The Latest Science on Microplastics — And What They’re Doing to Your Body | Dr. Shanna Swan

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People measure them in their blood, they've been measured in placentas, they've been measured in seminal fluid, they've been measured in breast milk. They're breakdown products, very small breakdown products of plastic and do harm in two ways. They carry the chemical, the chemical is piggybacked on the little particle, and then they invade the cells and that invasion, their presence in the human body, in the cell, itself causes harm. It's not anything you have any control over, really, because they're so prevalent in our water and in our air and in everything we eat and smell and drink. Where are they coming from? And the answer is everywhere, and that's kind of scary. Let's talk about the testing. Is it worth people doing the testing? If you want to learn what's in your body and then commit to go on and make changes in your life, you can. Today I'm joined by Dr. Shanna Swan to discuss the invisible threat of microplastics. 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Go to bigbolthealth.com slash Dr. Hyman, that's DRHYMAN, and use the code hyman15 to save 15% off your first order. Dr. Swan, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I'm excited to talk to you about this topic of endocrine disruptors and more specifically microplastics, which is something that's in the zeitgeist now as a problem that people are worried about, freaked out about, don't know what to do about. And you recently were instrumental in a movie through your action science initiative called the Plastic Detox, which is how to get plastic out of your lives. And I think we're going to get into all of that, but I kind of want to just start out by thanking you for your work and thanking you for highlighting the importance and the reality of these endocrine disrupting chemicals and how they affect us. And we're just chit chatting a little bit before the podcast. And years ago, God, it must have been close to 30 years ago, I read this book called Our Stolen Future by Theo Colburn. And it was kind of like a silent spring book. It was this book that kind of really kind of set the stage for how these environmental toxins were not just causing cancer, but we're having huge endocrine disrupting effects on fertility, sperm count, hermaphrodism in animals, weird stuff, what was going on that is so bizarre in affecting reproductive health across all species, including humans. And I think that work is only compounded and you've been instrumental in unpacking some of that. So before we get into the whole world of microplastics, I'd love for you to share how kind of you got into this work, how you first came to understand that these compounds were ubiquitous, how they were affecting human health, and particularly how they were affecting human reproduction, what kind of led you down that path? Yeah. So I was asked to join a committee of the National Academy of Sciences who was the committee was asked to look at the question, do chemicals in the environment that are hormonally active affect human health? Should we be worried about that? Kind of the same question we're asking today, in some ways. And I joined that committee as I believe they brought me on as a neutral. They have usually neutrals and people on either side of the question. And at that point, I didn't even know what an endocrine disrupting chemical was. So I was definitely neutral, although I had looked at environmental factors that affected fertility for a long time. I hadn't looked at this question of endocrine disrupting chemicals. So that's how I got into it. I got into it. I went to the committee. The first thing they asked me to do was to look at a study out of Denmark that claimed that sperm pound had declined 50% in 50 years. Yeah. That was the Carlson paper. And that paper, when I first looked at it, I thought, probably not, probably not going to hold up under scrutiny because it was kind of thin. You've probably seen it. It doesn't have a lot of right. I remember that study. So were you impressed? Why? I'm curious. I mean, it certainly got my attention. Also, the changing birth rates between male and female offspring was also really fascinating to me how that number was shifting. And so that all kind of got my attention. And this was really around 30 years ago. And 1995 is when you joined the National Academy of Sciences. And I still in the future came out in 96. So I was like, oh, wow, this is a thing. This is happening, right? So what I did was, as you probably know, I and my colleagues, I had two colleagues that worked for about a half a year trying to make that Carlson trend go away. So we looked at things that might explain it like, are there changes in smoking, changes in obesity rates, changes in how sperm count was measured, and so on and so forth. And put all these variables into a large model, 61 studies we got all the data from, put it in a big model, ran the model. And then the big surprise was that that didn't change anything, not to the first decimal place, a slow. And you're a statistician by training. You got your PhD in statistics. So this is like, you know this stuff. Yeah, I could not make it go away. That's what I was trying to do. I was trying to make this trend go away. I could not do it. And so I had to take it seriously. And that's when I kind of dove in to this question of, is sperm count declining? Why is it declining? Where is it declining? And that wasn't specifically focused on any particular chemicals. But then the next big jump for me was when I was traveling with a chemist friend to Japan, John Brock, and he said, Shana, you should look at phthalates. So that's kind of another big change in my life. And I said, John, why should I look at phthalates? Because I had never heard of them. Okay, so what a naive question, right? And so he told me two things. First of all, he said they were in everyone in the United States, as far as they could determine at CDC, because they had the NHANES study that sampled a representative sample of the US population. And you could see that it was positive. It was detected in the sample, almost 100%. And then he said, and this was kind of the thing that got me most interested, he said that his colleagues in the National Toxicology Program had shown that when a pregnant rodent, rat or mouse, was exposed to phthalates, that their male offspring developed atypically. And what they did was they had a less male typical genital tract. And we can talk about that some more, I'm sure we will. But they gave this the name the phthalate syndrome. And this was very interesting. I didn't realize this till much later, but this is the only environmental chemical that has a syndrome named after it. Okay, there's fetal alcohol, but that's not an environmental chemical. So this was really kind of, you know, changed the whole field in a way. Now we, yeah, we started having to look at like, what are these? And are there others? And to raise the possibility, you see, that a prenatal exposure to a manmade chemical could change the life's passage, the lifelong development of an offspring. Yeah, right? And so, it's kind of wild. Yeah, kind of wild. So that got me into, in a big way, into looking