Michael Roesslein: Thank you, Zoom, for the loud announcement. We are recording and this is going to be a fun episode. I’m here with my friend, Lara Adler. Lara, thank you.

Lara Adler:

Yeah. Thanks for being here. I always love talking to you. As doom and gloom as I am.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah, I love the doom. We’re going to bring the doom today a little bit. Maybe a little bit of not doom, but mostly doom. By my request, I wanted Lara to come on and scare the shit out of everybody so blame me later when you leave this interview thinking like, “What the hell just happened to my life?” Then make decisions based off of that. So before we get into the doom, most of my audience is probably pretty familiar with Lara and the work that she does. But if somebody is not at this point, Lara Adler is an environmental toxins expert and educator, and a certified holistic health coach who teaches health coaches, nutritionists, and other health professionals how to eliminate the number one thing holding their clients back from the results they’re seeking. The unaddressed link between chemicals and chronic health problems.

Michael Roesslein:

She trains practitioners to become experts in everyday toxic exposures so they can improve client outcomes without spending hundreds of hours researching on their own. Combining environmental health education, and business consulting, she’s helped thousands of health professionals in over 25 countries around the world, elevate their skillset, get better results for their clients and become sought out leaders in the growing environmental health and detoxification field. That’s a lot of stuff. You like talking toxins.

Lara Adler:

I do. It’s a real nerdy thing that I just have become obsessed with. I’ve been doing this for 10 years and I still get goosebumps when I’m doing this work, and I get really fired up about new research. And it just happened to be one of those things that drew me in.

Michael Roesslein:

Well, this is a subject that there’s plenty to get fired up about. So you really don’t ever have a shortage of like new research coming out to get really fired up about because the more research they do, the more things there are to get fired up about. And I remember when I took the dive and started learning health stuff in the late, I don’t know, in 2008, ’09, I started reading a lot of things that were kind of alternatively in health after I got out of the master’s program, which talked about none of those things.

Lara Adler:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

And everything made me so pissed at first.

Lara Adler:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

Even if I was just reading a book on the history of the pasteurization of dairy, or this seemingly non big deal topic. Like there was all this nefarious stuff in the food industry, and in the insurance industry, and in the medical industry, and the drug industry and all those things. And I read most books, at least then, were written from an angle of like sensationalism and fear. Like big, scary 22-word titles with, “This is The Reason Why You’re All Going to Die: Because this thing, this thing, this thing” is like the title of the book.

Lara Adler:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

There was a lot of that. And a lot of things made me really pissed, and the pissed is what made me do the things.

Lara Adler:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

So that made me like take the action and teach the things and whatever.

Lara Adler:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

It was coming from a place of anger. And nothing made me more pissed than the books I read on these topics.

Lara Adler:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

Because there were actual people, that actually have names, that were named in the books, who made decisions to put things that they know make people sick and dead in stuff that’s going to go in the water and everywhere else because they’ll make a lot of money to do that. And then they get fined a lot money, and they build that into the cost of the business model.

Lara Adler:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

That, “Oh, we’re going to get fined a lot, because this is going to do this, and it’s really bad. So we need to charge this much to make this much to offset.” And it’s literally there are people in these companies-

Lara Adler:

It’s [crosstalk 00:04:15]. Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

… whose job it is to be like, “We’re going to get fined this much money for killing this many people. So we need to make this much.” And these people have names. I’m not going to name names on the thing. You can read some of the angry books and they name the names.

Lara Adler:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

Or just type in like chemical companies settlement or something and you’ll get like things. But then there’s been movies now, the last 5 to 10 years. I just watched the one, this year. I just watched it. The one with Mark Ruffalo.

Lara Adler:

Yeah. Dark Waters.

Michael Roesslein:

Dark Waters. Was that Dow or was that-

Lara Adler:

No. That was-

Michael Roesslein:

… DuPont or…

Lara Adler:

… DuPont. So Mark Ruffalo, in the film, Dark Waters, is portraying a lawyer named Robert Bilott who has spent the last 20+ years really doggedly going after DuPont because of the groundwater contamination in Parkersburg, West Virginia and some of the other areas, not only around the U.S., but around the world where their factories have been knowingly contaminating the water system with these PFAS chemicals, these forever chemicals. And they’d known for decades that there was-

Michael Roesslein:

The key word there is “knowingly.”

Lara Adler:

Knowingly, yes. They knowingly did that.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah.

Lara Adler:

And so that film, Dark Waters, is sort of like a legal case drama that sort of-

Michael Roesslein:

The animals were dying and people started getting a lot of cancer. It was his hometown, right? Or he-

Lara Adler:

No. It wasn’t. Yes, actually it was.

Michael Roesslein:

So his mom lived there.

Lara Adler:

His grandmother.

Michael Roesslein:

Someone called him.

Lara Adler:

Yeah. His grandmother.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. His grandmother. And so he had a personal connection with the town. And then he started working at all this stuff, and then some locals started asking him like, “Hey, you’re a lawyer. Can you help us? Can you look into this?” And then he couldn’t unsee the things that he figured out, and then was threatened upside down, left, right and sideways from every direction-

Lara Adler:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

… to not do the thing that he was doing.

Lara Adler:

I think the chemical companies are like the original gas lighters. They’re masters at that kind of thing.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. Then gangsters, too.

Lara Adler:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

There’s a rabbit hole. You can go down in this industry where like I just, this year for the first time read all the details about the… What’s the one in India that killed like unfathomable number of people, Bhopal?

Lara Adler:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. I knew all that like, but I never actually like sat down and read a thing that detailed it.

Lara Adler:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

It’s like war crimes level of just absurd, unfathomable, inhumane, greed, and corruption, and like violent hostility to be people. So there’s no good guy in this fight, like in this industry really. And a lot of times when there’s these things that happen, that people are harmed, you can make an argument that like, “Oh, well this was unintentional. Or we didn’t know, or there’s.” Almost entirely every time there was knowledge and cover up and hiding and intimidation and threatening and all of that. So yes, the people and the companies and the chemicals and the things we were going to talk about, they are that bad. And there’s an objective good and bad and they’re bad. And we’re going to just try to help educate you.

