‘We were at a loss’: the couples trying to get pregnant by removing plastics from their lives
New Netflix documentary The Plastic Detox follows an epidemiologist’s radical new plan to boost fertility in three months. We meet the couples whose lives were turned upside down – and in some cases, hugely for the better
Two years into an emotionally draining mission to get pregnant, with no sign of a positive result, Idaho couple Darby and Jesse Nubbe were feeling desperate. “We were $16,000 (£12,000) out of pocket, with weekly blood work, invasive ultrasounds, sperm quality testing, genetic testing, eating well, exercising, daily cold plunging, expensive vitamins, excessive pregnancy testing and more tears than I would like to remember,” Darby tells me. “We were at a loss, with an official diagnosis of ‘unexplained infertility’.”
It hadn’t crossed the couple’s minds that the problem might be the everyday products inside their home, from water bottles to clothes. Then Dr Shanna Swan entered their lives.
Darby and Jesse were one of six couples facing unexplained fertility challenges who signed up for Swan’s three-month study. The couples, some of whom had been trying to conceive for 10 years, were helped to dramatically lower their daily exposure to plastic-related chemicals in the hope of getting pregnant. “I feel it’s a basic human right of every person to have a child if they choose to,” says Swan, a reproductive epidemiologist. “Chemicals in our homes or the environment should not interfere with that.”
The project is the focus of The Plastic Detox, an eye-opening new documentary. Plastics contain toxic chemicals, derived from petrochemicals, known as “endocrine disrupters”, such as phthalates, which make plastic soft and flexible, and bisphenols (BPAs), which make plastics harder and durable. As Swan explains in the film, they’re ubiquitous. “We ingest them, we absorb them through our skin, we inhale them. Every which way that they can get into our bodies, they do. And as they pass through our bodies, they wreak all sorts of havoc.”
Numerous studies – including ones by the US government National Institutes of Health (NIH) – have found that this “havoc” applies to male fertility, as endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) interfere with the body’s hormone system, and especially testosterone, which is essential for sperm production. Over the past 50 years, sperm counts around the world have declined.
Detoxing from plastic and EDCs is no easy feat. They’re not just in obvious places (bottles, food packaging), but seemingly everywhere from chewing gum to children’s books. Swan asked couples to avoid food and drink in plastic packaging, from supermarkets or takeaways, and to avoid wearing clothing with synthetic textiles and petrochemical dyes. She also asked them to use natural personal care products, such as plant-based or organic shampoos and deodorants – as one of her studies found a correlation between women who used fragranced products, and higher levels of phthalates, with perfume users having a 2.92 times higher concentration of monoethyl phthalate than other women.
The one that really catches the eye, though, is Swan’s advice to avoid handling receipts. Almost all paper receipts in the US contain bisphenol A (BPA), so every time a person accepts one “they increase their risk of altering their body’s hormones that may affect their fertility,” says Swan. Bisphenol A in receipt paper is banned in the UK and EU, though other toxic chemicals are still allowed, including BPS (bisphenol S), which is on the EU’s candidate list for Substance of Very High Concern. “There’s an easy fix – we have electronic receipts,” says Swan. “Whenever I shop and someone says ‘Do you want your receipt?’, I say ‘No’, and then I say (because I’m a pest), ‘And you shouldn’t handle it either.’”
“I had no idea that the chemicals used in plastic production could affect us, let alone cause an issue with our fertility,” says Eric Isaac, from Miami, Florida, who had been trying to have a baby with his wife, Julie, for two “painful, emotional and demoralizing” years. “Plastic’s so abundant and part of everyone’s life that it’s basically invisible.”
The detox process was tough. “Having Shanna Swan audit your home is like inviting a very sweet hurricane into your home,” Eric tells me. “She’s wonderful, but your pantry, bathroom products, cleaning supplies and personal care items are about to fly out the window. The hardest thing was giving up flavoured sparkling water in cans [most are lined with a thin layer of plastic, often including EDCs]. It’s cheap, zero calories, and when you’re ‘thick’, like me, and trying to behave, that’s a serious loss.”
Darby and Jesse found the new regimen manageable at home, even donating most of their clothes, leaving only non-synthetic fabrics. “But we couldn’t escape the exposure to plastics in the outside world,” Darby explains. “It felt like every day we were throwing away our progress at dinners in friends’ homes who cooked on Teflon, or the kind teller that chased us down with a receipt. Finding alternatives also proved the main barrier to accomplishing a plastic-free lifestyle. The chemicals disrupting our planet and its inhabitants are in nearly every product on the shelves.”
The harm caused by chemicals in our bodies could be catastrophic, warns Swan, who believes infertility could potentially lead to the end of the human race. “It’s a very serious systemic global problem,” says Swan. “The bottom line is these chemicals are here in our daily lives and they’re making it much harder for us to reproduce. I’d like people to realise there are things they can do to make the environment healthier for them, their families and their children, and the offspring of their children. These things do not stop with us – they carry on for generations.”
Without giving away who does or doesn’t get pregnant, the detox results are encouraging, with bisphenol levels plummeting and sperm counts soaring. It’s impossible to draw reliable conclusions from such a small sample group (Swan is currently applying for NIH funding to conduct a much larger trial), and it’s important for couples to note that there are many other factors in fertility and conception. But the message from Swan is clear. “Couples trying to get pregnant should try to avoid the use of products containing plastic,” she says. “I would focus on the kitchen. The most important thing is not mixing heat, food and plastic [such as microwave meals]. Our couples did much better reproductively in only three months by making fairly easy changes in their lives, and everybody can do that.”
Swan and the film-makers are not against plastic itself, just the damaging chemicals added to it. “As long as we’re putting clothing on, that clothing should not contain Pfas or other chemicals. As long as we’re eating food, it should not have harmful chemicals in it,” says Swan. “Let’s do what the EU has done – there are less than a dozen personal care chemical compounds that are banned in the US, but there are 1,100 banned in the EU,” says co-director Louie Psihoyos. “Children around the world are being poisoned. There’s no plan to slow down plastic production worldwide – it’s expected to triple in the next 40 years. This is only going to get worse.”
The couples in the film are sticking with the positive changes they made. “We were forced to focus on home-cooking,” says Darby. “We ate more whole [unprocessed] foods and noticed changes in energy, mood and our relationship with food. We also saved so much money. I didn’t purchase random things. Life slowed down. We enjoyed our newfound freedom from excess.”
Eric and Julie have maintained every element, too, with one exception: they occasionally eat out. “I’ve tried to explain to Shanna that sometimes people need a greasy restaurant burger that didn’t come from a kitchen audited by a reproductive epidemiologist,” Eric says. “The main reason we stuck with all the other changes is that we genuinely felt better. When we removed fragranced products from our home, Julie and I both started sleeping better and longer. We’ve both lost weight. We also noticed our focus improved. Once you feel those differences, it’s hard to go back.”
The Plastic Detox is on Netflix from 16 March