Fireworks, Wildfire Smoke, and Forever Chemicals: Bryan Johnson's Team on Measuring and Reducing Toxins
Bryan Johnson
In this episode of the Bryan Johnson Podcast, Johnson is joined by Blueprint co-founder Kate Tolo and his lead physician, Dr. Mike Mallin. Their subject is toxins: the ones people choose to expose themselves to, like Fourth of July fireworks, and the ones they can't avoid, like wildfire smoke and PFAS "forever chemicals." They take the categories one at a time, covering where each toxin comes from, what it does in the body, and what can be done to reduce exposure and clear what has already built up. Johnson's own test results supply most of the data. His position is that deliberately exposing yourself to chemicals is never a good idea, whatever the cultural reason. Mallin repeatedly pushes back in favor of a more practical view of priorities. All three insist they are not trying to scare anyone, though Mallin admits, half-joking, "maybe a little."
A Brief Aside on AirPods and EMF
The episode opens with Tolo noticing that Johnson is wearing AirPods. He explains that he tried to avoid them, but the producer needed him to have an earpiece for audio feedback. He expects viewers to warn him about EMF exposure, so he suggests a future deep dive on the question. Tolo agrees it is a hot topic and says the evidence may not be strong enough to settle it either way, but they could at least share what exists. They do not return to it in this episode.
Why the Fourth of July Started the Conversation
The episode was prompted by the Fourth of July. Tolo says she and Johnson spent the following Saturday together and were stuck indoors all day because the air quality was, in her word, atrocious. Johnson had posted online that the fireworks would "bathe" the whole Los Angeles area in toxins, including heavy metals and "a whole bunch of other toxins that we've imported from China." He also said those toxins would settle into soil and water over the next 24 hours. He called it a strange tradition that "we celebrate life by bathing ourselves in death." The post drew a lot of backlash. Tolo summarizes the reaction as: let us have one day without being chastised. A friend of hers said the same thing the next day: "you can't take this away from us."
Tolo thinks people are poorly informed about how severe the air-quality hit is. She cites a cigarette-equivalence figure, and Johnson gives the details. During the show, he says, exposure was roughly equivalent to smoking one cigarette, with PM2.5 around 160. Twelve hours later, in the areas shown in purple on the air-quality map they put on screen, the exposure was equivalent to smoking 20 cigarettes.
Johnson then qualifies his own argument. The Fourth of July spike is not what will kill you. He works through a comparison: an extra 15 points of PM2.5, around the clock, 365 days a year, adds up to roughly 131,000 in exposure per year. By that measure the July Fourth spike is less than 1% of it, which he calls "not hugely consequential." His real point, he says, is that people routinely do harmful things and describe them as "living life" or happiness. When a harm can be identified, it is prudent to name it and, where possible, change the culture around it. He acknowledges that big explosions in the sky are exciting and appeal to "our primitive brain." But he questions whether taking children to fireworks shows and exposing them to toxins, which then reach them again through water and food, really counts as living life.
Mallin's Contrarian View: Chronic Exposure Matters More
Mallin offers what he calls a slightly contrarian view. If he were choosing interventions to improve air quality, banning fireworks would not be first on his list. He agrees with Johnson's underlying point that it is odd to celebrate life with things that harm us. But in terms of total health impact, he says, many things rank above fireworks. Using Johnson's own math, he argues that a moderate, continuous increase in PM2.5 from living in a city like LA every day has a huge impact. A large but short spike has a relatively small one. He describes his view as practical, focused on where effort will do the most for health, and Johnson's as more idealistic.
Johnson answers with a thought experiment. Imagine an alien observer who can't see human storytelling or cultural meaning and sees people only as biochemical beings. What would it make of creatures bathing themselves in chemicals as a ritual? Mallin extends the point to birthdays, which people celebrate with alcohol, pizza, and cake. Johnson agrees and calls himself "Buzzkill Bryan in this vector," a label he says he fully owns. A birthday, in his description, stacks up a "metabolic disaster": alcohol, sugar, and late nights. He predicts that in the future this association of celebration with "death practices" will be seen as insane. The cost, he adds, isn't paid only at the end of life but also in reduced cognitive performance and health along the way. He grants that Mallin's reasonable, practical framing has its place. What he wants to offer is a "contrast of clarity": it is never good to bathe yourself in chemicals, and people can celebrate and feel good without doing so.
Choice, Consent, and Shared Air
Mallin reframes Johnson's argument: most toxin exposure is not chosen. It comes from wildfires, chemicals in the water supply, and other sources individuals can't realistically control. That makes it all the more reasonable to choose well when a choice actually exists. Tolo wants to give people the benefit of the doubt, since she doesn't think most realize what they are choosing. She reads out effects of chronic PM2.5 exposure. It increases inflammation in the lungs, contributing to asthma and lung cancer. It enters the blood and causes inflammation and oxidative stress in the heart and blood vessels, leading to cardiovascular disease. It crosses the blood-brain barrier and causes neuroinflammation, which can lead to neurodegenerative disease. She also recalls from their trip to India that daily poor air quality significantly shortens lifespans there.
Tolo stresses one more point: fireworks are a non-consensual pollution of a shared resource. Having a few drinks with friends is a personal choice, but polluting the air affects everyone, including children. As with alcohol, she thinks the cultural narrative can shift, and she proposes drone shows instead of fireworks, with speakers added for the noise. Johnson backs up the shared-resource point with their Saturday: they wanted to do something outdoors, but LA looked fogged in with smoke. He repeats the India statistic Tolo had raised, that India would do more for its citizens' health by fixing air quality than by curing cancer, so air quality is a higher-yield endeavor than solving all of cancer. After India and the LA fires, he says, toxins have been top of mind. The team has been measuring and removing them, so watching cities across the country get covered in smoke "hurts my soul."
The LA Wildfires: A Before-and-After Test by Accident
Tolo contrasts fireworks, a societal choice, with the LA wildfires, which were forced on everyone. Mallin says they expected the results to be bad. Wildfire smoke is harmful in general, and because so many homes burned, residents were exposed to chemicals beyond what burning trees and other organic matter produce. Still, he says, they did not expect results as bad as Johnson's.
Johnson explains that by coincidence he had measured his baseline toxin levels a month or two earlier for a different therapy. That may have made him one of the only people in Los Angeles with a before-and-after comparison. He took the follow-up test around day five or six, while ash was still falling. The panel lists industrial-grade toxins of the kind released by burning homes and cars, and he says every one it measured was loaded into his body, landing between the 75th and 95th percentiles. On screen, he says, "you just see red down the line."
Mallin says the elevated toxins made sense given what was burning. Johnson was exposed to phthalates, plasticizers added to make plastics soft and flexible, such as MEHP and MBP, which are released in large amounts when homes burn. There was also a large rise in VOCs from burning materials and from household solvents in cleaners, foams, and sprays. Mallin lists the harms associated with both groups: reproductive and developmental problems, higher risk of asthma and allergies, carcinogenicity, inflammation, DNA effects, and oxidative stress. Levels went from roughly zero in Johnson's normal life to the 95th percentile, meaning higher than 95 out of 100 people.
Johnson says the results showed up despite real precautions. He stayed indoors most of the time, ran multiple air filters, and had a MERV 13 filter on his HVAC system. Those measures appear to have made only a minimal difference, he says. Someone outdoors without filtration could have fared worse. He separates two layers of the problem. First, society shouldn't generate toxins that expose everyone. Second, events like wildfires are outside anyone's control and form a separate route of exposure.
"Not Trying to Scare People," With a Caveat
Mallin picks up on the "not trying to scare anyone" line. Fear, he says, is a side effect of knowledge in a situation where most people don't understand air pollution. Where he lives, he has friends who sleep with their windows open while a wildfire is nearby because they don't want to run the AC and want the house to cool overnight. Knowledgeable, educated people, he says, don't realize how much air quality affects their health, and if a little fear helps educate them, he considers that acceptable.
