The Plastic Detox (2026) Movie Script

1
Am I the only one that is just,
like, so fixated on microplastics?
-Microplastics are in everything now.
-[pensive music playing]
-[man] Microplastics.
-Hello?
We've all got microplastics in our body
-There's microplastics in your balls now.
-Right now?
Well, you just ruined my day.
[upbeat music playing]
[man 1] There's plastic in everything,
and you're consuming it all the time.
Literally, your toothbrush
is getting plastic into your mouth.
Do you chew gum? That's made of plastic.
These clothes? This is polyester.
That's made of plastic.
[woman 1] We don't know
what these plastics are doing to us.
[man 2] You and me and everyone you meet
has enough plastic
in their brain to make a spoon.
[woman 2] We're finding them
all over the body, not just the brain.
The blood, the lungs,
the heart, the arteries,
the gut, the liver, the kidneys,
breast milk.
Okay, I'm full of microplastics.
Now what? What do you want me to do?
Huh? Huh? Huh?
Tell me because I don't know.
I saw a gastro doctor today,
and she said
she never drinks bottled water
because of the microplastics
and their correlation to colon cancer.
[woman 2] Plastic also leaches out
a crap-ton of chemicals.
[woman 3] I was pissed when I found out
that the toxic chemicals
contained obesogens.
Do you know what obesogens are?
[music turns unsettling]
[man 3] The more technology,
the more plastic,
the more plastic in the bodies.
It's causing people's penises to shrink,
balls to shrink,
sperm counts are lowering,
and miscarriages to go up.
[woman 4] This is so crazy and alarming.
[man 3] What do we do
to try to keep the human race alive?
[woman 5] So what are the solutions
to these problems?
We can start by looking inside our homes.
[dramatic music playing]
[music fades]
[man over PA]
And now, tonight's very special guest,
the one and only Shanna fucking Swan.
[audience cheering and applauding]
Well, I have to say [laughs]
I've never had an introduction like that.
[laughs]
In order to understand
the impacts of chemicals in plastic,
you have to see
the effect on reproduction.
[pensive music playing]
Fertility worldwide is going down rapidly.
Your book, Count Down,
says that the modern world
is threatening sperm counts and imperiling
the future of the human race.
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
And it is tightly linked to chemicals
that are commonly used in plastic.
[pensive music continues]
I've been talking about these chemicals
for about a quarter of a century.
More than ever, people are worried about
how all the chemicals
we're exposed to are affecting our health.
At the same time,
the use of testosterone has increased.
My audience has always
been other scientists.
I published in scientific journals
pretty much exclusively.
And what I realized was that
that hasn't worked.
-Are human penises getting smaller?
-Yeah.
Shanna, why didn't you start with that?
[both laugh]
Now I am focused, I am honed in.
This is something
that affects me directly, Shanna.
[Swan] There's a lot of crises
in the world right now.
I don't want to scare people,
but I want to tell them
that this is also an important crisis.
This is also something
we have to pay attention to.
And actually,
in terms of our survival as a species,
it may be
one of the most important.
[pensive music playing]
One way to understand
the impacts of these chemicals
that can affect our bodies
is to look at couples who are having
a lot of problems getting pregnant.
-Hi!
-[woman] Hi! How are you?
-Are you Monique?
-Yeah, I'm Monique.
-I'm Shanna.
-Nice to meet you, Shanna.
[Swan] We recruited six couples
who are trying to conceive
but have not been able to.
And the question is, if we lower
people's exposure to chemicals
that are in plastic,
can we change their fertility?
[doorbell rings]
-Hi. How are you?
-[Swan] Hi!
Can you just tell me a little bit
about why you want to do this?
-For a baby.
-Yeah.
That's what we've been
working on for a long time now.
We've been trying to conceive
for about 22 months this month.
After about a year, we said,
"It's kind of weird
that nothing's happened."
We have been trying since we got married.
So that was about two years ago.
We have been trying to get pregnant
for over ten years now.
Two and a half years, I guess? Yeah.
Having to, like, have sex
all the time and, like, do these tests.
And it just becomes
It's, like, it's no fun.
Say what you always call yourself.
Ah. I say, "You know, Julie,
I'm not a human dildo."
[both laugh]
And then we proceed to go ahead and do it,
and I'm happy to be a human dildo.
But it is a dehumanizing thing.
-[Julie] I'm really excited about answers.
-That's wonderful.
-Wonderful, yes.
-[Julie and Eric] Yeah.
Wouldn't it be great
if we can figure this out?
So let's turn to products.
-[both] Okay.
-[Swan] Okay?
-There's plastic in here.
-[Eric] Mm.
[Swan] This is a three-month intervention
Why don't you read that?
to look at the effect
of lowering your exposure
to plastics and chemicals in plastic
on your fertility.
It's not a quote, unquote
"scientific study."
We have no control group.
It's very small.
And all of these couples who are infertile
but have unexplained infertility.
So nothing in their lifestyle
was obviously causing this,
with the exception of chemicals
in their environment.
[ominous music playing]
These chemicals are ubiquitous.
They're everywhere in our daily lives.
In hard plastics.
In soft plastics.
They're in fabrics.
The kitchen is home to obvious examples.
From utensils and cutting boards
to tea bags and coffee pods
and any number of containers.
Food packaging is often made of plastic.
And when heated, these chemicals
go into the things that we eat.
They're often in places you can't see,
like the linings of tin and aluminum cans
used for soup and beverages.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg.
They're in our closets.
In the fabrics and dyes of our clothing.
They're in our personal care products.
From brushes to shampoos
to deodorants and lotions.
They're in fragrances.
And our children are absolutely inundated
with plastics in their toys.
So we ingest them.
We absorb them through our skin.
We inhale them.
Every which way that they can
get into our bodies, they do.
And as they pass through our bodies,
they wreak all sorts of havoc.
[pensive music playing]
[Darby] We've done
a lot of research at home
on chemicals in the environment.
But learning more about plastics,
it's opening my eyes
to how much bigger it is.
-They're all plastics.
-[Darby] Oh, yeah.
[Swan] It's a plastic kingdom, you know?
These things we use a lot too.
-I know.
-[sighs]
[Monique] Now I cannot live without.
[Swan] These do contain chemicals
that are concerning.
And this is a problem. I use it every day.
[both laugh]
I think we have a lot of products.
[Tim] There have been more reports
of plastics and microplastics,
but I never would have thought
that they're in my body as well.
[Katie] One of the first things we did,
we threw away a cutting board.
So that felt good. [laughs]
[Swan] Thirty-five percent
of the microplastics in the ocean
come from textiles.
-Oh my gosh. Here's another.
-Oh!
[Eric] So this room is like
a chemical warfare room.
-[Swan] Yeah.
-[Eric] Is what you're saying.
[Julie] It's just for smells.
-[Eric] It's the Latino cleaning product.
-Oof! [laughs]
[Eric] When you actually look at your life
and how much plastic is in your life,
it's everywhere,
it's everywhere in my house.
I'm looking at something like,
"I have to throw that away."
[Swan] So beyond just removing
obvious plastics from all over the house,
I asked the couples to try these changes.
Try to avoid food and beverage products
that come in plastic packaging,
whether it's from the store or takeout.
Try to avoid
fragrance products and perfumes.
Try to use only natural
personal care products.
Avoid synthetic textiles
and petrochemical dyes.
And avoid handling receipts.
Almost all receipts contain bisphenol A.
[pensive music playing]
Would you mind tossing that for us?
-[woman] You don't want the receipt?
-No.
I feel like right now
we are in the movie The Matrix.
And they said, "Do you want
the blue pill or the red pill?"
I guess I forgot
which one's the one that enters
The red pill is the one that he takes.
-And I think I just took the red pill.
-[Eric] Yeah.
[laughs]
[playing "Sonate"]
[Swan] What makes
something interesting to me
is if it's a puzzle
that I think I can help solve.
The question of,
was sperm count declining?
And then if so, why?
And how do you show that?
That is a puzzle that I've been solving,
you know, for 25 years.