Lara Adler:

Yeah. And I will say that like look, I’m the last person you’re ever going to talk to that’s going to defend the actions of these chemical companies and product manufacturers that are utilizing questionable chemicals in their consumer products or that are dumping them into waterways. And I think that there are… I have a client who works as a paralegal and has been in court cases against Exxon Mobil and all of these big, Shell Oil because of issues like ground water contamination, and she’s sort of very much active on the scene in these legal proceedings and her stance on this, which I take with a lot of value, is that yes, certainly there are bad people at these companies that just don’t give a shit and all they want is profits, profits, profits at the cost of anything. And there are people within the company that are trying to ring alarm bells, but there are other people that are suppressing them. So I think it’s-

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah, those people generally don’t have jobs very long from my understanding of how works.

Lara Adler:

Yeah. They tend to not. But I think that yes, there are bad people. Not everybody at all these companies are bad people. Some of them are trying to do the right thing. They are the researchers that are doing studies on employees or factory workers or communities and bringing this information to the higher up that corporate, and then it’s corporate’s decision what to do with that information.

Lara Adler:

So there are people that are from the inside trying to do the right thing, but they’re but up against this to sort of corporate bureaucracy and constant drive for profit. I also just want to mention for folks that, go watch Dark Waters. Also go watch the documentary that was made before Dark Waters, which is called The Devil We Know, and that is the documentary version side of that same story. So you’ll get the dramatized version and the documentary version.

Lara Adler:

There are, like you said, so many films, so many… I actually had an Instagram post a while back where I highlighted some of my favorite films and most of them are scary and they are there to wake people up. And I think that that’s important and necessary. And because you know, me, Michael, because this topic gets so heavy, I try to whenever there’s opportunity to do so to inject a little bit of levity into this conversation because it can be really overwhelming for people. And so with that in mind I do want to make another film recommendation that is totally pertinent and relevant, but is also amazing and silly. And that is the 1982 film, The Incredible Shrinking Woman with Lily Tomlin.

Lara Adler:

So if you have not seen this film, go see it. I saw it as a kid and was like, “Oh, what’s not funny Lily Tomlin and a guy in a gorilla suit,” because, and then like Lily Tomlin in a big chair because she’s shrinking, and so they have to use all these comic props. But that film is a commentary on the use of chemicals in commerce. That is what-

Michael Roesslein:

[inaudible 00:11:13].

Lara Adler:

And corporate mouthpieces. So revisit that film now, and you will see it through a completely different lens, I promise you. I just watched it over Christmas again. It’s one of my favorite movies. It’s so silly, but it is also like if you take a deep breath and suspend the humor aspect, you’re like, “Wow, this is really messed up.”

Michael Roesslein:

Thanks for the recommendation.

Lara Adler:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

And speaking really messed up, we should probably have our conversation now.

Lara Adler:

Yeah, let’s do it.

Michael Roesslein:

So we’re talking about these chemical companies and people getting harmed and stuff being in water. What are we talking about exactly? Can you give us some context or what environmental chemicals really are? I know this could be like a two hour response so like, how we’re unaware we’re exposed to them and why we should be aware of this.

Lara Adler:

Yeah. So because people often are not always on the same page when we’re talking about environmental chemicals or chemicals in general, I always like to start in the beginning and set some framework here. So first of all, everything is a chemical. So we’re not like shaking our fists that all chemicals, because like water is made of chemicals, oxygen is made of chemicals. Literally everything is chemicals.

And so in this space of environmental health, environmental medicine, we are not looking at all chemicals. We’re looking specifically at chemicals or compounds, whether they are manmade or natural. So we have things like lead, arsenic, mercury. These are natural compounds. They’re not always in the environment due to natural reasons, I can come back to that, but we’re looking at chemicals specifically that are known or suspected to cause harm.

Lara Adler:

And so that’s kind of what we’re looking at here. So whenever I say the word chemicals and specifically referring to ones that are known or suspected to be harmful in some way. Either to humans, to animals, to wildlife, to the environment as a whole. So it’s a broad swath, but it is a helpful definition to make sure everyone’s on the same page. And not all chemicals are bad, obviously. So like many chemicals have made our lives better, safer, easier. Like we’re all using technology that relies on chemicals, our medical interventions, our medications. Yes, they have downsides, but they’ve also helped us as a species tremendously. So we can’t demonize chemicals as a whole.

Lara Adler:

In terms of how we are exposed to of chemicals. It is literally just through our normal everyday lives. When we are taking a breath, we are breathing in toxic chemicals that might be in our home environment. When we’re drinking water, that water contains hundreds and hundreds of contaminants, some in very concerning levels, others in less concerning levels. Most chemicals in drinking water are not heavily monitored or regulated at all. So there’s that exposure. We are exposed just through, driving your car, pumping gas, eating food, taking a shower in the morning, putting your sandwich in your plastic Tupperware container to take it to work, heating your food in the microwave. Like there are endless exposure sources that we have. Yes.

Michael Roesslein:

We were talking before we went on air and there was an Instagram post I think was yours or you commented on something somewhere, but it had to do with gas stoves.

Lara Adler:

Ah, yes. Yeah. So gas stoves.

Michael Roesslein:

And I hate cooking on electric stoves. Like I would probably starve if I had to cook on an electric stove because it bothers me so much. But I just learned about convect… What is it called? Conduction? Convection?

Lara Adler:

It’s not convection. I’m also blanking-

Michael Roesslein:

Something with magnets, like it does…

Lara Adler:

Induction.

Michael Roesslein:

Induction? That sounds like magic to me. I don’t know anything about it, but I read a lot of stuff from the last few weeks about gas stoves and that the incidence of asthma in kids who have gas stoves in their house is significantly elevated versus kids who don’t and people who don’t. And now there are like breathing disorders and problems and things.

