- Hey everyone, and welcome to "Fig. 1".

This is the stuff I use to clean my bathroom.

It's full of hard to pronounce chemicals

like alkylbenzenesulfonate, hexoxyethanol, lauramine?

Tongue twisting chemicals like these

aren't just in cleaning products,

they're in makeup, shampoo,

and they can even leach into the food we eat.

So how worried should we be about being exposed

to these chemicals basically all the time?

Is something bad

just because the name is impossible to pronounce?

I mean, this list of ingredients is for a banana.

To get to the bottom of it, I wanted to talk

with Tracey Woodruff, a UCSF researcher, whose lab studies

how different chemicals impact our health

in things like pregnancy and fetal development.

One thing that has set off alarm bells

for a lot of scientists is this chart.

It shows how over the past 20 years,

diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes, and cancer

have been rising at a very steep rate.

While there are many factors

as to why these chronic diseases are rising,

Tracey's lab is particularly concerned

with a class of chemicals called phthalates,

which are used in things like plastic bottles,

cash register receipts, nail polish, deodorant,

and even protein shakes.

Tracey and many scientists are concerned

because these groups of chemicals have been proven

to cause hormonal disruption

and developmental issues in young children

and increased risk of chronic diseases.

I know, you might be thinking,

"Is there really anything I can do to stop this?"

But there are changes you can make,

and Tracey has some really simple practical advice

for how to reduce your chemical exposures.

(mellow music)

Tracey, thanks so much for joining us

to talk in depth about your research

and how the chemicals that surround us every day

are affecting our health.

The chart I talked about earlier

showing the rise in chronic diseases is pretty frightening.

Can you tell us whether we know the causes

that are driving these diseases

and if there's any evidence to back it up?

- Yes, I'm happy to talk about this,

because I think a lot of people notice

that there are people in their lives that have illnesses

that maybe they didn't have a few years ago,

and that has been borne out by the data

that we're looking at,

which shows that there's been an increase

in a lot of different chronic health conditions.

So we're talking about things

that can affect older people like Parkinson's, cancer,

Alzheimer's, dementia,

but we're also seeing increases

in chronic diseases among children.

And children are supposed to be

at their most healthy stage, right?

You're born and you're starting off with

hopefully a lifetime of healthy potential.

But what we're seeing is increases

in a lot of different concerning health conditions,

including neurodevelopmental disorders like autism or ADHD,

certain childhood cancers are still going up,

and then also things like early onset of diabetes

or obesity type factors that we're seeing increasing.

So this has, as you said,

happened over a very short period of time.

And in fact, what's really interesting or alarming

or concerning,

depending on whether you're looking at the data agnostically

or you are reacting to it

as someone who has somebody in their family

who has one of these conditions, is that we've seen globally

that the global burden of disease has shifted.

It used to be that the biggest global burden of disease

was things that are called communicable diseases like AIDS

or tuberculosis or cholera, and that has gone down.

And a lot of that's from, you know, important interventions,

some of them are related to vaccines.

But what we're seeing that is replacing it

is this growth in these chronic diseases

or non-communicable diseases like the cancers,

the Parkinson's, neurodevelopmental disorders.

And the rate of increase

is greater than the communicable diseases are going down.

So it can't be genetics 'cause genetics don't change.

And this has happened,

this shift has happened in the last 20 years

really dramatically, as you said.

So that's why we're looking at these external factors.

So that's the first clue.

It's happening over a relatively short period of time.

Genetics cannot explain all those increases.

And now we have a lot more science about the role

of these different types of external factors

that can increase these diseases.

So one is air pollution.

Air pollution is the leading global burden for mortality.

Among all, it's the biggest cause of mortality worldwide.

And we know a lot about air pollution

'cause there's many, many, many studies

from air pollution monitors linked to health outcomes.

So that's one reason we know about that.

The other is there's other risk factors that include,

one thing that we work on is the role of toxic chemicals.

So think about different chemicals that are made from,

and these are made from fossil fuels,

so they're things like perfluorinated chemicals

that people have heard of, or phthalates or bisphenols.

And now because we've been focused on the research on this

for a number of years now,

we have a lot more information about

how they can also contribute

to these adverse increasing chronic health conditions.

- Well, we've had chemicals and air pollution pre-1990s.

So do you have any indication why this dramatic shift

is happening in this relatively recent timeframe?

- Yeah, that's a really interesting question.

I think there's a couple things that are going on.

First of all, some of these diseases

have been going up slowly,

have been going up for many years.