[pensive music playing]
How I got into this whole area
is because I was appointed to a committee
of the National Academy of Sciences
to look at these newly emerging chemicals,
which they called "hormonally active
agents in the environment."
The committee brought this paper to me,
which came out of Denmark in 1992.
They reported 50% decline
in 50 years in sperm count.
That's huge.
When I first saw it, I was skeptical.
I thought other factors
could explain that decline.
We reanalyzed the data.
And to my surprise, nothing had changed.
The sperm count had declined
by more than 50%.
That was a big wake-up call for me.
In fact, in 2023,
we found that the trend
was accelerating dramatically.
The decline was more than twice as fast
as we had reported previously.
What could cause this?
This was too fast to be genetic.
Then it's environment.
-Can we talk about these tests?
-[Julie] Oh, yeah.
-I'm super excited about that.
-Yeah.
At the beginning of the study,
we get measures
of their body burden
of environmental chemicals
by looking in their urine.
So we asked them for a urine sample.
[Julie] How do you pronounce the
"Phlalatates"?
-Phthalates?
-Phthalates.
[Swan] Do you have a preference
where we start?
Let's start with Jesse.
-In case mine upset me.
-Here we go.
And I cry.
[all laugh]
The first page says
that you have high phthalates.
-High phthalates.
-That's gonna come up afterwards.
-You have high phthalates?
-Wouldn't you know it?
This is exciting.
[Darby] I was shocked.
It was really frightening to see
we had accumulated so many chemicals.
[Jesse] It's clearly showing us
the things we're doing right now
are absolutely contributing
to what I would say
are pretty unacceptable
levels of these chemicals.
I can share your frustration, I mean
And then we look at measures of semen
quality by asking for a sperm sample.
We go to concentration.
That's the number
that most people think about.
-[Jesse] Okay. Mm-hm.
-Like, when I study sperm decline.
So the calculated total motile count,
23 is the value.
Reference should be
greater than or equal to 40.
Um, we're gonna go over
[Eric] When Shanna talked about
the results of my sperm test,
it definitely was
a very, very weird feeling.
I don't think most men are running around
getting sperm tests until it's
right up against the deadline
of when you need to know this,
which is normally after you want to get
pregnant and something hasn't worked.
[Swan] Below this point,
which is maybe 48
[Eric] It's the first time
I had really had explained to me
why that count wasn't optimal,
or really had anything explained to me.
You are technically sub-fertile,
infertile, depending on how you
-So that's kind of scary, right?
-Yes.
It's like, well, are you less of a man
because of it or anything?
Is something wrong with you?
But I was thinking,
I have to stare at this and look at this
and I have to deal with this
in order to try to make this baby.
[Swan] When I talk about
their test results,
I want to reassure them
that this does not mean
that they cannot get pregnant.
You are making sperm all the time.
It takes 70 days to create a new sperm.
And that's why we chose
this three-month window
for your intervention.
So I think the message is,
"It doesn't look great right now."
"It can change,
and you can help with the change."
[dramatic music playing]
We will also look at changes
in their body mass index
because these chemicals
not only affect your fertility,
they also have other health consequences,
such as increased obesity.
Here's a care package for you.
Then we give them a packet of products
that will help them lower their exposure.
Because the good news is there are
fantastic alternatives out there.
You can replace most of the plastic
in your kitchen with metal,
glass, ceramics, or bamboo.
You can use brushes
and floss made from bamboo
and find personal care products
without scent.
And then at the end
of the three-month period,
we measure everything again and
we'll see if this lowers
their exposure and maybe even
they get pregnant.
[Katie] I'm excited for the next 90 days.
I am bound and determined
to get those numbers down
for the plastics
or chemicals in our bodies.
And I live by the motto,
"Happy wife, happy life."
So I'll follow her suggestions
and do everything as well.
I like the cardboard container there.
-Yeah, looks great.
-Looks pretty good.
[Darby] It's 100% plastic-free.
I hope that we get pregnant.
-That would be fantastic.
-Yeah.
-A baby, yeah.
-A baby would be amazing.
-They don't look spongy.
-So it's like loofah.
Will we get pregnant because of it?
I have no idea.
[Eric] I think with infertility,
at least for us,
it's been like, what the hell do we do?
And this is something to do.
And so I'd like to see
those things down in three months.
Hopefully, they are down.
-Hopefully help you.
-Yeah.
[Swan] I don't think anyone
has actually done this experiment
to see the effect on conception
and hopefully live birth.
It's not straightforward. It's not easy.
But it's super important.
Plastics are a huge class
of man-made materials.
But unfortunately, many of the chemicals
added to plastic are toxic.
Including phthalates
and bisphenols.
[pensive music playing]
Phthalates make plastic soft and flexible.
On the other hand, the bisphenols,
like BPA, make plastic hard,
like a baby bottle or a water bottle.
These are chemicals that we call
endocrine-disrupting chemicals.
When talking about endocrine,
we're referring to hormones.
Hormones are our
natural signaling molecules.
They're like text messages that we send
from the brain to the heart or the kidney.
Endocrine-disrupting chemicals
are known to hack these molecular signals.
We have a robust body of evidence
that these chemicals can contribute
to early heart attacks and stroke.
You can have small shifts
in normal thyroid hormone function
in the developing brains of young children
that can produce autism,
attention deficit disorder,
as well as cognitive deficits.
At least 50 or so synthetic chemicals
are obesogens.
Chemicals that literally make us fatter.
Studies have shown that bisphenol A
can actually reprogram the epigenome
such that mice will get bigger.
Those signals get passed
on four or even five generations
down the family tree.
[Landrigan] If a pregnant mother
is exposed to a toxic chemical,
she is exposing the reproductive organs
of three generations.
So the mother
is obviously exposing herself.
Then the toxic chemical
goes through to her baby.
That's two generations.
And then in the female child,
the eggs are already forming
in the infant's ovaries even before birth.
And therefore, the reproductive cells
of the third generation
are exposed to the toxic chemical.
You could describe this as toxic trespass.
[McDonald] The thing about
endocrine-disrupting chemicals
is not just that they alter hormones,
but they also have
carcinogenic principles.
-They are promoting the cell to divide.
-[ominous music playing]
The faster your cells are proliferating,
the faster and the more precise and quick
your DNA repair system needs to be
to correct that.
Sometimes, things don't get fixed.
Now you have a mutation
that has created the ability
of that cell to be carcinogenic.
So now we're seeing
this rise in breast cancer,
ovarian cancer,
endometrial cancer, uterine cancer,
and even prostate cancer.
So it's important to understand
you are disrupting your natural balance
when you have these outside exposures
that can "mimic" your own hormones.
[music fades]
[Swan] I feel very strongly
that it's a basic human right
to have a child if you choose to.
It's always been
extremely important to me.
[tender music playing]
I had my first child at 27,
then I had my son three years later.
And then there was a gap.
I began trying to conceive at an older age
and had several miscarriages,
which were extremely painful.
[Naomi babbling]
[Swan] I was close to giving up,
but I kept on.
And at 42, I gave birth again.
So I have three wonderful children
and six grandchildren
and one great-grandchild.
Having the privilege to know her
and see that continuity
and see our family in her
and the joy that she brings
to all of us is just--
I can't tell you. I'm almost in tears.
It's so wonderful for me.
And so it's important to me to help
people whose fertility is impaired.
I think it is unethical, criminal,
that chemicals in their environment
or other factors beyond their control
can interfere with that right.
[Darby] We've always known
that we want children.
[hopeful music playing]
[Jesse] Though we've created
a lot of problems here on this Earth,
I do think kids are the future
and they are kind of the answer
and the solution
to a lot of these problems.
[exhaling]
I think there is a harmony
to be struck there.
[Darby] My hope for them
would be they would live
with minimal impact on the planet
and caring for other people.
[chickens clucking]
[hopeful music continues]
[dogs barking]
[Monique] We are trying to get pregnant
for about two years now.
When we met, it was hard
because I was getting divorced.
[Bruno] This weekend?