Tolo lays out the team's framing in three parts. Some exposures are within collective control, like fireworks. Others, like wildfires, are not, and people shouldn't be afraid of them because such events have happened throughout history; the difference now is that we can measure them and learn from them. Third, since preventing wildfires or changing construction materials is likely very hard, the useful work is to test protocols for removing toxins after exposure, which she says is inevitable in today's society, and to find out how quickly, how difficult, and how accessible that can be.
Chemical by Chemical: What Burning Homes Left Behind
Johnson reads out specific details. One marker, HEMA, went from undetectable to a fivefold increase, reaching the 95th percentile at 23 micrograms per gram. He describes it as a derivative of vinyl chloride, released mostly in fumes from burning synthetic floors, pipes, and PVC wiring. He says both vinyl chloride and ethylene oxide are known carcinogens and long-term neurotoxins, with acute effects including headache and dizziness. His broader point is that you can go through a home's materials one by one, pipes, plastics, and so on, and find each of them in his post-fire test. Another marker, likely coming from furniture and electronics, he describes as a byproduct of the fire retardant TPP.
Tolo asks what it was like to get the results after how carefully he looks after his body. Johnson says it was a terrifying time. The fires were raging, he didn't know whether the house would burn, and his son was with him. They talked about leaving town and weren't sure what to do. Looking back, he thinks leaving would have been the right call because of the toxins, but at the time he was thinking about losing the house and everything in it. When the fires were out and he saw the results, it was "devastating," because the team scrutinizes every calorie he eats against scientific evidence. The positive next chapter, he says, is that the team then asked what they could do about it.
PFAS: Why "Forever Chemicals" Are So Hard to Clear
The discussion then turns to PFAS. Johnson describes them as a class of more than 12,000 man-made chemicals used for stain and heat resistance. People accumulate them mainly through water, non-stick pans, and fast-food wrappers, and the body can't eliminate them.
Mallin explains why they are called forever chemicals. Human bodies did not evolve alongside them. The kidneys reabsorb them rather than excreting them in urine, and the liver can't break them down. Their chemical bonds are among the strongest in nature, and there is no metabolic pathway to break them. The only known exits are non-urinary: sweating, breast milk, menstruation, childbirth, and to some extent stool. He singles out two promising routes: sweating through sauna, and stool, where fiber compounds can help bind the chemicals so the body can excrete them. Because clearance is so slow, their half-life in the body is measured in years; he gives a rough range of two to eight years before most of a given dose is gone. They are in every water supply, he says, and "that's not an overstatement," found even at the bottom of the ocean. So the challenge is preventing exposure and maximizing clearance, which he calls difficult.
Tolo adds half-life figures in the ocean: 41 years for PFOS and 92 years for PFOA. "They're better at longevity than Bryan," she jokes. Mallin adds that these chemicals disrupt the algae that manage carbon dioxide in the ocean, then admits he hesitated to mention it for fear of scaring Tolo further. Johnson cites clinical half-lives in humans: PFOS 3.4 to 5.7 years, PFOA 1.5 to 5 years, PFHxS 2.5 to 8.5 years. Because even tiny amounts are so disruptive, he says, extra caution is warranted. Mallin says he recalls, while asking not to be quoted, that he doesn't think any blood sample has been found without PFAS, meaning no one escapes it.
Johnson lists the effects that made him anxious about his own results: lower sperm count, disrupted thyroid hormones, immune suppression, elevated cholesterol, liver damage, increased cancer risk, neurodevelopmental problems, and lower fertility in women. Tolo adds a figure that stayed with her: higher PFAS levels are linked to a 40% lower chance of a woman becoming pregnant, which matters more as people have children later. Mallin says these chemicals directly reduce steroid and thyroid hormone production. Beyond causing oxidative stress and raising cholesterol by mimicking other fatty acids, he says, they change how DNA is expressed. When Tolo asks what steroid hormones are, he gives testosterone and estrogen as examples. PFAS reduce not only hormone production but also how well the system responds when levels should rise or fall, which he says matters especially for women with monthly cyclical changes.
An Untaken Test and a Father's Fireworks Confession
There's a lighter interlude. Johnson explains that Tolo ordered a PFAS test first, the tests sold out, and she gave hers to him "for science." It turns out she hasn't taken the replacement. It is sitting on her desk among a stack of finger-prick tests. Johnson calls this "catastrophic" and offers to be her testing partner. They agree to do it together that day, and Tolo adds that she is behind on her pace-of-aging test too. Johnson proposes a "blood party."
Tolo says she doesn't understand the appeal of fireworks, which leads Mallin to a confession: he took his kids to a Fourth of July show. They stayed up until 10 p.m., well past the family's usual bedtime, because he felt guilty, like a bad father, for not going. They watched from about a mile and a half away, never smelled smoke, and he isn't sure they had any exposure at all. The kids loved it. His broader point is that you can find a paper to villainize almost anything. At some point people have to weigh social connection, awe, and wonder against what is reasonable to cut for health. That balance is different for everyone and doesn't have to be perfect. He values the education the others are offering because it turns an uninformed decision into a conscious one.
Tolo says the goal is to have the conversation, and society might well decide fireworks are worth it. Johnson takes a firmer line. Many voices already talk about moderation or say that connection and purpose justify these things; to him that is "all storytelling." You can thrive, feel connected, have fun, and be a great family without covering each other in chemicals. He says he isn't shaming Mallin. He understands the arguments about social inclusion and not changing society overnight, but he thinks they lead people to a conciliatory conclusion that nothing needs to change. Few voices say plainly that this is a bad idea, and he wants to be one of them. Mallin calls it a worthwhile contribution.
Johnson's PFAS Results: Surprisingly Low
Johnson took a full PFAS panel including PFOA, PFOS, and PFHxS. His PFOA levels were in the lowest 25% for US men aged 20 to 49; he notes the comparison is age-specific because PFAS accumulate over time. His PFOS and PFHxS were in the lowest 25% compared with boys aged 12 to 19. He was surprised. He started Blueprint only five years ago, and before that he was only vaguely aware that non-stick pans might be bad, didn't have good water filtration, and lived what he calls a typical American lifestyle. If anything, he says, his habits before Blueprint were much worse than average. He wonders whether the past five years of Blueprint lowered his levels in ways they don't yet understand.
Mallin suggests several likely reasons. Johnson has used reverse osmosis water filtration for five years, and water is probably the largest PFAS source for most people. His diet is rich in antioxidants and fiber, which should help clear toxins and move them out through stool. He also doesn't eat meat, which Mallin calls another major PFAS source.
Tolo asks whether the problem is non-stick pans themselves or how they are made. Mallin says both. Manufacturing is the main source, particularly PFOA, the most feared compound, which was long used to make Teflon. But Teflon and other non-stick pans also release volatile compounds when heated to certain temperatures. Those compounds are less harmful than PFOA but still not good. Teflon itself is relatively inert unless heated to high levels or scratched, so he thinks the pans are less dangerous than most people believe. Tolo concludes it's still best to avoid buying them, both to avoid supporting the industry and to avoid exposure as they degrade.
Mallin also mentions an online calculator. You enter your municipal water system, how long you've lived there, and your age, and it estimates your serum PFAS levels from published testing data. For him, the estimate was nearly exact. At this point Tolo says the conversation is stressing her out, that she suspects listeners feel the same, and she asks to move on to solutions. She has messaged Johnson privately to say she doesn't have a water filter. He replies that it's easy to fix and she can get the same system he has.