It's not like, for example, childhood cancers or leukemia,

there's actually been a slow increase in that over time

since the '70s.

Some of them we are seeing more emergent,

things like early onset of breast cancer,

increasing colon cancer in younger people.

So just to back up about these environmental factors,

we've seen a great explosion in the production of chemicals.

It starts in the 1950s and it accelerates

and has grown, you know, over 15-fold, for example.

Another thing that has grown, increased dramatically

particularly since 2008 is plastic production.

So plastic production has doubled since 2008,

and the chemicals that are used in plastic,

we know many of these are toxic

and can increase the risk of these diseases.

And now we're also seeing now

an emerging set of research on the plastic as it breaks down

and exposure to microplastics.

So that kind of increase in those types of chemical

or plastic-related exposures could be important here.

I think that's one factor.

You may have had people in the '70s

who had an early life period

where they didn't have these very high exposures,

but that is slowly going away

as we're increasingly being exposed in this chemical soup.

And the thing that's really important about the exposures

that occur prenatally and early in childhood

is they can have a much greater effect on development,

which can then predispose that child to future health risks,

things like these cancers

that we're seeing now emerging among young people.

- So your research focuses a lot on maternal health,

which includes the baby in utero.

Can you talk to us about what chemical exposures

are doing to us before we're even born,

and how those exposures can impact us through adulthood?

- Why we're really focused on these exposures

that occur during these developmental periods

is because development is a time

of very rapid, rapid changes that are happening, right?

So if you imagine, right,

you start off with the sperm and the egg

and they get together and form a cell,

and then that starts dividing.

That is happening,

you know, you start as something very small

and then you grow into a whole person in a very, you know,

nine months is a very short period of time.

So because things are rapidly changing

during that time period,

things that, perturbations that come in

and interrupt that in some way can leave a permanent effect

that may manifest later, maybe right at birth,

you may see a birth defect,

or it may not happen until childhood,

so you may not see a cancer or neurodevelopmental effect

or may not even occur all the way into adulthood.

So that's one factor.

And then some of these chemicals also interfere

with the signaling that happens during development.

So hormones, so things like estrogen or testosterone

or thyroid hormones,

they are chemical signaling messengers

that are telling the body to do certain things

during development.

So like, testosterone gets increasingly produced

and it's telling the male reproductive tract to develop.

So it starts off and then it like,

forms all the different parts

all the way down to the testicles and the penis.

And if you interrupt that,

if you have a chemical that comes in,

for example, like phthalates,

which lowers the levels of testosterone,

then you have less testosterone

and then you may have

incomplete male reproductive tract formation.

Or you could have damage

to the male reproductive tract organs like,

may affect the ability to produce sperm later in life.

So that's why you have different things that are happening.

And some of these things happen uniquely, right?

So these physiological systems,

like the male reproductive tract is only formed one time.

And so if you interrupt that particular,

you happen to have the disruption at that time period,

it's a unique event

that can have a permanent effect downstream.

So that's why it's really important

to understand development,

to understand how these chemicals

are influencing development,

and then by taking actions that prevent those effects

happening during that sensitive time period,

we can protect that, make sure that that happens

through a healthy trajectory.

But also it ensures that everybody else's exposures are low

and not affecting them adversely.

- So I think one important caveat in all of this is the idea

of the population shift.

Can you just sort of explain that

and how each individual's risk to these chemicals will vary?

- So the other thing

that's really an important factor in addressing this

or studying it or addressing it

is that we are all exposed to these chemicals all the time,

but we're not all getting sick immediately, right?

And that's because we all have different, first of all,

we're a little bit different in the population, right?

Some of us are healthy adults, some of us are children,

some of us already have an existing health condition.

Some of us live in stressful situations.

Maybe we have difficulty with food

or we're a low income,

makes it difficult to get food on the table.

And so when you're looking at the distribution, right,

there's whatever,

there's 360 million people in the United States.

Some people are healthier, some people are less healthy,

some people are older, some people,

so there's all these different factors

that create your individual profile.

But when we look, and so,

and then the chemical exposures, while they're important,

they're also can create a,

not a great risk, but some risk.

But if we each individually have this risk

across 360 million people,

it can just basically shift the whole population from,

we have a lot of healthy people

and some people who are more adversely impacted

to having more people in the adversely impacted group.

So for example, a good example of this is lead,

exposure to lead, which is well established

to adversely affect childhood brain development.

But it won't affect every child.

But it can affect the,

because so many children are exposed,

if you just shift the IQ among the whole population,

it can go down a few points.