Lara Adler:

What’s interesting going back to the industry angle here is that the natural gas industry has pushed really, really hard to, A, present gas as being a clean, safer alternative. They have done work with social media influencers, trying to be like, “Gas. Cooking with gas is clean. Cooking with gas, makes my food taste better.” It literally doesn’t, there’s no evidence at all to that. It’s just a PR campaign. The other thing that they’ve pushed really hard for, and I don’t know why probably just because it’s undo burden that might steer people away from having a gas stove in their house, is that at least in the United States, a gas stove is the only gas appliance in a home that doesn’t legally require ventilation or proper venting to outside. So if you have-

Michael Roesslein:

I thought it did. I always thought I did. And then I’ve lived in two places, one in Berkeley and one in San Diego that did not have that.

Lara Adler:

It’s not legally. Certainly there’s going to be differences for people that are in the trades, every state, every city has their own different codes, but as a whole gas stoves are not legally required to have a vent that vents outside, but your gas fireplace does, your gas furnace does. And I don’t know why, but of all of the appliances that we use multiple times this is one that should be vented outside. But you know, the point is that we are being exposed from really thousands of different places at the same time throughout any given day, the personal care products that we use are laundry detergents. These are all sources of exposures to chemicals. And I think one thing that’s important to understand is that, yes, okay.

Lara Adler:

Our bodies do have a built in detoxification system. We have our organs of detoxification. We have our liver, our kidneys, our colon, we sweat, we have a lymphatic system, we have our lungs that can help expel metabolic waste. And so we have this built in system that has been keeping us alive in the midst of this basically maelstrom of exposures that we’re getting and it’s having a hard time keeping up. So it’s a yes-and. So many topics in this conversation are yes-and answers, or it-depends answers because there’s a lot of gray area and a lot of nuance in this topic. There’s very rarely a black and white cut dry scenario.

Lara Adler:

And so we have these exposures, we have a detoxification system. I’m sure that you know, Michael, from your work with people when you were working with people one-on-one is that like, “Hey, people are doing things to their bodies.” That might compromise their liver function. Whether it’s they have a really poor diet or they’re drinking a lot of alcohol or they’re doing other things that compromise liver function, they’re not eating a nutrient dense diet that provides the materials that body needs to de to properly detoxify. It makes us more susceptible to these exposures that we’re getting when we have a shit detox system.

Lara Adler:

People aren’t pooping regularly. I mean, that’s as basic as you can get. And that is literally how our bodies get rid of waste. So for people that have like chronic constipation or that are pooping once every two days, the environmental chemical exposures that they’re getting have the potential to build up in them faster than they’re able to build up in other people. And so it’s not just that we’re exposed to a little tiny bit, that our bodies can tolerate every day. We’re just being constantly exposed, and our bodies don’t necessarily have the capacity to do the thing that it should be able to do.

Michael Roesslein:

So that’s quite the storm of chemicals in the air, and in the water, and then in the things that we put on our body and that’s in the kitchen and that you heat your food in and that new car smell-

Lara Adler:

It is your food, yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

… and all the other, and it is in the food if you’re eating the food with the ingredient label that looks like this big on the back of it.

Lara Adler:

Or if you’re not.

Michael Roesslein:

And then…

Lara Adler:

Right? Even if you’re eating apples that’s sprayed with pesticides, right? There’s an exposure that’s there.

Michael Roesslein:

So, and then combined with inhibited capacity to get rid of the things. So what kind of health effects is there like toxin sickness? What are we looking at here? What are like health effects associated? Now, this is where it gets really scary because there are hundreds of chemicals that I’ve seen and read about that have well documented, proven, non-questionable, statistically relevant, significant undeniable, strong correlations to like really scary shit. Like we’re talking cancers and like the rest of the sicknesses. And that’s when I was all confused, because I’m like, “Who’s in charge here?” In the rules guard the hen house, which we’ll talk about in a little bit, we’ll do that next. But what are we looking at as far as it affects is that some of these totally legal and that the ones that slip through that are released into whatever that shouldn’t be or that isn’t legal, but totally legal chemicals that are used, and a lot of the things we just said, what are some health effects that are proven, known unquestionable?

Lara Adler:

Yeah. So well, first of all, the proven known unquestionable is a little bit challenging to nail down for a couple of reasons. So I’ll start by saying, in terms of health effects and I’ll expand on this, like almost all of them, right? So any chronic illness, even acute illnesses, acute poisonings, if you’re talking diabetes, Alzheimer’s, dementia, allergies, autism, digestive issues, neurological issues, every organ system is affected. But in terms of this definitive provable, absolute proof, as I like to say, proofs exist in mathematics, they don’t exist in science. So we don’t prove something in science, we have evidence. And the problem that we have here in this sphere of environmental chemicals is we don’t test chemicals on people, right? There’s ethical reasons why we don’t do that. We don’t, I mean, I should say I’ll pump the brakes.

Lara Adler:

There have been many instances historically, where we have crossed those ethical boundaries. We have jumped over them, not even crossed them. The Tuskegee Syphilis Studies comes to mind. There are plenty of instances historically, where we have absolutely crossed moral and ethical boundaries and tested things on people. We tend to do that less and less these days because we’re far more aware of the consequences of that. But it has happened many, many times. So generally speaking, we don’t test chemicals on people because that is unethical to do that. What we do is test chemicals on animals and that becomes the sort of metric that we use to produce the data that we have. And there’s all kinds of calculation alterations that need to happen to say like, okay, in a mouse, if we give a mouse this much, what is the equivalent in human? I just was reading about this quite recently is that in rodent studies animals have much, much, much faster metabolism.

Lara Adler:

And so, because we have to account for that when we’re making a parallel into human levels of exposure because if a rodent that has a really high metabolism and is able to metabolize a compound far faster than we can, then that means a much lower level of that same exposure that triggered a disease in a rodent is likely to be problematic for human because we don’t get rid of it as fast. We don’t break it down as fast.

Lara Adler:

So first of all, we don’t test on people we test on animals. Then we have to look at that not-perfect animal research that we have and then say, “Okay, we’re looking at these levels of chemicals in these different animals, and we’re seeing these kinds of health effects. Now let’s turn to epidemiological research.” Right? Where we’re looking at population-wide human data on levels of chemicals in the human population and levels of disease, and this is where we have to draw associations, right? That’s not a causation, it’s an association. Hey, people who have higher levels of this chemical in their body have higher risk of these disease or have children that have higher risk of these issues. But we can’t prove that because we’re not testing them directly on humans.