Reducing Exposure: Water, Air, and Fast-Food Wrappers
Mallin starts with the good news. In his view, Johnson shows that both exposure and existing toxin load can be reduced. Johnson lists three encouraging results. His most recent microplastics test found a single particle, in the lowest 1% of the 4,000 samples they have collected and a 93% reduction from his previous levels. His repeat post-fire toxin test after about 20 sauna sessions showed those toxins "annihilated," though he allows that some natural tapering probably contributed. And his PFAS results were low. Sauna won't remove PFAS, he says, but his diet supports toxin removal. He presents these as the compounding effects of the whole Blueprint protocol, which he calls "best in world" for overall health.
On specifics, his under-sink reverse osmosis system with remineralization cost $1,300. Mallin bought his on Amazon for about $300, and Johnson says prices are competitive. For air, Johnson uses several commercial-grade IQAir HealthPro Plus units throughout his house, which he says cost about $1,000 each, because they aim to keep indoor air perfect at all times. He says cheaper competitive options exist and are fine. More effective still, he says, is a high-MERV filter in the HVAC system. MERV 13 is ideal, but the system has to be rated for it, since some can only take MERV 8 or 9. Higher numbers filter more.
Mallin shares a story from central Oregon, where wildfire smoke often blows over his area. During one of the worst fire seasons, outdoor PM2.5 stayed between 200 and 300 for about three months. Johnson points out that is five to ten times LA levels. Air purifiers sold out at Amazon and Home Depot, and his MERV 13 HVAC filter couldn't keep up. So he borrowed box fans from friends, duct-taped HVAC filters to the backs of them, and ran two in the house. He also taped the doors and covered the bathroom vent fans with plastic wrap because smoke was drifting in through them. About five years later, he notes, you can buy the same thing ready-made on Amazon for around $70. He still considers a good HVAC filter the best tool for indoor air quality.
Asked whether his family suffered lasting effects, Mallin says he didn't measure anything at the time but is sure everyone in the area had significant exposure. That smoke was mostly from burning wood rather than homes, so the chemicals would differ, but the PM2.5 was still harmful. That is why he thinks it's important to reduce risk at least inside the home.
Tolo recommends free air-quality apps for day-to-day decisions. After the fireworks, for example, a reading around 150 PM2.5 meant no outdoor exercise. She also recommends indoor monitors to check whether home measures are working compared with outdoor air. Mallin adds that EPA standards differ somewhat from what research suggests: the research indicates health effects above about 50, yet in his hometown kids' sports still go ahead up to 200 because the EPA hasn't said otherwise. Tolo notes the reading at the time of recording was 35.
Johnson adds fast-food wrappers. He cites a study finding that over half of the grease-resistant molded-fiber paper tested from major chains contained PFAS. He says these are being phased out in California but remain potential sources of contamination, "a good excuse to not eat fast food." Tolo refers back to their microplastics episode for daily steps and sums up the main priorities: water, air, avoiding non-stick pans and fast-food packaging. You don't need to go overboard, she says, to make significant gains.
Clearance: Sauna, Diet, HBOT, and Fiber
Johnson's current sauna protocol is a dry sauna at 200°F (93°C) for 20 minutes. He says they chose dry sauna because the evidence is more compelling, and they were shocked by how well it worked. Mallin says he had never seen such a dramatic drop from any toxin-removal therapy. He adds that he had also never had a patient who followed instructions so religiously, 20 minutes every day at 200 degrees, which may be part of the explanation. By his account, Johnson went from the 95th percentile on seven or eight markers to virtually zero over about three weeks, or 23 sessions.
Johnson reads off some numbers: MEP down 100%, MBP down 15%, MEHP down 100% (undetectable after the sauna period), NAP and HEMA down 56%, and another marker down 100%. Overall he estimates at least a 50% drop across most markers, all compounds that had been raised by the fires. He is careful not to credit sauna alone. The reduction may reflect sauna combined with the Blueprint diet, exercise, sleep, and what he calls the compensatory effects of a body running well.
Mallin fills in the other factors. The Blueprint diet naturally supplies high levels of antioxidants such as vitamin C and N-acetylcysteine, plus cruciferous vegetables and sulfur-containing foods like garlic. These support the body's natural toxin-handling defenses, which work for everything except PFAS. Johnson was also still doing HBOT (hyperbaric oxygen therapy), which Mallin believes likely has similar anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects that make clearance easier. Johnson points viewers to the Don't Die food guide and the Blueprint supplement stack, adding that they can buy their own versions if they prefer. The last lever is fiber: Mallin says it matters most for PFAS, because it helps stool bind these chemicals and carry them out instead of letting the gut reabsorb them.
Closing: Get the Big Things Right, Don't Despair
Tolo says she feels somewhat reassured. She's sad that there isn't better infrastructure for people to know what is affecting their bodies, and glad that the team's n-of-one experiments are producing new insights. Mallin sees Johnson as evidence of relatively easy, affordable opportunities: water filtration and a stronger HVAC filter such as MERV 13 alone would significantly cut most people's toxin exposure. Tolo returns to the basics. Exercise, sweating, and a high-fiber diet capture most of the benefit, and anyone who does just that is ahead of most of the population, especially in America.
Johnson closes by acknowledging how distressing the topic can be. He recalls the microplastics finding that glass bottles contained five to 50 times more microplastics than plastic bottles. A result like that, he says, can make people feel nothing they do matters and conclude "YOLO." He encourages them instead to treat it as a journey in which the science will change and surprise them. He offers his own example: this week he found out that the towel he used in the sauna was 15% polyester, so he had been wiping toxins onto his body while trying to sweat them out. The advice is to get the big ones right, clean water and clean air, and to avoid toxin spikes you can control, such as fireworks and fast food. Going much further, he says, has limited returns.
He describes two versions of each person: a sober-minded one who wants to be their best self, and one who in the moment decides they deserve fast food because it's Saturday. He urges listeners to make decisions as the first. He did this himself, he says, when he "fired Evening Bryan," the version of himself who would say PFAS is everywhere so there's no point worrying, and took away that version's decision-making power. He ends by saying that collectively people are becoming much more aware of toxins, that culture will change as they make these changes together, and that "we're going to be okay."
When we can identify things in our life that are causing us harm, it's prudent to identify those things and then if we can make the cultural changes. The problem is those arguments lead people to this conciliatory mark where they conclude, well, I guess we continue on. And there's very few voices saying this is a bad idea. So, if I can populate the airwaves and be that voice in society, I think I would play that role. And I know that I'm Buzzkill Bryan in this vector and I fully own it and I'm sorry, but it's true. And so it just really is this thing that we've done where we've associated celebration and life with death practices.
We're not trying to scare people.
I mean, maybe a little.
Hi everybody. Welcome to the Bryan Johnson podcast. Today I have with me my co-founder Kate Tolo and my lead doctor, Dr. Mike Mallin. And today we are talking about toxins. It can be a scary topic, but we're going to approach it toxin by toxin and talk about where they're coming from, what effects they have in the body, and then also what you can do to prevent exposure and minimize the things that are already in your body. Let's go.
Bryan, you're wearing AirPods today.
I tried to remove them. I didn't want to wear a wired set and then the producer said I needed some kind of feedback. So, I'm asking for an earphone. But I know that every time I wear AirPods, people are going to be like, "Bro, you're going to blow your brain up with EMF." So, maybe we should do a deep dive on this and assess.
I think it's a hot topic. I think people want to know. So, let's look into the science. It might not have enough robust evidence out there to support it either way. Do it or not do it, but at least we can share that. So hopefully your brain's okay today
and that if there's damage that there's some way out of it.
Okay, let's get into this topic. This topic came about because we had Fourth of July. Bryan and I actually spent the next day together on Saturday and we were trapped inside all day and it sucked because the air quality was atrocious. Like not worth exposing yourself to it. So what do you think of that? We got a lot of pushback from it on Twitter cuz people were like, "Let us have one day, Bryan, where you're not chastising us. Like, can we just celebrate?"