[Monique] I didn't want
Cecilia to grow up alone.
And I think now
we are with the right time,
with the right person.
It's just like a dream for both of us.
And then Cecilia started asking
all the time, brother or sister.
And we got the first dog.
It was not enough,
and she asked for the other dog.
[laughs] And hopefully,
we have a baby before the third dog.
[hopeful music continues]
[Eric] Baptism proclaims
the faith of the Church.
I baptize you in the name of the Father
-[laughs]
-And he doesn't like it.
of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit.
Sorry.
I've always wanted to have
a family of my own
that's really peaceful and wonderful.
I had amazing grandparents
and an amazing mother.
Um, and there's a piece of that
that's kind of missing,
and always was missing,
so I want it to be that for this child.
And I think that's why
I'll be so disappointed
if we never have a baby.
Just-- I want to see
a little version of you.
I think it'd be so cool.
I think you'd be the best mom ever.
And I really want to see that for you.
-Like, I really want to see that for you.
-Sorry.
You know?
Yeah. Okay, I'm good.
Yeah, I'm good.
[music fades]
[Darby] My fertility routines
have really grown over the last two years.
We want to get pregnant,
and I will do what I can do.
So you take all of these every day?
-Every morning.
-Every morning?
Yeah, actually.
We have unexplained infertility.
There's nothing "wrong with me."
I check my pH every morning
I've been looking
at what's right for my body
based on blood testing
and hormone testing.
-[Swan] What is this?
-[Darby] To make sure my body's healthy.
So this is when I would have ovulated,
released the egg,
and then they're looking
for my progesterone to rise
four to five days after.
It's a really nice way to be able
to track my hormones every day.
Many of the specialists we've seen
have had very narrow scopes of practice,
um, so they're not interested.
And when I tell them, "Oh, I'm trying
to mitigate my endocrine disruption,"
they say, "What does that mean?"
"Here, take this time-release capsule."
Right? And time-release capsules
have plastics in them.
Do you use that to time your intercourse?
Um, we just have sex all the time, Shanna.
[laughing]
To know that
there's these environmental factors
that are in the world
that are harming my chances
and taking away
my choice for parenthood is, um
-It's so overwhelming.
-Yeah, you don't really get a choice.
I don't think anyone does anymore.
-No.
-Because it's in the water.
It's in the air. It's in the soil.
I mean, is it daunting
and overwhelming? Absolutely.
[lively pensive music playing]
[Swan] So how did we get to this place
where we're all surrounded
by toxic chemicals in our homes,
in our stores,
and all throughout the environment?
How does that even happen?
[music fades]
120, 130 years ago,
most plastics were plant-based.
And then in the early 1900s,
the petroleum industry discovered
polyethylene, polypropylene,
polyethylene terephthalamide, polystyrene.
[male narrator] Reactors
and fractionating columns
crack and reform the oil's molecules,
turning them into new liquids,
gases, granules.
[Warner] When you pump the oil
out of the ground,
they separate it into a whole bunch
of different components.
One of those components
turns into what we now see
as the petroleum-based plastics.
[pensive music playing]
These inexpensive,
lightweight materials were so ubiquitous
that people just went crazy inventing
all different things to do with it.
It's a remarkable
new polyester film called Mylar.
Can you tear it?
It's almost impossible.
[Swan] Scientists could do no harm, right?
-It was a love affair with plastic.
-[music fades]
And it wasn't till quite a lot later
that we realized there was a cost to this.
[ominous music playing]
[Landrigan] Global manufacturing
of chemicals and plastics
is increasing very rapidly,
about three
to three and a half percent per year,
which means if we continue
on the present course,
we will have twice as much plastic
in the world by 2040 or 2050
as we have today.
And at the same time,
we live in a world that is awash
in manufactured chemicals.
Since about 1950,
at least 100,000 manufactured chemicals
have been developed.
In many cases,
they've never been tested for toxicity,
and so we don't know what they're doing.
It means that we're conducting
a vast toxicological experiment
in which our children
and our children's children
are the subjects without their consent.
[Swan] It's really scary
because we don't even know
the extent of this exposure.
How does that get there?
And what is it doing?
We're finding out,
and it doesn't look good.
[music fades]
Recently, the Environmental
Protection Agency, EPA,
put phthalates
on a list of chemicals that,
"may present a risk
to the environment or human health."
Congress came under pressure to act
because of a study by Dr. Shanna Swan.
Dr. Swan compared the levels
of phthalates in a group of pregnant women
with the health of the baby boys
they gave birth to.
Did you find that the higher
the level of phthalates
in the mother's urine during pregnancy,
the greater the problems
in the young boys?
-Yes.
-What did you find in the babies?
We found that the baby boys were,
in several subtle ways,
less completely masculine.
[ominous music playing]
The male genital tract requires
testosterone in this critical window
at a certain amount
to kick off what we call
the differentiation
of the male and female reproductive tract.
What would be the ovaries in the female
becomes, for example,
the testes in the male.
When phthalates come in there,
that testosterone is damped down,
and that male fetus doesn't
get that signal at the right time.
Consequently, he doesn't
develop the male typical genitals,
or maybe not quite.
That is what's known
as the phthalate syndrome.
It's pretty special
because there aren't other
syndromes named after chemicals.
Okay.
So anogenital distance is a distance
from the anus to the genitals.
And we measure it with these calipers.
Now, Willy is much more agreeable
than a lot of babies
[laughs] so it's very easy.
Doing this with real babies
is more challenging.
-[pensive music playing]
-[indistinct chatter]
So what we do is we pull their knees back,
which actually, um,
stretches the area a little bit.
And what we do is we just find the anus.
Right? We'll put one side
-[laughing]
-Oh my God. [laughs]
[Shantal] That is so great.
[Swan] This number in a female
would be 50 to 100 percent less.
And why is that?
Look at the stuff that has to go in here.
[Erik] The equipment, yeah.
[Swan] Yeah, all the equipment in there.
It is amaz--
This measurement is the
what we call the anal scrotal.
This is the scrotum.
We're measuring gooches.
We're doing science.
[Swan] Boys who had symptoms
of the phthalate syndrome
had a shorter anogenital distance,
which means the male
was somewhat less masculine
or perhaps more feminized.
So they have a somewhat smaller penis,
more likely to have undescended testicles.
It was quite striking seeing the effect
of powerful endocrine-disrupting chemicals
on the development of male genitals.
[pensive music playing]
And then the question becomes,
does it matter for his health?
That's the key question here.
And, by the way,
is it related to his later function?
For example, his production of sperm
or his fertility?
What we found
was a direct linear relationship.
Longer anogenital distance,
higher sperm count. Very clear.
This was really important
because it says those little changes
that you hardly see at birth
actually play out during your lifespan
in terms of your reproductive success.
There's something
which is very key to my research,
which is something you might know
by the name of the taint.
That's not really a technical term, is it?
Or the gooch or the grundle.
-The gooch? I've never--
-[man] Also known as the gooch.
-You know about the gooch?
-[man] Yeah.
[Swan] Most scientific findings
are lost to the general public.
There's a little bit of news about it,
and they're gone.
It's got to be
pretty disturbing to be the--
You're the Paul Revere
of tiny testicles and taints.
[man] Penis sizes are shrinking,
which you might have seen from headlines
There's been a huge decline
in fertility rates among men.
We may have a future where men
do not have enough sperm to reproduce.
Did you know phthalates
found in fragrances
[Swan] What surprised me
was the reception of the media
and the public
to the message I was putting out.
It's so sad because
so many people don't know
that these products
and toxins are harming them.
[Swan] People were really
kind of hungry for this information.
Babies are being exposed
to microplastics in utero.
[Swan] I think in part
because phthalates are in everybody.
This is not just an American problem.
We're seeing these issues
all across the world.
[lilting Italian folk music playing]
[music turns pensive]
[Ragusa] I chose to be an obstetrician
because everything begins at birth.
[medical devices beeping]
Every time a child is born,
it's a new world
that opens up on the horizon.
Ciao.
[woman in Italian] Push hard.
Very good, very good. Very good.
