:03:28.360 | So you don't want, you want maybe plant-based dyes.

00:03:31.680 | It's not my area of expertise.

00:03:33.160 | I have a colleague who I work with on this

00:03:35.120 | and I'll go with her advice.

00:03:37.080 | But I'm just saying that's another area

00:03:40.240 | that I think people will soon be paying attention to.

00:03:43.440 | There's also the area that is much more difficult,

00:03:47.460 | which is what's in building materials and furniture.

00:03:50.900 | But a lot of these PFAS and the flame retardants

00:03:53.960 | are in our furniture and in our building materials

00:03:56.860 | and trying to think about how to build.

00:04:00.040 | I was asked about safety in a new village

00:04:02.560 | that's being built in California, by the way.

00:04:04.480 | And it's really challenging to think about

00:04:07.560 | if you were gonna do this right

00:04:09.860 | and you were gonna build a town that was toxic free,

00:04:14.160 | how would you do that?

00:04:15.300 | I'm thinking about that.

00:04:18.560 | - I'm thinking about the opener of the Simpsons

00:04:20.520 | and doing the exact opposite.

00:04:22.200 | Where like in the opener of the Simpsons,

00:04:23.840 | there's like a three-eyed fish

00:04:25.000 | and there's the chemical plant.

00:04:26.540 | And I'm just thinking,

00:04:27.380 | you just look at the opener of the Simpsons,

00:04:28.560 | you do the inverse of everything that's there,

00:04:30.900 | the inverse of everything that's there,

00:04:33.800 | including alcohol intake,

00:04:35.440 | which is robust on the Simpsons.

00:04:39.960 | But interesting.

00:04:42.720 | So, and when it comes to food sourcing,

00:04:47.040 | like non-fruit, non-vegetable food sourcing,

00:04:50.080 | is there anything we can do?

00:04:51.520 | I mean, it's so hard for people to get eggs from farms.

00:04:54.520 | I mean, you can, if you go to a farmer's market,

00:04:56.160 | but this stuff can get pretty tricky, pretty expensive.

00:04:59.360 | And most people listening are not gonna be

00:05:02.480 | living in Sonoma where they might have a neighbor

00:05:05.120 | that has chickens or something.

00:05:06.640 | It's a hard problem.

00:05:10.320 | - It is a hard problem.

00:05:11.560 | And I think maybe people asking for it more would help.

00:05:16.560 | I don't know.

00:05:18.100 | I mean, in San Francisco,

00:05:19.480 | I'm lucky 'cause I can just get, you know,

00:05:22.360 | just on the phone, fresh direct order,

00:05:25.680 | and I know it's okay.

00:05:27.360 | But I know that's not the case everywhere.

00:05:30.400 | So I think being aware, honestly, is a really big step.

00:05:35.400 | If you are aware that this is something you want to change,

00:05:39.920 | you will find ways to change it.

00:05:42.340 | - It's interesting because a few years back,

00:05:44.100 | there was a lot of discussion about dyes in children's toys,

00:05:48.600 | in particular toys from overseas, right?

00:05:52.140 | Remember, kids are not, you know,

00:05:53.400 | babies are always gnawing on stuff and teething in.

00:05:55.600 | And there was a lot of attention like,

00:05:56.880 | "Hey, like what's in these sippy cups?"

00:05:58.520 | And my understanding is toys and sippy cups.

00:06:01.200 | And my understanding is that BPAs

00:06:02.640 | were banned from sippy cups.

00:06:04.320 | - Phthalates.

00:06:05.160 | - Phthalates, excuse me.

00:06:06.060 | - Based on my work.

00:06:06.900 | - Based on your work.

00:06:07.720 | Thank you so much.

00:06:08.560 | Thank you for the clarification, truly,

00:06:10.280 | and for the work that led to that.

00:06:13.040 | We know that baby skin is more absorbent than older skin.

00:06:16.560 | We know, and so there are literally laws in place

00:06:19.540 | and restrictions in place to make sure

00:06:21.520 | that some of this stuff is minimized in young kids.

