Life without Endocrine Disrupting Compounds

Many Endocrine Disrupting Compounds have become ubiquitous in the contemporary world, and especially in the U.S. Some of these EDCs interfere with reproductive development of newborn children, some have been linked to cancer, some impair cognitive development, and some are obesogenic, among other effects. To avoid consumption and absorption of these compounds, one must be very careful of the materials and substances one comes in contact with. Some of these materials are weaved so tightly into contemporary life, that it takes creative and active solutions to live without them. However, it is certainly possible to do so, and I will offer practical and fully realizable solutions for every category of EDC.

No plastics for food

This point requires a significant change of habits for many people, but it is the only way to reduce or eliminate BPA and phthalate intake. An increasing number of studies has linked both of these EDCs to reproductive development issues on a multigenerational timescale. They have been linked to reduced fertility, slowed development of reproductive organs, cancer in non-human animals, and brain function impairment in non-human animals.

When you’re eating out, eat in the café or restaurant rather than ordering your food as takeaway. Seated, slow, quiet, uninterrupted eating can have positive effects on physical and mental health as it can improve digestion, reduce stress, and increase a sense of satiation, thereby reducing calorie intake. You can try out some new locales in your area to find one that uses ceramic dishes and metal cutlery (or paper and bamboo products), or you can explain the advantages to your favorite place and ask them to provide the option for non-plastics.

A reliable path to the avoidance of plastic at home is to get groceries at your local farmer’s market or organic store. Stores that sell food in bulk are also useful. Most of these stores will allow you, and encourage you, to store your purchases in paper bags, mason jars, glass tupperwares, cotton bags, or hemp bags. Some stores have paper bags available in the bulk and produce sections. Mason jars and glass tupperwares have the advantage that you can immediately use them as storage containers in your home, for pulses, grains, flour, etc. While cotton, hemp, and other reusable tote bags are particularly practical for fresh produce. As long as you are careful to place sensitive items such as berries, tomatoes, and any ripe produce on top, this is a steadfast plan. Think of your tote bag as a mass and hardness gradient – the heaviest and hardest items need to be at the bottom while the lightest and softest items should be packed at the top.

Surprisingly, the greatest challenge of this grocery change is remembering to bring your non-plastics of choice to the store. This can be addressed by keeping a store of them in the trunk of your car, writing a short note at the bottom of every grocery list, or placing some tote bags by your entrance door to remind yourself when you leave.

Some farmer’s markets and stores stack the cardboard and wooden crates from delivery by the side of their stall or at the store’s exit. And you can use these, too, to transport your groceries. If you are so lucky, you will not face the challenge of remembering your supplies, and this may also be a more affordable option to some.

And this will not only benefit your health and your grandchildren’s health, but the rest of the Earth as well. Plastic takes over a million years to biodegrade and is accumulating at unprecedented rates in the ocean. The motion of the sea also causes plastic to break down into micro-particles which fish may breathe in and accumulate in their lungs. These micro-particles are unfortunately not biodegraded material, simply small pieces of plastic still chemically identical. And so they harm fish through lung blockage as well as EDC effects.

Additionally, shopping at a farmer’s market or organic store usually leads you to support more local businesses than shopping at a conventional store – certainly more than at a large national chain. This provides greater autonomy to farmers, as they can decide their own methods, yield sizes, harvest frequencies, conditions for animals, etc. Contracts with large corporations often direct these decisions, preventing them from being suited to the individual farm’s conditions. This can result in extra expenses, yield losses, and poor conditions for non-human animals.

You may find that avoiding plastics changes your eating habits too. Most candy bars, ready meals, chips, and such items are invariably packaged in plastic, no matter where you buy them. Though you may consider this inconvenient at first, it may also create a significant improvement in your health.

I must note here that eliminating plastic food packaging entirely will significantly increase most people’s grocery costs, and so it is not a possibility for everyone. However, it is possible to keep costs reasonably low in many situations by purchasing new kinds of products as alternatives, if you see that they are available more cheaply in non-plastic containers. For example, you may find that peanut butter is only available in a glass container from one brand, and it is much more expensive. Perhaps sunflower seed butter, however, is sold in a glass jar at the usual price, and you find that you quite like the taste of it.