Yeah, people were really upset with me because I posted online that the fireworks were going to basically bathe the entire LA area with toxins, and not just heavy metals, but a whole bunch of other toxins that we've imported from China. And we're now going to explode them in the air. It's going to bathe all of our family and friends and loved ones with these toxins during the fireworks show. And then for 24 hours afterwards, it's going to settle into our soil and water. And I was calling attention to the fact that this is kind of a weird tradition that we celebrate life by bathing ourselves in death. And people got really upset with me.
Yeah. Even when I was talking to a friend the next day and I was talking about the situation, he was like, "Kate, like, no, you can't take this away from us. Like, we need to celebrate. We need our fireworks." And I feel like when I think about that, I think people are just totally miseducated on the severity of the situation. There is always going to be a degree of things we're willing to do for our health and things we're like, "Okay, we'll spend a couple of points here." Fireworks really damaged the air quality for an entire 24-hour period. It was something like, what was a cigarette equivalent? Smoking 20 cigarettes the next day.
That's right. During the fireworks show, it was equivalent to smoking one cigarette because you're basically getting at 160 PM2.5 and then 12 hours after, we'll throw the map up here on screen, but in the purple areas it was equivalent to smoking 20 cigarettes. Yeah. Which is wild.
So today we're going to talk about what effect that has on the body and then we're going to talk about other types of toxins in the body. We had some feedback in the comment section that folks wanted a much more structured podcast. And so to tee this up, we're going to talk about why fireworks are bad, why you should be with us and saying, "Let's make other traditions for Fourth of July." What other toxins exist in your environment that you might not be aware of, and then how Bryan has limited his exposure and also reversed some of the exposure that he has been exposed to. And so this includes things like PFAS, different toxins from your blood, and then obviously like your environment, air quality, that kind of thing.
The thing that we're trying to call out is it's not that the July 4th spike in toxins are going to kill you. It's that we routinely do things in life that kill us. And those things we have tried to color as living life or the purpose of life or happiness. And I want to call to the attention that that may not be true. And so there's definitely not a rule of the universe that one needs to kill oneself in order to feel happy or satisfied or content.
And so if you're exposed to PM2.5 on an annual basis, so let's say that you have an extra 15 points on the PM2.5 scale for 24 hours a day at 365 days a year, you're getting exposure of 131,000 per year versus on a July 4th spike, it's about less than 1% of that. It's not hugely consequential, but it's really just a point of when we can identify things in our life that are causing us harm, it's prudent to identify those things and then if we can make the cultural changes.
So, I hear you. You know, big exploding things in the sky, it is exciting. They're loud and you feel the vibrations and that's cool. Kind of talks to our primitive brain, you know, but also when we're taking children to a firework show and you're bathing the children in toxins, I'm not sure about that. I don't know if that's living life. I'm not sure if I'm a baby if I want to be bathed in toxins. And then again we get dosed again when they enter into our water and our food supply. So Mike, what's your take on this?
I guess I want to take a slightly contrarian viewpoint to you just in the sense that I think if I were to choose interventions to improve air quality, the first thing I would do would not be to take away fireworks. And I don't think that's what you're suggesting necessarily. I think you're trying to point out that, hey, we choose to do things that are inherently bad for us on a regular basis as a way of celebrating life, which is just sort of ridiculous, which I don't disagree with you with. I think that makes a lot of sense. But when it comes to what's going to have the greatest impact on your overall health, I think that there's a multitude of things that are higher on the list for me than fireworks.
So, these one-off situations, just like you were talking about in that math that you shared, these one-off situations have a very small total impact when you compare it to living in LA 365 days a year. There's a huge impact from a moderate increase in PM2.5 as opposed to a relatively small impact from a large short duration increase of PM2.5. So, I don't know. I just tend to look at it from more of a practical view of where do I want to put my effort in terms of improving human health, as opposed to you're thinking about it a little bit more, I guess, idealistically in the sense that you're thinking about why are we choosing things that are inherently bad for us, which I don't disagree with.
Yeah. And I'm saying if you remove the storytelling and the cultural significance, if you're an outside observer, if you're an alien and you can't see the language of our society and the storytelling apparatus and you just see us as biochemical beings and you say, "What are those creatures doing bathing themselves in chemicals?" Like, what sort of ritual is that that makes any kind of sense?
Sure. Like we want to celebrate someone's birthday. So, we go out and have a couple of alcoholic drinks and pizza and birthday cake. We're just ingesting all of these things that kill us as a celebration of life. I don't know. It doesn't seem right.
That's exactly right. And so, it's the same parallel and I know that I'm Buzzkill Bryan in this vector and I fully own it and I'm sorry, but it's true. Like if a birthday celebration comes, you basically stack up metabolic disaster, right? So, it's alcohol and then it's sugar and then it's late nights. And so, it just really is this thing that we've done where we've associated a celebration and life with death practices. And it will be viewed in the future. This will be viewed as insane. There will be no way around it. It's weird that we do it. You're not just paying the price at the end of your life, you're paying price in decreased cognitive performance. It deteriorates your health in all capacities. So, it really is detrimental.
And I think that for me, I agree that, Mike, if you were to take a more practical approach and be like, well, let's be reasonable. I guess I want to create this contrast of clarity. It's not a good thing to bathe yourself in chemicals no matter what. I don't care what the reason is. It's just not. You definitely can celebrate life. You can do good things and feel good about various events, but you just don't need to do it with death.
If I could put words in your mouth, too, it's like people are choosing to do this as opposed to situations where we don't have a choice. Like the majority of toxins in our life are not things that we choose, right? They're the LA fires. They're chemicals that are in the water supply. They're all of these things that you really can't practically make a choice about. So, at least make good choices when you're given the opportunity to choose healthy or unhealthy traditions.
Yeah. And I feel like I would want to give people the benefit of the doubt. I don't think they realize what they're choosing at all when they go about doing this. So, let me read off a couple of things. It increases inflammation in lungs causing asthma and lung cancer. This is obviously chronic exposure. It crosses into the blood where it causes again increased inflammation and oxidative stress in the heart and blood vessels leading to cardiovascular disease. It crosses the blood brain barrier causing neuroinflammation. So that can lead to neurodegenerative diseases. I know that I think when we went to India it was something like their lifespan was significantly impacted by poor air quality every day.
So I'd say that, and the other point about this is that this is a non-consensual pollution of our shared resource of air. And so I think that's also the thing that upsets me is the kids that get exposed to this. If you go out and have a couple alcoholic drinks with your friends, that's your choice. But the general pollution of our shared environment, and I think that comes from misunderstanding and not being educated on the topic. So I do think it's the kind of thing, just like with alcohol, where we can push the narrative forward, like let's have drone shows, not fireworks. Very simple, easy to swap it out. We'll all enjoy it. We can put some speakers up and make some loud sounds at the same time.
Yeah, Kate, the shared resource thing is true. Like as you mentioned, when you and I were basically trying to find an outdoor adventure on Saturday and we're like, "Oh man, like the day..." There was this cloud of smoke. It looked like there was fog in LA. It was so densely populated with smoke from the fireworks. Yeah.
The stat that Kate mentioned was that India would do more to improve the health of their citizens by addressing air quality than by curing cancer. So in that sense, air quality is a higher yield endeavor than solving all of cancer. It is this invisible force and we saw this firsthand when we were in India and then when we saw this in the LA fires. So I guess toxins really have been top of mind. So even though when the 4th of July happens and it's this acute exposure for 24 hours, I guess I'm now particularly attuned to toxins because we've been working on measuring them and removing them. And so to see all these urban areas across the United States just get bathed in toxins, it just hurts my soul.