Lara Adler:

And so this scenario really does open up for an opportunity for the chemical industry to constantly call into doubt the research that we do have because they’re like, “Well, you can’t prove that. That’s just an association.” Humans are not animals. And it’s like, “Well, wait a second. You’re using animal research to show us that your chemical is safe but then when we point to similar animal research to show that chemical is harmful, you’re saying we can’t rely on an animal model. So, which is it?” Like I’ve seen that argument come up in these rebuttals to findings.

Michael Roesslein:

It’s convenient.

Lara Adler:

It’s super convenient, right? And so I’m like, “Look, dude, you can’t have it both ways. Either the animal model is something that we rely on or it’s not.”

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. And let’s just not give poison to animals anymore either to know that it’s poison. Because now we can understand like there’s ways to know that without doing that, that certain chemicals can cause cancers and poison and that we shouldn’t like eat, breathe and drink and put poison on our bodies and eat it because this could be super complex, like the things we’re talking about, like these chemicals and these studies and how to work physiologically and what they do in the body and the effects that they have and the disease processes that they can create, whatever. That can get super biochemistry and nerdy and really, really detailed and to make changes it really comes down to like very basic common sense. So we can come back to that later. Now that sort of stuff you can control but you don’t have to know the studies and read the studies and understand the studies to know that putting a carcinogen on your skin is not good or to breathe gas like in your house is probably not good or chemicals that make smells that fill your house and never go away probably not good.

Lara Adler:

So this is where, and this is actually where I think this conversation is super interesting because I am not anti new developments and new creations in science. I mean, we are a product of this conversation is being facilitated by technology that relied on chemicals. And so I’m not like a Luddite and an anti progress in terms of things coming to market that might make our lives better, easier or safer. And I think this is where we have this, I try to understand the perspective from every side and not just say like, “Hey. Yeah, it’s not a great idea to be surrounded by carcinogens, not ideal.” And I have to play devil’s advocate as well and say like, “Okay, well, first of all, human beings have always been exposed to some degree of carcinogens. They’re just not been manmade carcinogens.”

Lara Adler:

So we’re talking volcanic eruptions produce carcinogens. They produce toxic byproducts, they produce formaldehyde and ultra fine particles that can embed in the lung tissue. So like, there aren’t natural pieces to this. And I also recognize that if there is not substantial and substantiated evidence that something is harmful, I don’t necessarily believe that we need to stifle innovation in that space I think what needs to happen is that once we learn something is potentially harmful or suspected to be harmful or is harmful, we need to pump the brakes, and historically that is not something that we’ve ever done. So we’ve learned decades ago that these long chain and now short chain perfluoroalkyl substances, these PFAS chemicals are bad. But like we have never pumped the brakes on their production or regulating or legislating them. And so there is this space-

Michael Roesslein:

There’s money involved here. What do-

Lara Adler:

Well, I know as I’m saying like they don’t want to pump the brakes.

Michael Roesslein:

See what you’re looking for and calling for is like a sane policy of reviewing chemicals and testing them and providing safety evidence and things like pretty minimal blow bar saying like, “Let’s start here.” Because I think I’m a little bit more Luddaty. Is that a word?

Lara Adler:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

Luddaty, luddatish, we just made a word.

Lara Adler:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

We just made it one. But what you’re asking for it’s pretty reasonable bar of let’s have put the burden of proof on companies to show that the thing that they’re using is not poison, and-

Lara Adler:

And that exists in other countries, right? [crosstalk 00:29:55].

Michael Roesslein:

Oh for sure, yeah. People bring it up here actually. In Italy when they find out that I’m from the States, two people have asked me why we allow the things in the food that we allow.

Lara Adler:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

“Because here we would burn the street.” It was what one of the people said.

Lara Adler:

Yup.

Michael Roesslein:

And I don’t have answers. That’s one of many questions that I get asked of why do we allow certain things or do certain things? And I just say, “I don’t know I’m here now.” So that’s my answer.

Lara Adler:

Yeah. I mean, I have some thoughts on that. So just to bring people who might not know, the European Union has a chemical policy that’s quite progressive. In the 1970s, the U.S. was the first country to create an environmental protection agency and the Toxic Substances Control Act, which is our primary legislation, so it was quite innovative around the world. And other countries started to model after what we did. And then the European Union changed their policy. They developed a policy called REACH, R-E-A-C-H and their REACH policy far more progressive, and they take what’s called the precautionary principle which is, even if we don’t have absolute proof, right? Because that’s really hard in this space, if we have enough substantial and substantiated evidence that suggests that there is a potential for harm, we are going to move to regulate or restrict or even ban chemicals from being used in the European Union marketplace.

Lara Adler:

And there was a lot of pushback from U.S. lobbyists and for the chemical companies in Brussels, in the UN where they were really trying to fight against this REACH Policy because if you’re a multinational company, if you’re a Johnson & Johnson or Unilever, Procter & Gamble, and you want to sell in the European market, well you now have to reformulate your products to meet those regulations. And that’s what ultimately happened. They had to reformulate their products to make their products safer for the European market, but they didn’t all also reformulate those same products for the U.S. markets. This is why we see differences in products in the EU-

Michael Roesslein:

Which actually costs them more.

Lara Adler:

Yes. Well I don’t know, I don’t know from a-

Michael Roesslein:

To make two separate products. I’m sure…

Lara Adler:

I’m sure. But here’s the thing-

Michael Roesslein:

Just like car manufacturers do this too with miles to gallon. Because they restrict their miles per gallon while kilometers per liter things here, cars have to be more efficient here by law.

Lara Adler:

Yes.