at this, because what I then asked was, is it happening in humans? And that was kind of the big breakthrough for me. When I found, we can talk about how I did that if you want, but I did find that's the phthalate syndrome in humans. So before you go on, before you go on, what are phthalates and where they found and how are we exposed to them? Because I think people have heard that term. They might not know what it is, just like you didn't know what it was. It's likely that people are like, what is that? Anyway, actually, in Europe, they're in Europe, they're banned. They're like the little rubber duckies that, you know, babies were playing with. They're actually being in rubber duckies here, too. They are, they're now they are, but they weren't. So what are they? So these are chemicals that are added to plastic. And by the way, they're derived from fossil fuels, which is interesting to keep in mind. That's your chemicals. Yeah. They have a lot of interesting properties, say that they lend to the plastic. So they're put in to give it properties and the phthalates are put in into the plastic to make it soft and flexible. And they're very, it's a large class of chemicals. They're fairly diverse. And they're measurable in the human body pretty easily, which makes my work much easier because they're water soluble. And being water soluble, they get into the urine and as metabolite, they're metabolized. And so we measure metabolites of phthalates in the urine fairly easily. Everybody listening can do this. They can get their body burden of phthalates by peeing into a container and having it tested. Yeah. Yeah. So that makes it very accessible. The company that I use is called Million Marker, but there are other companies that do that, I believe, and certainly the government does it. So it's now measurable. Once we know this, we know it's measurable. And we know something about what it does because of those animal studies. But let me just add that it does other things besides making plastic soft and flexible. For example, it helps the absorption through a skin barrier or other barriers of chemicals. And so for it's added to hand lotion. And it's also added to pesticides. This is so interesting because if you're going to increase absorption, you would like that pesticide to go into the plant, so it's added as so-called an inert ingredient, although it's not inert. And another important thing it does, it helps retain scent and color. So it's added to makeup. So lipstick and products you put on your skin as well as fragrance. It's actually in all fragrance products. And that's a pretty big exposure. Because it helps. And everything's scent. Everything's scent. You're laundry detergent. You name it. So it's banned in rubber duckies, but it's in everything else. And it's still there. I just wanted to say about the banning. There was a lot of discussion about what should be banned, whether they should be banned after our studies and others came out. And finally, they decided that they would ban it in children's toys. That's the rubber duckie. But I've always been upset about that because a pregnant woman, particularly if she has no kids in the house, is not handling children's toys. That's not how she's getting her. But she's putting on makeup and lotion. And she's eating food that's been stored in phthalate containing containers, soft plastic containers, and so on and so forth. So she's not being protected by this legislation of 2008. Consumer Protection Act of 2008 did not protect pregnant women. And we still don't have good... Or the rest of us. Or the rest of us. Right. But for me, the pregnant woman is particularly critical because of the Thales syndrome, because the fetus is particularly vulnerable, especially in the first trimester or the first part of the first trimester. And I'm sure we'll talk about that in more detail. But that's when the pathway for the Thales syndrome is laid down at that time. Yeah, I think it's important. And I think the doorway into understanding this for you was understanding the role of phthalates in animal reproductive health and then human health. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Phthalates are just one of thousands of petrochemically derived compounds that are in everything, everywhere, all at once. And what's interesting to me is that in medicine, we're taught that the dose makes the poison. Right? This is Paracelsus's famous line. The dose makes the poison. One glass of wine, fine. If you have two bottles of wine, probably not so fine. However, in the realm of what we call these xenobiotics, which are foreign compounds that have biological effects, and particularly, they have estrogenic effects. They seem to be causing harm at very low levels. And from my understanding, they're not additive. So one plus one isn't two, one plus one might be a thousand. And there's thousands of these that are in and on and around us, and that are affecting us. So can you kind of unpack how these are, where are these all are found, what they are, and how they're synergistically affecting us, and the kinds of things we're seeing in the science over the last 30 years about how they really truly impact all aspects of human health, not just reproductive health. At 66, I pay close attention to how my body feels, especially my energy, my strength, and my resilience. And aging doesn't mean we have to slow down or stop doing things we love. And that's why I'm genuinely excited about Timeline Powered by Mydipure. And I've been talking about it for years. Since adding into my daily routine, I have personally noticed a real positive difference in my energy. In fact, I recommended it to many of the important women in my life because mitochondrial health becomes especially important for women in midlife when changes in hormones can affect energy, muscle health, and metabolism. And what I like about Mydipure is that it's backed by serious science. 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A few weeks ago, I had a fall while riding my bike and I ended up with some pretty good road rash on my face. It reminded me how powerful some of our body's natural healing tools can be when we support them with the right things. Now, one of the things I discovered during my recovery was red light therapy, which has been studied for its ability to support cellular energy and healthy cellular responses. Now, that's why I've been using the red light face mask from Buncharge, a wellness brand that makes science back tools designed to help you optimize everything from sleep and recovery to energy, circadian rhythm and skin appearance. Their red light face mask combines both red and near infrared light, which penetrates deeper into the skin to support skin elasticity, texture, tone, and improve overall skin appearance. It's incredibly easy to use. I just wear it for about 10 minutes while winding down in the evening. It's lightweight, comfortable and completely noninvasive. Buncharge ships worldwide, offers free shipping on the red light face mask, offers a 12 month warranty, and it's even HSA and FSA eligible. Upgrade your routine. Head to Buncharge.com slash Hyman and use the code Hyman for 15% off. That's B-O-N-C-H-A-R-G-E dot com slash Hyman and use the code Hyman. Phthalates are a class of several chemicals, which