1194: Endocrine Disruptors | Skeptical Sunday

1194: Endocrine Disruptors | Skeptical Sunday

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host, writer, and researcher Nick Pell. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you.

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That'll help new listeners get a taste of [00:01:00] everything we do here on the show. Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. What if I told you that there were chemicals in the food, in the water that were messing up your entire endocrine system? That's the bodily system, which helps your hormones regulate mood, physical growth and development, metabolism and reproduction.

Some of you might say, well, that would explain a whole lot, and others of you are trying to call BS on things like this. These chemicals are called endocrine disruptors, and they're a hot topic right now in health circles. Some argue that endocrine disruptors are responsible for everything from declining testosterone rates in men to turning the frogs gay.

Yeah, really apparently. But is this much a do about nothing or are we all doomed to a life of hormonal imbalance and potential infertility? What are endocrine disruptors? Are they really in everything we eat and drink? What does the science say about all this? And more to the point is it time to panic or just stop, I don't know, microwaving plastic wrap or whatever.

Here to help me [00:02:00] understand the balance of this subject is writer and researcher Nick Pell. So Nick, I asked you to be on this episode because I remember going on 10 years or so ago now you were on kind of a, a kick about don't touch receipts. It sounded absolutely insane at the time, but I later actually found out you were not totally wrong about receipts.

Actually, don't touch receipts, gang. They're absolutely toxic. Well, we'll dig more into the specific topic of receipts themselves later, but can you give us the high level view here to start? I think we need a definition of what endocrine disruptors actually are. It kind of sounds like science fiction before we're even out of the gate.

Nick Pell: So this is kind of defining a word by itself, but endocrine disruptors are anything that disrupts the normal functioning of your endocrine system. Now to be clear, these can be both manmade or natural, and it's important to note at the beginning of this, the naturalism fallacy, that natural things so-called however one defines that are good for you and unnatural things are bad for you.

Rice and gas is more or less [00:03:00] natural and it's obviously very bad for you.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, yeah. Cyanide is quite natural as well. You know, it's an apple seeds. It's just, there's hopefully not too much in there. I run into this a lot actually. On the show. People will write in and say, you know, this sponsor is not good for you because it has, there's chemicals in there.

And it might be bad for you and it might not be natural, but those two things have nothing to do with one another. And pretty much every substance on earth is a chemical. In fact, maybe everything is, I just don't wanna say that because someone's gonna write in and tell me about a radioactive nanoparticle.

That's not a chemical, and I'm gonna have to go like, okay. Right. So everything's a chemical, basically.

Nick Pell: Precisely. So to drill a little deeper into this, there are entire classes of chemicals. That are in everything from the food you eat to shampoos and soaps and yeah, even the water you drink that are endocrine disruptors.

To get a little better at defining what an endocrine disruptor is other than sort of repeating what we call them a different way. There are chemicals introduced from outside [00:04:00] the body that interfere with how the hormones in your body sends signals. Okay, so

Jordan Harbinger: how exactly do they interfere?

Nick Pell: I'm gonna assume that most listeners here are like me, reasonably intelligent, but not super knowledgeable about human biology.

I know some of you out there are really knowledgeable about human biology, but for the rest of us, at a very high level, your endocrine system uses chemicals to send messages. These chemicals are called hormones and there's stuff like estrogen, testosterone, and there's others. Thyroid hormones, for example.

Jordan Harbinger: Uh, yeah, I, and the endocrine disrupting chemicals, I guess disrupt how these, I hate using circular logic, but I kind of have to hear they disrupt how these work. How do they do that by stopping them getting where they're going? Or do they kind of put on a costume and pretend to be another substance, if that makes sense?

What are you talking about here?

Nick Pell: Yeah, that's basically it. So endocrine disrupting chemicals or EDCs block the proper transmission of hormones or mimic hormones. So for [00:05:00] example, your body thinks that it's getting testosterone, but really it's getting a cheap bootleg version or something else entirely.

Then your body sends the real thing and it doesn't get used because the metaphorical cup is already full.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh man. There's a joke in here about ordering something off of Timo probably, but it, it's, this is like when the USB port of your iPhone is filled with Play-Doh and it won't charge, I guess ask me, ask me how I know, but that, that's what this is.

Right? It's like, oh, instead of the USB plug going in there, it's just loaded with dry Play-Doh or slime or something, and it's like, oh, it still fits. It's just now that pour it is not usable. Right, right.

Nick Pell: The other way that EDCs mess up your body is just scrambling up all the wires completely so that none of the signals of your endocrine systems send anything.

That makes sense. You might think this isn't a big deal, but it is. Especially when you're talking about things like fetal development.

Jordan Harbinger: Sure. Because that's such a small little fetus in there and less resilient and [00:06:00] probably fewer sort of checks and balances. 'cause the, the whole hormone thing in your body, if you've ever had blood work done, it's just a, it's a delicate dance going on right in there.

One thing changes and three other things change and you try and change those and then five other things change as a result of each one of those. So what are some of these evil endocrine system disrupting chemicals? That are supposedly turning men into wimps and you know, making the frogs gay.

Nick Pell: I don't like 'em putting chemicals in the water.

They turn the frigging frogs gay. That, okay, so before we go on, I want to address this common misconception that even people who know a lot about endocrine disruptors seem to have endocrine disruptors are bad for everyone, not just men.

Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

Nick Pell: Let's talk about the impact on women super briefly and in broad terms.

Some endocrine disruptors are also xenoestrogens.

Jordan Harbinger: That sounds like a made up word off of one of your underground esoteric bodybuilding forums. Is it? So what is, what is that?

Nick Pell: [00:07:00] It's not a made up word, it's a real thing. Xenoestrogens are basically exogenous. That's a 50 cent word, meaning introduced from outside the body.

Exogenous forms of estrogen. Now you might think as many people do, women are getting estrogen. Who cares? But it's like you just said about your, your body's hormones and somebody, I use testosterone supplementation. I know this very well. Your hormones are a very precarious dance. It's a ballet. It's not as simple as you know, for men.