Michael Roesslein:

So the car manufacturers make one car for here and one car for the United States where they can make them inefficient for no reason…

Lara Adler:

Other than cost. Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

I don’t have one, but it’s maddening. It’s…

Lara Adler:

It is. And what’s even more frustrating is these multinational corporations that are conceding to the policy that are in the European Union are like, “Okay, okay, fine, fine, we’ll do it.” Are actively fighting in the U.S. against policies that are trying to do the same thing and arguing that it’s too expensive and too difficult to do when they have already done it. So it’s like, this is what I’m talking about. They’re like the ultimate gas lighter. So like they’re like, “We can’t do that.” And you’re like, “Bitch, you already did that. You did that over there.” And so I have no love for that scenario.

Michael Roesslein:

I can’t defend it. I have no defense for it [crosstalk 00:33:28].

Lara Adler:

You can’t defend that. And so-

Michael Roesslein:

… where it’s allowed.

Lara Adler:

Yeah. And so in the European Union, they have much stricter regulations and now other countries around the world, instead of modeling their environmental and chemical regulation policies against the U.S. Program, they’re now modeling them after REACH, which is great. What that also means is the U.S. is now quite far behind in terms of the way that they regulate and monitor chemicals in commerce, and they’re not putting the responsibility on the manufacturer or the chemical industry to say, “Hey, you need to show us that this isn’t going to be harmful beforehand.” Like novel idea. But I think one of the defense mechanisms or arguments, I should say, of the chemical industry and of these product manufacturers, and this is part of where that outrage just kind of simmers low in your belly all the time is that, like if we take whether it’s BPA or bisphenols or phthalates, these are chemicals that are used in tens of thousands of products across the marketplace.

Lara Adler:

And so the defense that a lot of these manufacturers, individual companies or chemical industry, specifically an individual a manufacturer Johnson & Johnson let’s say, or whoever makes panting. And if somebody is like, “Oh, I’m experiencing all these health effects, and it’s likely due to this chemical.” The product manufacturer is going to go, “Okay but like, prove that it’s my product because all of us are using these same chemicals.” Right? There’s thousands of products and in those types of court cases, in those tort laws or chemical tort laws, toxic torts, they’re called, you really have to prove like, “Yes, it was this product that caused my disease.” And that’s an almost impossible burden of proof to meet. And the chemical companies and the product manufacturers know this. They’re like, “You’re never going to be able to prove it was my thing that made you sick because that same ingredient is in thousands of other products in the marketplace so good luck.” Who are you going to sue? You can’t sue everyone, right?

Lara Adler:

So this is where, when we see cases like the Johnson & Johnson case with the talcum powder and the ovarian cancers and the lymphoma cases against Monsanto, those are very rare and they get publicity because they’re rare. And the reason why they’re rare is because Johnson & Johnson is the primary producer of talcum based products in the marketplace. So there really only is one major company to sue. Monsanto is the only manufacturer of those glyphosate-based herbicides. So there really only is one company to sue. But in other instances, like we don’t have a system of holding these people responsible or accountable because who are you holding accountable, everyone?

Lara Adler:

So it’s a big sort of nightmarish scenario that favors the product manufacturers and industry, because they know you’re never going to be able to take us on. We’d like to see you prove it in a court of law, we have more money than you. We will drag you out in litigation until you go bankrupt.

Michael Roesslein:

Which happens a lot.

Lara Adler:

Right. And so this is why okay sure, yes, the individual companies that are utilizing these compounds in their products that are linked to all of these chronic health issues and acute health issues, in some instances, sure we can take them to task. And I think as consumers we should, right? This is where we become vocal advocates, we make demands. This is how we see a shift in the marketplace faster than if we were pushing for regulation because regulations and policy changes in government are extraordinarily slow. It took 40 years, four decades for the Toxic Substances Control Acts to get a meaningful update. The piece of policy that we have, that’s regulating the use of cosmetics in the marketplace was written in 1938 and has never been updated. So the wheels of progress in government move extraordinarily slowly. And yet that’s where the more meaningful change is going to happen.

Michael Roesslein:

It froze for a while.

Lara Adler:

Oh, dang. I did please. How much-

Michael Roesslein:

Where you said, “That’s where the meaningful change is going to happen.” And then like it literally cut out off right there.

Lara Adler:

Okay. I’ll just repeat that. So what I was saying is that, yes we need policy changes. That’s a slow moving wheel that we just have to keep pushing at and keep advocating for. But the fast change, the real change actually happens when consumers press companies to do better and be more transparent. And we’ve seen that time and time again, there’s countless example. The reason why we don’t have BPA, bisphenol a in baby bottles, granted we probably have other bisphenols so not perfect, is because moms were pissed, when they found out that there is an endocrine disrupting chemical in their baby’s bottle. And so bad PR for a company that sells baby bottles to be like, “Shut up moms. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Lara Adler:

So they were like, they acquiesced and were like, “Great, sorry. We’ll do better. We’ll be more transparent.” And then ultimately there was the Consumer Product Safety Commission here in the U.S. banned BPA for use in baby bottles only, and only BPA. So it’s not a perfect outcome, but it is at least an example of when consumers make themselves heard, and there is a threat to the bottom line, meaning like, if you’re not going to do it, I’m going to from somebody else. That is the language that these corporations hear and will be more responsive to.

Michael Roesslein:

The results I’ve seen from those type of actions has far exceeded what I’ve seen from regulatory actions, or like trying to get your senator to go do a thing with the rest of the Senate to make a rule, to make somebody not able… That is good luck. While there’s people trying to do that all the time, wonderful. But when a whole bunch of people get really pissed off and post things on social media and share it all over, that’s when the companies tend to take action. That’s faster. Anyway, it’s faster.

Lara Adler:

I want to piggyback on this BPA thing, because I think this is a good example of this difference between chemical policy in the U.S. and the European Union. So in the United States, the safe tolerable dose, which is a dose of a chemical or an exposure of that our regulatory bodies say, the Toxic Substances Control Act, the EPA, the USDA says is safe for human exposure, it’s 50 micrograms per deciliter or per day of exposure to BPA. Now, BPA is a ubiquitous chemical, we’re all exposed. I think from NHANES data, NHANES is our National Health, Nutrition, Environmental, whatever, whatever survey. And this is our nationwide, essentially human bio-monitoring study, where we’re measuring nutrition factors in people. And also we’re looking at chemicals in people. So this is where I was saying earlier, where we’re looking at epidemiological data. And a lot of that data relies on NHANES bio-monitoring data to understand levels of exposure in people.

