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In his new Netflix documentary Plastic Detox, Academy Award–winning filmmaker Louie Psihoyos asks one question: What if the plastic crisis isn’t just harming the planet, but also impacting human fertility?
“Film is the most powerful art form to change minds and move culture at scale,” Louie says. “You make a film and you have a chance at not just changing the way people think, but the way they behave.”
And for Victoria Riskin, Louie’s film certainly did. “Louie challenged the narrative that we are stuck in a plastic-saturated world with no way out,” she says.
In this episode, Victoria sits down with Louie to discuss the impact of his film, how microplastics may be affecting our bodies in ways we’re only beginning to understand, and how to make informed choices to reduce your dependence on plastic.
In This Episode, You’ll Hear:
- What microplastics are and how they end up in the human body
- The connection between plastic exposure and declining fertility rates
- The research behind “phthalate syndrome” and its long-term health impacts
- A behind-the-scenes look at Plastic Detox and its real-world experiment
- Simple, practical ways to reduce your daily plastic exposure
About Louie Psihoyos:
Louis Psihoyos is an Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker and the founder of the Oceanic Preservation Society. His films include The Cove, which reduced dolphin harvesting from 23,000 to 6,000 per year; Racing Extinction, which exposed climate change impacts on biodiversity; and Plastic Detox, which focused on an evolutionary fertility intervention study.
Meet the Host:
Victoria Riskin: I am Victoria. I’m always looking for the best life has to offer despite a turbulent world. I find comfort in the environment and joy in friendships. We have a great team of all ages at Bluedot who inspire me every day as we work together to build community.
Transcript
Victoria Riskin: Welcome back to the Bluedot Living podcast, Imagine If. I'm Victoria Riskin, founder of Bluedot Living, and we're exploring ways in which people are living healthier, more sustainable lives, because they are. Our objective is to leave you feeling optimistic and with something that you can do.
Today we have an extraordinary guest, and I'm very excited to be interviewing him. He's a filmmaker with an amazing career of doing documentaries that have had a huge impact. His name is Louie Psihoyos, and he’s an Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker. He did a film called The Cove about the proliferation of harvesting dolphins for food in Japan, a rather horrible practice. Twenty-three thousand dolphins were being taken, netted, and taken to market every year in Japan. After his film showed, that number went down to 6,000, mostly accidental catches.
He did a film called Racing Extinction, which is really about how global warming is impacting the oceans, the reefs, and the various impacts on our biodiversity. He did a film called You Are What You Eat. If you see this, you'll understand how powerful it is to remove animal products from your diet. His new one is called Plastic Detox. It's a new documentary that is exploring the crisis of plastic pollution and microplastics in our bodies. It tells the story of couples trying to get pregnant, discovering that their sperm counts are low and the levels of plastic in their systems are high. I don't want to spoil it because there's a happy ending. These infertile couples, well, you'll see, do they get pregnant or not? I don't want to spoil it. It's a fantastic film. I'd love you to see the trailer because it is a compact, dramatic way of seeing the basic story. And I know you're going to want to follow up by seeing the film. So here we go.
Victoria Riskin: Welcome back to the Bluedot Living podcast, Imagine If. Today, I'm so happy to have Louie Psihoyos with us, who is an extraordinary filmmaker. I want to just kick this off by saying I've seen your new film in preview, and I think it could be life-changing and save the lives of a lot of people, or at least make them happier. It is an extraordinary film. Louie, you've had an extraordinary career, a significant body of work, and all your films have made an impact. I mean, you've not only done the films, which are important, but you've also developed impact campaigns. I know how long it takes to do a documentary and how much hard work it is. You decided to turn your attention to this particular story about microplastics and how they are impacting people's lives in a very significant way, particularly this film about the impact on infertility, which was incredible. So, how did this film come about?
Louie Psihoyos: Yeah, I mean, I run a small organization called the Oceanic Preservation Society, and one of our funders came up to me in about 2019 and said, “Hey, plastics is a huge problem, but I don't want to do it.” He wanted to do a short film about the solutions. I started looking into it, and then the pandemic hit.