If you cannot afford to eliminate plastic entirely, then buy as many non-plastics as you can, as this supports the companies who are making them available, and an increase in their scale of production may make it possible for them to decrease prices. Spread the word among your friends, neighbors, and the people you speak to at the market or in the store to increase demand.

As mentioned, and as implied, you should store your food in ceramic, glass, or other non-plastic containers at home too. Don’t use plastic wrap, as this contains phthalates.

Use glass or aluminum drinks containers too. You can buy reusable aluminum water bottles or glass bottles (which are available with a protective casing). And you can sometimes reuse glass bottles purchased as a drink (e.g. Honest T, Tico’s smoothies).

Cans, receipts, and dental sealants also contain high levels of BPA. So avoid canned foods, cashier receipts, and talk to your dentist before having work done.

Additionally, many plastic products and cans that are labeled as ‘BPA-free’ contain BPS, which has very similar health effects to BPA.

No pesticides in food

Pesticides include herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, molluscicides, rodenticides, as well as other subcategories. And several of them, including chlorpyrifos and triflumizole, have been linked to impaired reproductive development, impaired neural development, and obesogenic effects. Organic food is not grown with pesticides, all the more so depending on its certification. These synthetic pesticides are so widespread in the U.S. that even organic farms sometimes have trace amounts blown to them by the wind.

You can ascertain the strictness or level of organic integrity of a food by the type and number of organic certifications that it has. If it simply has the word ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ written in its title but no certification, it does not legally need to meet any criteria in the U.S. Some states and some independent certification agencies have their own badges, and some of these are stricter than the USDA label. The European, German, French, Australian, as well as many other countries’ organic certification labels have much stricter standards than those of the U.S.

Sometimes farms who come to sell their produce at your local farmer’s market don’t have organic certification because they are of too small a scale. The USDA may not yet categorize them as a retailer, or the certification process may be too expensive for them. However, these farmers can find a way of demonstrating the organic nature of their produce to you too. Perhaps they will offer you a visit to their farm, or they will have detailed photographic documentation of their methods at the market. It adds to your experience at the farmer’s market anyway, to get to know the farmers and get in the habit of having conversations with them. This is often part of the culture of farmer’s markets, results in jokes and laughter, creates an atmosphere of community, and builds a surprisingly deep relationship. Food is, after all, your most essential need, and the person who provides it to you has thus an automatic proximity to you. As you get to know your local farmers, they’ll usually be happy to tell you all about their farming methods. Some of them are very complex ecological schemes that have also been developed into analogous social systems, such as permaculture and biodynamic farming. Perhaps the methods they have developed do not require any fertilizers or pesticides, perhaps they use organic substitutes, or it is possible that they use some synthetic ones too for cost and convenience. Since regulations are so permissive in the U.S., the standards are never guaranteed. If this is inconvenient or frustrating to you, write to the USDA and the FDA, and talk to your friends and community members about it. Maybe your community will start a protest. You have the right to know what’s in your food, and the actions of the USDA, FDA, and food manufacturers in past decades suggest that a full disclosure of information will not be made available of their accord in the near future.

When you are restricted to conventional produce choose broccoli, sweet corn, asparagus, cabbages, onions, frozen sweet peas, cauliflower, eggplants, honeydews, cantaloupes, pineapples, avocados, papayas, mangoes, or kiwis. These produce items have been called the Clean Fifteen and have been found to contain comparatively low pesticide residues.

Avoid strawberries, spinach, nectarines, apples, grapes, peaches, cherries, pears, tomatoes, celery, potatoes and sweet bell peppers. These have been called the Dirty Dozen, and especially high pesticide residue levels were detected on and in them.

Wash your produce before eating it. Washing with water, and optionally also salt or a brush can remove a substantial amount of pesticides from produce. Some ayurvedic practitioners suggest washing produce with turmeric too, to remove an even greater portion of fertilizers and pesticides.