have a similar structure and similar effect. By the way, the phthalates are androgen lowering. They're anti androgens. So they're particularly important for things that affect the male side, but the females are also, as you know, of course, the females need their testosterone also. By the way, just a little aside in one of our studies, we asked women about their sexual satisfaction and frequency, and women who had higher levels of phthalates had lower satisfaction and lower frequency. Interesting. Because lower testosterone. That is through the testosterone. There are other chemicals that affect other hormonal systems, and a really important one for me, studying environmental health, are the bisphenols. So I think everyone knows about BPA, and that's one bisphenol, bisphenol A. There are many others, and they're up in the market now at bisphenol S and bisphenol F because there was concern about A. So the manufacturers said, oh, okay, we'll just swap out A for these look-alike chemicals, bisphenol F and S, and then we can put on our models BPA-free, but they didn't remove the risk. Okay. So just a little aside, that's another class. There's another very large class, which are the PFOS chemicals, so-called the forever chemicals, and these are affecting the immune system and in important ways. And this is kind of scary because they're, whoa, they're in so much that we use every day. They're in the Teflon pans. They're barriers. I think of them as barrier chemicals. They lay down a barrier in your frying pan, in your pizza box, in your rain jacket, if you play sports, in your sports clothes. You're Lulu Lemon Out Piss. Well, I try not to mention brands, but... I'm happy to. Because what are they doing? They're putting a barrier between the dirt and your skin or the rain and your skin. So they're laying down a protective barrier. That sounds good, but in fact, they're conveying harm because they interfere with your antibody response to vaccines, for example. They're actually pretty powerful. And there are arguably 80 hormones in the body. I'm not sure. I'm not an endocrinologist, but there's a large number of hormones, probably more being discovered all the time. And so when we talk about a hormone altering chemical, we're talking about something that can affect very, very many things in the body. And these are critical because the hormones are signaling agents that transport information from one gland to another and keep your body running. So if you're going to mess with those, you're going to mess with everything in the body. That's pretty overwhelming. Yeah. So it's not just a reproductive health. It's pretty much everything. And they're linked to cancer. They're linked to heart disease. They're linked to obesity. They're called obisogens. They're called autogens. They cause autoimmune disease. They're called obesity. Because they cause obesity. So it looks like they're affecting cognitive health, things like Parkinson's diseases certainly linked to these environmental chemicals, depression, mood disorders. I mean, you go through the spectrum of all chronic illnesses. In some ways, all of them can be triggered by some levels of environmental toxins. And what's happened in the last 150 years, I mean, when you were born in 1936, which is amazing, you're going to be 90 probably when this podcast comes out. So happy birthday. When you were born, everything was organic. There was no conventional sort of industrial agriculture. There weren't these chemicals everywhere and everything all the time. And we've done this to ourselves over the last 100 plus years. And now we're in this pickle where we're finally discovering the science of how these things impact us. And the question is, how do we go about addressing this clearly is having affecting fertility, sperm counts, sexual function, and all these other things that are quite concerning. But but I kind of before we get into instead of what to do about it, I really want to kind of go into this world of microplastics, because it's something that's currently in the zeitgeist, people are talking about it, concerned about it, want to test for it. I had my microplastic tested, I don't know if it was a good lab or not, but it was like off the chart. And I'm like, God, I don't I cook, I have only glass containers, I try not to drink out of plastic bottles. I mean, I do my best. And I know what I'm kind of aware I filter my water. I'm like, but it's frightening to see what was going on in my body, and how and how I might be affected by this. So it was a sort of a seminal paper that came out in the New England Journal of Medicine, which talked about microplastics in the atheromas or the plaques in arteries. And now that was linked to increased risk of cardiovascular events. And that was that was a pretty compelling bit of data. So can you tell you about what are microplastics, nanoplastics, where they found, what's the difference between microplastics, plastics and plasticizers? And like, what's the science about these things in human health? First of all, when we started studying when John Brock said to me, you should study phthalates, he wasn't thinking about didn't know about microplastics, that was not a thing of that. And that's a relatively new area of work. And, but there's a lot of overlap. And let me just say, we didn't know about microplastics, but we knew about particles harming us. And you know, and you as a physician, you know that we have asbestos. Asbestos were particles that went into the lungs and caused asbestosis. And they also had caused chemical harm. So they're similar. And, you know, silicone also, silicosis. So, so it's not to let that the phenomena of particles carrying chemicals and themselves being harmful. We know this, but we didn't know it about endocrine disrupting chemicals until recently. So it's their breakdown products of, of, very small breakdown products of plastic. And that do harm in two ways, at least where we may find more, but they convey, they carry the chemical. So their chemicals piggybacked on the little particle, and then they invade the cells. And that invasion, their presence in the human body, in the cell itself causes harm that is different than the chemical harm. Right. So, so that's, you know, microparticles 101 or something. But the other thing to know about them, I think, really importantly is that measuring them is extremely difficult and expensive. And you have, you were able to get measured, I don't know what tissue you measured, but blood, blood, yeah, yeah, blood test. Yeah. So people measured them in their blood, they've been measured in plus centers, they've been measured in seminal fluid, they've been measured in breast milk, they've been pretty much any fluid that's gone through the body, a body that's contaminated by plastic will pick up these little particles. And, but the measurement of these will also reflect the particles in the surrounding environment in which they are measured. So if they're measured, if they're to collect them in a autopsy, you collect them in a place where, you know, in a hospital where women are giving birth, you're going to get lots and lots of micro particles from the environment. And this is, makes it very difficult, a challenge to measure these without contamination. Because they're in