Zero Tolerance: Why There's No Safe Exposure to Carcinogens, with David Steinman @DavidSteinman2012

Foreign.

Welcome to this episode of the Feel freaking amazing podcast. I'm Wendy Trubo. Look. Our fearless leader Ed Levitan is here today. And today we have David Steinman on the podcast. He is the best selling author of the forthcoming book raising healthy kids how to protect your children from the hidden chemical toxins in our everyday lives. He's the chief officer of the nation's most active consumer rights nonprofit, the Health healthy Living foundation. And he's publisher of Healthy Living magazine. And he's going to talk to us today about how do we be anti toxic. And so David, welcome. Thanks for being here.

I'm so happy to be here. Thank you so much.

Our pleasure. What did you want to say?

Oh, I mean, first talk about. And we were just talking about what is antitoxin because.

Yeah, tell our listeners.

Well, I, you know, I've been doing antitoxic for about, for a long time, since before there was organic foods even. And I think it's a very, you have to be very. It's a kind of an active form. You know, we think of being low toxin and non toxic, but I think antitoxic is kind of searching out how to do things a little better. Just to give you an example, say you're buying a hose for your garden, right? It seems like such a mundane task, right? You go online and you buy it, you look for the price, right? That's what you do. Well, I've been buying hoses lately and I realized, you know, most of them are made from polyvinyl chloride. And in February we had that terrible train derailment in Palestine, Ohio where there was a, a number of cars came off the rails. There was a huge explosion. And that explosion was from polyvinyl chloride, which is a highly carcinogenic chemical. And not only was it dangerous to the people in Palestine, I also do work in Cancer Alley, Louisiana and I look at public source drinking water reports and folks in Cancer Alley actually have drinking water with polyvinyl chloride in it at times, which is really frightening because there's no safe level to a carcinogen. And in fact, a lot of regulators will tell you, well, these are very low levels. You don't have to worry about them. So I'm trying to get people to understand zero tolerance. There is no safe exposure to a carcinogen or a reproductive toxin. But in any event, here I am shopping for hoses and keeping in mind that I have friends in Cancer Alley are drinking water with pvc. I have more friends in east Palestine who just suffered through a Terrible train derailment that is going to hurt their health, their property values. And the chemical in common is polyvinyl chloride. And here I am on Amazon about to buy a hose with polyvinyl chloride. And so I'm thinking, wow, wow, wow. Is this really fair to my friends in Louisiana? Is this really fair to my friends in Ohio? I have a choice here. I can actually look for a hose that doesn't contain PVC and help my friends out all across this nation.

Wait, did you actually find a hose that didn't have PVC in it? You got to pay attention to this.

Ed, because this is really good news, because I am an avid gardener, so I go through lots of gardening implements, right? And then I'm getting tired of all this plastic because my friends are drink drinking water, as I said, with PVC and phthalates in it in Cancer Alley. So I did go on Amazon and I did search for it. I was. I was assertive. You know, that's what I mean by anti toxic. I was actually looking. I found a great hose that contains no polyvinyl chloride. It is made from polyurethane, but there's no PVC in it. And all the fittings were made out of stainless steel. Then I had to buy a nozzle. Most of the nozzles.

Good luck with that.

Are made from plastic, right? Hard plastic, yeah. And you use them for about six months, and then some little thing breaks on them and they won't spray or they spray too much. So this time I went out and I actually found a stainless steel nozzle. The old kind, the kind that we used to have when we were kids.

I grew up at those, actually. I don't know if you did, because you grew up in this, like, sort of more city. You didn't have a yard. Right.

Like, there's no.

No, I grew up with that.

So essentially, I did some really good things for my neighbors. I bought a hose without pvc. I cut down on our use of PVC and I cut down on our use of plastic totally just by buying a sprayer that was made out of stainless steel to last longer. That's.

I never thought about that, Ed. But, you know, you think about it, we spray this on our. On our vegetables and. And it's all rubber and it's. Or it's all plastic.

Yep.

Can we back up 20 steps? David, how'd you get into this? You know, what was the thing that had you be the. The anti toxin champion?

So I think I was probably one of the early victims of toxic Poisoning. I grew up in California, which is why I speak the way I do.

We'll forgive you for that. We're from Boston, so, you know.