Use a steel, ceramic, or other non-coated pan

The important point here is that you do not want to use a non-stick pan. Surfactants, the compounds that make the surface non-adhesive, have been linked to birth defects, ulcerative colitis, high cholesterol, pregnancy hypertension, thyroid disease, testicular cancer, and kidney cancer. The most common brand name for these products is Teflon, and they use a compound called C8. C8 is being pulled from the market because of the various health concerns listed above. But its proposed replacement, called GenX, does not seem to be any healthier. The EPA does not require manufacturers to test products for long-term health effects before putting them onto the market, only for immediate toxicity. So it is often the case that manufacturers keep producing similar compounds, using a slightly different chemical formula every few years. This allows them to escape litigation while each iteration has similar negative health effects.

There are many other types of pans available on the market. You can purchase stainless steel, aluminum, ceramic, cast-iron pans, or a wok. Stainless steel or aluminum pans and woks are the thinnest of them all and are low-maintenance, ceramic pans are best suited to low temperatures and need to be wiped with oil after each use. Cast-iron pans are very heavy and need to be seasoned with oil, leaving them on low-heat for some time after each use. But cast-irons are far less sensitive than ceramic pans.

Use organic and biodegradable cleaning products

Conventional cleaning products, that means any products except fully biodegradable and mostly organic ones, have myriad health effects. As their labels clearly disclose, they are all toxic. They should not be ingested, as doing so is often lethal. The logical rift in classifying long-term, low-dose exposure to highly toxic products as innocuous is becoming ever more apparent. Petroleum-based tensides are not fully biodegradable and are toxic to many aquatic organisms. Many fragrance-bearing compounds are allergenic, very slow to biodegrade, and toxic to aquatic organisms too. Many preservatives are also allergenic, and formaldehyde is carcinogenic. It can trigger asthma and allergies, and it can cause headache, mucous membrane irritation, nausea, and breathing problems. Disinfectants often contain respiratory irritants, in the form of chlorine compounds, and substances such as triclosan, which is increasingly evidenced as an EDC and a carcinogen.

Such brands as ecover, green works, Mrs. Meyer’s, and seventh generation offer healthy and biodegradable alternatives for all the necessary cleaning products in your home. There are many other brands out there whose products are just as effective, so support your local producers. Vinegar and baking soda are suitable alternatives for many cleaning purposes, which can make your health-conscious cleaning more affordable.

Use organic cosmetics and toiletries

Many perfumes and personal care products contain phthalates – from lotions, to soaps, makeup, and nail polish. Phthalates are EDCs that negatively impact reproductive health and reproductive development. They are used mostly to produce fragrance in these products, so opting for fragrance-free creams, lotions, and sprays already has a positive impact. Some products are now labeled as phthalate-free, but, remember that they may still contain other harmful substances and waste products of petroleum refinement (such as paraffins and silicon).

The word ‘natural’ is legally meaningless for product labeling. You will want to read the ingredient list yourself and choose the product that contains the fewest non-plant ingredients. Plant ingredients are often listed by their Latin name, so Aloe Barbadensis (Aloe), Cassis Angustifolia, Hamamelis Virgniana (Witch Hazel), or Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba) Oil are all plant ingredients, and they cannot have been chemically modified from their natural composition.

Glycerin is an alcohol compound derived from vegetable oil and limonene comes from the oil of citrus fruit peels. These ingredients can be completely natural ingredients or they can be synthetically formed.

Such ingredients as phenoxyethanol, methylparaben, octyldodecanol, or cyclomethicone are necessarily synthetic. These compounds are named systematically, and you will find a number of different -ethanols, -methanols, -parabens, -dodecanols, etc. on ingredient labels.

EWG (the Environmental Working Group) has a cosmetics database that rates over 70,000 products for overall hazard, cancer risk, developmental & reproductive toxicity, allergies & immunotoxicity, and more. As a non-commercial group, they give a less partial evaluation than cosmetics brands: https://www.ewg.org/skindeep/

The EWG also has many useful environmental health news updates in general.