00:06:23.820 | But then we sort of, after age 12,

00:06:26.360 | we're kind of like, "Okay, well, it's a free-for-all.

00:06:28.000 | It depends on your budget, where you go."

00:06:29.200 | And so we can't rely on governing bodies to do this.

00:06:32.820 | But I think it's a useful conversation,

00:06:35.640 | especially given your relationship to Scandinavia,

00:06:39.000 | which is a fun one to elaborate on,

00:06:41.360 | to illustrate some of the discrepancy

00:06:44.520 | between the U.S. and Europe.

00:06:47.340 | What sorts of chemicals are banned in Europe,

00:06:54.220 | in food, in lotions, et cetera, that you're aware of,

00:06:59.240 | that are prominent here in the U.S.?

00:07:01.860 | Maybe that's a good filter

00:07:02.980 | to place some of this choice-making through.

00:07:05.040 | - Europe has had a policy called REACH,

00:07:09.880 | and under REACH, you have to show

00:07:13.460 | that a chemical is safe

00:07:14.680 | before it's put into the marketplace.

00:07:16.600 | So the way our system is here,

00:07:21.360 | it's put in the marketplace,

00:07:23.200 | and then if somebody gets worried about it,

00:07:25.800 | they might do a study, they might find harm.

00:07:29.680 | Remember how long it took me to find that phthalate connection?

00:07:32.600 | It was 10 years.

00:07:34.240 | Two studies, 10 years, $10 million, by the way.

00:07:36.780 | So if you're gonna wait for that,

00:07:40.320 | I don't know, given the number of chemicals out there,

00:07:43.680 | 80,000 or more, forget it.

00:07:46.660 | So I think the REACH policy of testing

00:07:50.300 | before something's put in the market

00:07:52.140 | is making a big difference in Europe,

00:07:54.460 | and I think that's one reason why they're much better off.

00:07:58.340 | - Are those animal tests,

00:08:00.460 | or animal and human tests that they're doing over there?

00:08:02.740 | - Whatever defines safety.

00:08:04.260 | It depends on the chemical,

00:08:05.500 | it depends on what the product is.

00:08:07.900 | I can't answer that in general.

00:08:09.820 | - So that might be a good avenue

00:08:11.120 | for changing legislature here, right?

00:08:13.580 | To install something similar to REACH.

00:08:16.460 | - Absolutely, but it's not gonna happen, I don't think.

00:08:19.680 | - No? - No.

00:08:20.520 | Because there's too many forces against that.

00:08:23.460 | It's very, very hard for manufacturers to make changes.

00:08:26.800 | I'll give you one example.

00:08:28.260 | So you know that, you might not know, but should know,

00:08:33.200 | that phthalates are very prevalent in the hospital setting.

00:08:37.520 | If you think of a tube, you know, to dialysis,

00:08:41.300 | to chemotherapy, to IV, that's all phthalates, right?

00:08:45.640 | And that's going into your body.

00:08:47.800 | And there was recently a bill passed in California

00:08:52.240 | that DEHP could not be in IV bags.

00:08:54.840 | It's fantastic success.

00:08:57.320 | - In the actual bag? - Yes.

00:08:59.240 | - The bags could not contain these endocrine disruptors?

00:09:01.960 | - Yes, DEHP specifically. - DEHP, okay.

00:09:04.440 | - Diethylhexyl phthalate, the most anti-androgenic phthalate.

00:09:07.760 | So that was a great step forward,

00:09:10.300 | but that's like one chemical, right, in one product.

00:09:15.300 | And that was a battle.

00:09:17.340 | So you see how hard it is to do this, extremely hard.

00:09:22.340 | There's a company, Bbron, which makes hospital products,

00:09:27.220 | and they are very forward-thinking,

00:09:30.080 | and they set up a factory in Florida

00:09:33.760 | to make alternative IV bags

00:09:36.480 | out of another product, polyolefin.