That's about like a symbolic thing. Okay, fireworks, it's probably not going to kill us in the long term having one day in the year, but also it's a choice. It's a societal choice and maybe we don't have education on it. The thing that Mike was saying was the LA wildfires were really scary for everyone because it was something where it was imposed on us by the environment and we really were all exposed to some pretty intense toxic chemicals. Mike, what's your take on what Bryan was exposed to?
We knew it would be bad. Wildfire exposure is bad in general. And there was a lot of homes obviously tragically burnt during the LA wildfires, which expose us to other chemicals than you traditionally get from just a tree, you know, organic matter type of wildfire. So, we expected it to be bad. I don't think we expected it to be quite as bad as it turned out based on Bryan's results. Bryan, why don't you share your results with us? What did you see on that test that you had performed after the LA wildfire?
All right. If you look at this data, you just see red down the line. And let's walk through a few of these chemicals.
So, you got a baseline and then this is after. Is that right? Just to clarify.
Okay, that's right. When the LA fires happened, I had measured a baseline toxin level before for a different therapy. So, I was potentially one of the only people in Los Angeles who was being measured for toxins and I got a before and after shot. So, I did the baseline, I forget, a month or two before and then I did this follow-up I think on like day five or six post, when it was still ashing, and it lists out, like Michael was saying, the various toxins, like the industrial-grade toxins, all the stuff you would see in burning homes and burning cars. And it just basically loaded up my body with every single toxin they measured to between the 75th and 95th percentile for intensity.
And what was really interesting is that the toxins that we saw elevated make perfect sense when we think about what was happening, right? So homes were burning. So, you were being exposed to things like phthalates, which are plasticizers, which basically just means they're chemicals added to plastics to make them soft and more flexible. And these are things like MEHP, MBP, all things that we would see from burning homes. When homes burn, tons of plastics are burning. We were seeing a lot of increase in VOCs, again from other burning organic materials. And these are things that we would also see from burning solvents from household products like cleaners, foams and sprays.
And both of these, the plasticizers as well as the VOCs, have lots of terrible effects on the body. So things like reproductive developmental issues, increased risk of developing asthma and allergies, carcinogenic, basically everything you can think of regarding inflammation, affecting DNA, oxidative stress, these chemicals are going to do. And these went from, as you were mentioning, Bryan, from like zero in your normal life to 95th percentile, meaning we compare you to the rest of the population of, you know, out of 100 people, you have higher levels than 95 of them, which is pretty impressive.
This of course is not meant to scare anybody. It is to say that there are various sources of toxins and when that does happen I guess we want to identify what toxins are entering the body. So I guess two layers: one is if we can just baseline, it's not a good idea to generate toxins in society that bathe all of us in toxins, and then the second thing is when we do have events like fires which are out of our control then
that's a second vector that gets to us as well. And so maybe we can bridge to what things we're doing once we're exposed to these toxins. But keep in mind that when I had this exposure, I stayed inside for the majority of that time and I had multiple air filters and a MERV 13 air filter on my HVAC system. So I was pretty decently prepared to cycle through toxins, but it, you know, it seems like it made a minimal difference. Now, if someone else was in the same environment and was outside and had no air filtration systems in their home, then it could have been worse.
You said something there I just want to comment on real quick. We're not trying to scare people. I mean, like maybe a little, because maybe it's not we're trying to scare people, but getting scared is the side effect of knowledge in the situation, because I think so many people don't understand about air pollution in general or even its effect. Like where I live, I have friends that still sleep with their windows open when there's a wildfire nearby because they don't want to run their AC and they want it to cool off their house at night. And I'm like, what are you doing? You know, like knowledgeable, educated people are not aware of the effect that air quality often has on their health. And that's a problem we need to fix. And so if some people get scared, like I don't know, like not that big of a deal to me in terms of educating people and helping them understand how to take better care of themselves.
Yeah. And what we're trying to do in society is say, one, there are things that are within your control, our control collectively, like fireworks. There are things that are outside of our control. Don't be scared of those things happening because throughout history this has happened time and time again. The only difference here is that we know and we're going to learn from it. And three, using that information, we can try and test protocols for how we can go about preventing this, cuz preventing the wildfire, not using these materials in construction, it's probably going to be very difficult. But what we can learn from this is, like, if you are exposed to toxins, which is going to be inevitable going through life currently in society, here's how maybe we can start to scientifically attack, like, is it possible to remove these toxins from your body and how quickly, and you know how difficult it's going to be, how accessible is it going to be. We're trying to give a path for, like, let's actually tackle these big problems.
For those of you interested in the gory details, let me just read you a few descriptors.
You look happy.
I mean, some people are going to want to hear this. One of the toxins that showed up in my body is called HEMA. And so, my levels went from undetectable to a fivefold increase, 95th percentile, 23 micrograms per gram. And so HEMA is a derivative of vinyl chloride coming mostly from the fumes of burning synthetic floors, pipes and wirings, PVC. Both vinyl chloride and ethylene oxide are known as carcinogens as well as long-term neurotoxins with acute effects including headache and dizziness.
So I mean you can basically go chemical by chemical and say what's in a home? You've got pipes, you've got, like, you know, plastic materials. And we just, down the line, Mike started going through these. Every kind of PLA material that is used to build a home, you can now see in my body when I did that test.
Wow.
So again, from undetectable to 95th percentile. So pretty amazing to get this data in real time. You know, DPP, this is likely coming from the release of furniture and electronics. It's a byproduct of a fire retardant, TPP.
What was it like receiving the results? I mean, you work so hard on your body and keeping everything perfect. So, what was that like?
It was a pretty terrifying time. The fires were raging in Los Angeles. I did not know if the house would burn down. And I also had my son with me. We talked about leaving town. We wondered if we'd be okay. We wondered if the fires could be contained. We were not quite sure what to do. In retrospect, I think the correct decision would have been to leave town for the toxins. But in that moment, I was really thinking more like, are we going to lose the home and everything we've ever, you know, everything we have. In those situations, you're not thinking about those things. But when I got the results, I mean, after things calmed down, the fires were out. Yeah. Seeing the toxins, it was obviously devastating because we are so meticulous with my health. Like every single calorie that goes into my body, we've looked at scientific evidence, and then just to bathe myself with chemicals. That's the sad part. But there is now a next chapter that is actually positive that we can get into, because once I got bathed in toxins, we said as a team, what can we do about the situation?
Yeah. Make the most of it.
Yeah. The first part of the podcast, you guys, we're going to go down the various categories of toxins. So we talked about VOCs, phthalates, industrial solvents, like all the stuff that happened in the wildfires, but that we see in our environment, also in fireworks. Another toxin that we recently tested is PFAS. These are the forever chemicals, and so these are the ones that you accumulate primarily in water, non-stick pans, fast food wrappers. They accumulate in the body; it cannot eliminate them. They're a class of 12,000-plus man-made chemicals used to make things, again, like in water, stain resistant, heat resistant kinds of things.
So, Mike, what are PFAS?
PFAS are, well, they're called forever chemicals because they're really hard to excrete. And the reason for that, honestly, is just because our bodies didn't evolve to live with them, right? These are things that we created after our system evolved to where it currently is. So, our system's not prepared to manage them. Our kidneys reabsorb them as opposed to pee them out. Our liver doesn't know how to handle them or break them down. The bonds in these chemicals are some of the strongest in nature, and because of that we don't have a metabolic pathway to break those bonds to clear out those chemicals. So it turns out that the only way we can get rid of them is through non-urinary excretion pathways. So things like sweating, breast milk, menstruation, childbirth, the gut; you can also actually excrete these through stool to some extent. So, the only real pathways we know about that get rid of these chemicals are those that I mentioned, with a few interesting opportunities around sweating, so sauna, which we'll talk about, as well as stool, with these fiber compounds that can help sort of bind these chemicals and help your body excrete them through stool. But because they're so hard to get rid of, the half-life of these things is on the order of years. So when you ingest that chemical, you're looking at like 2, 4, 6, 8 years before you're actually going to get rid of the majority of that chemical. And the challenge that we have now in this world is that they are in every water supply.