the air is what you're saying. They're in the instruments that are used to collect the sample from, you know, the whatever, the center. And, and so this is a big challenge to the field. And it also makes it very expensive. So just it's very easy, I told you, for you to get your urinary metabolites of chemicals measured by sending in your urine. It is not easy to get your micro plastics measured. It's a much harder process. Yeah. And more expensive. Where do we find these things? Where are they? Where are we getting the most exposures? That's a great question. Everybody wants, yeah, where are they coming from? Right. And the answer is everywhere. And that's kind of scary. We're, but I would say, you know, think about how can things get in the body, right? You can take them in through your mouth as ingestion. So food, drink, very important, perhaps the most important, I can't be sure. And then we get them through inhalation. We breathe them in. So in our air. And then we get them through our skin. And that's the through our absorption. And there's another route, which is not very common, not studied very much, which is if you enter the skin, say you get a shot, or you get blood drawn, that will introduce some as well. But getting your blood drawn, just having a needle in your arm will be, I haven't seen a study on that, but I've seen that written up that that is possible. Yeah, because you're breaking the barrier. All of these are breaking barriers in a way. You know, they're, yeah, so it's another, what do you think about? How do things get in the body? Those are all that people have mentioned. Yeah. So, but the thing to remember is it's not anything you have any control over, really, because they're so prevalent in our water and in our air and in everything we eat and smell and drink. And, you know, that it's very hard to think about how we could defend ourselves against them. I mean, I would suggest taking a lot of care with your water, because that is a very common source of exposure. In my house, we actually distill our water, which sounds complicated, but it's not hard and it's not expensive. It's free, actually, once you buy the machine, make sure you buy the thing plastic-free. Okay. And then there's filtering and you have to worry about plastic and the filters and changing the filters and so on. And there's reverse osmosis, RO, which is, all of these things are technical to take machines, they take effort and allow for possible additional contamination, I would say. You have to be careful of that. But water is really important and bottled water is not great. Just not great. So, filtering your water or distill water if you can, right? And does reverse osmosis filter actually work for removing microplastics? Well, I can't say about microplastics. It works for keeping out exposure, whether it keeps out all microplastics, I can't say. I don't know. Well, before we get into the ways of reducing exposure, so I think there are ways and I think it's important to think about those as best you can. I want to go back to the biological impacts of these things. And what do we know now in 2026 about what these microplastics are doing to human health? But I have to say, I'm not distinguishing the harms from the plasticizers and from the microplastics. Okay. There are... You see them as a continuum of harm? Not so much a continuum as inseparable in a way because if you're going to be getting the plastic pieces in your body, you're going to be have the hitchhikers there too, right? The chemicals that are riding along with them. You can't keep them out. You can't have the microplastics without the hitchhikers. I mean, I've done lots of studies on phthalates and I've been studying the phthalate urinary metabolites, but undoubtedly all of those people that we studied also had microplastics, which we did not study, right? So it's very hard to separate them. They're kind of a... Yeah, you have to take them together. So in that whole category, what are the human harms? Like what are the things that people should know that they might be causing or that the data suggests that they could be causing? The outcomes or the... Yeah, like what do they do? I mean, we talked about reproductive health, sperm count, fertility, changing the genitals, all kinds of weird stuff, but what else is it doing to human health? Well, first of all, I have to say I'm a reproductive epidemiologist where I live, if you will, is in the reproductive system. And so that's what I know best. I also read a lot. So as you do and other people do, so I'm not sure that my expertise is... I'm not the right person to talk about obesity. You should talk to the author of Obesity Genes or... I haven't studied those specifically. You know, the relationship to cancer, a lot has been written on that. Parking is... There are experts in each of these areas and I would be reluctant. I would prefer to talk about reproduction because that's what I know. Okay, okay. But also saying that, yes, the harms are widespread and probably in every system in the body. Yeah, I agree. And I think from my perspective, looking at this more as a doctor from the high level, like looking at all the different things that it can affect, it's clear that the underlying drivers is inflammation, oxidative stress, immune dysregulation, endocrine disruption, and it kind of also like this Trojan horse, as you mentioned, for all the other chemicals that come into our bodies. Cardiovascular health, obesity, diabetes, autoimmune diseases. So we're seeing a rise of all these things and I think it's not the only reason, but it's clearly a major reason that hasn't been looked at. And I think that from my perspective, people are thinking, okay, well, what do I do? Like, how do I find out if I have them? How do I test for it? What can I do to protect myself? Am I just going to be at the mercy of this? And what needs to happen also in a regulatory level? So maybe you can kind of talk about what the diagnostic sort of framework is around this. Is it worth trying to find out what your levels are and then follow on a protocol and then retest? Or should we just be focusing on reducing our exposures? Help us kind of think through this because people are listening and are probably like freaking out. And I'm like, yeah, what do I do? You know? One thing I would say is watch the plastic detox movie because there's a Netflix, right? Yeah, Netflix movie. Now it came out in March and it's very widely watched, seen and shown. And that's just kind of an introduction. And I think it will give people hope because what happens in, can I just say briefly what happens in the film? Yes, please. Okay. I'll just tell you what this is when we conducted an intervention where we changed things in people's lives in order to change their health. The things we changed was exposures to these chemicals we've been talking about. And what we hoped to change in their lives was their reproductive health. So to do that, we enrolled, and this is very small, is a very small pilot, okay? We enrolled six couples, one of whom dropped out for personal reasons. So very small. We enrolled them at the beginning of a three-month intervention. And then we got information about that. We got a lot of information. We got a Seaman sample using an at-home collection