Dr. Aly Cohen is a board certified rheumatologist, integrative medicine specialist, and environmental health expert specializing in arthritis, immune system disorders and women’s health. When a personal experience with a beloved pet led her to start questioning everything she brought into her home, she was shocked at what she learned about the ingredients in common household products.

In this episode we discuss:

• Why environmental health isn’t being taught in medical schools
• The impact of endocrine-disrupting chemicals on our body systems, including immunity
• Teaching teens about safer ingredients
• Making changes that fit your lifestyle
• Why Mac & Cheese is different in Europe than in the US
• Being aware of substitutions that may not be safer
• Sourcing safe drinking water
• The hazards of scented products
• “Greenwashing” in Marketing

Dr. Cohen has authored several books, including “Non-Toxic: Living Healthy in a Chemical World”, a volume of Dr. Weil’s Healthy Living Guides that addresses how consumers can reduce their risk of harm due to exposure. Her talk entitled “How To Protect Your Kids from Toxic Chemicals” was featured at TEDx Cape May in 2019.

Dr. Cohen created The Smart Human LLC. (TheSmartHuman.com), to educate colleagues and the community on the potential health issues from exposure to everyday chemicals. You can find those resources on the website, podcast, and social media platforms @TheSmartHuman

You can also explore http://ewg.org  for water safety, ingredient information, “Dirty Dozen” produce list.

Susi: Thank you for joining me again today on the Thriving Life Summit. I am so happy to have with me here in our virtual studio, Dr. Aly Cohen. She is a phenomenal – and very involved and very busy, I don’t know how she does it – woman of the world. 

Dr. Aly Cohen is a board certified rheumatologist, integrative medicine specialist, and environmental health expert specializing in arthritis, immune system disorders and women’s health. She is also a passionate educator on the topic of environmental toxins and their impact on our health. Dr. Cohen’s practice, Integrative Rheumatology Associates P.C., integrates western and complimentary medical options with modalities, including biofeedback, acupuncture, and cognitive therapy while addressing food, sleep, stress, and the environment.

She has authored several books, including Non-Toxic: Living Healthy in a Chemical World, and a volume of Dr. Wiel’s Healthy Living Guides that addresses how consumers can reduce their risk of harm due to exposure. Dr. Cohen created The Smart Human LLC, to educate colleagues and the community on the potential risks from exposure to everyday chemicals, you can find those resources on the website, her podcast, and social media platforms @thesmarthuman 

Dr. Cohen helped the Knowledge Universe company reduce the chemical exposure of infants and toddlers at over 2,000 KinderCare daycares across the US, and works with schools to integrate environmental health information into the health curriculum. Her talk entitled “How To Protect Your Kids from Toxic Chemicals” was featured a TEDx Cape May in 2019. She has been a keynote speaker on stages around the world, appeared on television and radio, written for numerous websites, including WebMD, and has won numerous awards. Dr. Cohen is currently on faculty and writing environmental health curriculum for the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine. In the midst of all of this, she’s an avid runner and triathlon competitor, and lives with her husband and two sons in Central, New Jersey. 

And I scored a little bit of time with her today! So, thank you so much for dropping in and joining me. 

Dr. Cohen: My pleasure. Thanks for having me. 

Susi: So, as I was telling you before we hopped online, environmental health has been a focus of mine since way before it was cool.

And I believe that you were right there with me just on the other side of the country. And so I love seeing what you’ve created. I’ve been familiar with your work now for quite a while. I love your website and we’ll definitely talk more about that. And I’m curious. 

Why? Why are you passionate about informing people about how chemicals affect our health?

Dr. Cohen: Well, you know, I guess I fell into this very serendipitously. I mean, as my book talks about in the introduction, which was very important for me to write down, you know, I didn’t look to be a rheumatologist who, you know, fell into environmental health or even knew what environmental health was. And mind you, we don’t learn environmental health or anything about how environment affects human health, including nutrition, I mean even at the very least nutrition, in medical school. 

So, I really did not look to go into this field. I happened to go into this field because unfortunately, about 10 years ago, my dog got sick. And I had two young babies, and the dog got really ill, and what I ended up trying to figure out is why he was so ill at such a young age with such an unusual illness, which was autoimmune hepatitis.

And that’s unusual for dogs, let alone for golden retrievers and as an animal lover, and he was my first born. This was really a heartbreaking situation. And so, and also ironically as an auto-immune disease specialist, myself, I felt obligated to figure this out. But as I started to look into what might’ve made him sick – maybe his dog food was contaminated, maybe that rubber toy he was sucking on all the time was leaching chemicals. I didn’t know, maybe it was his pesticide exposure to, you know, we live on a farm in Central, New Jersey. 