But across millions of children, that can result in

a lot of children moving into a category

where they can have impairment

and make it difficult for them to learn in school,

and that can have many down the road repercussions.

- So these chemical exposures

are affecting us all differently

depending on things like our age

or preexisting health conditions.

Has your lab found any other risk factors

that people may not be thinking of?

- Sure.

So one of the things that we do both in our group at UCSF

and in collaboration

with other research communities across the United States

is you can actually measure these chemicals.

They're invisible to our eye, right,

but we can measure them inside biological samples.

They're invisible because they're very small.

So, but you can get a blood sample or urine sample

and you can see, measure the different chemicals in there.

We can't measure all of the chemicals we're exposed to,

but we know that when we do these measurements,

there are dozens of chemicals

that people already contain in their body.

But we also know

because people have different experiences,

either they're live in communities that have more exposures

that occur to them

or they're, have products in their house

that may have higher amounts or they're more used

or be marketed to them, that can create more exposures.

We know that certain groups of people have higher exposures.

And we've done studies to evaluate this.

So one of the studies that we participated in

was the National Institutes of Health

Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes,

or the ECHO Consortium, which is a consortium of

multiple pregnancy and child cohorts

across the United States.

And what we did as part of this

is worked with an analytic chemist who developed an assay

to measure many different chemicals in a urine sample.

So chemicals that we would commonly

come into contact with,

pesticides and chemicals that are used in plastics

and personal care products and in the home.

And what we found in a pilot study that we did was that A,

people were exposed to many, many different

of these chemicals, both pesticides

and chemicals in these personal care products

and chemicals in products.

And what we found was that certain groups

had higher exposures.

So for example, women who reported being Hispanic

had higher levels of certain types of pesticides.

And then we also found

that women who reported as being Black

had higher levels of certain types of chemicals

that are associated with personal care products.

And we know from certain types of beauty standard marketing

that that makes sense because sometimes,

or some of these products that have toxic chemicals

are specifically marketed

to certain segments of the population,

thereby it leads to increasing exposures

to some of these toxic chemicals.

- There's all these chemicals in the beauty products,

and it seems like the research is well-established

that these chemicals are no good for us.

So why are they allowed in there?

- Yes, so the way that the regulations are,

the way that these products

and the chemicals in these products,

the way that's handled in the United States, by and large,

is that you can use these chemicals in products

unless somebody, the government like, identifies them

and then decide, you know, the onus is on the government

to identify them and then regulate them and take them out.

I think a good example of this, we didn't measure this,

but a good example of this is formaldehyde.

Formaldehyde is a cancer-causing chemical.

Among other things, it also can induce asthma,

asthmatic responses.

And that is used in a lot of hair care products.

And the last administration was going to regulate that,

and I don't think it ever happened.

And so now people are still gonna be buying,

'cause people don't know.

People think that you go to the store and the government,

we've been sold this narrative

that when you go to the store,

the government has regulated everything

and all the things that are, and that's just not true.

These products contain chemicals that have not been,

the chemical industry doesn't have to tell you,

except beauty products are the exception.

But they don't have to tell you

where they're using those chemicals.

They don't have to provide data to the government

about the potential toxicity of chemicals

unless the government goes and like, asks for it.

- So a class of chemicals that are used in beauty products

from nail polish to hairspray are phthalates.

But phthalates show up everywhere,

and we're exposed to them just by touching these products.

From reading your research and other sources,

phthalates can have a really harmful effect on our health.

Can you walk us through what we know about phthalates

and the really surprising effect

that they have on male reproduction?

- So phthalates are a large class of chemicals.

They're used in many different types of products.

They're made from fossil fuels and petro,

they're a petrochemical, they're made from fossil fuels.

And they're largely used in plastics.

They make hard plastics soft and flexible,

so things like IV bags or vinyl flooring

or rubber, or you know, plastic toys,

anything that's like a soft flexible plastic

could have phthalates in it.

They're also used to convey scents in products.

So they can be used in perfumes,

you know, any personal care products

that have a scent in them,

they could have phthalates in them.

And as you said, there's many different types of phthalates.

And phthalates, but we know a lot about

certain types of phthalates.

And phthalates are known as endocrine disrupting chemicals.

So I talked about earlier that there are chemicals

that can interrupt the functioning of the hormone system,

and phthalates are one of those types of chemicals.

They can essentially interfere

with the production of testosterone.

So that's one way that they act.

Because of that,

because hormones are really important for all the,

you know, functioning of the body,

there's been many, many studies of phthalates

and the different types of health effects

that can result from those exposures.