A little bit of preface on that: The last two times I was in Europe, I didn't get in the water. I was off the coast of Positano, and it was one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world. I was about to dive off the boat and it looked like trash floating in three dimensions. It was pretty clear water, and it didn't pass. It was like that all day, and then the next day, the same thing. I didn't even get in the water. Then we went up to France, and it was the same thing. It was just garbage everywhere.
So, I knew that there's a plastic problem in the oceans. Then, researching this when the pandemic hit, we could get every researcher in the world on a Zoom call; everybody was available. I started to realize that it wasn't an environmental problem as much as it might be a “sea inside of us” problem. All the scientists were starting to talk about plastic showing up in different organs of the body. Back then they said, “Well, at least it hasn't crossed the blood-brain barrier.” Now they have the measuring tools, and they find out that, in fact, there might be as much as a spoonful of plastic in everybody's brain right now.
Two weeks ago, there was a report that there's twice the level of microplastics in the prostate of men with prostate cancer. It's everywhere, and there's this correlation with chronic diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and ADHD. The hormone system is being affected; it's an endocrine disruptor. Just about everything your body regulates is being impacted by plastic.
That's when we realized — they say a good documentary tells, but a great one shows. So we thought, how can we show this problem? Because not everybody is fat and not everybody has cancer, but fertility is common to everybody. It doesn't matter what side of the fence you're on; everybody came from a mother and a father, and you're probably on the planet wanting to make life better for your progeny. So, it's affecting all of us.
Victoria Riskin: I was so moved by the couples that you had. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about the longing to have a child and to strengthen the bonds of a marriage. Each of these couples had tried so hard, and the before and after was remarkable. How did you find Dr. Swan and how did you set this up? Was she in the middle of already doing this study and you followed her? I'd love to hear the mechanics of that.
Louie Psihoyos: Yeah. Well, Dr. Swan is kind of like the Dr. Ruth of the fertility movement. She's been researching fertility decline for almost 30 years, and she couldn't get traction. She wrote a book called Countdown, and she started realizing that she wasn't getting traction because she was talking to the same people that read her papers, which is about 200 people interested in endocrine disruption. So she had to step out of her ivory tower and go down and talk to the people. She was on Joe Rogan and popular podcasts getting the word out, and she got tremendous traction.
We discovered her, and we started working with her to try to figure out how we can show what the problem is. We came up with this idea of an intervention. Of course, back then we didn't know if this intervention would be effective.
Victoria Riskin: Maybe it wouldn't work. You don't know it's going to work, right?
Louie Psihoyos: Yeah. Well, that's part of the excitement and part of doing cutting-edge work. Maybe we didn't reduce their plastic exposure, but what we did is find six couples who had unexplained infertility. On the first day, the men sent in a sperm sample, and we did a urine sample of both couples. We found out that five of the six men were — I don't know if this is a spoiler — but they were infertile and didn't know it. They were basically shooting blanks.
Victoria Riskin: And sometimes every day, because when you're trying to get pregnant, you're working so hard at it. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I'm just thinking how exhausting that can be for the couple.
Louie Psihoyos: Yeah, it is a huge problem. You can imagine psychologically what it's like for both. It is usually the men thinking that it must be the female's problem because they think, “I can see the results here; it must be happening with you.” In fact, it was the reverse.
So the idea was that Dr. Swan went in and did a plastic intervention. She goes into the houses of each couple and explains to them the products that they should be replacing. Plastic is just about everywhere, or the plasticizing chemicals are. I'd say the exposure in women is probably higher because you use more personal care products. Anything with a scent — shampoo, deodorant, face creams, dishwashing liquid, any kind of detergent, soaps — all of that has phthalates in it.
There are two chemicals, the plasticizing chemicals: phthalates and bisphenols. The phthalates are used with scents to stabilize the scent. The bisphenols make plastic hard, and phthalates make it soft and stabilize scents. They're just about everywhere. So, we educate the couples, then we do this intervention over a 90-day period because it takes men 70 days to generate new sperm. We do a baseline, a midpoint, and an endpoint. What we found was extraordinary.
I don't want to give away too much, but I do want to leave people with hope. There are ways that you can easily reduce your exposure to plastics significantly. That's partly by rethinking the way that you buy products with this extra layer of looking for the healthiest products you can buy in every category. People say, “Well, that's expensive.” Well, you know what's expensive? Cancer.