00:09:39.880 | And the problem is that we're not sure

00:09:43.720 | about the safety of polyolefin.

00:09:45.840 | So it gets really difficult.

00:09:47.920 | You know, you can say, "Remove DEHP,"

00:09:50.440 | but now we scientists have to say,

00:09:53.280 | "What does it mean for a chemical to be safe?"

00:09:56.480 | And we don't know that.

00:09:57.820 | I don't mean to disillusion you and your listeners,

00:10:01.560 | but that's a huge challenge that we're up against.

00:10:05.200 | We know it's safer, we know it's safer,

00:10:07.940 | and we know what the bad actors are,

00:10:09.640 | and we know the things we don't want to be exposed to,

00:10:11.980 | but we have to be careful when we think

00:10:14.360 | about what do we want to put in instead.

00:10:17.040 | - If people are interested in limiting their exposure

00:10:19.320 | to these endocrine disruptors,

00:10:20.540 | one of the key questions that's going to come up again

00:10:22.460 | and again, especially in light of PCOS and sperm counts,

00:10:25.120 | is we can't control what happened to us during pregnancy.

00:10:30.200 | But once we have some sense of agency

00:10:32.560 | over what we put into our body

00:10:33.880 | and how we put it into our body,

00:10:35.740 | do you think that there's plasticity

00:10:42.400 | and resilience to this system?

00:10:44.480 | So, you know, God forbid, if somebody was exposed

00:10:46.800 | to a lot of these things early on, can they, you know,

00:10:49.200 | by making changes, can they rescue themselves

00:10:52.760 | to any degree? - No.

00:10:53.600 | - No? - No.

00:10:54.440 | - So it's really just dependent on what your parents did.

00:10:56.800 | - Yes, that's not to say that your own exposure

00:11:00.480 | cannot change things further and make things worse.

00:11:02.840 | But here's a fact.

00:11:05.540 | If a male's mother smokes when he's in the womb,

00:11:10.540 | then he has a, this is a Danish study, by the way,

00:11:15.020 | 50% reduction in sperm count.

00:11:17.200 | - If his mother smoked while he was in the womb,

00:11:18.880 | how much smoking are we talking?

00:11:20.440 | - I don't know, I don't remember.

00:11:22.240 | But the reason I bring this up is because

00:11:25.200 | there's nothing he can do to change that, okay?

00:11:29.240 | If he smokes as an adult, he has, I think,

00:11:32.600 | a similar reduction in sperm count.

00:11:34.680 | He can stop and his sperm will be restored.

00:11:38.480 | He can get his sperm health back.

00:11:40.280 | But whatever happened in the womb stays in the womb,

00:11:42.520 | if you will, so it's developmental.

00:11:45.160 | It's not going to, you know, it's gonna be there for life.

00:11:49.220 | And that's true for the brain as well.

00:11:50.920 | So I think anybody who's thinking of conceiving a pregnancy

00:11:55.920 | or pregnant has a responsibility to really learn

00:12:02.280 | how to reduce their exposure.

00:12:04.540 | Because these things are, by the way,

00:12:05.960 | passed on for several generations.

00:12:07.920 | It's your child and your child's child,

00:12:10.400 | because the germ cells for your grandchild

00:12:14.080 | are going to be carried in within your child.

00:12:17.140 | - So germ cells are not germs as in infectious germs?

00:12:20.600 | - Right, right, right.

00:12:21.440 | - It's the cells that will produce the egg and sperm,

00:12:24.040 | that germinate, hence the word germ.

00:12:27.000 | - So it's a huge responsibility.

00:12:29.480 | And I think people should take it very seriously,

00:12:32.020 | that they have, you know, they're going to be affecting

00:12:37.540 | the health of subsequent generations.

00:12:39.120 | Some labs say it's seven generations.

00:12:40.980 | I don't know if that's true,

00:12:42.000 | but certainly three generations.

00:12:44.260 | (upbeat music)

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How to Reduce Chemical Exposure in Your House | Dr. Shanna Swan & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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