The most classic is effects on male reproductive health,

so effects on the development

of the male reproductive system,

which can affect sperm quality,

and then downstream you can get infertility.

And I think this is a really important link

because sperm quality is one of

the documented adverse trends and adverse health effects.

For example, there's been good data published by Shanna Swan

looking across multiple studies,

finding a 50% decline in sperm quality

over the last several decades.

That could lead to infertility.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

- Has that decline come with an increase

in the production of phthalates,

or adoption of phthalates in products that we use?

- Well, so we've seen an increase in plastic production,

so I assume that, you know,

the phthalates would travel along with that.

The same time, we're seeing declines in sperm quality.

I'm not saying phthalates is the thing,

but it certainly can be one component of this.

And then with the decline in sperm quality,

you're gonna have decline in fertility,

and there's a lot of discussion about

the population decline

and really what's the role of environment?

I mean, environmental chemicals are gonna be

an important part of that,

though it often does not enter into the popular discussion.

But I do think it is an issue.

It's like, when we do research in this area,

and it's so interesting, we talk to doctors

and they're like, they have this light bulb go off

and they're like, "Wow, these chemicals can interfere

with testosterone production?"

And then they make the link to sperm quality

and then they make the link to fertility.

But it doesn't,

there's a lot of conventional areas in our society,

I don't know if they're conventional,

but sort of institutional areas in our society

where this is still not fully accepted.

And I think we're seeing the downstream consequences

of not being responsive to

what the public is concerned about, in this case.

But phthalates have also been,

there's been some good, high quality reviews

of the health effects of phthalates.

So they found that they're linked to preterm birth,

which means that babies are born too early,

and metabolic disorders like diabetes,

which we also know are going up in the population.

They're also suspected to increase the risk of miscarriage

and neurodevelopmental harms

like attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder

also going up in the population.

- Well, it feels overwhelming, and I think it's not just

because of the health effects that you've described

but knowing that the petrochemical industry

is this massive entity,

and some of the corporations that make it up

are just some of the most powerful in the world, but.

- Yep, that is true.

- Something your lab does really well, I think,

is communicate the things that we can do

to limit our exposures.

So can you let us know

maybe some of the cheapest and easiest ways

that people can change their life

by getting rid of this chemical exposures?

- We are creatures in the structures that we live in.

And so it's hard when you're constantly marketed.

So I just want people to know that, you know,

things that you do can reduce your exposures.

And you can take easy steps and not do everything at once.

I didn't do everything at once

and I still make a lot of mistakes

and my family sometimes doesn't listen to me, shockingly.

So, you know, it's a process.

And some of the things are super easy to do

and they're cheap

and have been shown to reduce your exposure

to these chemicals.

For example, don't microwave in plastic.

And I know, you buy these things and it says microwave safe.

Well, that's actually not been tested by FDA to the extent

that we think would be satisfactory,

and so just don't do it.

And I also cook in cast iron and stainless steel

rather than non-stick pans.

Non-stick pans often can have perfluorinated chemicals.

People are like, "Oh my god, I have to have non-stick."

And it's like you can make a cast iron pan be,

it can function non-stick-ily enough,

let's say it like that.

So it's totally possible, these things.

Also use, then that way

you can also use stainless steel kitchen tools.

Yeah, so you can take your shoes off

before you come in the house or minimize dust.

Chemicals love to hang around in dust,

microplastics hang around in dust.

You can HEPA filter vacuum and wet mop

and microfiber cloth are good ways to deal with that.

I also really, eating a healthy diet

that's focused on fresh fruits and vegetables

and lower on the food chain,

we know it's been shown empirically to,

especially if you're eating less ultra processed foods,

less canned and plastic-contained foods

will lower your exposures to many of these toxic chemicals.

That's been shown empirically in multiple studies.

And if you eat organic, it will lower your exposures

to certain pesticides.

So those are all options.

Some of them cost more than others

and so people should, you know, make the choices

that work for them.

And also we do, you know,

in terms of meat or fish consumption,

there are certain types of fish you should be avoiding.

So large fish, basically, could be high in PCBs and mercury.

So try and eat lower on the fish food chain.

And there's recommendations about that

that have been also put out by the government.

And I just wanna show, we have multiple versions

of these tip sheets on our website,

which also talk about the different chemicals

that are in some of these different types

of personal care products and consumer products.

And then I think the other thing that's really important

to the extent that people have the bandwidth

is to, as I said, it's not your fault

that there's all these toxic chemicals,

but we can collectively work to let the government know

that we want to have these toxic chemicals

regulated out of our products.