Victoria Riskin: I don't know if it's that expensive. I might push back when people say that because it's just a question of swapping things out. Maybe they're just a little bit more expensive, that's true, but that extra dollar a week or two dollars a week could be life-saving.
Louie Psihoyos: Yeah, no, I agree with you. And the other scary part of this is it's not just the exposure that you have. If you're a pregnant mother, you're exposing your baby and potentially affecting the sexuality of your baby. With that baby, you're affecting the eggs of the female already as she's developing as a fetus. You're affecting that. So there are three generations right there.
Victoria Riskin: Wow. How does it affect the sexuality of the baby?
Louie Psihoyos: Well, let's call it the “Phthalate Syndrome.” In the first trimester of a pregnancy, if the mother is exposed to a lot of phthalates, it taps down the testosterone that the baby needs to fully develop the male genital tract. What that shows up as is that the male babies will have slightly shorter penises and a shorter anogenital distance, which means that they're getting feminized. How that translates in later life is that they're going to be less reproductive; they're generating less sperm. There are a few other things, but yeah, it's a little bit terrifying that you're unwittingly exposing your child to this.
For instance, mice given the same amount of exercise, the same amount of nutrition, and the same amount of plasticizing chemicals that people get in proportion to their bodies will be about 75% fatter than the mice without being exposed. And it will affect the obesity of those mice's progeny four to five generations down.
Victoria Riskin: Amazing.
Louie Psihoyos: So, if that's happening with us — and it likely is affecting your endocrine system, which is everything. Everything you do is impacted. It's not just fertility, it's obesity, it's affecting your immunity, and it's affecting your propensity to get diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, ADHD, prostate cancer, and breast cancer. It's related to quite a few things that you don't want to have, and that's the scary part of it.
Victoria Riskin: We have an epidemic of obesity in this country. Everyone I know is taking some kind of pill or shot rather than reducing obesity, which is good if you want to reduce obesity but there may be a factor in here that we're just not looking at, which is what actually comes into the house, the kitchen, and every aspect of our life. What changes have you made personally in your house?
Louie Psihoyos: It's terrifying because when your eyes get opened up to what's going on, you realize that you're being exposed to everything: your toothbrush, your toothpaste, your underarm deodorant, everything. You go to some sites and they'll say, “OK, I'll just peg it up to give me the best, I don't care what it costs.” Then I get a year's supply of underarm deodorant and it comes encased in plastic.
Victoria Riskin: I know. I'm sorry, it makes me so frustrated.
Louie Psihoyos: Yeah, and it's a gel, and you don't know how much is leaching into the chemical that you're putting in the underarm deodorant. I'll call the scientists that are advising this and they say, “Oh, we're only concerned about the chemical, we're not concerned about the packaging.” But we know the packaging is leaching out these chemicals. So, you're looking for a clean voice, a pure voice, to help you understand how to clean things up.
I looked around my house and I thought, “OK, we have to start foundation-wise.” So, I cleaned up the bathroom and the kitchen; these are the easy things to get at. You kind of want to work through the stuff that you have already and not throw it out, but a lot of stuff you think is like, “I'm just going to get rid of it.” For example, dental floss is often made with a nylon thread coated in PFAS.
Victoria Riskin: Oh my gosh, I didn't know that. You know what? My hygienist says you should floss more, then she hands me the plastic little thing with the floss in it, and I think, “I'm not going to floss more.” Well, then you get a Waterpik and everything — the plumbing — is all plastic. Or what about your coffee maker? Maybe you don't drink coffee? I drink coffee.
Louie Psihoyos: We're a nation of coffee drinkers here, but that might be the easiest thing. I like drip coffee, not drip, French press. There's some great French press options: stainless steel, ceramic, glass. There are a lot of brands that we can recommend if you go to our site, Oceanic Preservation Society. You can find everything you need to clean up your house.
Victoria Riskin: That's fabulous.
Louie Psihoyos: Yeah, as we went through it, we thought, “If people are going to do this, it's so frustrating.” You go down this rabbit hole, you get their underarm deodorant, and you feel like you just want to throw it out. You don't want to do that; you want to have people find an easy way to find these products so they can start changing. Information isn't enough; you want action.