Organic cosmetics are more expensive than many conventional ones, but what is worth more than your health and well-being? Remember also, that you can easily make your own personal care products. There are lots of recipes for cosmetics from food-grade ingredients online, just look up ‘organic recipe for moisturizer’ or facial cleanser, conditioner, etc. And some things don’t even require any preparation. Coconut oil, for example, is a great moisturizer, that you can very simply replace your current tub of lotion with.

No flame retardants

If you are moving to a new home, buying new furniture, or preparing the bedroom of your expected child you will want to be very careful not to purchase foam products that contain flame retardants. Flame retardants have been shown by a number of studies to lead to lowered birth weights, alterations to genitalia, and skeletal malformations.

When shopping for furniture (including foam items, carpets, curtains, and more), buy only the products that are explicitly labeled as not containing flame retardants. If furniture is labeled as complying to TB-117 it contains flame retardants. This Technical Bulletin required flame retardants to be added to furniture in California. If the furniture was manufactured before 1975, it is unlikely that it contains flame retardants. Furniture manufactured after 2015 is less likely to contain flame retardants as TB-117 was modified in this year so as to no longer require the use of flame retardants.

Vacuuming and mopping frequently helps to reduce flame retardant exposure, as the compounds settle in house dust. And you can find more information and recommendations for purchases at HealthyStuff.org.

Keep a natural lawn

The fertilizers and pesticides for lawns and golf courses are some of the most potent and therefore some of the most harmful substances. Many of them are toxic in their concentrated forms and some have been indicated as carcinogens.

Use organic fertilizers and pesticides instead, which are widely available commercially.

Buy organic or second-hand clothes

Organic cotton and organic hemp are the most commonly available materials for organic clothing, and conventional cotton farming uses an exceptionally high amount of pesticides, compared to other crops. The exposure you gain through skin contact with non-organic materials to pesticides such as chlorpyrifos and other EDCs such as nonylphenol ethoxylates is significant.

Again, organic clothing is significantly more expensive than many widely available clothes. However, if you’re willing to spend more on designer products, why not spend more for your own health and that of your children? You can also buy second-hand clothes instead. If they have been washed very frequently, that reduces the amount of harmful substances you’re exposed to by wearing them.

Buying organic or second-hand clothes has a very significant environmental impact too. Nonylphenol ethoxylates, which are used to clean fabrics during manufacturing, are persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic chemicals (PBTs). And their extreme aquatic toxicity to fish and wildlife has been indicated in several forms. The dyes used to manufacture new non-organic clothing is washed into rivers by irresponsible sewage dumping too, and many of these compounds are harmful to the ecosystems they enter. Additionally, buying less new clothing saves energy, material resources, and land usage since so much clothing is thrown away every year.

Don’t give any plastic toys or other plastic items to your children

Infants, especially, put almost every object they encounter in their mouths. So make sure there are no plastic items around for them to be exposed to BPA, phthalates, and other harmful substances from.

Buy wooden, fabric, and metal, toys instead, and ask all your family members to do the same when buying gifts. Once you explain to them that it is for the sake of your child’s health, they will be more than happy to do so.

Living organically and staying on budget

Grow your own organic food! Herbs are often easy to start with, you can grow them in pots on your windowsill, learn to tend to plants, and from there extend to potted tomatoes and beyond.

Buy produce locally and in season. Eating many root vegetables, squash, pumpkin, and other seasonal vegetables during winter and waiting for the summer to enjoy berries, nectarines, melons, and other sweet fruit will benefit your wallet as well as the environment. You can find more detailed guides as to which kinds of produce are in season during which months online.

Go vegetarian! A vegetarian diet is far less expensive than an omnivorous one. So you can switch entirely to organic food without paying any more.

Remember that you’re making up-front investments for many of these things. You will only need to buy mason jars, glass tupperwares, glass and aluminum water bottles once. These products actually last a lot longer than plastics, as long as you don’t drop them, so you may not end up paying any more over the full product lifetime.

You can also make your own canned goods, though you’ll want to keep them in mason jars instead. Pickles, compotes, and jams are easy to make, and it can be a fun afternoon for kids. That way you can avoid BPA-containing cans and store summer-seasonal fruits for the winter.