Like that's not an overstatement.
At the very depths of the ocean, like literally everywhere. So the challenge becomes how do we prevent exposure and maximize the opportunity for clearance, which is not an easy one. It's worth noting that PFAS contamination, like you were mentioning, in the oceans: so PFOS has a 41-year half-life in the ocean and PFOA has a 92-year half-life.
Gosh, that's wild. So it's like, right, guys, strap in, get comfortable. We're going to be hanging out for a while. Our kids are going to be hanging out with these chemicals. They're better at longevity than Bryan. And those chemicals themselves disrupt the algae that manages carbon dioxide in the ocean. So it's actually like
Oh gosh.
I didn't know if I wanted to actually say that part or not. I'm worried about scaring Kate more.
In the clinical studies, the half-lives within humans look like PFOS is 3.4 to 5.7 years, PFOA 1.5 to 5 years, and PFHxS is 2.5 to 8.5. So Mike, just what you said, it's multiple years for a half-life. And because they're so disruptive, and a teeny tiny amount is so disruptive, you want to be extra careful with PFAS.
And I think, if I'm not mistaken, that there was a study that showed that, don't quote me on this, but from... Okay, maybe I shouldn't say this cuz I know
Somebody's going to quote you.
Okay, I literally have my fingers on the keyboard ready to quote you.
It's going to get tweeted
immediately. I was going to say that I don't think there's been blood samples that haven't had PFAS found in them. It's in all of our bodies. Like there is no one who can escape a war,
Right? Inescapable.
Yeah, exactly. Given that, and Bryan, you've been meticulous, as we know, about everything you put in your body, I was really curious to see what your results came back as. Like, would this be another wildfire situation where you were like all of us and were exposed to it, or do you have low levels? Yeah, I had the same questions because the effects are pretty bad. Lowers sperm count, disrupts thyroid hormones, suppresses the immune system, elevates cholesterol, creates liver damage, increases cancer risk, causes neurodevelopmental issues, lower fertility in women. So, it really does wreak havoc on the body, on all systems. And these are all things, of course, we measure on a routine basis. So, I was really in a heightened state of awareness of what these results would come back. And Kate ordered the test before me. Then they sold out. And then Kate gave me her test in an act of generosity.
For science.
For science. You've since taken your test, right?
I haven't got my results back.
But no, you took it.
I haven't. It's actually sitting right here.
You have taken it?
I have a stack of finger prick tests that I need to do, but yeah, I've got it right here. I know. Okay. Not everyone is like you, Bryan, that can do.
Okay. This is catastrophic. Can we talk about the psychological factors that contribute to the test sitting on your desk?
I need therapy on this.
Enter the health shaming.
Kate, what's going on?
I need help.
Do I need to be your testing verification partner?
Support. Support buddy.
Okay, you know what? We're getting together for a few events today, right? Bring your test and we're going to do it together.
Okay, sold. You know what, Bryan? I've been waiting for this moment because the other thing that I haven't done is my latest pace of aging test.
Yeah,
I've got a few that I need to get caught up.
Bring them on over. We will have a blood party.
Also, on the low fertility stuff, something that stuck with me was that higher levels of PFAS are linked to a 40% lower chance of getting pregnant as a woman. So, I know fertility is a really hot topic for people. People are having children later. And so that's a very scary and real statistic around why you don't want to get exposed to these chemicals.
Yeah, these chemicals directly reduce steroid hormone production as well as thyroid hormone production. So they get stuck in our body, enter every cell, and not only are they causing some of the things that Bryan mentioned, like oxidative stress, increasing cholesterol by mimicking other fatty acids, but they're actually changing the way our DNA is expressed at the very basic level of human health. Again, not trying to scare, just educate. Wait, can you try again for someone like myself who has no... like, what is steroid production? I've never even heard of that before.
Yeah. So like testosterone, estrogen,
I see.
any of the sex hormones. It's going to reduce the production and the adequacy of the way the system operates. So not just reducing production, but how it responds to a situation where your hormone should be higher or lower, which is obviously very important for women who are going through these cyclic changes throughout their month. That gets altered when you have higher levels of PFAS.
Wild. Okay. So, Bryan, drum roll. What were your results?
Yeah. So, I'm just asking an AI tool if there's PFAS in fireworks.
We're really on a vengeance against fireworks. I also, just like sidebar, I don't understand fireworks. I don't get it. I don't get the appeal. Do you guys feel something when you watch fireworks?
I think so. So, you see these huge explosions in the sky that are beautiful. You feel them. You hear them later than you see them. It's like physics happening before your eyes. Admission: I took my kids to the fireworks show
on July 4th.
We stayed up late because it's not till 10:00, which is way past my bedtime. But I was feeling guilty, like I'm a bad father, I'm not taking my kids to the fireworks show. We were initially like, "No, we're not staying up late. Our family doesn't stay up late. We're going to bed." And then I felt guilty. So I took them, and we were like, you know, a mile and a half from the fireworks themselves. So I'm not confident. I never smelled anything. I'm not confident they had any exposure whatsoever. But they were stoked. They got to watch this beautiful, you know, thing in the sky and it was amazing, and the wind was blowing, and I don't know,
Mike, you're safe here.
I feel where people are coming from, where it's like, you literally can find a paper to villainize anything, right? If you look at science from that perspective. So at some point we have to make decisions around what's important for social interaction and connection and awe and wonder, and what is reasonable to extract from that equation to improve our health. And I think that equation is different for everybody, and I think that's okay. I don't think it has to be perfect. But I do like
what you guys are doing while you're educating, like, you know, hey, if you're going to make this conscious decision to expose yourself to firework smoke, at least know that it's bad for you, right? At least make a conscious decision as opposed to the decision most people are making currently, which is uninformed.
Yeah. And ultimately what we're saying is that fireworks, we're not quite sure where it hits on the threshold and whether we're willing to make that or not willing to make it. And the point of the conversation is to have the conversation. We might collectively be like, you know what, totally worth it. Love the feeling of seeing the fireworks. Absolutely worth it.
You guys populated the airwaves with certain mental models. I'm going to populate the airwaves and say don't, don't bathe yourself in chemicals on purpose and call it fun, because there's so many voices that say, oh, in moderation, oh, have a little bit, or, like, we want purpose and connection. It's all storytelling. You as a human, you can definitely thrive and be happy and feel connected and have fun and be a great family (Mike, this is not shaming you) without lathering each other up with chemicals. And I feel like the dominant voices in society want to path this thing down, because it's a collective assessment of, it's kind of like, you can't change society on a dime. We do want to be socially inclusive. You want to be involved. I totally understand all those arguments. The problem is those arguments lead people to this conciliatory mark where they conclude, well, I guess we continue on, and there's very few voices saying this is a bad idea, like, just full stop. So if I can populate the airwaves and be that voice in society, I think I would play that role.
I think it's a worthwhile contribution.
Okay, my results. So I got a total PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS, I got a full panel PFAS and this
A lot of acronyms starting with P. That's the
And the summary is my PFOA levels are in the lowest 25% for US men aged 20 to 49. They use that because it accumulates over time. And my PFOS and my PFHxS are in the lowest 25% compared to boys aged 12 to 19. And so, relatively speaking, my levels are low. This is kind of surprising to me because I just
started Blueprint five years ago. Before that, I did not know that. I mean, I guess I was peripherally aware that non-stick pans were bad because of various reasons, but otherwise, I have not had great water filtration systems. I've not been aware of these things throughout my life. So, I'm really surprised these results did not come back higher because my life has been a typical American lifestyle with all the toxins in our food supply and everything else, all the materials we have. So, very surprised. I wonder actually if what we've been doing with Blueprint over the past 5 years effectively lowered my levels in ways which we don't yet know. But I'm really surprised. I should be on par with everybody else at this point because I don't think I've lived that differently from most. If anything, I think many of my habits before I started Blueprint were worse, much worse than the average person.