kit by Fellow. Meet Fellow is the company. It worked very well. We also got their urine using Millian Marker. And then we asked them lots and lots of questions. And Millian Marker has a team that's trained to ask people about their exposures and to inform them about what the risks of these exposures are. So it's an educational component too, because that educational component and the testing component. In their serum, sorry, in their urine, we got the levels of the metabolites. So we knew what their exposure was when they started. And we repeated that halfway through, which was six weeks. And then we repeated it after 12 weeks, which was the end of the intervention. So here, the picture is pretty clear. You start out, you know what's in their body. You tell them how to reduce it. They try. They reduce it. And then we get their levels at the end. As far as their health goes, we get their sperm, motility, morphometry, count, concentration, all these good things at the beginning, at the middle, at the end. And then we see who gets pregnant. Now, who are these people? These were people who had been trying for more than a year to get pregnant. And they had no obvious causes of their infertility. So idiopathic infertility. And they had to be willing to do this and be willing to be filmed, which is a pretty big bar, and wanting to do this. But if you're listening, you don't need this intervention, you can do your own intervention, which is really interesting. And several people I've talked to, hosts of shows and reporters are doing this now. You could do it if you want. You know, it's very easy to get a kit, send your urine in, have it tested, try to lower your exposure following the tips in the film, on plasticyourlife.com. We'll give you a lot of tips. I'll give you tips. And then try that for three months. And why three months? Well, it's because it takes 70 days to make a sperm. So we are approximately giving a little window there. And of course, the exposure to both the man and the woman matters. So you know, and then you see what happens. You see, have your levels gone down, has your sperm count gone up. And then if you add, which we hope to do, serum testing, home serum testing is more difficult than home urine testing. Yeah. But we are adding that and hoping to get hormone levels as well. So that's kind of the, it's not rocket science. It's pretty simple. And what did you find? And did you see after three months of doing kind of a plastic detox that people's numbers improved? Absolutely. Absolutely. And there's sperm function improved? To non-detect from quite high levels. And that's shown in the film. And we also published a paper containing a scientific paper in a peer review journal with these data. So their levels went down. And the main, the main, the levels went down, but the main health impacts related to the sperm function, motility, morphology, did that change? Yes. Yes. There are semen parameters. That's really helpful. Yes. I'm excited. I'm thrilled actually to have this, for the small sample, having this strong a result. And then we have several pregnancies as well. And three of the five. And were these in couples that were struggling to get pregnant? These were absolutely couples that had tried for more than a year, some as much as 10 years to get pregnant. And yeah, it's quite encouraging actually, because it was not hard. Now, this was a particularly intense intervention in the sense that they talked to Million Marker once a week. I went to their homes twice, even though they were spread around the whole country, because I wanted to see their homes and meet them and talk to them one-on-one. And it was so gratifying to get to know them and see them go through this journey. It's thrilling to them, and for me actually, to know that we can do this. Everybody can do this. These were not like special, we chose them people. They raised up their hand. They said, we'll do this. We're infertile and we'll try. And they did. That's amazing. And Million Marker is a consumer environmental exposure testing company that looks at endocrine disrupting chemicals. And it uses urine and it can detect plastics and personal care products. And they're looking at things like bisphenols, like BPA, BPS, BPF. These are, BPA may be reduced in certain products, but they replace it with alternatives that are just as bad, or maybe worse, who knows. And it looks at phthalate, metabolized parabens, which are a lot of skincare creams, sunblock oxybenzone, which is actually a lot of sunblock. So people are using all these things that think they help to help themselves, but they're actually potentially harming themselves. And so can you talk a little bit about some of these chemicals like bisphenol A, bisphenol A, BPS, BPF, and some of these compounds that are part of this whole microplastic family? Well, we've talked a little bit about phthalates and the other sort of big elephant in the room, if you will, for me is because of my focus on reproduction is the bisphenols. And the bisphenols, so I think of bisphenols and phthalates as kind of evil twins, because one of them, the phthalates makes plastic soft and flexible, and it lowers testosterone. And the other one makes plastic hard, firm, hard, and raises estrogen. So they're kind of, no. And so we're, I could talk quite a bit about the phthalates, but the bisphenols are very, very prevalent. And every time you go to the store and get a receipt, you know, would you like a receipt? I say no thanks, and you shouldn't be touching that either. I make a pest of myself because it's, they, I just say send it electronically. Why would you test it? Because when you touch that, we've done a study, study which shows, they touch that, particularly if you have hand cream on, you're getting a lot of bisphenols into your body. And every cashier gets a lot. So all those credit card receipts, you don't touch the receipts. The ATM receipts, the gas station receipts, right? Right. I mean, half of them sent electronically. So, and then bisphenol lines a lot of things. And I think what everyone here listening would do well to pay attention to is that it lines tin cans. It lines all your tin cans, unless there's a specific effort by the company to say they are not using bisphenol in their linings. And you can look for that usually on the package, read that, because it's a, you know, they have to make that effort and pay for that. You do this in a different way. And that's, you know, something to call attention to. So choose, try to choose tin cans, which are not lined with bisphenol of any kind, A, B, F, whatever, alphabet, suit, you know, you put in there anything that starts with bisphenol, B, G. But, but does that mean you can't have things in cans? You can, but you need to look for companies that package their food in cans that are not lined with bisphenol. There are alternatives, but again, I don't mention brands, but you can look at for that on the package, or you could go to Environmental Working Group, for example, and look at how they rate these things. There are other companies like Clearia, and so on that you can go to, to check out. Clearia is an app. You can use it to scan a bar, you know, on the thing you're buying, you scan that barcode and you can see what's in it, and including in the past. And it's called Clear? Clear, yeah. C-L-E-A-R-Y-A. Yeah, it's an app. That's helpful. Put that in the show notes. I know you've heard me talk about the importance of getting enough protein to maintain muscle as we age, but sometimes even when you eat well, meals can leave you feeling heavy, bloated, or sluggish. 