As I was looking into what had maybe caused his immune system to switch on him, to trigger him, I was uncovering all sorts of really uncomfortable facts and figures about our country in the ways it manages, or does not really manage or regulate, chemicals for humans and for human exposure. And I think it was really one of these moments where I had to look around at my cat, at the time, and try to figure out, you know, is this for real? 

And it began a journey of me trying to find out from the smartest people in the field of environmental health and to partner with them and to join them and to listen to them and to ask them questions, to see whether or not this is really the truth.

And it turns out it is true. And I had to shout on mountain tops to get this out there because the final piece of this is that I’m an auto-immune disease doctor. I’m a rheumatologist, but I see everything, including integrative medicine patients. And what I was seeing on the front lines was really the downstream effects of these chemical exposures.

And I think that’s why the partnership for this book and my textbook with Dr. vom Saal, who’s a bench researcher, was pretty extraordinary because he’s really doing the research that figures out how these chemicals work in the lab. And I’m literally, in real time, managing patients that are seeing the effects of these chemicals.

Susi: Yes, and I love that you’ve already, and and how could it not, from my own point of view, but you’ve already kind of pulled back the curtain on the connection or the results we’re seeing in people with auto-immune disorders right now. 

Dr. Cohen: Yeah. And so people, one of the questions people have as well, you know, we now are learning a lot about, we have robust information about endocrine disruption, right?

They’re called EDCs or endocrine-disrupting chemicals. And there’s just, you know, the World Health Organization has a huge report from 2012, if people want to look that up. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Endocrine Society, all of these major medical bodies that are international have position statements on the effects of these chemicals now on human health.

And what I think people have a hard time grasping and what I’m trying to work through as well with another book that I’m working on now is how, not only these chemicals affect the endocrine system, which is really hormone signaling between organs and organ systems and between each other, but also how the immune system is also caught up in the fray, and how the immune system is absolutely affected by these chemicals as well.

And so that’ll be the next kind of iteration of this environmental health work, is looking at the health effects from the immune system. 

Susi: Yes. Yes. And I’m sitting here thinking about the dates, you know, 2012 is nine years ago, and I’ve also heard that that process of getting new data into medical schools is about 17 – no, getting new data out into the practice, into the field it’s about 17 years, right? 

As new doctors get the current research and it works into their education, and then we can actually see the benefit of it. And that that time lapse is really hard to see as a number. Keep going up on the charts of thyroid dysfunction of behavioral issues and developmental disorders.

And, you know, the list goes on and on because our hormones –  every function of our body, nothing is immune to hormones. 

Dr. Cohen: In terms of your timeline, I will give you some information. I have now reached out to several deans of medical schools to give them free curriculum on environmental health. Be it an hour, or be it 40 hours that I’ve written for AIHM. And not only do they tell me no, they tell me that they based their education on what’s going to work for the board exams. So these are old school criteria for diseases that have been outdated. Not that they don’t have value, but they have new information. And so I’m basically getting on mountaintops and talking about how, if we don’t educate healthcare practitioners about these issues, then just focusing on treatment is missing the point, instead of prevention. 

Susi: Exactly. And you said downstream and that’s exactly how I saw it when I made my last pivot and decided to get into holistic health and see how I could support people in recognizing how stress leads to so many different diseases and ultimately robs our independence. Because before this, I was working with the senior clients in their eighties and nineties, and really seeing the downstream impact of not taking action when we’re younger and it’s easier. 

We don’t have such a hard course correction when we work upstream, but that education has to come from somewhere. And so I love that you’re sharing this with schools and adolescents and this passion project of yours, to bring this awareness, as you have said, at such an important part in their own growth and development.

Dr. Cohen: Yeah, teenagers, again, that was in my introduction because I wanted people to understand sort of how I came across this topic and how I met, you know, what my journey was. It turned out, after having lectured to over 25 major hospital institutions at grand rounds programs over two or three years that no one was really listening.

I mean, I got claps at the end of the talk, but no one would actually come up to me and take the resources I was offering them to manage the plastic tubing in their neonatal intensive care units to swap out for less phthalates and PDE. So, you know, there’s chemicals that we now know that are in plastic tubing and medical IV bags. It’s such an easy swap. 

So these institutions weren’t into change, physical change. And so it became a very frustrating endeavor, although I learned quite a bit about what the uphill battle is. But what happened was I was in my kitchen one night with my babysitter and I was paying her after she was leaving from watching the kids. 

And she said to me, “oh, you know, you mean my shampoo might be causing me some kind of harm, like, is it toxic? Should I swap out?” 