More testosterone, good for women, more estrogen good. You need a variety of hormones in your body and you need them in the proper balance. So too much estrogen or the wrong kinds of estrogen are absolutely not okay for the proper functioning of the female body.

Jordan Harbinger: Got it. So women are just getting slammed by these xenoestrogens.

Well, well, men and women I suppose, are getting slammed by these xenoestrogens, and that's throwing off the ballet.

Nick Pell: Right. To get back to the question of what these [00:08:00] chemicals are, most of them have really crazy names. I've actually selected the ones with the easier to pronounce names. Atrazine, bisphenol A, which you might know as BPA.

Ah, phthalates. Dioxins and phytoestrogens. All sound kind of science fictiony. Very much. Yeah. There's a whole bunch of them, but again, these are. Both the most common

Jordan Harbinger: and the easiest to pronounce. I see. I remember the panic, well, it was probably a, a long time ago now, about BPA water bottles and the companies advertising themselves as BPA free.

Nick Pell: The funny thing about that is that they ended up replacing BPA bottles with something even worse,

Jordan Harbinger: right? I mean, not, maybe not every bottle. I'm sure some are made of, you know, bamboo or something like that. But yeah, now it's like. Not BPA. It's BPW and it's, yeah, 10 times worse, but it's not illegal yet or something, so this shouldn't surprise anybody.

Right. This is kind of what always happens.

Nick Pell: Yeah. BPAs are also in things like [00:09:00] receipts, by the way, and they absolutely do leach into your skin and impact the proper functioning of your hormones. This is one of the more extremely well documented examples of mass endocrine disruption taking place

Jordan Harbinger: so people can check the show notes for those we're.

We try to do as much good fact checking, running it by a doctor slash expert as we can on stuff like this. But there are show notes for those of you who are in doubt or like receipts. Come on the Cliffs notes on this receipts thing. Is that if you buy something each day at Starbucks and you crumple the receipt and throw it away, probably not a huge deal.

But if you're a cashier and you are touching 500 or a thousand receipts per day with your fingers, and then, I don't know, rubbing your eyes and your face, or you know, you lick your fingers so they get a better grip on 'em, you should be aware of this and you should almost certainly wear gloves. Actually, BPA

Nick Pell: will in many cases, go right through the latex of the gloves.

Oh, great. In fact, wearing the gloves might be worse because the chemicals accumulate. In the gloves that you

Jordan Harbinger: wear all day. [00:10:00] Okay. So don't wear gloves, just cut your hands off in No, that's insane and scary because there are pe, I mean, you've had transactions. The, the, the guy or the lady, they rip the receipt off and they put it on the thi the thing at the restaurant, the little spike.

And they do that a thousand times a day, a hundred times a day, whatever it is. And it's the same person. Then they go and eat or they, I don't know. Oh gosh. So where are people encountering these chemicals besides water bottles and receipts? Because a lot of people are going, I don't play soccer and have a water bottle where mine's metal and I don't work at a restaurant or a cashier, so I'm safe if it's only in those fine.

Or maybe if it's in some weird industrial stuff I can avoid. But I'm gonna guess that we're not doing an episode about this because it's so rare that only a few types of people encounter this.

Nick Pell: I know it sounds like a cop out or an exaggeration to say they're everywhere, but they kind of are. They're basically in every shampoo, basically every liquid soap, tons of the food, most of the water.

There's not really any avoiding them. I mean, you can [00:11:00] potentially buy ED C3 alternatives, but get ready to pay.

Jordan Harbinger: I could probably try to buy products without these ingredients, but how do they get into the water supply? Because I can't really avoid drinking water.

Nick Pell: This is gonna be one of the most insane sounding things I ever say on your podcast, but again, check the show notes if you don't believe me.

So some women take birth control pills, which may contain estrogen, right? Sure. It doesn't all get absorbed by their body. And then when they go to the bathroom to do number one, it goes into the toilet, which gets flushed, which then leaks into the groundwater.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay? This actually does kind of sound insane.

All right, I'm gonna check the show notes on this one. I'm, so, I'm drinking water with people's pee in it. I've accepted this. But I'm getting their birth control runoff essentially. That stuff doesn't get taken out by treatment or end. That's crazy. I mean, first of all, some guys out there would pay good money for that, but, but, but I typically try to avoid drinking people's pharma pee if I can.

Nick Pell: Yeah. [00:12:00] Well, you know, I rarely say things I can't back up and I never say things I can't back up on your show supposedly. The Xenoestrogens from birth control runoff are in amounts, not enough to impact humans, but we do know that they impact aquatic life.

Jordan Harbinger: Aquatic life. Is this turning the fricking frogs gay?

Is that what he's talking about there? It's

Nick Pell: basically the same stuff as the frogs, uh, feminization, including egg production. Reduced fertility up to and including total population collapse. This is for the, the aquatic animals, not for the people. Right. There's also estrogen from other sources in the water, and in fairness, I think people, myself included probably make the birth control thing a kind of bogey man, because it's so impactful.

Jordan Harbinger: Well, it's gross sounding, right? Yeah. Like it has shock value to say you're drinking pregnant ladies, or you know, birth control p. And it's affecting you. And it's like, oh my God, I wanna figure out how to blame women for this. But, but it's like, you know, I don't know. Yeah. It has shock [00:13:00] value compared to my shampoo has a weird chemical in it.

Nick Pell: Yeah. And, and you know what birth control is? You know, you've seen it industrial runoff. Yes. Could be absolutely anything Xenoestrogens like BPA are in plastics. And epoxy resins. And then there's Alka Ethanols that are in, in industrial detergents and pesticides and yeah, that's what the industrial runoff is.

And I say that and it's, it's super abstract, but I say birth control pills. And P, and you're like, oh man. So yeah. That's fair. I mean, but for contacts. I did an article about this a million years ago for a website called Made Man and the editor, Steve Mucci, I know you're listening. Mm-hmm. He went into this being like, this is insane and I am not printing anything.

You haven't seriously backed up, which is fair. But he printed the thing about the water and the birth control.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. So, and he's a really kind of, what's the polite version of anal Reta? He's a very thorough [00:14:00] fact checker. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And that's how we met writing for Steve Ouchi back when online men's magazines were actually a thing.

