Darin Olien is the wellness and environmental advocate behind the Emmy-Award-winning Netflix docuseries, Down to Earth, and NYT best-selling author. Darin’s book, Fatal Conveniences, is all about revealing where and how the system is failing us.
According to Darin, “Fatal Convenances” are the modern habits and products we engage with every day that just may cause serious health problems down the road. More and more, we understand that it’s the persistent, proximal exposures to potentially unsafe chemicals that are of the greatest concern.
Here are five of the most dangerous Fatal Convenances Darin noted to us from the book…
01 PFAS | A class of chemicals that are in many things. It is a very large Fatal Convenience spanning across many hundreds of products we buy every day. It is found in everything from dental floss, flame retardants, lipstick, stain resistant carpet, wrinkle-free shirts, to baby bibs, food packaging, and the list goes on. It persists in the body and in the environment, and is known as a forever chemical.
According to the International Agency of Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, PFAS are “likely carcinogenic” and have been associated with:
+ Kidney cancer
+ Testicular cancer
+ Liver disease
+ Ulcerative colitis
+ Thyroid problems
+ Decreased birth weight
+ High cholesterol
+ Neurotoxicity
+ Immune system dysfunction
+ Hormone disruption
Children, because of their size and developing immune systems, have been shown to be even more susceptible to PFAS toxicity. According to one study, exposure to the chemicals caused a 50 percent decrease in antibody concentration in children aged 5-7.
TCM Recommends: Do your research and find product swaps. We compiled a list of ways to start at home here.
02 Tap and Bottled Water | It’s is a modern convenience to have on demand water in your home when you turn the faucet on. They figured out how to save us from waterborne diseases like typhoid, dysentery and others. However, they put a potential neurotoxic material in the water, fluoride, which is a byproduct from the pesticide production and the aluminum making industry. How can that be good? Turns out it lowers the IQ in children from studies.
Lead is still in tap water in locations all around the U.S., It’s commonly found in the pipes of older homes. Drinking and absorbing too much of this metal can damage kidneys, increase risk of hypertension, and cause reproductive problems. It’s also responsible for learning difficulties, lower IQ, and slowed growth in children. Even if you live in a newer home with PVC pipes, your child could be drinking water from lead pipes still in use in school and other old buildings.
According to the CDC, virtually every person ever tested has some PFAS or PFOS—the “forever” chemicals we keep talking about, the dangerous ones that take a long time to dissipate—in their blood. How did they get there? From drinking tap water, most likely. These chemicals have been found in the water supply of more than 2,800 communities in all 50 states, meaning that every day more than 200 million Americans are drinking potentially dangerous toxins—substances that can cause several cancers and a long list of other ailments.
A 2022 study from Northwestern University found microplastic levels in water capable of resulting in 90,000 pieces of plastic ingested annually by humans just from bottled water, and 4,000 more from tap water, according to calculations. Microplastic consumption can lead to thyroid hormone disruption, and may make us obese by altering how we store fat and burn energy.
And in terms of water bottles usage, according to a 2019 report from the Reuters News Agency, every year 481.6 billion plastic water bottles are sold globally—about one million bottles a minute. And fewer than half of bottles are collected for recycling, and just five percent of those are actually turned into new bottles. If it is not good for you, it is not good for the environment, period.
A solution for clean water is a reverse osmosis system, which pumps the water through a series of filters that removes virtually all particles, even the ones too small to see, so all that’s left is pure water. I add a pinch of pink Himalayan salt to every glass—you don’t taste it, but it remineralizes the water, which is extremely important. Buy a nice glass bottle to reuse and carry with you.
TCM Recommends: Get an at-home water filter.
03 Ultra-processed Food | What is it? Highly processed foods usually include fats, starches, salts, sugars and hydrogenated oils that are pulled and extracted from other foods. The ingredients are then chemically reassembled with preservatives and additives to make them hyper palatable, with flavors, tastes, and textures so you crave more. Many studies show these low nutrient, chemicalized foods drive cravings, leading to more calories, less nutrients and certainly more disease.
Sixty percent of adult calories come from highly processed foods, and 70 percent of children’s calories come from them. Manufactured foods, that are created to addict us and increase our appetites, makes us overweight and sick. And of those calories, the topmost consumed are conventionally processed grain-based desserts, like cookies, cakes, donuts, pies, granola bars, and other non-food foods. Next is just straight up over-processed bread.
This behavior has led to the most obese cultures with horrible side effects like diabetes, coronary artery disease, high blood pressure, several types of cancers, liver disease, years of infirmity, premature death—and astronomical health care costs. What the hell are we doing? Yet we are all born into this with chemists opting for the profits of the food giants. So, it’s not entirely your fault for not feeling good. It is a mega machine profiting off of us being sick, and it was virtually unheard of before most of us were even born—and now we somehow accept it. We should not accept this anymore. And there are other exposures to ultra processed foods, including PFAS, which has been reported in everything from paper bags for fast food French fries and wrappers for hamburgers to disposable salad bowls and single-use paper plates. It’s there so the wrapper doesn’t stick to the hot food. These PFAS chemicals stick around in the body, and are endocrine disrupting as well as probable carcinogens.
TCM Recommends: Identify the 3 ultra-processed foods you eat most often and look for whole food alternatives.
04 Cell Phones | We are surrounded by polarized, man-made electromagnetic radiation fields different from the non-polarized and natural frequencies, magnetic and radiation, in our environment. Since the most intense representation of that are the cell phones we use, let’s share how stressful it is to our biology. Our cell phones emit polarized but non-ionizing radiation. Most of the scientists say very confidently that non-ionizing radiation is safe because it’s too weak to penetrate deeply into our bodies and directly damage our DNA or our cells. Until you actually look at the research.
Evidence of free-radical damage has been repeatedly documented among humans, animals, plants and microorganisms for both extremely low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic fields (EMF) and for radio frequency (RF) radiation, neither of which is ionizing. While infrared radiation (IR) directly damages DNA, near-infrared light (NIR) interferes with the oxidative repair mechanisms resulting in oxidative stress, damage to cellular components including DNA, and damage to cellular processes which leads to cancer. Furthermore, free-radical damage explains the increased cancer risks associated with mobile phone use, occupational exposure to non-ionizing radiation.
We are seeing an increased risk of leukemia, brain tumors, cancers, free radical damage, and disruption of our reproductive systems showing effects on lowering sperm motility. However, we still need more studies. Many studies I found and cite in my book, Fatal Conveniences, makes a hell of an argument that man-made EMFs from our phones, wifi, Bluetooth, gaming and smart devices are putting stress on the body—and are persistent and proximal. The closer we are to these devices, and the longer we use them, the more problems occur. For instance, when a phone is being held up to our head for a long period of time, we are seeing alarming problems through the mechanism of cellular and DNA stressors. The World Health Organization acknowledges that “concern continues to grow” about “overexposure.”
TCM Recommends: Don’t wear your phone on your body, if possible. Turn off your wifi router at night.
05 Food Packaging | It is a transporter of more pollution to our body, like plastics (petroleum), large numbers of microplastics that we consume annually (estimated 200,000), endocrine disruptors that bind, mimic and disrupt our glandular system running our bodies (by increasing estrogen-like activity and lowering testosterone by things like Phthalates and Teflon-derived PFAS), forever chemicals linked to cancer, diabetes, and high cholesterol, and more. A study by Consumer Reports of more than 100 food packaging products found PFAS in a wide range of packaging utilized daily, and it accounts for 23% of total landfills, which is a lot of toxic waste.
TCM Recommends: Use glass storage containers at home. Buy package-free produce and other foods when possible.
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