Lara Adler:

And so in the U.S., it’s 50 micro micrograms per deciliter, per day of exposure to BPA and according to NHANES’ data, and this was from I think, 2008 so I don’t know if there’s updated data on this, like 93% of the population has metabolites of BPA in their body. Probably that’s more. And probably that also includes BPS and BPF which replacements that are often used when people are swapping those out. So right now there is a proposed policy change in the European Union that would reduce the safe level of exposure to BPA by 100,000 fold. 100,000 fold and so what that would-

Michael Roesslein:

Essentially eliminated from use because they wouldn’t be able to…

Lara Adler:

So this particular policy relates only to BPA in its use in food contact materials. So the European Food Safety Authority, which is their version of our USDA, is they’re looking at food contact materials. And that is a 100,000 fold drop in the previous level that has been deemed safe. Which will basically mean, if this goes through, BPA will no longer be used in food contact materials in the European Union.

Lara Adler:

And what I find interesting, first of all, is BPA only so this doesn’t refer extend to BPS or BPF. Hopefully that legislation would follow suit, otherwise it’s just a stupid policy that’s meaningless if they’re going to replace one chemical with a nearly identical chemical, and they’re going to go through the trouble of doing this policy change only to replace it with something that’s just as bad, if not worse. So baby steps I’ll take what I can get, right?

Lara Adler:

And so what I find interesting is that scientists and regulatory folks in the U.S. are still like, “No, no, no, it’s safe.” And it’s like, okay, but living in Europe doesn’t mean that you have different physiology than if you live in the United States. We’re all people. We’re all affected the same way. And so why would our science be better than their science, especially when the science that they’re considering is sometimes conducted by people in the U.S?

Lara Adler:

So it’s this ridiculous conundrum where we’re, again, seeing chemicals regulated far more aggressively, or at least even being examined, but this policy hasn’t been inked yet. But the analysis is far more considerate of the reality of our exposure situation, and that looking at the science that specifically is saying that these really low levels of exposure are extraordinarily important, and in fact, when it comes to certain chemicals, and I’m happy to dive into this, when it comes to certain chemicals, those tiny little exposures that we’re getting every day can actually be more meaningful than a high level of exposure.

Michael Roesslein:

Wow. Well, it’s really optimistic to hear that’s happening with the BPA and the food stuff here, and in this world any win is-

Lara Adler:

Any win is a win.

Michael Roesslein:

… win.

Lara Adler:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. Any little win is celebratable.

Lara Adler:

It’s like when you’re in an abusive relationship where you’re like, “I’ll take whatever strap you can give me.”

Michael Roesslein:

It really kind of is, and I don’t want to trivialize that in any way, but it’s like it is. It really is. All of humanity is in an abusive relationship with these chemical companies. I could get into more parallels there, but I’m going to not. This isn’t really talked about in the medical community very much at all, especially in the conventional medical community. If you even bring up half of this stuff to like a conventional, even specialist rheumatologist doctors, which a lot of our listeners probably have, they won’t know anything about it. Chemicals and disease and all of this. Why do you think there is that disconnect?

Lara Adler:

I mean, I think like everything, there’s a lot of reasons for that. First and foremost, I think it’s not the individual doctors’ or medical professionals’ fault that they don’t know this. And so I think that our first reaction is to kind of shake our fist to be like, “You are shit.” Because they don’t know this information, but we have to remember that is not their fault, right? They’re a product of the education system that they came out of. The problem and the fault lies in our curriculum. And so the curriculum that we have in medical schools just doesn’t address environmental exposures almost at all. And this is not a criticism necessarily of conventional medicine because conventional medicine is necessary and has its place. If I get hit by a bus, I don’t want someone putting an herbal [inaudible 00:47:47] on my open wound, I want fucking ER, I want doctors, I want drugs, right?

Lara Adler:

I think all different types of medical providers have a place in our medical system, we’re not talking about the insurance system that’s another scam that’s a different industry nightmare. But the curriculum for medical professionals just doesn’t include discussion on environmental health. There was an analysis done a couple of years ago that looked at how many medical schools offer curriculum on environmental health and of the ones that do what’s the average number of hours. And what they found was that the average number of hours offered in medical school programs on environmental medicine, that offer programs because most of them did not, the average number of hours was seven. And those hours are most likely going to be looking at things like cigarette smoking, recreational drug use, or that type of environmental exposure, toxicology conversation.

Lara Adler:

So the education is weak. It’s limited. There was a couple different surveys of medical school graduates and of nursing school graduates that asked them like, “How comfortable do you feel about environmental medicine?” And they were like, “I don’t know anything about it. My education is inadequate. I don’t feel prepared to have this dialogue.” So the big change there needs to happen on the curriculum side. And that is an incredibly slow moving pivot. We already know there’s a 15 to 20 year gap between what is coming out in the scientific literature and what makes it into standard of care practice for practicing physicians. Like there’s already a 20 year gap. That’s one person who has to become informed about a topic in order to change something in their practice. When we’re looking at academic curriculum, that’s a 30, 40 year pivot, I’m guessing.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. And it’s about as much as they learn about nutrition or food as well.

Lara Adler:

Well, they’ve more or less actually. So the average number of hours dedicated to nutrition is about 19. Where we have seven in environmental health so It’s really weak. And so what happens is-

Michael Roesslein:

[inaudible 00:50:16] factors that are making a huge impact on the chronic diseases that those doctors are then expected to treat.

Lara Adler:

Yes. Well, and then again, because most of conventional medicine is a reactionary, right? Once somebody already has the disease or manifestation of symptoms, how do we-

Michael Roesslein:

So they study the disease itself and the disease processes and the disease mechanisms and the drugs that can be used for the disease, not how to make my patients not get the disease.