And I looked at her and I thought to myself, that’s it. Eureka. This is the population, these young people who are so attuned to their bodies and self-conscious about their bodies, but also interested in their bodies and also able to maneuver websites and apps, and really can figure out, if given the right tools, that they too can look up their products. They can figure out what’s safe. What’s not safe. They can find their own choices. 

And that became sort of my next layer of this mission was, let’s get this into the hands of people who want it. Let’s go where the love is. And I wanted to test this out with two pilot projects that I undertook at Princeton High School here in Princeton, New Jersey.

And they were remarkable. The head of science who opened her doors and really let me do whatever I want. And it turns out, after collecting pre- and post data on interest, on a baseline level of understanding, and then post, that these kids really wanted this information. 

And that, that really changed everything because we need to go younger if we want to get people thinking about these concepts of what you put in on and around your bodies, especially young people who may one day choose to have families. And we know that this is a big issue when it comes to pregnancy. We know that when you’re pregnant, that exposures matter, exponentially, really.

And so if we give these kids the idea to be even careful about what they do with their bodies, they’re going to be that much more careful when they’re trying to conceive if they should choose to want to do that. 

Susi: Yes. And, and I think it’s so powerful to, to be talking with them before their buying habits have been ingrained because I, my toughest test case is my husband 

Dr. Cohen: Been there, done that. 

Susi: Right? I’d like to buy this product. I have this product sitting under the sink, “but I just picked up my 409, or my scrubbing bubbles” or whatever it is, you know “because this works better.” 

In a side by side test, he can’t prove that. But habits die hard and it feels really overwhelming to make changes. But also to understand when you turn a bottle around it’s Greek. 

Dr. Cohen: It’s meant to be Greek, but really independent of being Greek, you know, people don’t realize that those chemicals that are Greek on a label are not tested for any safety or toxicity before they go into the product that you’re now holding. And it’s hard to wrap our heads around that. 

There is this imaginary feeling that we have these regulations and government oversight that protects us. When in fact we have no protections and we have 95,000 chemicals that are now used in all of our products that are not tested before they go into the products we love.

And that’s a very hard thing for people to wrap their heads around because it’s almost like saying that there’s no Santa Claus or, you know, not that there isn’t, but it’s like saying that there’s something that we grew up believing. It’s like having a third of your plate with a starch.

You know, we grew up believing we need to have a third of our plate with pasta or rice or, you know, potato chips or potatoes or whatever, when in fact it turns out that may not be such a great idea. Turns out. 

Susi: We might be finding some evidence otherwise, but it depends on whose numbers you might be looking at.

And one thing that I find really interesting is, and this has come up as Kraft reformulated their macaroni and cheese because it won’t sell in Europe the way they can sell it in the US. So they, to your point of changing out products that we use in medicine, ingredients that we use in food, it’s not a deal breaker.

It’s just that when they don’t have to, they’ll keep on using the cheap standard, processed, easier to come by, we need to do something with this anyway, ingredients that they have. 

Dr. Cohen: That’s true. 

Susi: And in skincare products too. So in Europe, they are more aware and they are more present in what is allowed to be used.

And I find that really interesting too. And in the US, I mean, maybe five ingredients, 

Dr. Cohen: 11 chemicals and cosmetics, five other chemicals. I’m trying, I’m working on that exact list, just in terms of the nuances right now, but it’s certainly 11 and cosmetics about five overall. And that includes, you know, DDT which is a pesticide, PCBs, there’s some components of, asbestos that can’t be used in certain aspects of building construction, but certainly it’s still out there. 

So there are less than 20 chemicals, I would say less than 15, really, that have ever been removed from the US market, as compared to over 1200 in the European union, because they have a much more rigorous regulatory and oversight and testing program.

So, it’s become a joke that major companies really do formulate products specifically for the United States that they wouldn’t necessarily, or they don’t get away with in the European market. And you could hold, side-by-side two different bottles from two different countries. In fact, that’s something I plan to do if we ever get back to traveling is to really show those in real time.

Because it’s one of those things where people don’t like being duped. No one likes being duped, and I think we’re getting duped. And I think it’s resulting in us being sick, and to some degree or another, obviously not everyone’s sick when they put on their lotions and their creams, it’s really more of cumulative exposure over time. 

But I can assure you that the numbers, when we look at the epidemiology of autoimmune disease, of diabetes, of thyroid cancers and other endocrine cancers that are hormone sensitive, obesity of infertility, of male genitalia changes in terms of phthalate exposure, when we look at all of this, these numbers, they did not rise exponentially from just random genetic mutation. These are exposure related, associated changes and that’s a real problem. 