Victoria Riskin: I want action. Yeah.
Louie Psihoyos: Netflix is a terrific platform to be on. They have almost a billion people now that have access to 350 million subscribers, and if four people see each one, it's a huge body of people that you can talk to all at once. When this [Plastic Detox] comes out, it's going to be in 200 countries and territories and in 30 languages. Their reach is phenomenal. Hopefully, if this hits that zeitgeist, people will instantly know what's going on. The goal of this film is to get as many people to see it as possible and then take action.
Victoria Riskin: I'm so struck by how we think, “Oh, it's impossible, this is overwhelming.” And then you think about the history of smoking and how people stopped smoking — it stopped being cool. I think so many of these things you're talking about, we can do in our own kitchens, our own bathrooms, and our own homes, and then share the information with others. My challenge is getting my husband not to come home with 500 things in plastic. It's like the nickel hasn't dropped. We're too old to get pregnant, so it's not going to be motivated by that, but health and obesity and all those other issues matter.
Louie Psihoyos: Have him see the film. Film is the most powerful art form to change minds and move culture at scale. That's why I love making films. You make a film and you have a chance at not just changing the way people think, but the way they behave. If it's positive for you, it's going to be positive for your neighbor. There's nothing more fulfilling to me than being able to help facilitate this kind of change at scale.
Victoria Riskin: If people think it's easy enough, they'll do it. It's not that it's easy, but it's doable.
Louie Psihoyos: Twenty years ago, if you talked to most directors, they would say, “Oh, I just want to create awareness.” I want to do that, but I also want to make the world a little bit better using this platform. This is a huge, huge problem. Fertility has been dropping 1% a year for the last 50 years. This has accelerated to 2.66% now. By 2045, most couples will probably need IVF to get pregnant.
Victoria Riskin: Wow. It's of epidemic proportions, right?
Louie Psihoyos: Yeah, and it's not something we generally talk about a lot in America; it's a little bit difficult for people to admit this publicly to their friends and neighbors. But I think it is becoming more common. Hopefully, this film's going to unlock the ability for people to talk about it. Because now if you think, “It's not just me, it's something that's being done to me,” then you can change. So, show the film to your husband. I'd say the film is for everybody. Somebody asked me earlier this week who the target audience is, and I said everyone. If you had a mother and a father, you should probably see this.
Victoria Riskin: Everyone. I wanted to ask you about petroleum-based products. Vaseline, makeup there are so many things that actually have petroleum-based ingredients. Are they also a problem?
Louie Psihoyos: Yeah. When we created the site, that's the first thing we did: no toxic chemicals, no petroleum-based chemicals. I think if you go to all the sites — Environmental Working Group, Yuka — there are a lot of great apps out there. But there are caveats; some people are only interested in sustainability. I'm interested in toxicity, sustainability, all that.
“Plastic” is a general word that you use to describe the malleability of materials so you can mold them. Plastic can be used in a lot of different forms. Right now, it just happens to be petrochemicals. But you can use mushrooms, algae, and food waste; there are a ton of alternatives out there now. They just need to scale up so they are more available.
Victoria Riskin: We just did a podcast with a company called Notpla, run by French and English guys who are making packaging especially for food from kelp. They won the Earthshot Prize. They're great guys. We want to spread the word that they have a solution that people who are using plastic for food could purchase. If everyone did one small thing to reduce plastic exposure, what kind of ripple effect would that have?
Louie Psihoyos: Well, for instance, I have a Vitamix blender. It was plastic, but they have a stainless steel replacement. They have a plastic lid on it, but you know… but if you're making a wonderful lentil soup and it's hot, then you take a third of it and you blend it while it's hot. You don't want to put anything hot in plastic. Takeaway containers, your blender if you're doing anything hot in it, nix it if you can. The plasticizing chemicals aren't bound to the material; they get released when they're heated. So that's one factor. No microwaving in plastic, blending in plastic, or using pans that have non-stick coating is probably not good. There are all sorts of great alternatives out there. It is a little bit scary once your eyes open up.