Lara Adler:

Get this disease. And that actually is like preventative medicine, that’s preventative medicine. My hot take on why preventative medicine is basically just fails as a modality is because we’re asking people to allocate mental energy, financial resources to a problem that hasn’t happened yet. And I think evolutionarily speaking, our brains are not wired for that. Like we are a, look I have limited resources. I’m going to deal with what’s in front of me right now. It’s very hard for me to take actions and invest time, energy and money on a hypothetical, a what-if. It might be. And that’s to me like why we’re so shit when it comes to climate change, right? Like, well it hasn’t happened yet. Like you are asking me to change my whole business model. You’re asking me to allocate billions of dollars. It’s not here yet. And meanwhile, you have climate scientists who are like, “It’s actually here, it’s been here.”

Lara Adler:

Anyway, I digress. The point is that our medical providers just don’t have training in this. And on the one hand, look, there’s only so much that can be covered in an eight year program and residency, and then this is why it’s called medical practice. You have to continue to learn, and this is why people need continuing medical education because you need that push to stay current. And so this is just not part of the curriculum yet. And my hope is that will shift.

Lara Adler:

And in the meantime, part of what I’m doing, I’m not a clinician, I’m not teaching clinical education, but I teach practical and I’ve been teaching. I’ve had over 4,000 students in the last 10 years because I’m trying to fill an education gap that exists and say, “Look, here is what the research is showing. Here are the studies that are suggesting X, Y, and Z. And here is a practical intervention that we can implement in our lives to minimize exposure and thereby hopefully, reduce risk or likelihood of disease develop or minimize symptoms of a disease that’s already present.”

Michael Roesslein:

Thank you for filling that gap. And if you’re a practitioner out there, please consider going through Lara’s training because the more health practitioners that are aware of these things, the more people are going to be aware of these things and people who are dealing with chronic issues who… If you’re a nutritionist or a health coach or, or even a doctor out there, who’s working with chronically ill people and they’re doing the diet and the supplements, and they’re doing some, even some lifestyle changes or you got them exercising or going outside or whatever. And these people aren’t getting better. This is one of the elephants in the room, along with a couple others that generally get ignored when it comes to chronically ill people.

Michael Roesslein:

And it puts you as a practitioner, and I know our practitioners out there and coaches and all these people like, yes you are inspired and motivated by the outcomes of your clients and patients, and that’s your primary objective, is to help people. And it feels pretty good to be better at what you do, and to be able to offer like a better service and better value and more confidence that you can help people get to the root of things. And this type of knowledge, it totally shifted the way that I had conversations with people. Like, I didn’t know about your trainings 12 years ago. I didn’t think I knew until about, I was probably about six or seven years ago I figured out what you were up to. But when I was working with clients, one-on-one, which is predominantly right around then and before, I just read the stack of books, which takes a really long time to do. And you mentioned in your bio, I think… Where is it?

Lara Adler:

Oh it’s like-

Michael Roesslein:

… spending [inaudible 00:54:36] researching on their own. I spend [inaudible 00:54:41] of hours researching on my own. Probably a couple 100.

Lara Adler:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

And that was enough. That was enough to where I was like, “Oh, I get it. Okay. I got it. Get it. This is enrage.” I couldn’t even handle any more of it. But I didn’t have a lot of these books that I read that are like this big, there’s like three main take rows in that book that was really important for me to understand. And I spent like three weeks reading in the book. And what I’ve seen out of your work is like really condensing a lot of this extremely overwhelming field of shit to get into. Like, it is the most overwhelming of all the things to learn as somebody who’s going to help people with their health is chemicals. What is that called when somebody’s scared to leave their house? Agoraphobic?

Lara Adler:

Agoraphobia, yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

Then the things are in your house. So like it’s not even that it makes you not want to leave your house, it’s like. “This could easily trigger people into becoming like I’m going to build a bubble that I live in and then that bubble’s probably going to be made out of plastic and that I’m going to be housed in plastic.

Lara Adler:

And then, yes. That’s actually my joke. I actually-

Michael Roesslein:

[inaudible 00:55:50] so I-

Lara Adler:

I have a joke like that, and then I say like, “What’s the bubble made out of, what kind of plastic? Is it off gassing?”

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. And then he is going to [inaudible 00:56:00] gas plastic. So like this can get really intense and really overwhelming and really like deep and heavy and never ending and all encompassing and whatever, and the way that you teach about it, which I’m actually going to impromptu to ask you to come back for a part two because I can’t do another hour of the podcast. And I want to talk more about the rest of the things that we didn’t really get into.

Michael Roesslein:

We talked big picture around the chemical industry and why this doesn’t get dealt with in the medical industry and why activism amongst consumers is going to beat government action when it comes to speed, because there are some really exciting government action things going on. But I want to do a part two where we actually teach some things.

Lara Adler:

Yeah. Let’s go through that.

Michael Roesslein:

But what I like about the way that you teach is that you go into the bottomless pit of all the shit and then you come out and you teach health practitioners, what exactly they need to know in order to be better at their jobs and to better educate their clients and their patients, without them having to jump into that same pool for an endless amount of time.

Lara Adler:

Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s exhausting and it’s overwhelming and as you know, when you’re going down those rabbit holes and you’re looking at studies and then one study is, “Oh, well this study has full 40 different citations, and I now want to read all 40 of those papers.” Right? Like it is an endless, endless rabbit hole. And I think that one of the things that is important for, especially for practicing care providers, whether are they are a health coach or nutritionist or MD or an ND, and I’ve had the whole range in my courses, is that they don’t have the time to do all that research, but they still want to help the client who’s coming in the door with Hashimoto or some other kind of thyroid disease. And they’re like, “Hey, I’ve done all these different things.” You know my take is like, “Well, look there’s a lot of chemicals that we’re being exposed to in a single day that we know, there’s a substantial amount of research showing that this it suppresses thyroid function, that it displaces iodine in the thyroid and leads to all of these downstream health effects.”