Susi: Yes. And, one thing that I think some people, as they start to tune in, I mean “BPA free” became a big thing, we all became aware that BPA is bad. And so the BPA bottles became a marketing ploy, frankly, but we don’t know that the alternative is safer, necessarily. We’ve changed the molecules around, but we don’t know what that means for us. And it’s still in a lot of the linings of food cans and a lot of places where we might be surprised to find it.

Dr. Cohen: Yeah, BPA was only removed, and that was really an awful lot of the book because my coauthor, Dr. Frederick vom Saal, I guess this might be backwards, but oh, well, I don’t know. Frederick vom Saal is a sort of, one of those thousands of unsung heroes that really do their work quietly and fastidiously, and with very little popular media recognition because their work doesn’t require that in order to. Are they in it for that reason?

And, you know, he is just a remarkable human being because he was one of the first and he had colleagues that really found out that this being bisphenol A, or BPA was an endocrine disruptor was one of the first ones really found to be not only, able to disrupt hormones, but really mimic estrogen at low levels, block androgen levels, which is the male hormone levels. And also that it’s so pervasive, I mean, it’s one of the most utilized chemicals in all of our market because it essentially makes plastic soft – I’m sorry, hard. And phthalates usually make plastics softer. 

And so BPA, which was found to have hormone related issues, it was fought with all of the science that was discovered to remove that from plastic baby bottles in 2012 in the US market. Now that being said, if it’s so bad that we have to take it out of plastic baby bottles, why are we not taking it out of plastic – I mean, metal cans like aluminum cans, which serve babies or cans of, baby formula that serve babies, because it’s in the lining of all aluminum cans in this country and around the world because it lines the cans so that the food does not make contact with the metal.

And so this can be our diet sodas and our favorite organic fruits and vegetables in cans and tomato paste. But it’s still in cans, independently of whether the food it contains is organic or healthy or whatever you want to call it. But you know, the idea that we were so limited in our ability to remove BPA from more products is really, I think, a failure of our system.

You know, what they did since that time is that they’ve said “BPA free” on many plastics, including water drinking bottles and baby bottles. And yet they can actually substitute with BPS, BPSIP, BPFP. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of bisphenols that are substitutions, they’re calling them regrettable substitutions, because now it’s a whack-a-mole and they just substitute in a different polymer for BPA and call it “BPA free,” which is just another way we’re getting duped.

So one way to get around that, because we’re here, is just basically remove plastics as much as you can from your life. And then you don’t have to worry about the duping. It also means switching from canned foods, as much as you can, to frozen foods. And then transferring food that’s frozen into glass or stainless steel when you heat it up, so you’re not heating up any plastics around your food or drinks. 

So that’s really a big swap out that actually has a lot of benefit because we do know that those levels will drop in urine When BPA is tested after making some of those healthy lifestyle swaps. 

Susi: Yes. And I’m so glad that you brought this up, um, because I believe that you advocate, and I do as well, that any change, a small change is better than nothing.

And feeling like you have to go 180 and “live a clean life,” is so overwhelming that we never get started. So what’s your recommendation to people when their eyes glaze over, and they’re like, “oh, my gosh. I have to throw out everything that’s in my house. 

Dr. Cohen: Well, I start, well, first of all, tying this back to the work you do with stress, is an environmental component of environmental health. Remember it’s not just chemicals, environmental health. It’s other things.

It’s stress, it’s sleep. It’s light pollution, air pollution. It’s noise pollution, it’s poor sleep. It’s drinking water, which is a big issue of mine. So, you know, environmental health is anything that’s outside the body that affects human health. What I tell people, patients, and this is really kind of interesting, is when I first was learning this material I was on a ledge. I mean, I was like, “are you kidding?” Pretty much 24 hours a day. 

Susi: With little babies in the house. I mean, your little boy, 

Dr. Cohen: The dog that was dying or had passed away, you know, with new pets in the house, with family history of all sorts of illnesses from heart disease to breast cancer. It was one of those, living in a farm on with glyphosate being sprayed out my back door, which is literally true and still goes on, which I have to manage with the farmers that live locally. 

You know, I was really like, “what do I do? Do I pick up and just leave? Do I go?” Well, it turns out that there’s studies that people in remote component parts of Maine and Alaska have very high levels of certain chemicals in their blood and urine, despite living off the grid. So that wasn’t a great answer. 

The answer is not to leave because you’re really not going to go anywhere. Okay. That’s not going to be – In some way, you’re exposed to some kind of industrial chemicals. But that being said, we can make changes. We can make a dent in our body’s exposure, our body burden, and that’s what I wanted to focus on.