All right. So it's everywhere. So what though, Nick, come on. Carbon's everywhere. A lot of things are everywhere. Oxygen, hydrogen. Do we actually know that these things are bad or is this just a panic over pseudoscience? I mean, I walk on concrete. Am I getting poisoned by that? Don't answer that. That's probably another skeptical subject.

It's a whole other episode, but But like is this pseudoscience? Because I can see that this is potentially one of those like, oh my God, this is so terrible. And then in 20 years it's like, yeah, 0.0001% of people may have had a slight increase in cancer risk. Because of all these things and whatever,

Nick Pell: and I totally agree that the internet is filled with people who have too much information and not enough wisdom to know what's useful or true or you know, whatever.

But there does seem to be something here.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I'm vaguely familiar with this topic, just from having an internet connection in the first place and being. I guess you could say somewhat connected to male self-improvement [00:15:00] social media. So like the, the claims are basically EDCs are lowering your testosterone.

Uh, they're making younger girls go through puberty super early. They can make you infertile. They can, and of course, you know, the old standby, they turn the frogs gay.

Nick Pell: And you know what, there's evidence to support basically every claim you just made.

Jordan Harbinger: Can we talk about the frogs gay thing? 'cause that's not really.

A hundred percent accurate, but it's also not fake.

Nick Pell: It's not fake. It's not a hundred percent accurate. Like a lot of things Alex Jones says that turn out to be true, which does happen from time to time. It's true, but it's more complicated than he's presenting it. It is not turning frog's gay. But there was a study in which frogs mega dosed with xenoestrogens changed biological sex.

Jordan Harbinger: How is that possible? Is that because they can reproduce a sexually or something? I feel like this is sixth grade biology, and it was just too long

Nick Pell: ago.

Jordan Harbinger: Don't ask me about the

Nick Pell: specific process. I'm not a scientist, so I mm-hmm. Couldn't really make heads of tails of that, but I do know that it happened. Boy, frogs.

Became girl frogs, [00:16:00]

Jordan Harbinger: so to speak. Right? Yeah. And again, I know amphibians can reproduce a sexually in a pinch, sometimes it has to do with temperature and stuff, but yeah, hormonal kind of cues make it happen. Do we know about this at all? I, or should I just stop talking?

Nick Pell: No, I'm overstating it a little bit.

They, so the, the male frogs develop female characteristics. In some extreme cases did become hermaphroditic. After exposure to atrazine, which is one of these ones that's everywhere and just in everything, it's one of the main EDCs that it's not really possible to avoid. One of the reasons why people eat so-called organic food is to avoid atrazine.

Now, the thing about all of this animal testing stuff is when you drill down into the methodology, a lot of times it does become a little ridiculous. You know, like, man, I can't believe monkeys died of lung cancer three months after you forced them to smoke seven packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day.

What amazing [00:17:00] science.

Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

Nick Pell: And I kind of suspect that this was possibly a case of forcing frogs to encounter some insane dose that they're never going to get in the wild and go, damn, that's crazy. That something crazy happened after we did something crazy.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It turns out when you lobotomize people, this happens.

Like, yeah, that's what happens. Now maybe you can divert some of your birth control urine budget to support the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Quilt Mine. Let's be honest, most social media feels like noise. Scrolling through vacation picks and dance trends might kill time, but it's probably not landing you.

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That's Jordan Audience at Q-U-I-L-T-M-I-N d.com. This episode is also sponsored by Shopify. I do a lot of online shopping, probably more than I should honestly admit. And you know what? I've started noticing The stores I actually enjoy buying from all seem to have one thing in common. They have that little purple shop pay button at checkout.

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Jordan Harbinger: By the way, folks, if you haven't signed up for the newsletter yet, it's really gotten a lot of positive feedback about this. We love writing it, and y'all seem to love reading it. You can sign up at Jordan harbinger.com/news. It's a practical tip from a past episode from us to you. It's a really good companion to the show.

It's an under two minute read every Wednesday. Again, Jordan harbinger.com/news is where you can find it. Now, back to skeptical Sunday. [00:20:00] People aren't going to go out and take intravenous BPA or lick a thousand receipts a day for fun. It's just not a thing. So that's where we kind of have to caveat this is it's like how much, because the dose makes the poison.

I I, I did a show a long time ago, I think this is Neil deGrasse Tyson, and we were talking about people were worried about some sort of antibiotic and ice cream from cows. It turned out that the amount of ice cream you would have to eat, like the sugar would kill you way before the antibiotics would even start to have a measurable effect in your body.

Like the sugar itself would literally kill you from whatever. Whatever bodily process causes you to die from eating too much sugar. So, I don't know. I, I, that's the little asterisk, dagger symbol next to some of this stuff. Yeah.

Nick Pell: Yeah. Like you said, the comparison breaks down because most people aren't going out and seeking exposure to these chemicals.

Like, so is it comparable? I don't really know. The thing is, there's all kinds of things, like you said, that are [00:21:00] poisonous when you have. Too much of them, but they're fine and small or moderate or even large, but appropriate amounts.

Jordan Harbinger: Dihydrogen, monoxide, you know, it kills thousands of people every year.

Didn't a celebrity recently die from this? Nick, uh, Malcolm Jamal Warner, I believe that's right. Malcolm Jamal Warner. Theo Huxtable from the Cosby Show very recently died from Dihydrogen Monoxide, also known as water. And most people don't know that you can die from drinking too much water. That's not how he died.

Didn't he drown? That was so tragic. He drowned. Yeah. It's sad. The lesson here is not never drink water. Uh, it's don't drink a bathtub full of water every 20 minutes.

Nick Pell: Yeah, that's, it is a really good way of putting it because I, I remember there was like a, it wasn't a meme because it was like in the nineties, but my high school chemistry teacher.