Yeah. So I fished a lot from the Santa Monica Bay and I brought all my seafood home. We ate it as a family. I did this for many, many, many years. I grew up on this ocean and unknown to me, a chemical company called Montrose Chemical was manufacturing DDT in South Central Los Angeles and barging its DDT laced sludge to the Catalina Channel in barrels, hacking the barrels open and dumping them in the ocean where I was fishing.

Come on.

2000 tons of DDT were dumped in the Santa Monica Bay during the time I fished. And I was building up all this chemical. And we weren't told about this, but this was kept secret.

No, these are exposes that come out. Well, this is crazy.

When I was an investigative reporter, dolphins began washing up on the beaches filled with their blubber, was filled with pcb, which is another toxic chemical used in transformers to as a heat shield. And the dolphins were dying. And I was an investigative reporter. But instead of reporting on the dolphins, I organized a study with a friend of mine who is a physician, a marine biologist, and a toxicologist at usc. And we went to all the fishing piers and boats along the Santa Monica Bay and asked people if they would do a seafood consumption survey and if we could draw their blood and measure their level of pesticide and pcb. And this was at a time when no one was being told anything. This was in the 80s. We weren't being told anything. As it turned out. We got about 35 people to participate. And the people who are eating the most fish in the locally caught waters had much higher levels of DDT and PCB in their bloodstream than people who were not eating the locally caught fish or who weren't eating seafood at all. So we report Congressman Henry Waxman asked us to testify. Tom Hayden asked us to testify. The late Tom Hayden. And we did, did a joint congressional state hearing. The Santa Monica Bay got designated a Superfund site. An oversight group called Heal the Bay was formed and warnings were posted to tell people that the fish had a lot of PCB and DDT in them. And if you're pregnant or just want to don't have cancer, don't eat these fish. One of the people we interviewed was really touching. He was a Japanese American man, a postal carrier, and he was fishing on the Venice pier. And I remember this really clearly. His wife was there too. He had a bucket filled with croakers. Which were the most contaminated fish. And we asked if he could take his blood. He was very soft spoken. He said, sure, take it. We did. He had really high levels of ddt. We found that out later. But while we were taking his blood, he said, you know, I'm dying of cancer. And we looked at all the fish and we saw the results. He had liver cancer. And it was, it was very touching. And it just kind of shows you the results are there. You have to be really careful about your exposures. That's how I was one of the people who I got my own blood measured and I had really high levels of DDT and I was like barely 30 years old.

Did you have any clinical symptoms? I mean, what was your, did you say, oh, this explains my fill in the blank, whatever it is. Did you have, did you have experiences where you weren't.

Well.

I, I, I don't think I, I don't think I had physical symptoms in terms of neurology. But I do think these chemicals do influence us, everyone. When I was writing my new book, Raising Healthy Kids, I did a chapter called the Joy of Gender and I did.

Talking about frogs in California who are changing genders, you know, from the pesticides.

Yeah. You know, in nature we, we tend to think of things in terms of polarities, but in nature there are really spectrums and as human beings there are really spectrums. And our brain is not a monolith, it's more like a mosaic. And I was trying to help parents understand why is there so much gender fluidity today? You know, why are things changing in society so much? And everyone kind of looks at it superficially, but I like to look at it biologically or neurobiologically. And many of the chemicals that we're being exposed to, whether we're adults in our 50s or 60s or kids, are estrogenic. In nature. They're called endocrine disruptors and they actually in the body imitate the hormone estrogen and they can lock into the same cell receptors on our reproductive tissues or other.

Even tighter, they bind even tighter to your receptors than your normal hormones do. It's like a double dose, a whammy.

Yeah. And they're persistent? They don't break down?

No.

