Dr. Aly Cohen
speaker
699 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard May 2025
Dr. Aly Cohen’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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They're also used for, you know, rain gear to make things waterproof and greaseproof. So in a lot of fast food wrappers and a lot of fast food or food packaging. Okay. And the PFAS chemicals, there's over 15,000 of them now. But we certainly know that they're in nonstick pans, nonstick cookware, nonstick, you know, utensils even.
And so it's just something that we can easily swap, which is why I love some of these. You know, you're calling out great ones because these are the things that we can actually very inexpensively swap out. PFAS chemicals have a whole host of health effects that we want to avoid.
Some of them affect the immune system for sure, which is what I talk about in the book, lowers our ability to create antibodies if we get vaccinated intentionally to create that antibody response to protect us, but also can cause inflammation. So it's the opposite. It can actually increase inflammation. also linked to a variety of cancers like kidney cancer for sure.
But again, these are exposures, low levels over time that we want to try to either reduce or avoid as best we can. And so it's a process. But then I think people should be aware of what's getting into their bodies and how simple it is to swap out these things.
Yes, and an image just came to mind of a place where they made omelets at a buffet that I was at recently. And, you know, they love these really quick and easy omelets where they slide right off and they're scratched up because they've been used for, what, a million, like, you know, hotel guests.
And the idea is that the scratches actually break down that coating and release more of those nonstick chemicals, the perfluorococals, into the foods that you're cooking. into whatever you're using, even with your cookware in terms of utensils, the scratches make that matrix looser.
And especially if they're, you know, fatty foods like eggs, fats tend to draw in more of those perfluoroalkyl chemicals. So olive oils, all the oils that we use to cook with can add, you know, kind of more problems if you're working with scratched cookware.
Because we're going to have multiple solutions.
That's fine with me.
We'll drop it down.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, listen, you have to have an ounce of the why, of what the issues are, a little bit of the fear factor. But you don't want it enough to keep you from making changes and making really reasonable, practical, simple, smarter choices.
And I think that's the beauty of how you're presenting this today is that we want to really see what the problems are so that we can go into action mode.
So let's start by saying, well, where do we get our water from? Let's make this simple. We get most of our water from our tap, which would be our faucet, but that water could either come from a well from our town or underneath our home, but most of it really comes from what are called wastewater treatment plants. And that's the places across the U.S.
where there's 160,000 of them that actually clean the water that comes into them and then sends the water right out to our homes. You know, it could be down the street. It could be 10, 30, 40 miles away. Who knows? But wastewater treatment plants, the problem is that they are the laws surrounding those wastewater treatment plants are from 1974, the Safe Drinking Water Act.
And under that legislation, only 91 chemicals were are looked at in terms of their levels, their MCLs, maximum concentration level, and then remediated if they get too high in the water system. The problem is, is that 91 back from 1974, you know, is really way, way long period of time without any changes. And we've had thousands of
Harmful chemicals that we now know harmful chemicals have been added into our environment that make their way into the water system, including what goes through those wastewater treatment plants and then right out the other side. So the problem is, is that our water has gotten dirtier and we have no infrastructure that's fixed this, you know, the problem.
And so we're really drinking pretty dirty contaminated water. And it changes over time. It changes with, you know, weather patterns, floods, you know, anything, you know, seasonal spraying of pesticides, anything that gets into lakes and streams, aquifers under the ground, anything in the air quality will make its way into these water systems that will eventually make it into your glass.
So water is actually really my number one priority.
So I have to pick that as my number one most underestimated, underrated contributor to human health issues. That would have to be F. F. All right.
So really filtering your water. And there's a variety of options for filtering your water. And most people have either tried them, thought of them, grew up with these filtration systems, whether it's a pitcher, which is typically what's called a carbon block. It's a big block of carbon. Water runs through it pretty quickly, which is convenient, right? And then goes into the pitcher.
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