And so I went from being on the ledge to calmly incorporating, “how do we do this with a real life, with kids, with busy work schedules, with maybe not enough money to buy a new couch that doesn’t have flame retardants.” And it took us six years to get rid of our flame retardant couches. I could have gotten rid of them next day, but where would anyone sit?

So, you have to think about, how does life play into this? And so this book was written as if I, if I had it back then I would have been on the ledge. It was written so that people can dive in on their own journey, at their own timing, and focus on things that matter to them. 

So there’s a whole chapter on drinking water. There’s a whole chapter on personal care products, you know, sharing that with your teenagers would be great. There’s a whole chapter on radiation and how to manage, not get rid of necessarily, all of our radiation toys, our tech toys. You know, I have a cell phone, I have a computer, I have everything, but how I use them and how I tell my kids to use them will lower their radiation exposure. Over time that’s even more important. 

So, you know, the idea is to have chapters available for people to dive in when they’re ready. Also, I pushed for a refrigerator kind of tear off sheet at the back, which means that you can go and do some really simple stuff really quickly if you so choose. That’s not going to be so stressful, but really easy and high yield.

I want to do things through, you know, kind of high yield to low yield. 

Susi: Yes. And I, and I love that you’ve created these tools and that quick resource because any action is better than none. Choose one area, one cabinet, one room and get started. And I love when in your Ted talk, I think you talked about paying attention for just one day to everything we encounter as we move through life. Because it’s a bit mind boggling, just how much we do from the rolling out of the bed, as you said, flame retardants on mattresses and furnishings. 

Uh, did that change also in around 2012, but again, maybe just a little bit different, or 2016 perhaps. So some newer items, I believe it’s easier to find. 

Dr. Cohen: For flame retardants, do you mean? So it was actually in 2013, because it’s called TB 117. You see, this is what happens when you have kids, your brain, chemistry, everything just comes at your ear. So what I did was in the book, I wanted to show people the story and tell them the real story behind flame retardant chemicals, which were actually put into products and basically home furnishings and mostly couches and baby products in 1975, because what was behind it was that there were supposed to be an increase in burn time by 12 seconds. If God forbid a cigarette was dropped onto a couch, it would smolder because of these chemicals in the couch and not light up and give people 12 seconds to get out of the house safely.

Well, that sounds all good and true and altruistic, but guess who was behind it? The cigarette industry, and this was actually, they didn’t want to change their formula. They didn’t want to lose market share. And so this was actually exposed through an incredible Pulitzer prize winning piece, a series from the Chicago Tribune.

And so I talk about that and give references to that. So people can deep dive it, but essentially, you know, what we now know about those chemicals, as they’ve gotten to our bloodstream, they’ve gotten to our children. They were in pajamas that had to be removed because the kids were having very high levels of these chemicals in their blood.

And then those chemicals were related to, as mentioned, these are endocrine disrupting chemicals. So they were having effects on thyroid and hormones and estrogen levels and androgen levels. And so it’s really become quite an issue. Since that time in 2013, actually, they lobbied – you know, they wanted to reverse this. And so California did reverse this. And so now when you look for furniture, you can actually look at the label that says TB 117, which was actually the original bill. And then it has a -2013, which means that that product no longer has flame retardant chemicals added.

And so I actually have real life pictures in the book of my chair and my couch and all this stuff, because as I’ve been going through this journey, I’ve been taking pictures and I’ve been documenting, I’ve been posting on The Smart Human, I mean, even today or yesterday, the other day, I, you know, I post some things and I’m going through life, showing the crazy that’s going on and why we’re not sort of alert to it.

So people will start to, you know, I think get a feel for the crazy out there in terms of what they’re doing just by getting, sort of dipping their toe into the process. And that was really the purpose of the book is to get people started and then it would start to unfold for them. 

Susi: I’m so glad that you’re up on this mountain top, and I’m glad that this, right – 

Dr. Cohen: I don’t work for anyone, I can’t get fired. 

I’m not kidding. I swear. I think there’s a lot of people that would love to talk truth to the world, to their patients, to everything. Or have more time to even talk about anything, including my medical colleagues. I don’t think the system supports it. And so, when you work for someone or a system and you have to worry about the words you say, I think it’s really quite, you know, muting.

So, you know, I do count myself lucky because I’m trying to set up a situation where I can still talk truth and still make an income. So it’s one of those things that I’ve chosen, and I think that, that’s a rarity, so I’m blessed in doing so. 

Susi: And and we’re all grateful that you’re standing in your own space and – You know, because it is, there’s, there’s a lot of movement. There’s a lot going on. 