Also they're little, they're like viruses because they change the expression of our genes. They're not exactly estrogen. And our sex hormones are metabolized in different pathways. For example, estrogen can be metabolized in the body to a very non toxic form called estriol, or it can be metabolized into another highly toxic persistent form called estradiol. And when we get exposed to these xenoestrogens, it changes the expression so we can produce more of the toxic estrogen. Some chemicals, like phthalates, block the action of testosterone and so they interfere with our endocrine system differently. So you're asking me whether I was influenced by my exposures to ddt and I would say yes, but so was everyone else. So we probably aren't noticing it. But the big thing I'm trying to get across to parents or grandparents. Why are your kids, you know, so gender fluid? Why aren't they so concerned anymore about these, you know, castigating people who might seem different in their orientation or identity? Well, our generation, our Gen Z and Gen X, have completely chemical genes now, people like me. My dad was born before the World War II. His genes were less impacted by chemicals. This mainly happened after World War II, but, but I was definitely impacted by chemicals. So, you know, I'm don't feel like I the ideal representative of the Marlboro man or the Don Draper in society anymore. So if you're asking me how it's affected me, I think it has. I just think it's probably had a feminizing effect on everyone slightly because I think most of these chemicals that we're being exposed to tend to change the balance more toward estrogen than testosterone. So I think it's affected all of us in our society. So I have been impacted. I am one of the impacted. I stopped eating all the contaminated seafood and I wrote about this in Diet for a Poison Planet, my first book to show you which seafood was safe. And.

Is that before they were found to all have plastics or after?

Yeah, that's a long story about how I got involved in this, but it was because I got poisoned.

I was just saying. You weren't on our call. We have this program we're running called Feel Freaking Amazing. It's an eight week program and one of the male participants said he started this product called Estro Val Complete, which is designed to help you move the endocrine disruptors and move your estrogen out of your body when you're done with it, rather than recycling it or storing it. And he said to me, I don't really have man boobs, but I feel like my man boobs are a little bit smaller since starting this. He's like, I'm not going to stop taking it because I don't want man boobs. He's a really funny guy, but it's amazing what happens, especially for men, that breasts are not supposed to be part of your lexicon. But. But a lot of men have breasts now, and that's the impact of these forever chemicals and these endocrine disruptors.

That's so interesting. Wendy, my editor at Good Men Project, I never knew this, but he suffered male breast cancer. And this is, you know, it's. It's something where we have to be aware of this, that men can be impacted by breast carcinogens, too.

Let's drill into this, David, because, I mean, this is. This is our sweet spot. This is your sweet spot. So when people are listening and I think, let's set the stage. If you live on the earth, you're getting poisoned. So you know you're getting poisoned. But how would you know? Okay, okay, that's impacting me. What are there signs and symptoms that people can look for, aside from man boobs on men, that are going to be things that. That bother them? What are the things that you tend to tell people look out for?

Well, brain fog and I think premature aging and fatigue are signs of chemical overload. The more serious signs are things we're trying to prevent. I can't tell you, you know, how many cancers are occurring where I visit places like Cancer Alley. And that's too late. That's too late. You can all. You know, it's. I'm not saying it's too late. And because we. I don't want to take away hope from anyone. Also, this is a really manageable issue, chemical exposure. Don't throw up your hands and give up. I. It. It's very manageable. In my new book, Raising Healthy Kids, whether you're a grandparent or parent, I tell you how to manage the situation for you and your loved ones and reduce your exposures. But you know, kidney disease, liver malfunction. I think liver is a big thing, and liver and kidney are big things. ADHD in your kids, boy, you know, you can really help kids by. By and adults who have ADHD by reducing your exposure to neurotoxins. And people don't realize how prevalent the exposure is. One of the big tips I give anybody is, for example, when you're buying bread, why not buy organic? It's the same price every slice of bread my nonprofit has ever analyzed where pesticides contains nerve toxins, whether it's malathion, chlorperiphoros, or other organophosphates. So you can do something really simple. Just buy organic bread and you'll reduce your exposure. When you reduce Your exposure to nerve toxins, you will feel it mentally very quickly. Our RNA picks up environmental changes in the snap of a finger and it transmits those to DNA. And the more positive messages the environment gives our rna, the happier our DNA and our genes will be.

So I think. Yeah, yeah, I would say also all those vague symptoms that you go to the doctor for, that the doctor says, oh, you're just getting older.

Yeah.

Those are the symptoms of environmental toxicity. Right. Like the, you mentioned the brain fog, memory loss, fatigue, sleep dysfunction, gut issues, female issues. I know so many people who are having fertility challenges now. I can't even. And male fertility is decreasing at a rate of 1 to 3% per year. So it's rife. And then the autoimmune cancer, degenerative. So it's basically, if you're going to the doctor for something that's not strep throat or an ear infection or. What am I missing a mechanical issue? You know, like pregnancy is a mechanical issue. You know, it's going to be solved by time and moving that fetus.