[Ragusa in English] The moment
when you see your son or daughter
for the first time,
all the neurotransmitters
inside your head, inside your body,
in fraction of a second,
when you see your child, they change.
It's an explosion.
[groaning]
[woman in Italian] My God.
Congrats, Vane.
[baby crying]
My love.
He looks like his father, once again.
[all laugh]
[Ragusa in English]
Everything is concluded in a single word.
Ciao. Hey.
[Ragusa] Joy.
[crying]
[in Italian] Yes, love. Hello.
[chattering in Italian]
[tender music playing]
[Ragusa in English] When I first
saw plastic inside the human placenta,
I didn't feel joy.
Quite the opposite.
[ominous music playing]
We asked mothers
to donate their placentas,
being careful
not to corrupt them with plastic.
[ominous music continues]
-[in Italian] Can you show me?
-[woman] Of course.
[man] Yes. We have some good results.
In my opinion,
we found something interesting.
We found this object.
We see that it has multiple layers,
like other microplastics described.
[Ragusa in English]
We analyzed the samples
and in some of them
we found microplastics.
And we found various types of plastics.
Polypropylene, polyethylene and so on.
[in Italian] Have a seat.
[Ragusa in English] We thought,
"If microplastics are in the placenta,
perhaps they are in other places as well."
[nurse in Italian]
The movement is this and this.
[Ragusa in English]
We asked mothers to donate milk.
[in Italian] Excellent.
[Ragusa in English]
And we saw that in many of these samples,
there are plastics.
-[ominous music continues]
-[speaking indistinctly]
[Swan] Plastics are in everybody.
I mean, that's really scary.
[ominous music playing]
I would say the approach of industry
is to ignore the problem,
to make more of these chemicals,
to put more of them into plastic,
and increase production.
No company is going to change
making a product willingly
if it's going to affect their bottom line.
That's the reality.
So just as I won't stop
talking about the harms that I see,
they are not going to stop
following what they feel is their duty,
which is, I guess,
to protect the value of their stocks.
We have different goals.
[woman 1 on TV] After a decade
of planning and construction,
Shell's cracker plant
in Beaver County is finally about to open.
[woman 2] In the course of a year,
the plant will produce
3.5 billion pounds of plastic pellets.
[man 1] In its short span of operations,
the multibillion-dollar
Shell cracker plant
has been beset with problems.
[man 2] According to Shell's own data,
the malfunction resulted
in elevated levels of benzene,
a colorless chemical
that can cause cancer.
[Salter] The EPA knows
that toxic petrochemical facilities
are some of the most toxic
polluting facilities in the world
I'm trying to give you the floor.
and are killing Black people
throughout Louisiana.
Everything you have,
your clothes, your glasses,
the car you got here on,
your phone, everything you've got
is petrochemical products.
What would you do with that?
To know how people are making chemicals
with absolutely no regard
to their impact on human health,
it makes me extremely angry
and want to fight,
and that's why I'm fighting.
Tell me some of the changes you've made,
both what you eat and how you handle food.
-We do eat out a lot less than we were.
-Oh, yeah.
The study can feel daunting.
Plastics are so pervasive.
They're everywhere.
And the question then becomes, "Well
boy, can I even make any changes
that are going to make a difference?"
So, like
But I think having
Shanna here has been great
because she's been able to guide as far as
what are some alternatives we can do?
And maybe we can't get rid of everything,
but here are a few key areas that we can.
At least reduce
and see if that'll make a difference.
Of course, we'll always
be a little sad if nothing comes of it,
but you don't know until you try.
You've got to give it a shot,
see what happens.
[pensive music playing]
One way that I've tried
to reduce my plastics exposure
is by wearing more sustainable clothing
with natural fibers.
That's really hard to find.
I saw the paper, and I was really excited.
I thought they had plastic-free
shipping materials.
But they don't.
These are all wrapped in plastic.
"95% micromodal, 5% elastane."
I have no idea what any of that means.
"88% polyester recycled, 12% elastane."
So, yeah.
This is cotton, 100% organic cotton.
So yay, um, one out of three.
Yay, let's try it.
[music fades]
[Wendt] Your skin is your largest organ,
and it can absorb over 60%
of the chemicals that are put on it.
These toxins that are part
of our dye and our fabric
are being absorbed into our skin,
so it's going to shorten
our lives and our fertility.
[hopeful music playing]
I am a natural fashion designer,
and I began in the fashion industry
as a fashion model.
I did a lot of street wear,
body wear, beauty.
It definitely taught me something.
Everything is about the drape
of the fabric and the fit of the garment.
So as a model, I actually knew
how a garment should fit
before I ended up
working in the industry for designers.
I worked with Calvin Klein
and Jones New York, Perry Ellis America.
Then I moved into private label design.
Those large department stores would love
the designs that we would create,
but then they would say
it's way too expensive.
A lot of companies
are skimping on quality.
[Wendt] And so we would
have to pull pennies
out of every step of the supply chain
so that we could meet their prices.
[man] At prices like these, it can be
more expensive to clean your clothes
than it is to throw away
your dirty clothes and buy all new ones.
[Wendt] We would substitute acrylic
for wool, polyester for cotton,
nylon for silk, and spandex for rubber.
And what I didn't realize then
was that all those substitute fibers
are plastic and endocrine disruptors.
By 2030, 70% of all fibers
and therefore fabrics
are projected to be from plastic.
[pensive music playing]
[music fades]
[Wendt] When I was raising my two kids
and weaning my second
off of breastfeeding,
I discovered a lump,
and it was breast cancer.
[unsettling music playing]
I was told it was a rapidly growing,
pretty aggressive cancer.
It was very difficult for me to accept
taking chemotherapy, which is a toxin.
But I did it.
They then told me I had to do
a heavy round of radiation.
So I asked if I could just do
a double mastectomy instead.
So
um, yeah, the cancer
took my breasts and my fertility.
A few years later, I founded this company
and did a photo shoot.
There were nine women,
and one had just done
a topless photo for us.
Across her chest it said,
"Fuck breast cancer."
I said, "Well, I had breast cancer."
We realized that out of nine women,
three of us had breast cancer.
That was a little bit
of a flame underneath me.
I thought if we create healthy clothing,
maybe we can heal,
in some way, the industry.
Hello, and welcome back to my channel.
We're doing another "best of."
I'm going to be sharing
my top ten hair care favorites.
Because, yes, I have found the secret.
[McDonald] We have routines as humans,
and routines create routine exposures.
Have you ever walked around
the personal care section of a store
and looked at the ingredients
in the products you put on your skin
and on your body every day?
[McDonald] Personal care products
and makeup contain
endocrine-disruptor chemicals.
Formaldehyde, PFASs,
which are also used in flame retardants,
phthalates, xenoestrogens, sulfates,
triclosan, EDTA, parabens
[McDonald] All of these chemicals
are added to enhance the product.
You see phthalates added in hairspray
because it helps
with the flexibility of the hair.
It's also added because
it helps the product smell good.
It's part of the ingredients for scent.
But these chemicals
that are added to enhance the product,
actually adversely affect our health.
[pensive music playing]
My research found that the earlier age
that women started using hair products,
the earlier the age they had their period.
Girls in America
are reaching puberty earlier.
The percentage of girls
getting their period before the age of 11
almost doubled from about
eight and a half to fifteen and a half.
[McDonald] Having your period early
is a risk factor for breast cancer.
Increased risk
of breast cancer, uterine cancer,
again, because there's more time that
they're subjected to the hormone estrogen.
[McDonald] The fact of the matter
is that certain populations
are more exposed to environmental toxins.
Research shows that Black girls are more
than twice as likely as white girls
to start their puberty early.
Black women have
the highest rate of breast cancer,
fibroids, obesity.
This correlation has been
linked to toxic ingredients
in their beauty products that they use.
Some groups are more exposed than others,
but we're all exposed.
[poignant music playing]
Here in Louisiana, they let industry,
in particular the fossil fuel industry,
just build there and build
and build and build and build.