You’re talking about flame retardant chemicals, and I’m thinking about the news this morning, that the new environment bill that’s going through the government right now actually addresses some Superfund cleanup sites. And there’s such a problem with these chemicals in our environment, especially around military bases and so many other industrial areas and the impact that has on the people in the area, the earth itself, and what we’re eating, growing from it, but our water.

And so I appreciate you that you keep trying to shine a light on the safety of our water supplies too. 

Dr. Cohen: Drinking water. And, you know, it’s funny. Out of all the things I could be pissed at, and I’m pissed at a lot of stuff, which is probably good for my childhood, you know, to have a good focus, healthy energy, to be angry at. Um, I’m just kidding mom and dad.

But anyway, the point is that out of all of the topics, and there are a lot to be really upset about, I’m most angry about drinking water. And I think the reason is that again, I feel duped. I feel like, you know, we haven’t upped our systems since 1974, since the Safe Drinking Water Act, which only covers 91 chemicals at all of the 160,000 water treatment, the waste treatment water plants that we have in this country that serve 83, 86% of the country, as opposed to wells that – You know, we have military bases that have PFAS chemicals that are terribly toxic and last forever because of their flourine component in their, in the matrix of their compound, in the structure of their compound.

And there are thousands of different PFAS chemicals. And then I’m also angry at the Superfund sites, the Brownfield sites, and all the fracking, the coal ash, the you know, the, agricultural runoff into streams and lakes that are allowed to do so. You know, when we have flooding, when we have tornadoes, we have hurricanes, we also have release of a lot of these chemicals into our bodies of water that do become our drinking water.

So there’s nothing like, you know, an escape, an out. These chemicals all come back into us and we kind of throw them down the drain and throw them in the toilet, even medications, but they’re not washed off in these water treatment plants. So, where are they going? They’re going right back into our bodies.

And so when I talk about water and its vitality and how important it is to the human body composition and all the things that clean water does for the body, it’s almost, you know, one of those things where if I had to pick one major thing for people to consider changing in their lives, it’s drinking water filtration and encouraging everyone to just filter their water. The amount and the type of filtration is not cost prohibitive anymore. Really, many people can find a filter that fits their life. And, I had a comment from a colleague in medicine on a facebook board, when I was talking about drinking water filters and reverse osmosis, which are now $275 to get a great one, certified, covers almost a zillion chemicals, and, I guess $150 for a plumber to put it in one time and then maybe $40 a year for cartridge removal.

And someone said to me, well, “I work in really poor areas and socioeconomically deprived and my husband’s an engineer.” And after all this to do, she was angry that I was talking about this and telling other doctors to tell their patients. And I was so up in arms, I said, “do you think poor people don’t have a right to know what’s available to them? Should they choose to put their money into a reverse osmosis water filter or not?” I mean, it’s almost ridiculous. You know, people spend money the way they choose to spend their money. And there are things that I can’t afford. There’s different brackets of life.

But if people want to have clean drinking water and they want to stop spending lots more money on bottle of water, in case they’re in an area where they have to do that, then why shouldn’t they have access to that information? So, her point sort of was taken, but not really. 

But really, everyone should have the right to have good information about where to buy the right materials, to clean up their lives in any way they want, from inexpensive filtration systems to the more upfront costs of maybe a reverse osmosis. Turns out they actually ended up being the same price, these drop-in filters and pitchers are not cheap. And so my argument is, get the filter that you actually can live with for 10 years, and have much cheaper changing out of cartridges, but it’s the upfront costs that are kind of limiting. You know, I just want people to have information. What they choose to do with that, whether they choose to get their hair done, whether they choose to go to the gym or buy a special pair of shoes versus buying a $275 water filter, that’s up to them. But we shouldn’t limit our information just because we think they’re too poor to afford it. 

Susi: So true. And when you think about the math and I’ve heard people say, of course, you know, would you rather pay upfront to remain healthy or would you add a pay a lot more in lost time, lost work, lost quality of life when your health is already suffering?

Dr. Cohen: Right. And look, that’s an argument that’s very hard for people to wrap their head around because we’re all trying to survive, right. We just had a pandemic, people have lost their jobs. People have lost their health insurance. I mean, I get that, but I also think that if you can buy into the argument that these things matter, to make that argument. 

Then I’m saying, you know, it’s even cheaper to even put this machine in, or something similar in terms of its efficacy, then buying something that’s actually cheaper, but has less effect. I’m not about the low level, I like high yield things. Go big or go home. But that’s okay, people don’t have to have water filtration, but they should at least know what it does, and what are the other options that may be less costly?

