It's that time of the week for another fatal convenience. This is a bite sized segment that addresses some of society's fatal conveniences and the steps you can take to avoid becoming a victim of them. I define fatal conveniences as the things we may be doing because the world we live in makes us believe we have to tap water, shampoo, sunglasses, food. I dive into the hidden truths behind some of our everyday choices that could not only be harming us, but even killing us.

So let's dive in.

Hey, everybody, welcome to the show.

Another installment of Fatal Conveniences. If you don't want to be inconvenienced by this one, turn off the podcast. Now, it's like once you're aware of something, you can't be unaware. So I'm warning you now, these are probably going to be affecting your favorite pair of pants, your favorite jeans, this fatal conveniences on micro plastics, in jeans, the blue jeans, the denim, all of that stuff. But there's good options. There's good opportunity to change.

There's some things you can do, but here we go. So listen, so blue jeans are the most worn pair of pants on the planet. Listen, we all love that perfect fitting pair of jeans and we wash them, but we don't realize and I'm going to get into this a little deeper on average. Fifty six thousand micro fibers are released with every wash. These are strands of organic or synthetic material, along with thousands and thousands and thousands of micro plastics, tiny minuscule pieces of plastic that end up where do they end up in our rivers, oceans and environments.

So, again, this is research done by Rachel Kauffman, a journalist at Smithsonian magazine. We have that in the show notes very interesting. The history obviously is genes. We know them today and these indigo dyed denims with pockets and they're sturdy and they have the rivets and they're comfortable. And this was patented basically in eighteen seventy three by Jacob Davies, a tailor, and Levi Strauss, owner of a wholesale fabric house in San Francisco. Cool. I didn't know that rapid improvements in design were made and other manufacturers came into play such as Oshkosh.

But gosh, remember those enter the market and eighteen ninety five later Blue Bell Wrangler in nineteen eighty four and Lee Mercantile in 1911. So Blue Jeans have been around a long time. During the First World War Li Union Ale's jeans were standard issue for all people in the war. In the nineteen twenties and thirties of course the cowboys like the actors, the cowboys of like John Wayne, Gary Cooper, they're all dressed in jeans, became popular in the thirties.

Vogue proved them as it's like this Western chic. In the nineteen fifties jeans were associated with this rebel without a cause. The rebellious nature is the white t shirt, anti-establishment. Roll them up, you know. So it's it all had this thing and then and then it even translated throughout and went to the 70s and the hippies, the protest unit wore the bell bottoms and all of these things. And the feminist unions, women's lib, gender equality all had roots and people wearing jeans.

It's very fascinating. Nineteen seventy six. Calvin Klein showed that blue jeans on the runway, the first designer to do this. So Gloria Vanderbilt introduced her hit jeans in nineteen seventy nine. So arguably jeans are the most popular garment in the world, but people are not aware that jeans also are a big source of environmental pollution. That's what I'm saying. If you don't want to know anymore, turn off this podcast and put your head back in the sand, put your fingers in your ears, put your hands over your eyes.

If you don't want to know that, just go back to sleep. But if you want to know and be an advocate for yourself, your health and the environment and doing something different, then keep on listening. So some fun facts are the. A.M. Denham comes from the name of a sturdy fabric called surge, initially made in Nimes, France. Twenty thousand tons of indigo are produced annually for dyeing these genes toxic. Of course, statistically, every American owns an average of seven pairs of blue jeans.

Wow. I own one. And it's organic cotton, no formaldehyde. So that's the only one I have left. Approximately four hundred and fifty million pairs of jeans are sold in the United States every year. Stretch denim is a type of denim that is used as the skinny jeans. And so you all who like those skinny jeans, not to mention I hate them. I just don't like that tension, that pressure on my everything. It's made of pure cotton, but it also has this elastic kind of plasticky stretchy stuff component called elastin the orange thread.

And interesting that Levi Strauss that used the stitching for the jeans and they trademarked that, as does their distinguishing factor.

Of course, now the conveniences besides from sweatpants, jeans are literally the most comfortable pair of pants you can have usually, and you can wear them both on on a horse and but show up and be semi dress up. And so they're kind of this versatile thing. They're super durable. So you can have that favorite pair of pants forever and we're going to get back around to that. So that's a good idea to keep this that one pair of pants, those one pair of jeans that are with you and not needing seven jeans are still in fashion.

They've always has been. And it's easy to clean and iron and not get too wrinkly, etc.. So that's the convenience, of course. But here's the thing. Jeans are absolutely polluting the environment. Some sixty three percent of the clothes are made from plastic. You know that some 63 percent of clothes are made from plastic like so that polar fleece, mostly P.E.T. plastic, a mix of cotton and polyester. When you wash all these clothes, millions of micro plastics and plastic fibers end up in the water systems.

Obviously, they're all over on your body and you're 60 percent of that plastic is on your body and then you're using that and sweating with that, etc., causing other hormone, disrupting things. So all this waste water goes into the oceans, affects the plant life and insect life, sea life, birds, seals, fish. It's that whole thing. Right. So it just permeates from the the micro to the macro in terms of our of our marine environment.