You have these communities
that are completely surrounded
by the fossil fuel industry.
[woman 1 on TV]
A stretch of land in Louisiana
that used to be known
as plantation country,
residents whose ancestors
have lived here for generations
are now fighting for clean air.
[woman 2] Community after community,
all surrounded by industrial plants.
[Yearwood] Petrochemical industry
impacts people of color
from a location standpoint.
In this country, 68% of Black people
live within 30 miles
of a coal-fired power plant.
And then on top of that, within plastics
and petrochemicals here in Louisiana,
they're living literally
within just miles.
The term "fenceline community"
literally means that there's a fence
between your backyard,
your swing set,
and petrochemical facilities.
[ominous music playing]
There is a region within Louisiana
from Baton Rouge to New Orleans,
and that is "Cancer Alley."
One of my co-workers,
she died with cancer.
Right there in that house.
When you go straight,
my uncle and his wife both have cancer.
My neighbor on one side of me,
she had stage four cancer.
Went in hospital,
I ain't never seen her no more. She died.
After the plants came here,
start polluting, Oliver died.
Oliver got sick and died.
And I know because I was dating him.
And my friend Matt just died.
Matt told me to fight.
And I'm gonna fight for Matt.
Miss Sharon, we done drove
just about a mile
[Lavigne] Mm-hm.
and you called about 40 people who died.
[Lavigne] Yes.
It hurts that I know all these people,
and they're dying.
Everybody got cancer. What's wrong?
[somber music playing]
I mean, you ain't gotta go far.
-No.
-You got the home right here.
[Lavigne] Right there.
[Yearwood] Got the
fossil fuel industry right there.
[Lavigne] That's right.
-[Yearwood] And the cemetery right here.
-[Lavigne] That's right.
I mean, we all gonna die.
We just want to
We don't want to die too quick.
-Too quick. That's right.
-And not for someone else's greed.
That's right.
It's heartbreaking.
-But we gotta fight.
-Mm.
[somber music continues]
[Yearwood] Their business plan
is a death sentence for our communities.
I mean, they're making money
and profit off of the deaths of people,
like, to make plastic?
Like, to make plastic,
they're killing us.
[somber music continues]
[music fades]
[Jesse sighs]
[hopeful music playing]
All right. So update here.
We're in, uh, January,
about a month
into the plastic study thus far. Um
Last month, we did, uh, get pregnant,
um, but it ended up being
an early miscarriage.
It's a little bit hard
with family and everything
and trying to stay positive
during the holidays
and not being able to talk to anybody
about it. [sighs] Um
So, yeah.
Uh, seems it brought us some hope, though.
It's definitely a good sign, I think. Um
It's a good sign that my body
can get pregnant.
You know, we've been really careful
with our plastic consumption,
really diligent about the study.
Um, and we have seen the best results
as far as pregnancy goes so far.
So hopefully, by the end of the study,
we can check back in with better news.
[music fades]
[Warner] Plastic is only possible
because of chemistry.
And chemists don't want
to poison and destroy the world.
Companies know if you kill your customer,
that's going to be bad for sales.
So it's not a revolution to say,
"Gee whiz, we should have nontoxic,
safe things."
[somber music playing]
But if you look
at the education of chemists,
you'll be shocked to find
there is no fundamental classes
that teach people
how to anticipate the negative impacts
on human health and the environment.
They don't know
the mechanisms of toxicity.
They don't know
the mechanisms of biodegradation.
It seemed to me, shouldn't that be
the first thing a chemist learns,
you know, is how not to hurt people?
But the fact that it's absent
from the curriculum is shocking.
I actually am not someone
who grew up wanting to be a chemist.
Had anyone told me that I was gonna
end up being an industrial chemist,
I would have laughed at them.
But when I realized
that scientists created,
scientists designed, scientists imagined,
I saw chemistry as an artistic expression.
[auspicious music playing]
So I went,
and I became a medicinal chemist.
I published five papers before I was 21,
and I went to graduate school,
to Princeton.
And by the time I was 25,
I had 25 publications.
I worked on an anti-cancer drug
that's now called Alimta.
And I went to work
in industry for Polaroid.
And before very long,
I had dozens of patents,
inventions, products, awards, prizes.
And then disaster hit.
[music turns poignant]
My son John was born
with a disease called biliary atresia.
[music fades]
It's a disease where his liver's
detached from his intestines,
and he can't metabolize
water and soluble nutrients.
He was given a surgery at birth,
and at two years old, we lost him.
[somber music playing]
We never really acknowledged
he was terminally ill until the end.
We always kind of had hope.
But yeah, it's, uh it's difficult.
Lying in bed
the night of my son's funeral,
staring at the ceiling, I asked myself,
"I wonder if something I touched
in the chemistry lab
caused my son's birth defect?"
I'd say, "Why?"
"Why would anybody
invent something hazardous?"
"But wait a minute."
"If it's not part of their education
to recognize and anticipate it,
how could they not?"
[Schuh] Good, okay.
Is it?
Oh, yeah. Wow, that has a lot more--
You dissected that away
from the yolk of one?
Yeah, from right here.
[Schuh] Me and my students,
we look at various different chemicals,
ranging from BPA compounds and phthalates,
and we look at the effects
on developmental pathways
going from very, very early in development
that sort of mimic the time
that a human embryo in a womb
would be exposed
to some of these chemicals.
We use animal models
like the chick embryo.
It's really easy to do.
We micro-inject,
using little micropipettes,
various doses of the compounds.
We incubate them, and then on day 12,
we analyze them under the microscope.
[pensive music playing]
You don't have to be a scientist
to even figure it out.
You can just look at the control embryos
versus the phthalate-treated embryos.
And the differences are quite stark.
All right, so this is classic
phthalate exposure.
So all those characteristic things
that we've been seeing,
we see decreased pigmentation
across the whole body,
decreased pigmentation
in the eye and the retina and the iris.
And then in this case, especially,
we see an opening up
of the abdominal wall,
some of the internal organs
actually coming out,
protruding outside of the body wall.
So a lot of these, uh,
deformities or malformations
that are very characteristic
of phthalate exposure.
We took some representative pictures
of all of the embryos
that were treated with,
in this case, it was BPA,
even at the low doses,
and then going
to the intermediate-to-high doses.
There are extreme embryonic defects,
cranial facial disruptions.
The size of the body in this case
is a third of that
of the control situation.
Organs protruding outside of the body.
Some embryos that are just completely
malformed that they stop developing.
These are reminiscent
of many common human birth defects.
And we see that with these very low doses
of phthalates and BPA compounds.
[Trasande] Unfortunately,
many of us have been taught
that only the dose makes a thing a poison.
It's common sense.
Like, everything in moderation,
if you will.
But the reality is that even
the smallest levels of exposure
can have profound effects,
particularly when we're talking
about our hormones.
It takes only a tiny amount of a chemical
to alter the behavior of genes.
That's what endocrine disruption
is all about.
[tense, pensive music playing]
So that as a fetus is developing,
the wrong gene gets turned on
at the wrong time,
and development goes along the wrong path.
Now we know that parts per billion
can be harmful,
and that seems like
a really little amount.
But if you have a drop of water
in which there is one part per billion
of bisphenol A,
how many molecules of bisphenol A
do you think
are in that one drop of water?
2.65 trillion molecules.
And one of them can cause harm.
That's a problem.
And we're only now reaching the state
of science that we understand that.
[music fades]
[Swan] So, first of all,
it's good to see you.
Should we talk about your results?
-I think--
-Yeah.
Well, Darby, your BPA
at the beginning was really high.
-And in the follow-up, they dropped a lot.
-[hopeful music playing]
-That's amazing.
-Wow.
Jesse, you've really dropped in your BPA.
-[Jesse] Really?
-[Darby] Wow.
So all of those efforts have paid off.
-That's crazy.
-Wow.
[Swan] I was extremely happy
with the results of the intervention.
After six weeks,
almost everybody dropped
their bisphenol A to non-detectable.
They also dropped their phthalate levels.