Susi: Yes. And I know that you have collaborated with the Environmental Working Group and their website before. And on ewg.org I know they have a pretty good way to find information on your own local water quality, is that right? 

Dr. Cohen: Yeah. And so they have a tap water database, which I think they’re actually upgrading recently or soon. And essentially you type in your zip code and it’ll tell you some of the contaminants that they’ve discovered, because remember this water information, or maybe not remember, but I’m telling you now, water information is public. It’s public.

You are entitled as a homeowner who has public water to actually have an annual report. You can get that anytime you want. You’re required, I mean, you’re allowed to have it once a year. And so really what they’re almost doing is kind of incorporating what the findings are for that locale into a database.

And it’s interesting because I’m giving another talk on water and I actually did the database zip code and found that I have over like 1900 times the level of PFAS in my zip code, than what’s considered healthy or normal. 

Remember there’s no maximum contaminant level for PFAS yet. They’re working on that in terms of government oversight, but again, that might add to the 92 chemicals versus the 95,000, they get into our water. So better than nothing for sure. 

Susi: Right, right. So true. And, they have great other resources on that site. That’s where every year, they update the Clean 15 or 13, or whatever number they land on. And – 

Dr. Cohen: Yeah, Dirty Dozen, Clean 15 is for their, you know, conventional produce, not organic.

And they measure the, uh, pesticide residues across the country on the most common. Produce vegetables and fruit. And every year they have the Dirty Dozen and Clean 15, the Dirty Dozen are the Top 12 that really has the highest level of pesticide residues that you want to actually try to either wash really well or to buy organic.

And then the Clean 15 are really 15 that you could go conventional, not organic and save money. If you feel that’s helpful. And almost every year, it comes up with strawberry, spinach, kale, anything with the skin, all the berries, those are always laiden with lots of pesticide residue. So those are the ones that I actually encourage my patients, and people online to really think about getting organic, even if they’re frozen organic, wonderful way to get cheaper organic produce is, you know, through frozen organics because they’re flash frozen, they maintain all their nutrient values. So you can actually go from what you consider healthy and well and fresh, which might have traveled actually quite a distance. And maybe not as nutrient rich, but fresh frozen organics is a wonderful way to do it, but just make sure you transfer from the freezer, glass or stainless steel to heat up or to do anything you’re going to do with it.

Susi: Right. Right. And avoid that heat situation where that heat and plastics

Dr. Cohen: Yeah, molecules of plastics, not good molecules, 

Susi: Plasticules. I made a new word. Yeah. And also, I am guessing when you mentioned earlier, or as I was looking into the work you did with Princeton high school and having the kids actually look at the sources of ingredients and see how does this rate that that’s another really amazing tool that they’ve put together as well.

And turn the teenagers loose on that when you go shopping. 

Dr. Cohen: Great experience to toss- You know, I threw the tampons at the jocks and the Axe body spray at the girls and everyone giggled, but it was such a good moment of discomfort, or being uncomfortable. But then again, we’re all in this together, boy, girl, or whatever, you know, he, she, anyone, we all have a right to know what’s on our body. What’s in our body? Feminine care products. 

We should be thinking about lifelong exposures to tampons that have tons of chemicals. We should really be thinking that, and it doesn’t mean that it’s just a girl’s issue. It means that it’s a boys issue, too. They have tons of stuff they throw on. I mean, I have two tween boys and the stuff they want to buy and the stuff I have to fight with them over.

I said, let’s look it up because the smell goes all the way through the kitchen from the shower. I mean, I’m thinking to myself, how did these smells make it all the way to the kitchen? Well, because phthalates are involved. So I have to negotiate with them. So it’s not easy. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not easy, don’t think it is. 

But you know, once you get down to your products that you know are safe and you can live with, you’re done. And you can keep checking them every year because formulations do change. But at least that website is evergreen. And that was the basis of the book. Let’s give tools that are online so that if things change and formulations change, they’re not getting old information.

Susi: Exactly. And just in case phthalates is a word that people haven’t attached to you yet, but as you were discussing, BPA helps to make plastics more rigid. Phthalates help to make them softer, so they’re in all the squishy shampoo bottles and everything else. But they also, through the magic of science, make fragrances, make scents stick to the products, which I find fascinating.

So, they’re so pervasive in the things that we’re literally putting all over our body. 

Dr. Cohen: Right, it gives them more shelf life in terms of odors in terms of fragrance. And it also actually locks in color in cosmetics. So phthalates are used in all of the products that we literally put on our skin, on our face, on our hair, shampoo, conditioner aftershaves anything with a fragrance or perfume.