Well, there's probably multiple things that you've been doing recently at least that have improved these, right? Like, how long have you had your water filtration system? It's years, right?
Five years now.
Five years of water filtration. So, you effectively have, and that's probably the largest source of PFAS for the majority of humans on Earth, is water. So exclusively drinking or almost exclusively drinking from an adequate reverse osmosis system, you're likely significantly reducing your exposure. And then you're also doing lots of things to increase excretion. Blueprint gives you lots of antioxidants. So you are going to be doing a better job of clearing toxins. High-fiber diet, you're likely clearing more toxins through your stool because of that. So you know, you don't eat meat, which is another big source of PFAS. So, there are things that I think have probably got you in this lower 25 percentile for sure.
Also, I'd like to do one other fact check to make sure that from my understanding, it's not non-stick pans that are the problem. It's the construction of non-stick pans. So, it's not like you don't want to use non-stick pans in the home because there's microplastics or PFAS in there. It's the manufacturing of those products.
Both are true, I think. So manufacturing the products is the primary source of the PFAS, PFOA, which is the really bad one that everybody tries to avoid, that was used to make Teflon pans for a long time. But also Teflon pans and non-stick pans, when they get to a certain temperature, they do start to release volatile compounds. While they're not as bad as the PFOA that was used to make the pan, they're still not necessarily good. So the Teflon itself is relatively inert until you heat it to high levels or when you scratch it, things like that. So in general, they're not as bad, I think, as most people think that they are. It's actually the process of making them that creates the majority of the compounds that are bad for you.
Cool. So still don't get them. Don't feed the economy and avoid having to expose yourself to them later on when they degrade.
So you can actually look this up online. You can look up the PFAS levels of not every, but almost every tested municipal water system, and it's actually a pretty cool calculator where you can put in how long you've lived in that place, your age I think, and then the municipal water supply you're using, and it'll estimate your serum PFAS levels, and for me it was like almost perfect.
I would like to indicate that I'm getting stressed by this conversation and I suspect I'm not alone in this. So if you're listening, bear with us. I am with you. It is stressful. Can we talk about how to reduce toxins?
Yeah, Kate just messaged me privately about the situation.
I messaged Bryan. I was like, I don't have a water filtration.
I responded, easy to solve, Kate. I've got you. We'll get two tests done today. We'll get a water filtration system. We can get the same one I have at the house. It will be an easy fix. Yeah, you're good. Mike has one already.
You got the full setup, Mike?
Yeah, I got one off Amazon for like 300 bucks. It wasn't too bad.
All right, let's get to the good stuff, please. Can we soothe our souls?
Can we just start with like the good news? The good news is that I think Bryan is an example of the opportunity to reduce toxin exposure. So Bryan's done a good job of implementing tools in his life to reduce exposure and also to help clear the toxins in the first place. So there is light at the end of the tunnel of this chronic exposure of toxins that we're all dealing with in the world.
Yeah. So to pile on what Mike said, this should give you hope on several fronts. So, we mentioned this, my most recent microplastics test, I had one microplastic particle in the sample I provided, and that was in the lowest 1% of the 4,000 samples we've collected. So, a 93% reduction from my previous levels of microplastics. So, that was a big one. And then two is we did the same toxin test that we did post the LA fires. And after 20 or so sauna sessions, it annihilated those toxins. So there was also probably some natural tapering off of those toxins because they do cycle through the body, but also just a dramatic reduction in toxins in the body. So two really strong results. And then the PFAS results I think were also very positive. The sauna is not going to remove PFAS, but also like Mike was saying, the diet I maintain is a very pro-toxin removal diet. So, these things do have compounded effects. And this is what we talk about, you guys. You can piece this together. We've tried to be the most thoughtful group in the entire world on how you systematically address longevity. And so, everything we do from what you put into your mouth to the exercise protocols to sleep, all of it has this holistic effect. So hopefully you feel encouraged that you hear the conversation today is specifically about toxins, but more broadly we're trying to say that the protocol we've built is I think best in world for approaching health overall.
So a few things on the specifics. I have that reverse osmosis water system in my house. I paid $1,300 for it. It sits beneath the sink. Mike has one that's a few hundred. They're competitive in price. Kate, you will get yours, too. It's reverse osmosis and then there's a remineralization that happens. So, that's a good way to eliminate a lot of toxins from water.
I also have an air filtration system. So, I bought a commercial grade system. I bought the IQAir HealthPro Plus XE. It's a bit expensive. It's about $1,000 per filter. And I bought several of these to be throughout the house because we're trying to maintain perfect air quality in the house at all times. There's many other air filtration systems that are competitive, so you do not need to spend that kind of money. But having a high quality air filter in your house is good. Even more powerful is having a high MERV filter in your HVAC system. So if you can have a MERV 13, that's ideal, but you need to make sure that your system is rated for whatever number you're going to have. Some systems can only take like a MERV 8 or MERV 9. The higher the number, the better the filtration system.
Can I just tell you guys a story about air filters?
Yes.
I live in Oregon, in central Oregon. We get lots of fires near us that often blow over us. So, we get smoke plumes. During COVID was one of the first worst fires that we experienced. And the air quality outside for three-ish months or so was between like 200 and 300 PM2.5, which is, you know, an average of at least like 2x LA, maybe like 3x LA.
5x.
5x, sorry. It was really bad.
It's actually 5 to 10. That's incredibly high.
Really high.
Yeah. So you know, there's the PurpleAir app that allows you to check the air quality. We actually had purple air, literally. So, and there are no air filtration systems available in stores or online. Like Amazon sold out, Home Depot sold out. So, I finally found some box fans. I borrowed box fans from friends and bought these HVAC filters and literally duct taped them to the back of the box fans and made two of them. Kept them in my house because my HVAC, even though I had a MERV 13 like Bryan's talking about, which is an ideal level for air quality, it wasn't enough because the air was just so bad outside. I mean, I literally taped the doors. I had Saran wrap over the ventilation fans in the bathrooms because the smoke was drifting down from the ventilation fans. So, I built these tools. Funny thing, now you can actually buy these pre-made. So, on Amazon for like 70 bucks, you can buy a box fan that literally just has a little attachment for it that you put an HVAC filter on the back of. So, it's just sort of funny that I rigged this thing that then, you know, 5 years later people were like, "Oh, this works. We should just sell these."
That's a very clever idea.
There's lots of tools out there where you can get filtration in affordable ways. But the point that you made about the HVAC, Bryan, is important. The best tool you can use to improve your indoor air quality is just making sure you have an adequate filter on your HVAC.
Mhm.
Mike, did you guys experience any kind of medium or long-term negative health effects from this?
I'm sure, 100%. Yeah. I mean, there's no way. I mean, nothing that I measured, I didn't measure at the time, but had I done one of the tests like you did, I'm sure myself, everyone in my family, everyone in the area would have had similar exposures to similar types of chemicals. Now, it's predominantly wood burning, not homes. So, different sorts of exposures, but wood burning still has PM2.5 that's important and bad for health outcomes. So, I'm sure everyone had bad and still does have bad effects from this exposure. So, that's why it's important to at least mitigate your risk while you're inside your home.
And also, like your anecdotal experience, there's two things there. One is you can get these free apps. So, at least you can make appropriate decisions day-to-day on how much exposure you're getting. Like for us with the fireworks, it was like, okay, today is a 150 PM2.5 day, so we're not going to go outside. We're not going to exercise outside. So, that's free apps. And then filters are quite expensive. These are alternative things you can do as well. And the other thing is you can get these internal monitors. So, you can have a monitor in your home. So you can actually track, are the interventions that I'm doing in my home space actually working compared to outside air?