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That's fatty15.com, FATTY15.com slash hymen today and use the code hymen to get 15% off. There was legislation introduced by Dan Feinstein in 2009 called the Ban Poisonous Addives Act, which meant to really limit and phase out BPA in food containers, beverage containers, can linings, and other FDA regulated food contact materials. But it was defeated because of the industry's massive investment in fighting it and lobbying against it. Where are we now with legislation around this? Where are we in terms of having consumer protection against these toxic chemicals? Not very far in this country. I want to mention two things. One is we know how to regulate products because the FDA does it and they do it well. They've done it for a long time and they did it in response. I'm sure you know, but your listeners won't know, in response to two very dangerous chemicals in drugs. One of them was Psilidomide that caused children to be born without arms and legs. And one was DES, Diothylstylvestrol, which caused cancer in the children born to women who took it during pregnancy. These are historic. They're old, but they're really impactful because they changed the process of the FDA. FDA responded immediately to the DES information and took DES off the market within six months of the publication of Herp's paper showing that causes cancer. So that was responsive. It was quick and they kept on. And so we know that government can respond quickly. It can regulate well, but in this case, it's not doing it largely due to the pressure of the industries that are involved. And ultimately... And it's not just one drug. It's the entire chemical industry. It's not just one molecule that we're trying to ban. It's a whole class of things that are used in everything that we consume and use every day. It's quite huge. And I think, is there any current legislation on the books in Congress or in state legislatures that are trying to address this? Yes. Let me just say first, I would say that the best, the most successful has been the EU with the reach is the program that was put in place by the EU. The reach legislation. Yeah, reach legislation. And it has the really important caveat, which is if you want to bring in a new product and put it in commerce, you can't do that until it's tested for safety first. We don't have that. We don't have that. We have that for drugs, but we don't have it for other products in our daily lives. So that's really what one of the major things that has to change. And there is a TOSCA is under revision now and that will, depending how that goes, that could help. But it's a very difficult uphill battle and there are wonderful groups working on this without very much funding, of course. And fighting very big, big giants of industry. It's a very slow and difficult process. I mean, yeah, we all in America bought the line, better living through chemistry. And I remember being, you might remember this, but I was in New York City, lived in Queens in 1965 during the World's Fair. And there was such a big celebration of chemicals. DuPont had a whole little dance of routine and song and dance, literally song and dance about better living through chemistry. And we're all so naive in that point. And I think Rachel Carson had brought up some of these issues around pesticides and herbicides. But in terms of the rest of us, it wasn't a thing. It really needs to be, I think, legislation or even litigation that helps to move its industry out of this. Because it's only getting worse. And I'm seeing it in my practice as a doctor, the effect of these. And I actually measure these things. I look at urine, I look at blood, I look at like, burn, body burns of toxins, look at cell membrane levels of these things. Great. And it's quite staggering how much of a problem is when you start to look. Let's talk about, you know, the testing. Is it worth people doing the testing? Is it something they should think about doing and then reducing their exposures and then retesting? Is that a worthwhile endeavor for people who want to like find out where they're at? It costs money. You know, several hundred dollars. I don't remember the cost right now to do the whole program. And that's one thing I should point out that this is a problem that affects people of lower SES more than higher SES. Because they can afford to be tested. They can afford cleaner products, which are always more expensive. They can afford to shop in organic stores. We haven't talked about pesticides, but those are also endocrine disrupting. And they can't afford the time if they have, you know, working two jobs, three kids. I mean, who's going to take the time to check out the labels and, you know, worry about what they're putting on? It takes time. It takes energy, takes money. So, you know, there's this, this is not an equal opportunity hazard for everybody, right? But yes, I think if you can afford it, and if this will help you change your behavior, if you're going to go into it and say, well, I just want to know, but I don't want to do anything about it, then don't waste your time. I mean, why do that? If you want to learn what's in your body and then, uh, kind of commit to go on and make changes in your life, you can. You can, but you have to make the effort and you have to put in, you know, you have to do it and you have to want to do it. And then you can do it. So let's talk about, let's say, you know, with or without diagnostic testing, which I think is an interesting thing, but we can all assume we're basically poisoned. So we should just reduce our exposures. You mentioned a few things like, you know, distilling water or filtering your water. You talked about the exposures in air, should have air filters. I have air filters in my house, in my bedroom, and in the place I spend most of my time. I try not to buy things in plastic, but it's almost impossible. You know, like, how do people go about really reducing their exposures in their home, in their skincare products, in the environment that they're in, in their food? And how do we think about creating a systematic approach to reducing exposures? Because I think that's all we can really do at this point. And then, you know, the second follow-up question that we can talk about in a minute is, is there a way to get rid of this stuff? Like, besides just reducing your exposure, can you detoxify from it? So why don't we start out with like, how do we reduce our exposures? So I would say watch the plastic detox. You get a good idea. Watch the plastic detox. Okay, that's something I watch the most. Okay. Make a commitment to do this. Actually, what you're doing, each little thing is not going to be that important, but having a commitment to reduce your exposure in your life and in your family's life matters, because it takes an effort. You're going to have to take an effort to do this, make an effort to do this. And I would say I would start with your food. I think food