If you literally look at the label and it says fragrance or parfum, that is a proprietary blend of chemicals that are not even required to be disclosed to the consumer. So there can be upwards of a couple hundred, 300, 400 whatever number of chemicals in just the word fragrance or perfume on a cosmetic label.

So I do encourage people to consider going fragrance free or at least finding, I mean, I have a perfume that I get, and I looked it up and it’s like a zero, one or two, I can’t remember on EWG database, the Skin-Deep Database. So I use perfumes of different flavors, but they’ve been vetted. 

So once you find what you need, the safer you can find things with fragrance, but in general, cleaning products, personal care products, anything with the word fragrance or parfum has hidden chemicals, intentionally. And they’re not required to be tested before they go into those products that will end up on our surfaces or our tables, our dust, our pets, our kids, you know, it becomes something, and usually it’s dust that gets into our animals and through our skin. 

Susi: Yes. And we’re tight on time, but I want to bring up one more topic that I have seen you address also. And that is the greenwashing that some of these manufacturers are figuring out. Because people are waking up, and we do recognize that to a point, you know, as if it’s closer to nature, it’s probably healthier for us. As I was studying technical theater and design and scenic construction in the mid and late nineties. Monona Russell was an industrial hygienist that was working through a lot of the theater shops and training the staff about the hazards of what we were using in the shop.

And she used to say, “By God or by Goodyear, it’ll kill you just as quick.” And that has always stuck with me because there are some things that are natural that can be very harmful. Not everyone can tolerate limonene, but it’s a product that’s in a lot of quote-unquote natural cleaners that can be very, you know, it can be harmful to people.

So, um, so that’s something else that I think is worth mentioning, you know, because now they’re saying natural fragrance, 

Dr. Cohen: Right, I’ve had a hundred percent natural, I think it was a soap or a cream and it made me break out. It doesn’t mean that the actual components were industrial. They weren’t petroleum-based.

But my personal – my body did not react to it. So you can have those issues, but you can also have the things that don’t smack you in the face, that don’t give you a rash, that don’t make you feel like, oh, I don’t know, “I have less estrogen,” you know, they’re subtle. 

And those are the low level exposures, parts per million, parts per trillion that add up over time, the same way, by the way, hormones work in parts per million, parts per trillion.

So our body has conserved over millions of years, the ability to signal throughout the body, through hormones that these chemicals now can mimic, disrupt, or block the receptor site. I mean, there’s just a lot of different ways in which they cause problems, which is why they’re called endocrine disruptors. In fact, I just interviewed on my podcast for The Smart Human, Dr. Pete Myers, who is John Peterson Myers, but Pete Myers who wrote Our Stolen Future, which is another great book, but he really was one of the people that coined “endocrine disrupting chemicals” 30 years ago. And I said, how brilliant is that, you discovered and named a set of chemicals that you didn’t even know in how many ways they could disrupt?

You know, it wasn’t like endocrine mimicking chemicals. It was endocrine disrupting. Because there’s lots of different ways these chemicals can, um, disrupt the signaling between one thing to another. So I thought that was pretty brilliant of him. 

Susi: Yes. And I’m, I’m so glad that that these voices are coming together and the books are available.

I mean, it’s not like we haven’t had them to draw from, for the last 10, 20 years, but, but we can, as we tune in to what’s happening and start to make change, we can educate ourselves. Start at The Smart Human, it’s a brilliant website with so many great resources. Lots of short videos, in digestible pieces because this has been a lot of information in a fairly short window of time.

So don’t let it just make your head spin and feel overwhelming. We tend to get really angry about things that are beyond our control. Right. But if we start paying attention to what is within our control, we can start to recognize that we can make shift happen. And we have to start where we are. 

Dr. Cohen: I use the Serenity Prayer, it’s the first, the first quote in this book, because we have to know what we can control and what we can’t control and have the wisdom to know the difference, because otherwise we waste to energy.

So that is exactly how I want people to think. Don’t get overwhelmed, pick one topic, maybe one topic a month, if it takes that and work your way through it to a place you’re comfortable. So there’s no rush. It’s better to get it right than to get quick. 

Susi: Beautiful. And so, I do encourage everyone to check out Dr. Aly Cohen’s website, The Smart Human, and sign up for her newsletter. Get information coming into your inbox. Get these digestible nuggets to keep you coming back to good, current information. 

And I thank you again so much for your time. And joining me today, this has been such a treat. 

Dr. Cohen: It is my pleasure. And thank you for all the work that you do to promote all of this information in, through the channels that you work with, because honestly it takes a village.

So I appreciate that as well. Thank you. 

Susi: Thank you so much. Take care.