Had a photocopied thing that bounced around workplaces that was about like how the government needed to ban the dangerous substance of die hydrogen monoxide and people die and you know, blah, blah, blah. So yeah, I mean, [00:22:00] water can kill you. You drink too much of it.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's funny. I remember the dad jokes plus science teacher jokes days where they're like, here's a thing that's been photocopied 78,000 times that you can barely read.

Let's spend the hour doing this. 'cause I have a hangover. 2020 hindsight, that's what it was, right? Yeah. The, the teachers were hungover and you're like, why are we doing this today? And it's like, oh yeah, Mr. Cooper put down a few too many last night. Let's get into some of the more realistic and frankly, alarming claims about endocrine disruptors.

Is that what's behind the decline in testosterone levels in men over the past several decades that I keep hearing about? First of all, I should probably start, is that even true? Because I keep hearing like, oh, men's testosterone levels today are n minus whatever of what they were in the sixties and seventies, and that's kind of scary if that's the case.

I can just tell by looking at photos of men from previous generations that testosterone levels are lower. Is it just me or is everybody hairier back then

Nick Pell: why do 30 year olds not look like Tom Selleck on Magnum PI anymore? That's right, that's right. That's right. Tom Selleck and Magnum pi.

Jordan Harbinger: You're like, wow, how old?

25 years old and he [00:23:00] looked like he's, yeah, he's got like a full ass, like Charles Bronson, just Harry from top to bottom. Giant mustache, low deep voice. I mean, smoke all the smoking and probably sun wasn't good for them, but like. Man, they looked like they were 50. They still look like they were 55. When I look at those and it's like, nah, he just turned, that was, that was his 30th birthday party.

Nick Pell: Yeah, Lee Marvin was born like 60 years old.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Yeah. It's unbelievable. But I, some of that's fashion, like haircuts and stuff and, and having giant mustache, but still come on, what's going on? So I believe

Nick Pell: that that is true. It's true as far as I know. If somebody wants to correct us, you know, I'm sure they're already doing.

So, yes, we do know. The endocrine disruptors are correlated with lower testosterone rates in both men and boys, and yes, I know correlation is not causation. The thing is, it's basically impossible to definitively prove causation here because there are so many factors and [00:24:00] isolating this one variable is pretty much impossible.

I see. I think the important point to make is that it's totally biologically plausible that endocrine disruptors are doing this. There's evidence that suggests a connection, and for me, that's enough. For others, they might be more skeptical.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it's really tough to decide that. Again, a little asterisk, a little dagger on this one, but that's why people are listening to this episode, I suppose.

Okay, so let's just grant for the sake of argument here, that these endocrine disruptors are causing declining testosterone rates in men. That still doesn't prove the degree to which it's happening. And I think there's just a bit of a logical leap involved saying it's doing this in individuals and it's the solely or even primarily responsible reason for crashing testosterone rates in men over decades.

Nick Pell: I think you're right in the main, but here's the thing. Aggregates are made up of individuals. So if individual men are being impacted by endocrine disruptors, and these disruptors are in basically everything. [00:25:00] It's not a huge leap to say that testosterone levels are crashing more generally because of this specific factor.

That's not proof, but it's enough to convince me that it's an issue with broader social implications.

Jordan Harbinger: So I heard on NPR that girls are hitting puberty on average six months earlier than they were in the 1950s and sixties. So are endocrine disrupting chemicals causing that? I'm guessing you're gonna say that they are, but I don't know.

As a father of a girl, anything that could affect her health is concerning to me. The evidence

Nick Pell: here is kind of less clear than it is for declining testosterone rates, but there is some fairly compelling evidence that exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals like BPA, parabens, thalates, these are at the very least a contributing factor to early onset puberty in girls.

There are other compounding factors at play like childhood obesity, genetic factors, psychosocial stress, dietary habits that are completely unrelated [00:26:00] to EDCs. Sedentary lifestyles and even stuff you'd never expect, like exposure to light late at night and coming from a fatherless home, it's less conclusive.

And again, it's hard to say what impact duration of exposure has genetics, timing, dose level, all of these things have on the process. Mm-hmm.

Jordan Harbinger: The

Nick Pell: issue, and I will say this again and again, is that because this stuff is basically in everything. It's nearly impossible to isolate it as a factor. How are you going to find a girl or a grown man for that matter who has never been exposed?

To endocrine disrupting chemicals and then use them as a control group. The best you can probably do is find someone from a family that, quote unquote tries to avoid them where they can.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, and even then it's kinda like, okay, well what does that mean? What are they avoiding? Which chemicals? And with the girls or the women who live in families that don't care about this stuff.[00:27:00]

How do you measure how much she's getting and over what duration and what age? By the way, that fatherless homes thing where they start puberty early because of fatherless homes. I went ahead and looked that up a little bit. It's called the absent father hypothesis. That's an interesting rabbit hole to go down that we don't have time for right now, but people should look that up.

The absent father hypothesis, I, I guess it has to do with the women starting their period early because of instability in the home, in part due to an absent father. I mean, just that's like, that's kind of dark. Yeah. Anyway, it's impossible to isolate these variables, right? You can't really even say, this person has lived a, an isolated life.

I mean, if it's in the freaking drinking water, it's just absolutely everywhere.

Nick Pell: Yeah. And you could get one of these. People who was raised in a home where they just, they'd never even heard of endocrine disrupting chemicals and Right. Maybe they avoided them for other reasons because they don't like, you know, maybe they just don't like liquid soap.

Jordan Harbinger: I see.

Nick Pell: Yeah. Who knows. There's no way to get a control group here. So there's just way too many factors [00:28:00] to control for, which might make you say, well, we don't know. So I'm not convinced. And again, for me it's. Pretty obvious, but I'm just some weirdo bodybuilder who's obsessed with hormone levels.

Jordan Harbinger: The opposite end of the spectrum is male infertility, which I talked about on episode 6 58 with Shawan.

That was the phthalates episode where phthalates are in everything. What role are endocrine disruptors playing in male infertility? Do we know? 'cause we've seen that go down too. Is it it, it doesn't seem to be explained just by guys having kids later or trying to.

Nick Pell: This one is probably the most strong and compelling case we have that EDCs are doing something with regard to proper hormonal balance.