We want the government to intervene

and make sure that when we go to the store

or when we're purchasing or when we're going anywhere,

'cause you know,

air pollution is not really going to the store,

but it's out there,

that we're not being exposed to toxic chemicals.

That as simply as much as registering and voting

or, you know, joining a group

that you think represents you in those situations.

- There's a whole industry around cleaning,

and it feels like I have to buy a different product

for every single surface in my house,

which means I just have a closet full of like,

20 bottles that are 1/4 used.

Is this all necessary,

or can I just throw 'em all out and do something else?

- No, you don't need all those products.

I know there's a Green Seal program,

which actually I think this administration got rid of,

from, the EPA implements that.

You know, if you wanna buy products, I'd choose those.

Nonetheless, you can use things that you can easily purchase

that are cheaper,

like vinegar and baking soda work really great

and produce most of the cleaning that you need to do.

So that's what we do is just, there's recipes for,

I think it's 1/4 vinegar, the rest water,

you could just put baking soda and water on things

and it pretty much cleans everything.

And then we buy, if you're gonna buy things,

I definitely recommend buying fragrance-free.

And that's different than unscented.

Fragrance free means they don't put any chemicals in there

to make it smell a certain way.

Unscented could mean they put another chemical in there

to make the smell go away.

So, you know, and so your laundry,

so we, you know, buy all that laundry detergent, soaps.

And don't use, try and buy your dishwashing soap

that's not those little pods.

First of all, if you have a small child,

they look like candy and that's really bad.

So you don't want them for that reason.

But also, turns out they dispose a lot of microplastics

into your washing machine and into the water supply.

So you can just get the, you know,

box of whatever detergent.

- One of the biggest problems is not that

we're just exposed to these chemicals,

but we're exposed to them every day.

And our body might clear them,

but the next day we're doing the same thing,

we're breathing the same air.

And so in thinking of the importance of these chemicals

and their health effects on mothers and expectant mothers

or people planning to become mothers,

is there anything they can do extra to sort of,

let's say do like a body cleanse

to have their body in the best shape possible

before they become pregnant?

- Well, I think doing the things

that we recommend for everybody

helps reduce your exposures to toxic chemicals.

The way that you clear chemicals from your body

is not to be exposed to them.

There's really no scientifically justified

cleansing routines.

Though I suppose if you're just drinking fruit juice,

you aren't really exposing yourself

to all the other chemicals that might be in your food.

So it's technically a cleanse

but not technically a cleanse.

Anyway, the point being that you just,

you stop the exposures

and the levels in your body will go down.

Whether it's the government stopping the exposures

in the air pollution,

or you stopping the exposures through eating,

you know, lower on the food chain.

Don't eat, you know, really there's a lot of,

for example, phthalates, we've shown in studies

that you get exposed to phthalates

through food that's not prepared at home.

That means like fast food, takeout food.

So doing things that are about lowering your exposures

will help you be, and then increasing your resiliency.

'Cause if you eat a diet that's high

in fresh fruits and vegetables, hopefully organic,

you're gonna also improve your health,

which will increase your potential

for a successful and healthy baby.

- Those of us who live in California see these signs,

the Prop 65 warning signs everywhere.

And I've lived here for 10 years

and it's still terrifying to me every time I see them.

What are the warnings for?

Why are they everywhere?

And has Prop 65 been effective in what it set out to do?

- First of all, Proposition 65 was passed by the voters,

I wanna say in the 1980s, somewhere in there.

And that was because the voters in California were concerned

about toxic chemicals in their consumer products.

So they passed the law

that said the state of California should identify chemicals

that are known to the state of California to be a carcinogen

or a reproductive and developmental hazard.

And they have various mechanisms by which to do that.

And then once that's identified,

they have to identify the kind of like,

amount that could be in a product that might not cause harm.

And if they have more of whatever that chemical is,

lead, for example, in that product,

they have to label it that,

"This product contains a chemical

that's known to the state of California

to cause reproductive and developmental harm."

So I wanna say,

and then there's a lawsuit mechanism associated with it

if the stores or whatever don't label it.

So it has been actually effective

in forcing some reformulation in products.

For example, you see a lot less products

sold in California than have lead.

And actually it forces, you know, other places

to like, pay attention to whether,

like a lot of products like bowls and things like that,

servingware like from Mexico

used to have a lot of lead in it.

Now they've like, you know, they've responded

by removing lead from those products.