and drink is probably the easiest and the most important, perhaps, target. And so that starts in the store. When I was doing the movie, I went around with Cecilia, who is a 12-year-old daughter of one of the couples. And I was really fun doing this with her, pointing out where the plastic was, and then looking at how we could avoid it in the store, you know, so looking, you can get bulk instead of wrapped production of flour and spices and so on and so forth. And then even in vegetables, some places have vegetables laid out, not wrapped. You can pick like several near me, because I live in San Francisco, but you can pick out a head or lettuce and pick out whatever you're buying. And what I did with Cecilia, I said, let's see if what this costs. So we looked at the cost of the unwrapped and the wrapped, and guess what? The wrapped costs more. We did it with fish, we did it with other things. So I would say right there, when you're buying the product, try to buy it, not wrapped in plastic. And if you're doing jars, do a glass jar rather than a plastic jar, and so on and so forth. So have your eyes open in the store when you're shopping, okay? Then we bring it home. Don't put it in plastic containers, because you're just undoing that good work, you just did. Okay. And yeah, so put it in a glass container. You can put it in ceramic. I save all my glass jars and reuse them, and why not? And then worry about it when you're cooking. We haven't talked about PFOS very much, but I think everyone knows that Teflon is something to be avoided in black plastic and so on. So think about what your food is touching on the way from your shopping bag to your stomach. Try to keep plastic out of the picture as much as you can. So like cast iron, stainless steel pots, yeah. Cast iron is great, it's cheap, and it's a little heavy to see, I would say, the drawback. But yes, we have many. Good for string training. I use it for string training. Double benefit, right? And let me just say here, it's kind of trite by now, but do not microwave food in plastic. Never, never, never, never. Because that's, you know, what happens is that the plasticizers which are added to the plastic are not tightly bound to that matrix, and so you heat it, the particles get active, they hop out of the plastic, they help into your food, they get into your body. So don't do that. Yeah. Avoid that if you can. That's a no-no. Don't microwave in plastic. Don't store your food in plastic. I mean, that's a problem with takeout and delivery, right? Because it's all in plastic, really bad plastic containers. I don't know how to get at that because a lot of the restaurants that are sending stuff out can't afford high-touch containers, so you know they're going to do what's cheap and quick, and then we get that exposure that way. And the food is put into the containers when it's warm, so it's going to absorb more of it. Yeah. So that is a problem, and takeout from restaurants is also, yeah, it's the same problem. Warm food, bad containers. Yeah. No, no. Okay, so we've got, you know, filter your water, maybe air filters in your house. When you shop, don't buy stuff wrapped in plastic. Buy in glass if you can. Don't cook with cookware that's got coatings on it that is non-stick that could be Teflon. I don't know if all non-stick is bad ceramic, maybe probably not bad, and that's more of non-stick. There are options, but be smart about it, and don't definitely cook anything in the microwave in plastic. Watch out for your skincare products, right? I think this is really important. That's the next level. Yeah, the Environmental Working Group has a great website, ewg.org, and they have an app called Skin Deep. I'm on the board of the Environmental Working Group, and they have really good resources. You can actually see what's in it. So, you know, you might not know that oxybenzone is actually a toxic plastic that's in almost sunscreens or parabens is in most skincare products. So, it's, you know, unfortunately, often are more expensive and they're more challenging to get, but I think if you're doing something every day to your body, like that's putting stuff on it, your skin basically, what I say to people is if you wouldn't eat it, you shouldn't put it on your skin. Because it goes through your skin. It goes through your skin, you're absorbing it. I mean, we know in medicine, we deliver all kinds of medicines through the skin. We have estrogen patches, we have naturopathic glycerin, cream, and paste. We put on people in the come-in-the-merdans room with a heart attack because it works so fast because it's absorbed right in the skin. We know this is possible. So, I think those are really important, simple things you can do. And what else would you suggest that people might think about besides those things that we just talked about? Fragrance. I would ask people to think about fragrance. Again, in our studies, we asked women what they used. These were pregnant women that we were interviewing. We asked them what they used in the last 24 hours. And then we asked, was it fragranced? And so, when the women reported use of fragrance products, their levels of several chemicals were higher, particularly the phthalates in their bodies. And so, this is not just perfume. It's also, your laundry detergent is fragranced. Candles are fragranced. You know, plugins in the wall, things you hang in your car, there's a little pine cone. Yeah, don't do that. If you can smell it, and maybe even if you like it, you like the smell of it, don't use it. And that's one of the things that was hardest for participants in the film, by the way. But there are some natural fragrances, right? There's essential oils that people use. So, there are things that are okay. Beeswax is great if you like to smell it. Beeswax, that's a really nice smell. Yeah. And there are brands that I wonder what you think of these that are like, quote, organic or more natural brands that like, for example, laundry detergent, there's a bunch of them. There's ECOVER, there's 7th Generation. Are those okay? If they're fragrance, are those also problem? I don't know. I don't know specifically that. But I mean, you know what would be great if you weren't sure, if you had the time to ask them manufacturers, if they got a lot of questions from people saying, what is the fragrance in here? And is it safe? And you know, that kind of question would really, I think, make a difference. Pile up if enough people did that. So, if you don't know, I would ask. All right. Well, this has been such a fascinating conversation. I'd like to ask you a set of rapid fire questions. Are you up for that? Sure. Okay. This one's obvious. You're turning 90 this month. Like, what's your longevity tips? You're sharp, you're smart, you look beautiful, like, I don't get it. What are you doing? And how do I subscribe? Thank you. I would say be interested in what you do and exercise. Watch what you put in your body and have friends. Friends. And I have a wonderful husband. I have a wonderful family. So, that's great. I'm really lucky. I don't know. And genes. I couldn't control my genes, but I'm sure they matter. Well, I think those are all really important, simple, but obvious tips that actually make a difference. So, it's not any secret sauce, it's just the