I thought it was a parasite issue.

Yeah, it is a kind of a parasite. Then they turn into parasites when they take all your money. So. So, yeah, so I guess when you go big picture, anything that you're going to the doctor for that's not straight up mechanical or straight up infectious is. Is really in the purview of environmental toxins.

So. So how do we protect our kids, too?

How do we.

Obviously, eating organic grains is.

Even those can be contaminated with glyphosate. I mean, all the, all the legumes are contaminated. They're spray.

Yeah. Okay.

Don't get me going.

So I took a 360 degree view, whether it's for yourself or for your kids. And you're right, the diet is hugely important. And one of the myths I want to bust is that organic foods have to be more expensive. That's one of the big impediments to people buying organic. They think it's more expensive or they may think it's a fraud. And I want to say I look at pesticide monitoring reports all the time from different states, including California. And when you look at the reports for organic foods, they're very clean. I'm not going to give them 100% bill of health because there are always going to be some contaminant issues. Nothing's perfect. But if you compare your organic diet to a diet from conventionally grown foods, the pesticide exposure is much higher from the conventionally grown foods. And studies have actually shown a reduction in organophosphates to non detectable. In kids and adults who go organic, about two thirds of your diet should be organic to get those big significant reductions. So I do talk a lot about food and the other thing about it is, as I said, it's a myth that organic is more expensive. Say for example, your kids love strawberries, right? Or you love strawberries. Well, if, if you do look at strawberries, sometimes the organic strawberries are more expensive. But if you look for like a three pound bag of frozen organic strawberries and you get some non fat yogurt, that's a really good dessert and it's totally non toxic. The non fat yogurt is a good choice because most of the harmful pesticides in dairy foods accumulate in the fatty portions. So non fat dairy foods are much safer. If you do organic, non organic, non fat yogurt, that's the best because then you avoid antibiotics that can also have an effect on your microbiome and cause resistant organisms that are resistant to antibiotics. And organic yogurt is about the same price as non organic yogurt. So you can buy celery, potatoes, carrots, lettuce, bread, all the staples for about the same price now as conventionally grown foods.

But I think it's more than that. I think it's more than that because it's, it's really when you look at the, the, I'll call it the tidal wave of disease that we are dealing with as a country and a world, they all link back to what we're eating, what we're putting in our bodies, how we're living. And, and you're either going to pay a little bit more for food that is going to keep you healthy, or when you get sick, you're going to pay more to try to get back to baseline or from medications that will mask the symptoms. So, so it feels like it's not, you know, it's not only it might be more expensive, but you're, what you're preventing is so much more expensive. You're preventing something even worse.

Oh, oh, absolutely, absolutely. I'm just saying that if for people who are on a budget, they don't always have the long term view. They just say I have to save, you know, I gotta watch my dollars. And so, you know, you're right though at times, you know, one organic may be more expensive, maybe 50 cents more for something, for a bag of apples. But you know what, you're right. The investment is, is far more valuable than health insurance. It's it's going to keep you healthy and it really will going anti toxic or non toxic. Your body feels it right away. So food is big. There are many other things you got to do. It's the food is one of the primary. Primary. I can go on from there if you want to know more about how to manage it.

What are the other things besides food that you recommend for to protect kids, protect ourselves from the toxins? What are the.

Well, let's get really basic water. If people say I have $100 to spend, should I spend it on testing my water or filtering my water? I would say filter it. Now if they say I only have $35 to spend, I would say filter it and you can really do it. What I'm trying to point out is that most of the water in the United States today has carcinogens. Some of them are intentionally added because the water has to be chlorinated and disinfected. And when water has a lot of organic matter and you add chlorine to it, it can form chloramines, trihalomethanes and other disinfectant byproducts that do cause cancer. They also kill the bacteria and viruses. But that alone is a reason to filter your water.