For me, it's the smoking gun that says, okay, the rest of this stuff is probably happening as well. Sperm counts have been declining globally for decades, and there's just tons of evidence that EDCs are playing a key role in that. It is a conspiracy theory to say that, you know, ooh, globalist elites are deliberately putting this stuff in, everything to lower the birth rates while they rub their [00:29:00] hands and cackle from their doctor.

Evil cave. It's not a conspiracy theory at all to connect EDCs with declining sperm count. It is about as well established in scientific literature as you are going to get with regard to the actual impact of EDCs on the human body.

Jordan Harbinger: Let's go back to the idea of dose. Do you need to be consuming a metric crap ton of this stuff?

For it to make any difference. Like I'm, I'm sure I eat atrazine at every meal and I haven't started growing boobs because of it. And I have two kids, which, you know, I mean, I, I don't, there's not a sort of tactful way to say this, I guess, but that took each of, we basically needed a month to conceive each one.

So dad is still got it.

Nick Pell: I will do every single one of these episodes from now on for free if you promise never to call yourself daddy on air again. Uh, you No deal. Sorry. So I think you're right to call this out, and it's actually a point of controversy in the [00:30:00] scientific community with regard to EDCs.

There's kind of an old guard that says there's a threshold that needs to be crossed before it makes any difference. Newer research and more recent literature says it doesn't really matter. Any exposure has negative consequences for your health.

Jordan Harbinger: Which is where it starts to get really scary because like you said, it's kind of impossible to avoid all EDCs.

So basically everybody's suffering at some level from this.

Nick Pell: It's absolutely impossible to avoid all of

Jordan Harbinger: them. They're in everything. Are you gonna stop drinking water? I mean, hydration is overrated. Cracks open can of diet Coke. Well, there's another episode idea. I get your point overall, so people should just try to limit exposure where they can, and maybe we just kind of accept that we're gonna get some endocrine disruptors in our system, and that's just life in 2025.

Nick Pell: Here's where it gets absolutely terrifying. The impact of EDCs is such that lower doses might be worse for you than higher doses.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:00] Huh?

Nick Pell: Lower doses might also act in completely different ways than higher doses. So it's not like a trend that you can plot or predict. The more is worse, less is better.

Assumption is increasingly challenged to the point where we really have no idea what's a safe quote unquote dose. Or if there even is one, or if you'd be better off just chugging, endocrine disruptors than letting them slowly sleep into your body every time you touch a receipt.

Jordan Harbinger: Man, this is so weird. I genuinely cannot really, well, I can't wrap my brain around how getting more of something that's bad for you might actually be better.

Than getting less of the thing that's bad for you. So in fact, I just confused myself saying that getting more endocrine disruptors might actually be less harmful than getting less endocrine disrupting chemicals in your body. That's crazy. That almost seems like, I'm not even hearing this correctly.

Nick Pell: It's not.

It's from something in toxicology called a. Non monotonic [00:32:00] dose response curve. Okay. The extra short version is that the impact of endocrine disrupting chemicals is plotted on a non-linear curve, and when you get a ton of EDCs, your body might compensate or the receptors are already saturated or your body realizes what's going on and counteract it, whereas it doesn't do any of these things at lower doses.

I see Also. Pulling BPAs from water bottles. You know the ones you used to drink from when you played soccer in elementary school. And yeah, everything tasted like chemical sludge that only resulted in bottles with BPS or BPF in them. Which might actually be worse,

Jordan Harbinger: right? Uh, yeah. Hey guys, we changed the label and we made this thing comply with the latest and greatest fads in green marketing, but now it's worse for you.

Yeah. Thanks guys. Good looking out. So basically, it, it's kind of, you know what this reminds me of, Nick? You know how those drugs that they used to sell at gas stations that are basically bath salts and they were like, this is, uh, incense or something. Yeah. And then they [00:33:00] outlaw whatever chemical that is, and then the factory in China that makes them is like, okay.

We're adding a hydrogen molecule onto the end of this. So it's not that chemical anymore, but it has the exact same effect and now it's got a different label, but it's legal. That's what this reminds me of.

Nick Pell: Yeah. Or like all the weird designer analogs of ecstasy from the nineties and two thousands, like two CB and you know, where they were just like, oh, this one chemical is illegal.

We will change one molecule. And now it's. A hundred times more dangerous and a hundred times right. Less pleasant and, but it's legal. What is two CB again? Two CB is one of those weird party drugs

Jordan Harbinger: that they use in New

Nick Pell: York, isn't

Jordan Harbinger: it?

Nick Pell: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which for the record, I've never done.

Jordan Harbinger: No. Yeah. And I'm curious about this.

I heard about a drug gang from Venezuela trafficking mostly, and I think it's called pink cocaine, and it has nothing to do with cocaine. This is another skeptical Sunday episode, or at least outta the loop. I think. I mean this, this kind

Nick Pell: of like. Changing the deck chairs on the Titanic is sort of what I think about green consumers in in general, but that's a topic for another [00:34:00] episode.

Jordan Harbinger: I mean, unlikely episode because libertarian guy thinks recycling is stupid. That episode's been done to death. So yeah, I agree. It's

Nick Pell: it's not, it's not interesting. The thing is, I don't think people should do nothing either with regard to endocrine disruptors or living more environmentally friendly lifestyles in general.

The issue is that it's just so difficult to tell what to do. I'm not really comfortable prescribing a plan of action here, because again, who am I? I write, you know, research podcasts and write YouTube marketing videos.

Jordan Harbinger: What happened to your gig? Sending spam email to boomers to sell Trump tchotchkes. Oh,

Nick Pell: they went out of business.

It turns out

Jordan Harbinger: he's way more popular when he is not president. That's hilarious. Somehow, so, okay. To ask a super obvious question, why isn't this stuff regulated? I'm well, is this stuff regulated? I guess I should have asked you that.

Nick Pell: Is it regulated? Eh, kind of, not specifically anyway. Our current regulatory structure isn't really built for the problem that [00:35:00] endocrine disruptors present.