And interestingly,
the man and the woman in the couple
had values which traveled in parallel,
which meant they reflected changes
in their shared environment.
[music fades]
I wouldn't say I was surprised that
our participants reduced their exposures.
What was less clear is how this would
affect their sperm counts.
And to be honest, after six weeks,
we didn't see much change.
I was really sad when I got those results.
I was like, "Dude, what is this?"
Like, I was so upset.
[Swan] This was, of course,
disappointing to the participants.
But we have to remember,
it takes 70 days to produce new sperm.
So it's likely
that we won't see improvement
until our final samples.
We're all trying to do a hard thing.
And, um, I think
we have to relax a little bit
and, if we can,
give it a little more time.
[audience laughing]
I come to you as a sperm
to ask for your help.
We sperm are becoming
an endangered species.
But this is a problem we can fix.
Please join me
in welcoming one of the people
who really is saving our sperm
and our future,
John Warner.
[audience applauding]
You may be thinking it's strange
to be introduced by a sperm.
[audience laughs]
[Warner] But if you really think about it,
you all were.
[audience laughing]
[Warner] After I lost my two-year-old son
to a birth defect,
I realized that there was
a missing element to my education.
And I realized that no university
teaches a chemist anything
about what makes a molecule toxic.
I realized that the world
didn't need a social movement.
The world didn't need a politic.
The world needed a new science.
A science that taught a chemist
how to anticipate these negative impacts.
And that is the birth
of the field of green chemistry.
[dramatic music playing]
Paul Anastas and I wrote the book
on green chemistry back in the 1990s.
You do any science,
any chemistry you normally would,
but you put a layer of interpreting,
"What if this actually succeeds?"
"What if instead of it just being
a publication in a journal,
some company actually starts making
thousands and thousands
of kilotons of it?"
"What impact are my decisions
on that first day of my invention
going to have in the future?"
That's green chemistry.
At last count,
I think I've been to over 65 countries
meeting presidents and prime ministers
and cutting ribbons and giving talks,
that it's starting to be a movement.
And almost 100 universities globally
have signed this commitment
saying we will bring green chemistry
into the required curriculum.
But everyone in society
needs to understand
things don't have to be toxic.
We can learn to do it other ways.
[dramatic music continues]
[Swan] Just everywhere you look,
you have plastic.
We are really dependent on it.
It'd be hard to think about
a plastic-free world.
But plastic in and of itself
is not the evil.
It is the chemicals in it
that have the ability
to alter our hormones.
[music fades]
[helicopter whirring]
Many people think
the government takes care of us.
They would not let us be exposed
to things that would harm us.
But we're not protected against
the chemicals in our everyday products.
In terms of regulating these chemicals
in the United States,
very few chemicals are actually banned.
And most chemicals
haven't even been tested.
[unsettling music playing]
[Landrigan] Time and again,
we have come to realize
that chemicals on the market for years
were causing toxicity.
With DDT.
[man 1 on TV] Pesticides may indeed
represent a grave threat to mankind.
[Landrigan] With asbestos.
[woman on TV] Today, the Environmental
Protection Agency finalized a ban
on the only type of asbestos
still used in the United States.
[Landrigan] Lead in the gasoline
was causing brain damage to children.
[man 2 on TV] Leaded gasoline caused half
of the population to develop a lower IQ.
[Landrigan] When we took lead
out of gasoline,
we reduced children's blood levels by 95%.
We raised the average IQ of a generation
of children by about five IQ points.
And those more intelligent,
more highly creative children
have put billions of dollars
back into the economy.
So it's a huge success story.
I think a big question right now is,
what are we gonna do about plastics?
[music fades]
The media has reported that the federal
government's reluctance to regulate
these chemicals is based
on the reliance of biased studies
from the chemical industry itself.
Senator, at FDA,
all of our products that we approve
are based on data that are prepared
and conducted in studies
by that particular manufacturer.
But doesn't that bother you?
That's my point.
You don't seem to see the connection here.
We got here because the scientific
understanding of endocrine disruption
did not exist when plastics
first came onto the market.
Our genes actually are being turned
on and off trillions of times a second
every day of our life,
every second of our life.
And things like phthalates
and bisphenol A affect
that process of turning genes on and off.
The FDA and EPA and the CDCs,
their science currently ignores
molecular genetics.
Over the last 30 years,
the science has gotten a lot stronger.
If anything, we underestimated
the scale of the problem.
[unsettling music playing]
The plastics industry
grew to be a behemoth,
and we let that get ahead of us
and out of control.
Many chemicals
leaching out of plastics are EDCs.
That links them to a wide array
of today's epidemics
of noncommunicable diseases,
like breast cancer, prostate cancer,
testicular cancer, infertility,
immune disorders, and brain impediments.
Unfortunately, in the United States,
regulatory toxicology,
it's stalled because the chemical industry
has too much influence on Congress.
Period.
Stable supply chains are imperative.
Producing plastic in America
is a good thing.
[tense, pensive music playing]
[Yearwood] We now are here
on a plantation site
where my ancestors
were extracted from Africa
and brought here to be enslaved people.
The memory of that is still real.
And now the fossil fuel industry
here in Louisiana,
they are literally looking to build plants
on former plantation sites,
knowing how painful
that history is for everyone.
It's heartbreaking
because they take the same mentality
that was used on plantations
to not only extract from Mother Earth,
but to then harm those same people.
This shows how they don't care
about humanity.
-[music fades]
-[indistinct chatter]
[Edwards] We're here to announce that
Formosa will be investing $9.4 billion.
So I'm delighted to announce
all this extraordinary capital investment,
job creation,
right here in St. James Parish,
just about two miles
from the foot of the Sunshine Bridge.
[ominous music playing]
[Yearwood] The Formosa plant
was a plant that they wanted to build
on a former plantation site.
And this isn't just any plant.
It's being called
the largest facility in the state.
[Yearwood] And people like Sharon Lavigne
who were pushing back
an international mega corporation,
literally off their kitchen table.
[woman on TV]
This is a David and Goliath story
if there ever was one.
A multibillion-dollar chemical company
was all set to build
a massive new plant there.
That is, until they encountered
Miss Sharon Lavigne and Rise St. James.
[Lavigne] Formosa Plastics was proposed
to be built two miles from my home.
And I said, "Dear Lord, this land
cannot be for Formosa. We live here."
I had no intentions
on becoming an activist.
All I know was Formosa Plastics
kept ringing in my ear.
-First of all, we went to God first.
-[Yearwood] Mm-hm.
-I know I went to God.
-[Yearwood] Come on.
And I sat on my porch, and I prayed.
And I asked God,
and if God would have told me to move,
I wouldn't be in this fight today.
But God told me to fight.
[tense music playing]
I was told that,
"The governor approved this plant,
and you can't stop it."
I said, "Tell the governor
to build it in his community."
He thinks the people
in St. James are stupid
and they're gonna just put another
industry on us, and we have 12?
No.
That dog is not gonna hunt.
We rallied.
We gave marches.
We went to the parish council meetings.
If Formosa come into St. James,
we will not be able to live.
We are Rise St. James, and we're gonna
stand up for St. James Parish.
Formosa has a fight on their hands.
[music fades]
[Swan] So let me talk to you
about what your last results are.
What's dramatic is, for me, Katie,
that your phthalates went up a lot.
And here you are at a time that you
were lowering all your exposures.
[Katie] There's something hidden then.
I'm like, "What's hidden that I'm?"
Is it something at work?
You know, like, who knows?
Tim, your sperm numbers
are not great, right?
-[Tim] Right.
-Yeah.
Your concentration
actually went down a little bit.
Okay.
It doesn't look like there's been
a significant improvement,
I would have to say, honestly.
What's heartbreaking in these studies
is that not everyone is going to improve.
It's a difficult thing to remove
all the contaminants in your life.
Endocrine disruptors are so pervasive,
you're being exposed
even when you least expect it.
But that doesn't make it
easier to give bad news.
I mean, you guys have tried
for a long time, right?
[Tim] Mm-hm.
-Yeah. Over ten years.
-[Tim] Yeah.