foundations. Okay. What's the number one thing in terms of all these exposures that people can do? If you had to pick one thing, what would it be? Food. Food. So, watch your exposures in food. Okay. And then, you kind of see these cans and say, BPA-free, and it gives us aura of being safe. Is it safe? Are they safe? No, not necessarily. Probably not. Probably, if they took the trouble to put BPA-free on the label, they've already put in an alternative like BPS and BPS. That's the problem. It's like they add other stuff that sounds better, but it's not. What's the biggest myth about plastics that people believe? I think that it's recyclable. That it's recyclable. Okay, say more. Well, we all put our plastic in the recycle box. Me too. Me too. But very small percent of that is actually recycled, and it's dumped in faraway places that we don't have to worry about, and does harm there to the land landscape and to the people who are going through it and handling it. Just don't assume that once you throw it away, you don't have to care about it anymore. You do have to care about it. It's not going to disappear. I think that's important. I'm a friend of mine started a company called Hero Technologies, developing mushrooms, different strains of mycelium that actually can digest and break down mushrooms in landfills, and they're starting with diapers, but it's a kind of a cool idea. You mentioned food, but was that one other thing in your home that people could immediately remove that would make a difference? I would say after food, it would be your water, cleaning up your water, because there's so much exposure to your water. And then third would be air, filtering your, using a HEPA filter would be good. So there are things you can do. Water, air, food, I think those are important. What's worse, heating in plastic or storing in plastic? Oh, heating in plastic. No question. Heating in plastic. I knew that was clearly the answer. What's the biggest mistake people make in their kitchen? I think the biggest mistake is probably storing in plastic, because so much is stored in plastic. It's so hard. I have plastic in my kitchen. I have true confessions. I don't, I'm not, my kitchen is not plastic-free completely. And so that's, it's just really hard. And it's non-stop. It's coming in when you do takeout, and it's coming in when you shop, and it's coming. It's just hard to think of getting ahead of it. What do most people do every day they're not aware of that increases their exposures? Well, we didn't mention clothing, but yeah, that's something that we know we're just coming to belatedly, I would say, awareness of the chemicals. And there are many, many plastics in fibers and dyes and in our clothing. And it's everywhere. It's on our beds, it's on our sofas, it's on our bodies. And it's particularly concerning if you use clothing that has barriers like attendance, flight attendants, firefighters, sportswear, children's school uniforms, all PFAS is the classic chemical I'm talking about. That's added to all of these. And it's invisible to us. So stick with natural fibers, natural fibers, wool, cotton, silk, linen, right? Right. When you can, yes. And what's worse, a plastic straw or a plastic fork? Oh, boy, I don't know. I think you'd probably use that plastic fork more. And I don't know how they compare in terms of exposure. I don't know when that. Okay, if you were the environmental czar for America and the world, what would be the policy you would put in place to make things different? I would solve $2 million questions. Moonshot questions, one is how do we make plastics out of safer products rather than fossil fuels? So we know that there are plastics made of plants. There's potato-based plastics. Right now, they're kind of niche items, they're expensive. But I think money should be put into that. We should then solve the problem of how to get rid of the plastics once we've made them. And on the policy front, it's actually investing in those things. One more just to add to that. We need to be clear about what it means for something to be safe because we need to say safe for home, at what age, for what systems, and so on. Testing for safety is very difficult because it's easy to say it should be tested for safety before it's put out there. But think of all the tests you have to do. Test all these systems in the body and so on. So that's very difficult. It's a hard problem. And by the way, it shouldn't be consumers' problems, it should be governance problems. No. And manufacturers. I agree. And we didn't really dive into this, but you kind of hinted at it. In Europe, they follow something called the precautionary principle, which is something that's guilty until proven innocent. In America, it's innocent until proven guilty. So we introduce all these toxic chemicals. We don't make the manufacturers prove they're safe. We let them be in the marketplace. We let people be exposed. We let people get sick. And then maybe 10, 20, 40, 50, 100 years later, we go, oh, wait, we have a problem. And I think that's not a good framework for policy. It should be prove it. You're given a hall pass and let's see what happens. And I think that's really important. The last question is, what's the most surprising thing you've learned in your long and very career? Wow. I know. That's a hard one, right? I would say because I am an optimist, I learned that we can make a difference by our action, that we can clean up our act. And that really people want to. And so I want to make helping that happen. Thank you. That's amazing. Okay. People are going to find out more about you by going to your website, which is? Go to www.SeanSwan.com. You've got unplasticyourlife.com, right? Unplasticyourlife.com. That's not mine. That's the film or additional help. I would suggest you want to test your sperm. You go to Meet Fellow if you want to test your urine. You go to a Million Marker. And there are other companies coming out all the time. So this is not going to be the only ones. But I think the question is, do you want to know? Do you want to know what's in your body? Do you want to? Men don't ever know their sperm count, by the way. They just don't. So if you want to know about what's going on in your body and in your home, don't dive in. Don't be afraid. And yeah, do it. Well, we actually did a podcast on sperm as a biomarker for health. I think that's important. People don't understand that. So this is amazing. Thank you for your work. I hope you get to go for another 90 years. And I look forward to your next chapter and what you're going to help us understand about this very frightening world, but hopefully with some optimism and how we can protect ourselves and how we can push our governments to do the right thing. So thanks so much for your work and for being such a light in this whole dark space. Thanks for having me so much. I really enjoyed talking to you. And, you know, together we can make a change. If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the Dr. Hyman show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Dr. Hyman show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guest's opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at ultrawellnesscenter.com, and request to become a patient. 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