Jordan Harbinger: Why not? I mean, isn't that kind of what they're supposed to be able to do is regulate substances, chemicals, and stuff like that?

Nick Pell: Most of how chemicals are regulated in this country is related to a 1970s law called the toxic Substances control. Basically the assumption is that chemicals are innocent until proven guilty.

And to be proven guilty, you have to prove that they're actually dangerous. Dangerous, not just kind of a pest

Jordan Harbinger: that doesn't sound so hot. Basically, we have to wait around until we find out that these things are causing aggressive forms of cancer or something before the government can even consider taking any action.

Nick Pell: I'm not convinced that the government is the best way to deal with this problem, but I do concede that my general model of. Government bad starts to break down a little on this. Mm-hmm. You can't just opt out of tap water. You could, I guess. But what are you gonna do? Start using bottled water for absolutely everything.

Or I guess you could dig a well. I'm sure there's people out there who do this, but that's a little outside of my [00:36:00] budget.

Jordan Harbinger: Well, Flint, Michigan has entered the chat. Do you remember that whole debacle? They changed the water source and then they have to spend millions on bottled water for everybody. It's crazy.

Nick Pell: I think it's still not fixed,

Jordan Harbinger: but I don't even know how you can fix it because don't you have to fix all the pipes too? I mean, that's just a massive, massive problem. The sad reality is people just don't care about Flint. Yeah. Or, or like many poor cities in the United States, by the way, for a different take on the whole role of plastics.

With our regard to the environment and your health. Checkout our episode 9 2 4 with Krista Armit, author of The Plastic Paradox. A lot of people, you know, loved it. A lot of people hated it and said it was all wrong, but you know, he does have a free book and brings receipts about why plastic might not be the end of the world.

So when the market moved to get rid of BPAs and plastic water bottles, you think it might have just made the situation worse?

Nick Pell: Yeah, because on every important level stuff like replacing BPAs with bps, it's kind of more of a PR stunt than a responsible move by companies to make the world a better place.

They're just gonna bandaid the problem for public image [00:37:00] because that's the most cost effective means of dealing with the public outcry over BPAs.

Jordan Harbinger: All right, soy, boys and soy gals, time for a word from our sponsors. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Better Help. Something I've learned after years of talking to high performers on the show.

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Thank you for listening and supporting the show. It is your support of our sponsors that keeps the lights on around here. All of the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are searchable and clickable on the website at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. Now for the rest of skeptical Sunday, why don't companies have to prove that these chemicals are safe before releasing them into water bottles and the groundwater?

Nick Pell: I think it's because requiring them to prove chemicals are safe. Is, in my opinion, it's a seriously undue regulatory burden. I mean, first of all, what do we mean when we say safe? There's all kinds of stuff that's bad for you, that's in the air and the water. For some of it, we've simply decided as a society that the benefits outweigh the problems presented.

So if we're trying to make companies prove that everything they make is 100% safe and presents no problems of any kind, get ready to have precisely [00:41:00] zero new breakthroughs in chemical engineering until the regulatory structure is changed back. Because companies are just not going to keep making new chemicals, many of which you want them to make.

If they have to prove beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt that there's no problems presented by them whatsoever. So what are the rules

Jordan Harbinger: in the eu?

Nick Pell: Who cares?

Jordan Harbinger: No. No. But really, what are the rules in the eu?

Nick Pell: It's kind of a, a flip script from what we have is if there's any indication that there might be a problem.

The company has to prove that there's not a problem before they can start manufacturing the chemical, which again, Europe is not exactly a hothead of chemical engineering breakthroughs. I mean, they do innovate, but the regulatory burdens are much higher. So you just don't see as much coming out in Q, angry commenters in the eu.

But

Jordan Harbinger: yeah, I suppose so what if I don't care and I just don't want atrazine in my topsoil and tomatoes and stuff. And I

Nick Pell: think that's a fine position to take as long as it's an informed and honest one. [00:42:00] There are trade-offs in everything, and if you're aware of that, okay. The problem I have is when people act like we can just wave a magic wand and get rid of all these chemicals and have absolutely no downside as a result.

Jordan Harbinger: So what do you, Nick Pell, some guy who lives in, I don't know, on underground bodybuilding forums, obsessed with having a proper hormone balance. What do you do to limit your exposure? Or mitigate harm done by EDCs. Do you do anything besides not touch receipts?

Nick Pell: Well, like you said, I don't, I don't touch receipts.

Yeah. Uh, the market has kind of responded to this, so there's a regional chain here in the southwest called Natural Grocers that doesn't use receipts with BPAs because their customer spoke and they listened. I generally try to buy food that's in glass or metal rather than plastic. I have a metal water bottle.

I'm also not gonna pay $9 for a gallon of milk. Because it comes in a glass bottle. Right? So there's an example of me saying it's not worth it. It's all a trade off, all trade off.

Jordan Harbinger: What else do you [00:43:00] avoid? Do you avoid anything specific?

Nick Pell: Shampoo and soap. I don't mean I avoid them in their entirety. I was gonna say

Jordan Harbinger: that explains a lot.

Nick Pell: I, uh, I don't use liquid hand soap and I look for more natural. Okay. Or whatever. I mean, I use Dr. Bronner's bar soap.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh yeah.

Nick Pell: It's something to read while you shower. That's right. You know, I look for more. Natural or whatever, shampoos. I

Jordan Harbinger: don't let my

Nick Pell: kid use liquid

Jordan Harbinger: hand soap. I'm a weirdo and basically don't even, I shouldn't admit this, but I don't even use soap most of the time.

Obviously when I'm washing my hands, I do that to before I eat or after I use the bathroom and we've got some natural something or other in here. But I don't put soap all over my body, which I think is probably weird, but my skin is great. I don't stink. This is the hippie part of me, but I'm like, shouldn't I be letting certain kinds of things grow and live on my skin?

Don't those protect me? I mean, you know, soap is sort of a relatively new invention. I'm not willing to put that stuff inside my body. But you know, if a weird colony of some harmless bacteria wants to live on my lower back, [00:44:00] like, okay, fine. I concede

Nick Pell: I don't use deodorant and inhabit for like. Years. So, and I didn't use shampoo for like five years, which sounds gross.