I mean, I'm really glad
that the intervention
has been helpful to your life.
[Tim] Yeah.
But I don't see any signs here
that you're going to imminently,
you know, gonna get pregnant.
-[Katie] For sure.
-[Tim] Right.
-[Katie] And that's okay, like
-[Tim] Yes.
[Katie] We, you know
We know it's going to take a miracle, so
[poignant music playing]
It's been really hard
not being able to conceive.
In all honesty,
there definitely have been moments
when I have felt pretty jaded about it.
Difficult part that has actually
gotten more difficult each year,
at least for me, is, um
like Father's Day and Mother's Day.
Something that I always thought
I'd be celebrating.
But that's not who we are.
[Katie] It just makes you think,
"Wow, our lives are so much different
than what I expected them to be."
But I'm never going to let go
of this hope that I have
that we could still
possibly have kids one day.
[woman on TV] California's top cop
subpoenas ExxonMobil
[man] Attorney General Rob Bonta says
fossil fuel and petrochemical companies
have been overstating the role
of recycling and curbing the problem.
The fossil fuel
and petrochemical industries
have engaged in a half-century
campaign of deception.
The work I do is official in conduct,
but it's also personal.
My oldest daughter has told me,
"Dad, I love my family."
"I want to have
a family of my own someday."
"But I don't think it's responsible
to bring a child onto this dying planet."
"So I'm not planning
on having a family right now."
That's wrong.
We shouldn't steal the dreams of our--
Of the next generation
because of our mistakes,
of our failure, uh, to be responsible.
In pursuit of what? Endless profit?
[dramatic music playing]
The entire plastics industry
is built on a lie.
The only reason
that plastics today are ubiquitous
is because people were told
that this product can be recycled.
[commercial narrator]
People start pollution.
People can stop it.
[Oliver] The organization
that produced that ad,
Keep America Beautiful,
was funded in part
by a plastics industry trade group
and composed of leading beverage
and packaging corporations,
which might seem odd until you realize
that the underlying message there is,
"It's up to you,
the consumer, to stop pollution."
[unsettling music playing]
[Bonta] People would not
have purchased plastics
and relied on plastics
and consumed plastics
knowing that it was
destroying the planet as we did so.
The California Department of Justice
launched an investigation into ExxonMobil.
We became aware of internal communications
that said things like
recyclability at scale
is not financially viable.
Yet they were continuing to sell the myth
of recyclability of plastics.
Making recycling work was a way
to keep their products in the marketplace.
-It was a way to sell plastic.
-[Liesemer] Yes.
It's a win-win situation.
[Bonta] Today, only 9%
of plastics are recycled.
It's shocking.
And the reason is because
the big plastic companies
won't profit from it.
It costs too much to recycle.
[Trasande] And we are
making so much plastic,
we're overwhelming
the capacity of the system
to even recycle itself in the first place.
[woman on TV] But after decades
as the dumping ground
for more than half of the world's trash,
China has banned most types
of low-grade recycling products.
What appears to be happening is that
China is tired of importing our trash.
If plastic products are not recyclable,
then it needs to be stated as such.
There needs to be a truth in advertising.
Oh, Tracy, look, she's going for the bin.
[Bonta] The fact that, you know,
this myth was allowed to occur
for decades and decades, it's shocking.
It's not unlike tobacco.
[ominous music playing]
[music fades]
When you have big corporations
that are lying to the public
and fueling a global plastics
pollution crisis, it needs to end.
And I'm not gonna wish or hope
it into existence, I'm gonna do it.
[whirring]
[Wendt] When I was diagnosed with cancer,
I had been teaching sustainable fashion,
and I realized that
it was no longer about sustainability.
It was about
eliminating all petrochemicals.
Textiles are the single largest source
of microplastics in the environment.
[hopeful music playing]
But at California Cloth Foundry,
the fibers are cotton, linen, hemp, flax,
viscose from trees.
The most toxic process
in the textile supply chain are the dyes,
and those are from petrochemicals.
So many of our ingredients
can be found in the kitchen,
like chestnuts and iron.
Those are the main ingredients
in our North Face and Levi's program.
Another would be elderberries,
one of the colorants we use
for Gisele's Gaia hoodie.
But it's expensive.
So to really change fashion
from a highly toxic, high-volume industry,
we have to scale green chemistry.
[ethereal music playing]
[Gutsch] Fashion is so unnecessary,
and still it plays a big role in society.
Most of my adult life,
I worked as a designer,
and it was mainly about
inventing new products.
And at some point,
I realized that I'm actually the one
that is creating all these
environmental issues we are facing.
As a designer, you convince people
to buy, to spend, to waste.
But ten years ago,
I realized that people like me
can decide if a company is harmful,
or establish
a totally new way of doing business.
So in 2015,
we tried to convince corporations
to use recycled materials
instead of making more of it.
We created sneakers out of fishing nets.
But plastic stays plastic,
even if you recycle it.
So plastic needs to go.
Next up, I would like
to invite Cyrill Gutsch.
Hey, hey. What's up, Paris?
Now is the time to invent new materials
that are made from nature.
This is the first jacket designed
by Dior, Kim Jones, to support us
in this process of making
Bananatex a new technology.
The concept of a plastic doesn't have
to come from a petroleum-based material.
There's no laws of physics
that say it has to be these materials.
They just happen to be
the ones we're using now.
Let's open our eyes, embrace nature,
and learn, "How does nature
make something transparent?"
"How does nature
make something strong but flexible?"
[hopeful music playing]
Everything that you could use to define
what a plastic or a polymer does,
nature does.
And if we can learn from nature,
we can make things that are less toxic
and more environmentally responsible.
At Sway, we use seaweed
to replace really pervasive plastics,
mainly thin films.
This shoe is 100% plastic-free,
so the whole product
can be put into the compost.
After seven to ten weeks,
there's nothing left but nutrients.
[woman] We make
the world's first performance pigment
that's 100% plant-based.
And we're looking to replace
all the traditional dyes, toxins.
We mimic the same principles
that give butterflies their natural color.
So we can make any color
on the visible spectrum.
[Gutsch] We are in the midst
of what we call a material revolution.
This is the biggest and the most exciting
challenge we humans ever had.
We fight for our own survival
by redesigning, by recreating,
by redefining the foundation
of our society,
how things are being made.
[hopeful music continues]
[Warner] Someday, imagine when we say,
"The world has now nontoxic,
safe polymers and plastics and materials."
Someday, we need to look people
in the eye and say, "We did it."
Not, "We want to do it," but, "We did it."
That's gonna take great risk,
trial and error and hard work.
[music fades]
[Swan] Even though the couples
reduced their exposures dramatically
at the midpoint of the study,
I was interested to see if they would
be able to maintain that vigilance.
Let's look at some of your graphs.
-Shall we?
-[Jesse] Yeah, let's do it.
[Swan] So this is Darby, and this is BPA.
-Okay.
-Mm-hm.
[Swan] You have this drop at midpoint.
These were your high
molecular weight phthalates.
You remember
those are the ones in soft tubing
and, you know, soft water bottles.
-Your values just plummeted.
-[poignant music playing]
-So I would say that's a success.
-[Darby] That's great.
So, Jesse, this is your BPA,
and this was in the beginning.
You did a miracle and you went down,
and you stayed down morning and evening.
-And that's just phenomenal.
-That's great.
[Swan] The high molecular weight,
you were also quite high when you started,
and then you brought it down,
and you stayed down.
-That's great.
-[Swan] So you're a star.
-How'd you do that?
-Well, uh
[Darby and Jesse laugh]
[Swan] Our couples were able
to keep their bisphenols down,
many to undetectable levels,
which is amazing.
And while phthalates were more stubborn,
we did see a meaningful reduction
in the average.
And couples, first of all, stuck with it,
liked it, and want to continue
these changes going forward.
I think what we gave up mostly
was going out to eat.
We saved a lot of money,
and we spent more time together cooking.
So it's been a positive for you.
-Yes, definitely.
-Absolutely.
And once you know,
you kind of can't go back.