However, we have to pause it right there. David, wait. Okay, so would you like a bacterial infection or cancer? You choose, one's going to kill you quickly and one's going to kill you slowly. You can, you, you pick. But more than that, I don't know if you read this study back in 1989 there study done that showed that air and water quality were directly linked to one in every six deaths that. And we're from Boston, so that caught my eye because it's a Massachusetts study and so it's really horrifying. And when we went through this whole thing, I was like, Ed, we got it. We're married by the way. I don't know if you know that. I was like we gotta filter our water in the house. And we have relatively clean water and, and it's horrifying. When we change the filters, we have.

Very clean water per the. Per United States, per them patting themselves on the back.

But.

Right.

But when we change the filters, they're black. I mean like full of crap. It's crazy to watch. So yeah, big fan of filtering your water. No question.

So we've only, the, the nation has only just begun testing drinking water supplies for forever chemicals which are known as pfas. These are chemicals that are used in water and stain resistant fabrics and Clothing. So even if, even if you're on a budget, a little filter over your faucet, the end of your faucet will give you about a 75 to 95% reduction in contaminants, depending on which contaminant it is. So filtering your water is, is also a huge contaminant. Hugely important whether you want to have kids, are pregnant and are older. Because like Wendy, like you said, you know, all those colorectal cancers, bladder cancers, you know, they're coming from chlorination, from, you know, a lot of them are caused by contaminants in our drinking water. We have epidemiological studies that make that clear. So filtering your water would be the next food water. You know, we're really being basic here. And these are not expensive things to do. You can do these things on any budget. That's what I want people to know. Don't think you can't do this. We have to work on, you know, we have to work on the laws, but we have to be healthy to work on those laws.

So do you recommend people filter their air?

Yeah. So here's something really interesting next week to give us a little time time thing. Next week I'm going down to Louisiana and I'm meeting with, with two other nonprofit groups. We're meeting with folks at the Fifth Ward Elementary School in Reserve, Louisiana, which is the heart of Cancer Alley. The school is 1500ft from the Danka plastic plant, which has been violating EPA regulatory rules on air quality for years with carcinogens like hexachlorocyclopentadine and just other really noxious chemicals. The kids are breathing these. The reason we're going down to the school next week is my non profit and Earth Friendly products and Concerned citizens of St. John the Baptist Parish are all contributing air filters to every classroom there to help the kids. And we're also going to be putting clean, clean from Earth Friendly products as well, green cleaning products in the classrooms. And we're going to have a little symposium I think in January to help the kids protect themselves. So you're asking about air and air filters. You know, that's hugely important to your breathing to, you know, you know, dust in our homes is like the forensic archive of everything in our lives. So when you breathe in your home air, you're breathing in your PFAs from your, from your couch, your phthalates that flaked off from your some plastic, your, and it's all in your desk. So you do want to use air filters. And again A good air filter for a large room, you can purchase one for about $85. So we have, we're really taking care of our health. And it's less than the cost of one health insurance. One month of health insurance, way less.

I mean, health insurance is crazy expensive. So what do you. Can you direct people to some specific brands that you really like that you say, oh, do this one or do that one for filtering your air?

I, I don't have specific brands for air filters, but I do have a type. The ones that have been studied a lot are called high efficiency particle air filters or HEPA filters. And there are other kinds that have been studied as well. But I do know the studies on HEPA filters and they're very positive. They show that when, for example, the children of women who have filtered air actually have higher IQs than the children of women who don't have filtered air. And that's because chemicals like polyaromatic hydrocarbons actually affect mental acuity and can be transmitted during pregnancy to the child. So, you know, these HEPA filters really do work well, that's the type I would recommend.

Can any company put HEPA on their filter if it's not filter? If they, if they put hepa, is it really a HEPA filter? This is a basic question, but I.

Think about that there's a certain micron that they have to filter. There is, there's, there's definitely legalities to that.

So not. You can't just say all natural and have it. You know what I mean? You get greenwashed on the packaging and it's all natural. It's not really. But they can't say HEPA without it being hepa. Okay, I'm happy with that. Okay, so eat well, filter your water, filter your air. Obviously get enough sleep well, you also.

Said using green products and just not adding to the toxic load with chemicals that you spray on for cleaning.