Yeah, sounds grosser than it is. 'cause it does your hair adjusts, you stop your hair, gets like super greasy for like two weeks and then it dries out and you're good. But yeah, there's some guy out there listening who's like nodding his head, pointing at his whatever. He's listening to this through and being like, I know.

I know bro. Sure. You know, so none of that's super weird to me. Sure. Filtering water, always a good idea. It tastes better. If you live anywhere near agricultural runoff, IE atrazine, you absolutely should be doing this. All my home food storage containers aren't glass or aluminum. I typically don't eat canned food, which cans.

I know. I said metal is fine a bunch of times. Here's the plot. Twist cans usually have some kind of plastic coating on the inside. Yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: yeah, right. I found that out too. Yeah. Um,

Nick Pell: I love tuna though, and I'm just not gonna stop eating tuna because it comes [00:45:00] in cans and I'm definitely not buying it in the bags.

That's unholy.

Jordan Harbinger: That is weird. Yeah. I mean, this is one of those things where, by the way, I should point out, I've heard fine. The plastic coating on the inside of the can's not that big of a deal. It doesn't leach at all. Okay? It leaches a little, but it's not that big of a deal. So this isn't like, stop eating canned food, stop doing it.

But I would say filter your water, because coming from Michigan, you gotta filter the crap that's in the water. If you start asking questions about, Hey, they treat the water and then it goes through the pipes, so the pipe's clean, the answer is absolutely not. Yeah. And if they are clean, it's because they're running chemicals through there, which you also probably shouldn't be drinking, right?

So filter your water, like you said, it tastes better. You have to decide how crazy you want to be avoiding this stuff, right? Like we have glass and aluminum containers for food, but then of course I keep cereal in a little plastic thing, right? So it's like, okay. So you just kinda have to decide how crazy you wanna be.

And like I said, we've got reverse osmosis filters in the house. I'm probably dying from a lack of minerals because of that, because it filters [00:46:00] out the minerals too. But at least I'm not drinking birth control urine anymore. Maybe.

Nick Pell: But you know, if you were, some people pay good money for that, that

Jordan Harbinger: yes, that they do.

I've also seen people paying big bucks for hormone harmonizers and other treatments. I'm just gonna go out on a limb and say that those are useless quack science nonsense and people should avoid them. I've not seen

Nick Pell: this specifically, if you can believe that.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I'm surprised you didn't sell it at your old company.

Actually,

Nick Pell: actually, lemme make a note. Maybe my current company will wanna sell it. There you go. I think it's probably nonsense. I don't believe any of that stuff works detoxing. You know, I've kind of file it under detox powders. But yeah, stop microwaving your lunch in plastic wrap. A melting plastic wrap into it, and you're already way ahead of the curve on this one.

But beyond moving to some untouched bit of virgin forest and opting out of civilization entirely, you have to accept that you know you're gonna be exposed to EDCs. I spent five years [00:47:00] of my life trying to opt out of human civilization and. Like Ray Charles said about heroin. I, I don't regret it, but I don't recommend it

Jordan Harbinger: as usual.

You seem shockingly reasonable about this. I do a lot of this stuff myself because there's not a lot of downside to trying to limit your exposure to endocrine disruptors, I guess. So why do you think that there are people who even go totally crazy over the EDCs? Why are people so obsessed with this that we got the suggestion a gazillion times?

Nick Pell: I think there's a tendency to jump to crazy conclusions post COVID. A lot of people don't trust experts, and I think a healthy skepticism is, is good, but you either just totally abandon a search for truth or you choose to be willing to critically evaluate. Research. I think some people distrust studies because they can be industry funded, they could be misrepresented, they could be cherry picked.

I think especially in the age of clickbait, there's almost no news sources trying to report to you. The straight [00:48:00] dope about scientific studies, the reporting, what gets engagement, what gets some traffic. I think a lot of people have become wise to that and as an overreaction they've simply thrown their hands up and, you know, stopped trusting expertise or have, in worst case scenarios become hostile to the idea of knowledge itself.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, so I read a lot of scientific studies or abstracts that are of, or summaries thereof that are linked from clickbaity news articles, and you're not wrong. The thing is, you can click the study and read it. And see what it actually said and what the methodology is and the sample size and all that, and you can make your determination based on that.

Then whatever Buzzfeed is saying, is that even still a thing? Are they still around? I hope not, but probably. Yeah,

Nick Pell: I, I mean, I do the same thing. If I find the topic interesting or controversial or suspect, you don't have to read a 67 page study to understand what the study is saying or if the methodology is good, read the abstract.

See what it's actually saying. What's the same, is it an N [00:49:00] seven study? Did they study seven people for this? The claim that they're making is also usually very, very limited. You know, so like the Dave Frogs thing is like. This species of frog when introduced to, with this amount of atrazine under the, you know, it's, it's always very specific and limited.

Just run that through a basic analytic loic check and do a gut check, and don't start rejecting the very idea that people can know things.

Jordan Harbinger: I think this is all true of a healthy skepticism of scientific research leading to a total rejection of truth, but more specifically on the subject of EDCs. Why do you think people get a little crazy about this specific area of biochemistry?

Nick Pell: Because the impact of endocrine disruptors is viscerally dystopian and

Jordan Harbinger: discogenic. Discogenic. Is that a word? What does that mean?

Nick Pell: Yeah, it's the opposite of eugenic. It's means selecting for the worst characteristics rather than the best.

Jordan Harbinger: Cool. Okay. New word learned, I suppose, but tell me what you mean by this.

Nick Pell: Well, we [00:50:00] have entire works of art that revolve around the idea of people's hormones getting thrown outta whack. Whether it's The Time Machine or P.D. James' book, Children of Men, which I haven't read, but I've seen the movie, it's difficult to prove any direct connection because of the latency of effects.