So that's a really good thing.

It is true, every garage, most garages you go into

in the state of California have this,

because cars emit toxic chemicals from the tailpipe.

Now it is, you know, people are like,

"Oh, it's just like, everywhere."

But the reality is it's still true.

So, you know, I think Prop 65 has been doing a good job

of updating their labeling

to try and make it be more specific.

So for example, BPA, which is a plastic-related chemical,

can be found in the lining of canned foods.

If you go to the grocery store, the labeling,

the Prop 65 label they have there is a little more specific.

It's like, "BPA can be in the lining of these canned foods."

So you kind of know which things have it and which don't.

And it's a slow process.

And unfortunately

the office that implements that in California

could use more funds to improve their labeling system.

And I know they're very aware of this

and they continue to work on this.

And I think it's been shown,

there was a recent study showing that it has had

some influence on people's chemical exposures.

And so that's a good thing.

Is it a crude tool?

Well, sure it's crude, but it still works

and it's better than what any other state has.

It's not better than what any other state has,

it's one of the best that any,

the state of Washington also has some very good laws.

A few of these states have good laws.

But this really was a leader

and California was really a leader in identifying this.

And I think it's been, you know, it's effective,

and that has really put California on the map

in terms of being a leader

in identifying these chemicals that are harmful.

- Well, it feels like a great example

of a economic powerhouse

and the people who live there in California sort of,

you know, taking their own course

and voting that with their health in mind.

- Lemme just say, California has often been a leader

in a lot of these areas that then have gone on

to be replicated, either in other states or federally.

And it's true that Prop 65 has a lot of labeling

by California, but the people who implement it

have been very responsive to

trying to improve how the labeling works

and make sure it's more specific.

And you can go on the website,

and you know, they've been trying to update it

to be more specific about what the labeling,

why a product has been labeled and what's the component?

And so I think that's really important.

- We have the FDA, we have the EPA.

They regulate these chemicals, or we think they do.

And you talked earlier that, you know,

it feels more like a shoot first

and say you're sorry later sort of scenario

with some of these.

So what is the real issue

with the government not keeping these chemicals

out of our lives?

Is it that the science hasn't caught up

to the regulatory bodies yet?

Or do they just not, you know,

it's putting innovation first?

- The first issue is

the way that the laws are set up in the United States

for chemicals that are produced and manufactured

in the United States,

so there's 40,000 existing chemicals on the market,

that can be used in the market.

And the chemical companies

are gonna use them in any way they want.

And they are using, there's 9 trillion pounds,

that's 30000 pounds per person being produced a year.

And the way that the law is set up is that

the burden is on the government

to go through these chemicals,

identify the ones they're gonna address, get the data,

make the decisions, and then do the regulation.

So the burden should really be flipped

that these chemical companies,

if they want to sell their chemicals

and products on the market,

should have to prove that they're not gonna,

A, should tell us where they're being used,

and then have to provide the data

so the government can ascertain that they're not gonna pose

a threat to human health risk.

Now it is true that the chemical companies will say,

"Woo, you're gonna harm innovation

and shut down, you know, American manufacturing."

So there's two things.

One is, I just wanna emphasize

that regulation is an innovation driver.

Meaning that if the government says,

"You cannot use this toxic chemical,"

it's not like the companies are gonna say,

"Well, I guess we're just not gonna make anything."

No, it'll drive them to make a safer substitute

or an engineering substitute.

And we see this time and time again.

It's been well documented that the chemical industry

or whoever the industry is

will complain about whatever regulation.

They say, "Oh, it'll cost us so much money,

it'll be so expensive."

And analyses, for example, analysis of the Clean Air Act,

which is required by law,

which is about regulating pollution,

the types of certain pollutants in the air,

has both reduced air pollution and resulted in,

has not been as costly as the industry said

and has resulted in huge economic benefits.

Not just like, we have less people sick and dying,

which seems pretty important.

Less people sick and dying,

but also because people are healthier,

they're more productive and the economy has grown.

So this argument that we're gonna stifle innovation

and all that stuff, is just really an argument

to promote their ability

to continue to make profits over really, people's lives.

'Cause people die from these toxic chemicals

and it's well documented.

And it's hard 'cause they have a lot of money at stake.

And so that's why really people need to speak up about this,

because their lives are at stake.

- Thank you to Tracey

for having this important conversation with me.

If you enjoyed this video, check out this one

that explains why you should throw out your Tupperware

and stop microwaving plastics.

And be sure to hit the subscribe button for more research

and breakthrough stories.