Lara Adler:

So as somebody who’s working with somebody on thyroid issues, metabolic issues, gut issues, hormone issues, we can’t just look at nutrition, lifestyle, supplementation, and medication. We also have to consider our environment. This was a survey that was done, this was I think in like the late ’90s and we don’t have a more current one, but it was a survey of the American population about like how much time do you spend inside versus outside? And the survey found that like 93% of our lives are spent inside the built environment, meaning in our homes, which was like 60%, our offices and our vehicles and only 7% was spent outside. And so to me, the absolute arrogance to assume that like that 93% time spent in a built environment, couldn’t influence your health is outrageous. And so we know that that’s not the case. Even going back to what you said about the gas stoves, that’s just one exposure that we can see hey, has an association with asthma in children, for example. You also add incense into that home that also is going to up their…

Michael Roesslein:

Incense and plugins and scented candles and…

Lara Adler:

Air fresheners, yeah. So like…

Michael Roesslein:

And fabric softeners and laundry detergents and cleaning products and all the things that make your house smell like things.

Lara Adler:

Yes.

Michael Roesslein:

Or not smell like certain things, but all of those things on a wider, like more simple level, physiologically, we are part of that environment that we only spend 7% of our time in. And we are not part of the environment that we then spend 93% of our time in. So our physiology is mismatched with its environment 93% of the time then. And to think that that’s not going to impact the way our body works and the way our mental health works, and everybody there’s a few small percentage of people, but most people will say like, “Oh, I went to the lake today. It was amazing.” Or “I went on a hike today and fell so good.” Or “I went on this thing I was outside” Like no shit. Like, of course that’s where we belong to be. That’s your body’s like, “Oh yeah, this I’m this, this is good. I’m in this place. That’s good. I like this. This feels good.” It also happens to have way less of the chemicals that… So do that. [inaudible 01:01:05] on part two, but we’ll end part one with doing that.

Lara Adler:

Yeah. Go outside. And if you can’t go outside, open your windows in your house, right? [crosstalk 01:01:15] get some fresh air.

Michael Roesslein:

And I know it’s winter right now and there’s places in this country where that’s not a feasible thing, but still try to go outside. And I know I’m a hypocrite right now because I don’t do outside winter things, and I actually left places that have winter because I didn’t go outside ever because I hate it but if you live in there those places, one, I’m sorry. Two, doing things like snowshoeing and cross country skiing, and I don’t know what other things, but there’s always a long list of things. Those people who claim to like the winter, you’re out there. I know you’re out there winter. There are those people that are like, “Oh I love the winter. I love to go do.” And then they list like 12 things. They love to go do, go do those things outside.

Michael Roesslein:

I don’t know what they all are because usually my brain shuts off after like the first three and I’m just like, “Nope.” But yeah, it’s snowed the second day I was here and I almost had like a full mental breakdown of like, “What did I do? What did I just do?” But it was like a dusting of snow and then it was gone. It’s supposed to dust again on Saturday, but it’s been like 60 this week so one day where it’s dusty actually, I should say it’s been 16 because I’m trying to convert myself to all of the Celsius and Metric Systems things but yeah, go outside.

Michael Roesslein:

And then next part we will talk about specifics, more specifics. This was like a broad sense topic, broad sense conversation to give you like the scope and the scale of the issue and the problem and some larger scale solutions and some news of things that are happening. Like way to go EU. I didn’t know that. And that’s exciting. [inaudible 01:03:00] way more over here when they find out about things that like companies are doing that are harmful, it’s like a collective rage that spikes really quickly.

Lara Adler:

Well, especially when it comes to food and-

Michael Roesslein:

Yes.

Lara Adler:

And that’s because food is [crosstalk 01:03:14] cultural component. And I’ll just leave it cliffhanger because I have some interest. If you remind me, I have an interesting story to tell on that as it pertains-

Michael Roesslein:

Let’s do it.

Lara Adler:

The French because they also love their food.

Michael Roesslein:

French food, cliffhanger story. I just took notes.

Lara Adler:

Right.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah, in France, Italy and Spain, you can’t mess with their food or people get very, very upset. So or the wine. There was a study last year that came out about, or maybe it was last year, the year before, that even organic wines from California were relatively high in glyphosate and other stuff that shouldn’t be in them. They know that here.

Lara Adler:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

Like they will bring that up because they’re offended by California wines as a whole. They bring up that they have chemicals in them that are not allowed to be used here so then you’re drinking chemical wine and here is not chemical wine. And that people there that have responses to wine, like don’t feel good when they drink wine.

Lara Adler:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

That doesn’t happen to people here, they will say. Just like the gluten here, doesn’t upset people nearly as much either. So we can get into more specific stuff like that next time. In the meantime, if you’re a health practitioner, go to Lara’s website and check out her professional trainings. Where should they go exactly? Is there like one spot on your site or what?

Lara Adler:

I mean, no, they can just go to laraadler.com and peruse. There’s a courses tab that people can go and check out the courses.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah, yeah. [inaudible 01:04:48] professionals, you have a really cool training. People are always asking me what water filter they should get. And I literally just send them a link to your website because water created a course that helps you figure out what water filter you should get because not every water needs the same set of filters, which I know that makes it way less convenient, and there should just be this one mega filter that saves all the water and then you should just buy that one and then we could all just say, “Hey, buy this one.” And then it will be really easy, but that’s not true. So she made a really simple course that teaches you how to know what’s in your water and what filters or what and how to get them and all of that. So that’s for anyone. And then there’s professional trainings there on how to teach this stuff in an effective way. So before we come back, go there, check that out. Do that. Also Instagram.

Lara Adler:

Metric of information and education there that’s really accessible to anybody, but obviously still geared towards my practitioner crowd. And my-

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah then, again, our listeners are kind of…

Lara Adler:

In the middle. Yeah, yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

In the middle of that. So yeah. Check her out on Instagram, really cool content there.

Lara Adler:

It’s @environmentaltoxinsnerd, is my IG handle.

Michael Roesslein:

@environmentaltoxinsnerd on Instagram, and lauraadler.com on the interwebs and go check that stuff out. And I’ll ring Lara into another podcast recording, and we will be part two to save you from listening for two straight hours at one time. We will do one straight hour, two times.

Lara Adler:

Perfect.

Michael Roesslein:

Cool. Well thank you, Lara it’s always super fun and I will be harassing you soon to come back on here.

Lara Adler:

Sounds good. Sounds good. Thank you.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah, take it easy.