It takes years for the impact of the chemicals to show up. So every study kind of hedges on the thesis and waters it down, and that kind of ambiguity while understandable from the perspective of the scientists. They're not really supposed to be claiming anything other than what the actual study says, but that ambiguity leaves a lot of room for so-called alternative new sites to take the ball and run with it.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. I I would imagine that a big part of it is generational concerns too. Like, ask me if I'm worried that microwaving plastic is gonna make my Jun rivel up and fall off, and I'll say, no, but ask me if I'm gonna feed my kids. Something that came out of. Microwaved Tupperware with plastic wrap over it. I mean, I'm gonna say probably [00:51:00] not.

Nick Pell: Yeah. I will dart across the room and perform a leaping dive to make sure my kid doesn't touch a receipt.

Jordan Harbinger: Right, right. Well, parents do a lot of things they wouldn't want their kids doing, that's for sure.

Nick Pell: Where it gets really scary though, is when we start talking about generational. Because, yeah, if the endocrine disrupting chemicals change your genes,

Jordan Harbinger: wait, they can change your genes.

How? What are you talking about?

Nick Pell: It doesn't really change your genes so much as it tells them to start behaving differently, which is a subtle Oh, right. Okay. Subtle but important difference where this really becomes a problem. Is when your kids inherit the messed up genes from you, which is called epigenetic inheritance.

Jordan Harbinger: So I've heard of epigenetics, right? That's basically where changes get made to your DNA or RNA, not in terms of the actual sequencing, but in terms of how they express themselves, and then that can get passed down to your kid and then their kid and so on. I didn't, I guess I didn't realize that part.

Nick Pell: Here's where we start getting really down the rabbit hole. There's a chemical called, I'm just gonna call it DES. [00:52:00] It was prescribed to prevent miscarriages, but in fact it increased chances of infertility. It increased pregnancy complications, and it increased incidence of a super rare form of cancer called clear cell adenocarcinoma.

Jordan Harbinger: Yikes.

Nick Pell: Okay. Yeah. In fact, who it really impacted was girls whose mothers took the drug while they were in utero, but the damage didn't stop there. Research found that not only did DES impact the women who took it, it also impacted their daughters. Even their granddaughters through epigenetic transmission.

So that's at least three generations impacted by an FDA approved medication. Yikes. Now that's regulated. Think about what unregulated stuff in the air, water, food, and paper is doing to you and potentially your children.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's definitely scary. Ugh. What are some of the [00:53:00] other reasons that people seem so focused on endocrine disruptors?

And why people who know about it, they seem to go down these like crazy rabbit holes with it. I mean, it was researching a little bit of this episode. It looked like we had to even cut things that were just there. There was a lot of ways we could have gone with this one.

Nick Pell: I think that one reason people are focused on this, well, another reason anyway is regulatory caption.

I think people are correctly somewhat skeptical of the FDA. The folks skeptical of the FDA have a very real sense that the chemical lobby has, and I wanna put this in the most generous and agreeable terms possible. It's just not a wild conspiracy theory or some insane crackpot proposition to say that maybe the chemical lobby has been able to buy undue influence in certain sectors of the federal government that directly impact your life.

There's this huge revolving door of lobbyists and regulators just like everywhere else. Does that mean every study is a load of bunk, or every study is an attempt [00:54:00] to conceal some dark secret from the population? No, absolutely not. It does mean that you shouldn't always take what they say at phase value.

And I get why people think it's some elaborate coverup, but to me it's just powerful organizations doing what they do.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that sounds about right. The key takeaway here it sounds like is you, you don't need to go full Unibomber, but also maybe don't guzzle a pint of shampoo every night before bed.

Endocrine disruptors are real. And there does seem to be some credible evidence that they're doing things to your body that you would rather they not do, and also maybe even to your children's bodies. We don't know that yet.

Nick Pell: Yeah, that's about where I'm at. Science is catching up here. Regulation, if that's your thing, generally tends to be slow moving.

It plays catch up. Your personal choices can help you feel more comfortable, more in control about your exposure, if nothing else, which I think is valuable.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's a great way to end it. Check your labels, question your sources, and ditch the plastic wrap people. Thanks to Nick Pell for the Assist. He kept us balanced [00:55:00] without getting, uh, getting too hormonal about it.

Until next time, stay as skeptical and thanks for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday to me Jordan@jordanharbinger.com. Advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show all at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn and this show.

It's created an association with Podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger. Jase Sanderson, Tadas Sidlauskas, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own, and I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. Do your own research before implementing things you hear on the show. Remember, we rise by lifting others.

Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge we doled out here today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn and we'll see you next time.

What if the same psychological tricks magicians use to amaze you are the ones con artists use to rip you off. Brian Brushwood has spent decades mastering the art of [00:56:00] deception. Not to scam you, but to teach you how to spot when you're being

JHS Clip: played. When I learned the fundamentals of magic, there is a rhythm and pacing that you have to set things up.

If you do a good magic trick, you very artfully set up all the walls around the person until you reveal the effect, and by the time they see the effect, and then they try to backtrack and figure out how you did it. They realize that they're completely locked in a mental cell. They can't remember the right part, or they were looking at the wrong place.

The moment a magician says, now we begin, you're already screwed. There are a number of. Fraudsters out there. There are people who claim to have actual telekinetic powers, people who claim to be clear vance or psychic, or talk to dead people. But I realized that if I could educate other people, if other people knew magic the way I knew magic, then that would put them in a position where they would have that low grade alarm ready to go off at all times.

And I realized that by getting people into magic on scam school, what I'm really doing is I'm forcing them to practice and perform and actually automat, automatize [00:57:00] the maneuverings that make magic possible. That whole time I was on the road, I had to end up educating a lot of people about the difference between science and pseudoscience and the way people can be psychologically manipulated.

Those things exist. You can either understand them and master them and use them in a safe space like magic or trying to score a free beer or playing a game, or trying to create a novel false memory as an experiment with your friends. Or you can willfully remain ignorant of them, in which case you can take it to the bank that they will be used on you at some point.

To hear

Jordan Harbinger: Brian Brushwood break down how to be more persuasive, less gullible, and way harder to fool. Check out episode 7 22 of the Jordan Harbinger Show.