Yeah, green. Then a third area. Now you're, now we're looking inside our home. So what can we do to make our home safer? We've got an air filter. Green cleaning products. There are not very many good green cleaning product brands. A lot of them are kind of fake. And I really worry about that. Just to give you an example, seventh generation, I look at their laundry detergent and they're using what is called an ethoxylated alcohol. That's a chemical like sodium laureth sulfate. And you can recognize these chemicals because they have ETH in their name. And that means they were ethoxylated or had Oxygen added to them by using ethylene oxide, which is highly carcinogenic. And you have these EO plants all over the country that are emitting EO fumes. So again, I don't like seventh generation laundry detergent. The company that I think is really doing a good job is Earth Friendly Products. Their brand is Ecos. And you'll recognize them because they're, all their packaging is transparent and all their liquids are transparent too. I've actually visited their plants. You don't have to wear masks when they're manufacturing. They completely avoid ethoxylates. So in terms of green cleaning products, Earth Friendly products is really good. And you want to put them in your home because green. Because if you don't, cleaning products will emit a lot of chemicals into your air too, like solvents like Butyla solve and quaternium compounds that can impact your health and fertility. So definitely look on the label and if they contain ethoxylates, you don't want to buy it. But the brand that I do, we've tested and I do like is Ecos. Earth Friendly Products. That's great.

Yeah, that is great. I also usually recommend how do you feel about environmental working Group? Because they typically rate. Rate things. Do you use them?

Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm very, I work with them a lot. Not, I don't know if they know me personally. I think some of them do, but I mean I, I look at their data and I think their data is, I think what they're doing is great.

Because it's very hard when you look at a product to go, okay, wait, it's got the S. What? It's very hard, I think for people on the go. I mean we have a ton of kids like a soccer team. So I'm usually like frantically looking for something. So I usually say to people, go to ewg, they're going to rate it for you and then go for, ideally go for one. Or if you're at a, of a highly low rated red, that's a 10. Go for six. Just try to level up each time you're doing something. You don't have to be perfect, but get better.

I, I rate a lot of the cleaning products and cosmetics in my book Raising Healthy Kids too, just by brand, to make it simple. Because it's true. It's very, it's. I try to make label reading as easy as possible and I think it's important. But there are some brands that you can trust and I try to. In the book Raising Healthy Kids, I do share those.

Yeah. I mean, it does boil down, you know, people say to me, what do you use? And I use Beauty Contour, I use Purity woods, and I use Mineral Fusions. And that's it.

Right?

Those are the three products that go on my face and my makeup. So I, I think you're right that there are very limited numbers of things that you can just blanket trust. Okay, I was going to ask something and I totally forgot.

Where can people find your work? I mean, is your book, when is your book coming out? Where, how can they find you? Where can they get the resources?

So Raising Healthy Kids is out in January with Skyhorse Publishing. And you can put Raising Healthy Kids, my name, David Steinman, into any search engine and it'll come up and you can get an advanced copy. I wrote Diet for a Poison Planet, which is a great book on detox and living healthy and I think it's a really good read too. The Safe Shoppers Bible. And my website is davidsteinman Us. The magazine is healthyliving Magazine Us. On Instagram, I'm David Steinman, underscore author. And on X, formerly known as Twitter, I'm by David Steinman. So those are places where people can connect. I try to do a daily anti toxic tip so that every day there's a little bit of knowledge being spread because I think, you know, just to give you some perspective, we didn't even have an anti toxic movement until Rachel Carson wrote silent spring in 62. We didn't even have the vocabulary to be anti toxic. The whole environmental movement then was about saving mountains, saving rivers, stopping dams. It wasn't about parts per billion or parts per million or 14 dioxane or endocrine disruptors. So what we've done with this movement in half a century is incredible. We didn't even have the words to be what we are today. And I'm so excited because we're really building something. You know, it's youth who are moving it. You know, when I talk to kids, teenagers and kids in their 20s, they get what I'm saying right away. But no matter what your age, we've got to have the vocabulary to be antitoxic because it's about our health.

It is.

It's great.

All right, we'll make sure all of the ways people can reach out to you are in the links. So if you're looking, if you missed it, it's in the link. Don't worry, it's in the show notes. And I mean, David, this is amazing. This is, this is what everyone needs to hear. So thank you for being here and for the listeners. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. And David, we can't wait to see the book when it comes out. And, I mean, it's just fantastic. So thank you for being here.

Thank you. Thank you all. This was a great interview, and I really appreciate the opportunity.

Great. Thank you.