It's worthwhile noting too that the standards that the government, the EPA, sets for air quality are a touch different than what the research suggests. So the research would suggest that basically once you get above 50, there start to be health effects. There's many places, like for example my hometown, where kids' sports still happen up to 200 just because the EPA hasn't directly come out and said that they need to not. So things are not necessarily to your benefit.
That is not a good situation.
Right now we're at 35. So to give an idea of how easy and quick it is to get this kind of data at your fingertips.
So all right, next thing you can do. So we talked about a HVAC filter. We talked about an air filter inside the home. Also other things, for example, wrappers for fast food. So there was a study done that showed over half tested from major chains had it. So this is the grease-resistant paper that's molded fiber, and this is being pushed out in California, but still, you don't want to mess with these. They are potential contaminants of PFAS. So, that's a good excuse to not eat fast food.
I think we already had good excuses. I'll take that one, too.
Yeah,
just in case you're still considering it. So, we've talked about reducing exposure. Now, let's cover how we can get rid of it and then also your results, Bryan, after having tested again.
It's worth mentioning, on our podcast on microplastics, we went over the steps of how you can minimize your exposure to microplastics on a daily basis. You're now toxin aware, which is very positive. And now you can make choices on the few things you can do. You don't need to go overboard, but just these big ones, you know, water, air, avoiding things like non-stick pans, fast food wrappers, some of the bigger ones, and you can make some big gains in reducing the overall exposure.
So, Bryan, we noticed a significant change with sauna. Do you want to tell us a little bit about what happened when you tested your toxins after your sauna?
We recently started this protocol. It's 200 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes. That's 93° C and it's a dry sauna. We chose that because it has more compelling evidence and we were shocked at the efficacy of toxin removal. Mike, I think you mentioned you hadn't ever seen such a dramatic reduction of any kind of toxin removal therapy.
No, I had not. I mean, I had also never had anyone who religiously does exactly what I tell them to do. So, it might be just that you're actually doing the sauna 20 minutes, 7 days a week, 200 degrees. But I mean, you basically went, those results, 95th percentile on what, seven or eight markers, to virtually zero.
Zero. Exactly.
And the time span, was it 3 weeks?
Yep. 23 sessions. So we'll throw up the results on screen,
which is crazy.
Yeah. And I guess it could also be the case that the sauna was coupled with the Blueprint diet. So we're high in the fiber, the antioxidants, and a lot of the nutrition. So I wonder if it's a combination of diet, exercise, sleep, sauna, like the compensatory effects of a body running well. But it was a stunning decrease. We'll put this up on screen, but just to rattle off some. We had a 100% drop in MEP, 15% drop in MP BP, 100% drop in MEHP, which meant it was undetectable post sauna. We had 56% drop in NAP and HEMA, and 100% drop in perlate. Across the board, a mixture of somewhere probably, I would say, at least 50% across most markers. So, wild change. And these are all of those compounds that were increased specifically from the LA fires and burning of materials that are inorganic.
There's other things that you were doing as well, worth mentioning these, Bryan. For example, on the Blueprint diet you're naturally getting high levels of antioxidants like vitamin C, N-acetylcysteine, lots of cruciferous vegetables, lots of sulfur-containing compounds like garlic. So high levels of these antioxidants are going to help your body's natural defenses against toxins. So the body naturally manages toxins with the exception of the forever chemicals, the PFAS. And the way to help the body do that is a diet that's high in antioxidants. So by getting these high levels of antioxidants, you're going to do a much better job of clearing quickly. So that's also helping the sauna. So it's not just sauna by itself. And then you were still doing some HBOT, right?
Yes.
Yeah. HBOT's likely going to have a similar effect. So, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant effects that are going to basically support those systems, the anti-inflammatory antioxidant systems. It's going to allow your body to manage clearance of toxins a lot easier.
Okay. So, we can sauna, we can boost antioxidants through diet and supplementation. We can boost antioxidant, anti-inflammatory defenses through HBOT. What else can people do?
Yeah, and by the way, we should throw up on screen the Don't Die food guide. So, eat foods from this menu. And then the Blueprint stack has many of these things that we're talking about. So, if you want to do that, great. If you want to go out and buy your own, go do it.
We're trying to make this easy for you guys on how you can do this, you know, in some kind of low-cost, time-manageable way.
And then the last thing that we did mention was increasing your fiber intake in general to also be able to excrete it through stool.
Yeah. And that's most significant for the PFAS chemicals as well. So helping your body, helping your stool grab onto those PFAS chemicals and excrete them, because otherwise they get reabsorbed by the gut.
All right, you guys. There you have it. Am I more emotionally soothed? I think so. It's definitely a scary topic. It makes me sad that we don't have better infrastructure to know what's affecting our bodies. But also I'm very happy that we're being really diligent, even if it is an n of one, that we get to have these novel insights to help others. What do you guys think?
I take Bryan as an example that there is easy opportunity here for most people that is even relatively affordable, in the sense of water filtration as an easy tool to reduce exposure, as well as just replacing your HVAC filter with one that's slightly stronger, a MERV 13. Even if you did just those two things, you're having a really significant impact on your overall health and your overall toxin exposure. And that's relatively approachable for most people, which is great. And I think hopefully we can help educate people that these are things that they can do to take better care of themselves and their loved ones.
Yeah. And actually, again, like we always come back to the same thing, which is like the basics of health end up covering off a lot of the majority benefits that you would get from this anyway. So, you know, exercising, excreting through sweat, having a fibrous diet. If you want to simplify your health routine and not get stressed out with this kind of stuff, just cover the basics and you're off to a much better start than the majority of the population, especially here in America.
Yeah. And I also want to punch in and offer some words of comfort, because I know this is very distressing. I mean, for example, I know we mentioned this on our podcast on microplastics: glass bottles have five to 50x the microplastics as plastic bottles, and that can lead to a feeling of despair that no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, it's just unavoidable. So therefore, YOLO. And I just want to give you some encouragement that it really is about the journey. Science is going to change. We're going to be surprised here and there.
I mean, I discovered this week that in doing the sauna, I was accidentally using a towel that was 15% polyester. So I was accidentally wiping my body with toxins when I was in the sauna to try to remove toxins. Good bit of humorous irony for you there, but it's going to happen and it's fine.
So try to get the big ones in your life, like we discussed: clean water, clean air. Just try to avoid spikes of toxins where you have control, for example, fireworks. But there's a limited return on this of going too far. Just try to get the big ones right. And we discussed how fast food is a vector for these kinds of things. So a few good decisions.
And I would say that there's two different versions of you. There's a version of you that is sober-minded and wants to be your best self, that hears these things and says, "I'm on board." And there's a version of you which is in the moment, like, "I'm just going to eat the fast food meal because it's Saturday and I deserve a break." And whatever your rationale is, try to channel your best self and your best moments and then make life choices.
So this is what I did when I fired Evening Bryan. Evening Bryan's the kind of guy who's going to be like, "Honestly, PFAS is not that bad. Like, whatever. It's everywhere. You can't avoid it, so you might as well." And I just said, "Evening Bryan, you can't have decision-making power anymore." So this is very much a psychological thing. It's very practical.
So I understand the complexity of this. I hope you don't feel overwhelmed. I hope you see this as a nice positive step. We're doing this together. Collectively we're becoming much more aware of toxins, and we will change culture as we make these changes together. So have hope. We're going to be okay. We're going to figure this out.
Perfect ending.
That was awesome.
This is the Bryan Johnson podcast. Special thanks to my co-hosts Kate Tolo and Dr. Mike Mallin. For more science breakdowns and protocols, subscribe to my YouTube channel, follow the podcast on your favorite platform, or follow me on Instagram or X, Bryan Johnson.
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