So that's the only downside
to learning more about plastics.
Do you feel that?
-You feel you can't go back?
-[Darby] Yeah.
It was not that hard, uh, as we thought
because it was just like one week,
let's do this,
and another week, let's do that.
I think what's stuck
has been those habits you develop.
You know, you get in the pattern
of not using, or using the replacement.
Like changing how we prepare food
and how we store food.
The biggest thing is fragrances.
You know, laundry detergent, for example.
We would smell it
literally 24/7 and it'd be like,
"Oh my gosh, I can't stop smelling this."
If we're gonna buy a blanket or something,
we try to buy 100% cotton.
-Yeah.
-Like, we're now more aware.
I've since become an evangelist of this,
by the way.
I think people start to care
once they start to realize
that it's affecting them.
[music fades]
[Yearwood] People fight against all odds.
Truly, David versus Goliath.
But they got a strong faith
and a strong spirit that is unbelievable.
On this land in St. James,
as it's the proposed site
for the $9.4 billion
Formosa petrochemical plant.
And the land that the plant is built on
is causing an uproar after the discovery
of unmarked graves of enslaved people.
[Yearwood] The legislation
that we have now in Louisiana
says you can't build on graveyards.
[poignant music playing]
What's crazy about that is that that's
actually how people are now winning.
The ancestors who are buried
in many unmarked graves
is now stopping the fossil fuel plants.
It's almost like those ancestors
are reaching back
and saying, "Enough."
-[Lavigne] We're gonna stand together.
-[man] Right.
-[Lavigne] And fight Formosa.
-[man] Right.
We will not allow them
to take our ancestors out of this ground
and put them somewhere else.
Judge Trudy White ruled in our favor
and told Formosa to vacate the property.
Because we have the right
to breathe clean air.
Sharon Lavigne is a true force of nature.
She is to be reckoned with.
[Yearwood] I know
that if we come together,
we win.
I've said it, organized people
beats organized money every single time.
[music fades]
[Landrigan] The impediments
to controlling exposures
to toxic chemicals are not,
for the most part, scientific.
And what's required
to deal with the problem is courage,
vision, political will.
[hopeful music playing]
No country is doing a perfect job
in regulating toxic chemicals and plastic.
[music fades]
But the European Union
is the world leader.
They have chemical legislation
called REACH,
which actually requires
that chemicals be tested
for safety and toxicity
before they come to market.
[Swan] There are nine chemicals
that are banned
from personal care products
in the United States.
And over 1,100 that are banned in the EU.
You can see
that's two orders of magnitude.
[man on TV] New EU rules
proposed by the European Commission
will target ten
single-use plastic products.
These products won't disappear.
They will just be made
with different materials.
We have an opportunity.
There's an international
global plastics treaty
being negotiated by the UN.
[Valdivieso] This conference
is about far more
than drafting an international treaty.
It is about humanity rising
to meet an existential challenge.
[Swan] We're finally seeing some traction
on banning bisphenol A, or BPA,
and other lookalike bisphenols,
which cause the same harms.
These chemicals disrupt hormones,
including increasing estrogen.
In fact, BPA was studied in the 1930s
for its potential use
in hormone regulation,
including birth control.
In 2025, the EU said enough is enough.
[woman on TV] As of Monday,
the European Union has prohibited the use
of this endocrine disruptor
in food containers.
[Trasande] If we really
incorporate a health mindset,
we will get past a model that focuses
on what we see on our beaches,
in our oceans.
We need to think about what's getting
into human bodies, ultimately.
[music fades]
[FaceTime call ringing]
Did you change anything
in your work environment
that might have decreased your exposure?
I changed a lot. For me, I changed a lot.
[Swan] After I met Bruno,
I was worried that he would not be able
to lower his exposures
or improve his sperm count.
He is a construction worker,
had a lot of exposures
from construction materials.
I was wrong.
You have four semen analyses, right?
Three of them are really good,
and the last one is really good.
The pattern overall
is that you have gotten greatly improved.
[Monique] Yeah.
We were not expecting at all.
We thought, "What?"
If we look at your concentration,
it was 44.
And then it was 60.
I did see some sperm results from you,
and they got a lot better.
Ooh, good.
[Swan] Your total
motile count increased 50%.
-[Katie] Gosh.
-[Tim] Yeah.
-So that's huge.
-[Katie] That's awesome.
-Whoo-hoo! [laughs]
-Yeah. [laughs]
The numbers were
We were talking about that quite high.
-Concentration is way up.
-[Kate] I know!
[Swan] It's just incredible.
You've turned into Superman.
[all laugh]
I have results here.
I think the most exciting to me,
and probably to you,
is that your total sperm count
is way high.
The cutoff for fertile is about 40.
You were originally below that,
and now you're at 77,
which is awesome!
-Thank you.
-[all laughing]
[Swan] I was really pleased
with the results of the sperm analysis.
Of the six men in the study,
five improved their semen quality
on multiple parameters.
-So, how do you feel about that?
-I feel great.
-Yeah?
-Um, yeah.
It feels really good
that the intervention actually worked.
And I went from being sub
or not fertile to normal.
[Swan] Another really positive takeaway
from this intervention
is that it seemed to improve their lives
in many ways that we had not expected.
When we cut everything out, I went from,
I think I was like at 212
when we did the measurement,
down to like 198.
And now I'm back around 202.
So ten pounds you lost.
I wake up way less at night,
and I sleep, like, deeper.
[hopeful music playing]
[Swan] A third of the participants
lowered their body mass index.
Over 60% reported increased energy levels,
80% reported increased sleep quality,
and 86% reported they plan
to keep these lifestyle changes.
[Eric] I feel like
I'm able to focus for longer.
There's not the fog that used to be there.
I just feel better, and I enjoy life more.
So why the hell
would I not continue to do this?
[Swan] It's true that
to understand patterns of disease,
you need a large population.
So these results will be used
to support an application
for a larger study
with government funding.
So I think we're pioneers.
[music fades]
[in Portuguese] Well, today I decided
to take a pregnancy test, another one,
and I'm going to share with you.
We never know, right?
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
[hopeful music playing]
What does it mean?
It's not a joke, is it?
It's not a joke, right? This can't be.
[Bruno] There are two.
[laughing]
I'm not trusting this test.
Okay, hold it here.
I'll use another one now.
Oh, my love.
Oh!
[Bruno] Oh, my love.
[sobbing]
[in English] I love you.
So since we last spoke, uh,
life has changed quite a bit.
[Julie] Right now, I'm 15 weeks pregnant.
And we already know it's a boy,
so we can't name the baby Shanna, really.
Yeah, I know. We were planning on Shanna.
[Darby] Okay, this is Bobby.
Those are feet.
After the study,
we found out we were expecting.
Yeah! We're [laughs]
Yeah, we're pregnant.
-Yeah.
-It's amazing.
-Mostly I'm pregnant, but we are pregnant.
-Well, it's the way they say it, right?
[hopeful music continues]
[Swan] Initially, my introduction
to all the participants was on paper.
But I was continually surprised
what a pleasure it was to meet them,
to interact with them,
to get to know them.
[doctor] It looks great.
-[Monique] Oh!
-[doctor] Did you see it moving?
[in Portuguese] Oh, it's moving, honey.
[laughing]
[Swan in English]
I feel connected with each of them.
And it's very surprising
because it's unusual for a study
that you would have that.
[hopeful music playing]
Knock, knock.
-[Monique] Hi!
-[Swan] Hi!
[Swan laughs]
[baby crying]
[Swan] Look what you did.
[laughing]
-[Monique] We did.
-We did.
[hopeful music playing]
[Swan] If you want to have a child,
I believe it is a fundamental human right
to be able to do so.
I think I'm now more optimistic
about solving the fertility problem.
But it's going to be a fight,
and that's why I'm fighting,
and that's why I'm talking to you.
[laughs]
[baby coos]
-[Swan] You are perfect.
-[Monique] Yeah.
[baby coos]
[hopeful music continues]
[music intensifies]
[hopeful music continues]
[music fades]