Victoria Riskin: Yeah, there's no end to it.
Louie Psihoyos: Well, there is an end. Every time you get a new product, you realize that you're upgrading your life, and then you want to do it more. It becomes addictive. I'd like to gamify it so that people are talking and asking, “Have you tried this product? Have you tried that?” There are a lot of alternatives out there that are niche now, but they can grow. I had one of the first three electric cars in Colorado, powered by 114 solar panels. I was a crazy lunatic. People said, “Oh, that's just a niche market.” Now, electric cars have taken over. These technological revolutions take about 10 years. In New York at the moment, there's a famous picture taken of the Easter Parade of 1900, and it was all horses and carriages. Thirteen years later, it was reversed with no horses.
In 2007, the year before the iPhone really started to get popularized, we were hitting the number two key six times on our flip phone to text. These revolutions happen very quickly.
Victoria Riskin: You hardly notice it because you just weave these things in so normally.
Louie Psihoyos: In the mid-’90s, people were smoking on planes. Now it’s unheard of.
Victoria Riskin: I know it. I had to hypnotize myself to stop smoking, but I didn't smoke for very long, so that was good. We usually wrap up our show with anything that you feel I might not have asked that you'd like to share. And then our special question is: “Imagine if…” and you could fill in the blank. “Imagine if everybody did such and such.” It could be on the emotional side or on the practical side. That's our big question for extracting wisdom.
Louie Psihoyos: Well, nothing happens unless first a dream. I can't remember who said that. But my dream is that everybody on this platform sees the film and wants to share it with their friends and their family. That way we can change the world. I know we can. It's important that people see this film. It's not just important if you're thinking about having kids, but what about your grandkids? Everybody has a chance to make their life better. Films are a very powerful way to educate and entertain. After you come away from seeing this film, you're not going to look at the world the same way. My dream is that everybody that has access to a computer, an iPhone, or a home theater sees this film. That way we'll change the world.
Victoria Riskin: Beautiful. One practical question: You did the before and after with these couples where you measured sperm count, but you were also able to measure the microplastics in their urine. Was that true? And then you can find out afterward whether there's less. Can an ordinary person do that? Could I do that?
Louie Psihoyos: Yes, absolutely. Again, if you go to our website, Shanna Swan, who is almost 90 years old now and the protagonist of the movie, belongs to a company called Million Marker. You can order a test from them and find out what your levels are.
Victoria Riskin: Wow, that's a great piece of information. OK, one last closing question: What's she like?
Louie Psihoyos: I love Shanna Swan. She's a fiery woman. She looks unassuming, but I'd be terrified of her if I was a company because she's passionate about the truth. The recipe for changing the world is once you get 10% of the population 100% committed to the truth. That's when you have horses leaving New York and being exchanged for cars. That's when the flip phone becomes the smartphone. When you have somebody like Shanna Swan proselytizing what's going on with plastics in the human body, I think that's the recipe for changing the world. And then you get it on the Netflix platform — that's the key. I hope so.
Victoria Riskin: The wave is going to happen; I know it will. You've done a fantastic job. I'm so honored to be interviewing you and to do whatever I can in my little corner of the planet to spread the word and amplify the importance of this discovery.
Louie Psihoyos: Well, thank you, Victoria. I appreciate your help.
Victoria Riskin: Take care. Be well.
OK, what am I taking away from this? First of all, I want to get into my kitchen and my bathroom and start cleaning things out. I think I might want to talk with you, our listeners, give our audience a little challenge. Maybe we'll do a few things each day, maybe three or four things a week. Because as Louie Psihoyos said, once your eyes open up, you can't not see the problem, but you can fix the problem. I want to be on that train with Louie and everybody else who's making these changes.
Victoria Riskin: Thank you for joining us on Imagine If from Bluedot Living. If you want to explore our recipes, products for your home and lifestyle, and read interesting stories, you can find us at bluedotliving.com. And for daily inspiration, you can follow us at Bluedot Living on Instagram. If you enjoyed this conversation, share it and please add your thoughts in the comments on YouTube. I’m Victoria Riskin, and we’ll be back next week with more stories from great people doing amazing things in their little corner of the planet.