Micro plastics of this indigo have been discovered and vast quantities in water samples taken from Canada, from Toronto, all the way to the Arctic survey, which I have in the show. Notes conducted by Miriam Diamond at the University of Toronto and our colleagues found that between an eighth and a quarter of all micro fibers in the sample, we're blue denim. That is crazy.

Here's her conclusion. We conclude that the blue jeans, the world's single most popular garment, are an indicator of the widespread burden of anthropological pollution by adding significantly to the environmental accumulation of micro fibres from temperate climates all the way to the Arctic regions. Whoa, that's crazy. The research also monitored how many micro fibers are lost from a pair of blue jeans during an average wash. The average wash loses 50 thousand micro fibres off of a pair of blue jeans.

That's crazy, right? That's just crazy. Micro fibres were found in the digestive track of sixty five percent of the rainbow smelt a type of fish ranging from zero to sixty three fibers per individual collected from the Great Lakes. A recent study found that seventy three percent of the fish caught in the middle ocean depths in the northwest Atlantic had micro plastic in their stomach. Even the animals that live in Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean, are still eating micro fibers.

These micro plastics will eventually find their way into our bodies through the food chain. So if you're eating fish of any kind, guess what you're accumulating. You're accumulating micro plastics from your genes. Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, that is what's going on. And that is one of the indicators of our massive population and our insanity and how we're doing things. So we're all prone to over washing. So one study in twenty sixteen found that half of the people living in Canada wear blue jeans almost every day and they wash.

And that average after two wears off the jeans, they wash them. So think about that. Every second time they're wearing blue jeans, they wash and they're losing 50000 micro plastics on average every time. And so these chemicals are affecting, again, your body. These chemicals are supposed to be improving durability and all that stuff. But the polyvinyl chloride is interacting with your skin, known to cause cancer. And these mimicking these are also mimicking hormones, which is increasing hormone disruption and other hormones signaling pathways.

So we need to wean ourselves off these unsustainable genes. Right. So skinny jeans. Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, throw them away because they're full of plastics. The bottom line is, don't buy excessively. Don't buy all these jeans, all these tight jeans. You don't need them, right? There's all these other ways you can keep your good genes that you've had forever. They probably fit the best anyway. Buy organic, buy materials that are organic, that are certified by chemical free stuff, plastic free clothing.

There are some companies out there doing better processes now. Don't overwash, trying not to wash your blue jeans in hot water and of course, don't use conventional detergents because that's just accelerating and increasing more hormone disrupting, which I have also talked about in other episodes. But I also say a solutions. There's a lot of things you can do because of this issue. I have started to create my own organic hemp and organic silk clothing. So, you know, I have some prototypes.

I'll be wearing those things. They feel incredible. It's almost like when you start eating really, really healthy, vibrant food that tastes frickin amazing. So when I put on these natural fashion, cool looking clothes, they feel so good. And it's almost like on some level my body is celebrating that. So there's some cool studies also showing that you can filter and using a lint Aluva dash our filter that can stop eighty seven percent of the micro filters.

So we have a study and some links to that in the show notes there's some special bags called which we found is called Guppy Friend. And you can put your genes specifically in there and that will catch all those micro fibers. And there's also machine washable called Colorable, which also are in the show notes again. But my thing is, you know, don't buy these kind of products anymore by natural fibers. Cotton linens helps silk's all of these things, organic, organic, organic, and stop using these things that are causing literally affecting your life and affecting the environment and affecting the whole food chain.

So unfortunately, our favorite jeans need to be minimized. And these denim jeans, but by organic, if you need to keep the old ones, stop buying all the ones with the skinny jeans and the stretchy stuff and all of that. The other thing we can figure out, another way to be fashionable and cool and also some. Our health and the environment. OK, that was a big one. I understand you're going to take some deep breaths, but here's what you're going to do.

You're going to go back and you're going to look in your closet. Don't shit. How many genes do I have? And the next time you put those on, you can't put back in the box what I just shared with you. OK, so your choice now that you know that information, what are you going to do about it? OK, I love you. Take care. Live happy. Live healthy. Thanks for telling everyone. I hope you're feeling inspired to take a closer look at the everyday choices you're making and how they could be impacting your health and the planet.

If you want to learn more about life's fatal conveniences, head over to fatal conveniences dot com. You can sign up for the exclusive access to fatal conveniences episodes, news insights and more. And all this great stuff gets sent each week straight to your inbox, making it really easy. Now, that's a convenience without the negative side effects. It only takes a few seconds to join. Just fill in the form and take that amazing step towards making better choices.

Remember, small changes can have a big impact. So we keep driving. My friends keep driving.

Oh, and if you haven't had a chance to check out the interview I released earlier in the week, here's what you missed.

The two most common infections in man, woman or child tooth decay and gum disease. And that affects up to 90 per cent of the population to some degree. Pain is very, very rarely associated with a toothache. So what brings people to the dentist? But there's so much more going on there that people are just not aware of. Literally, the shape and size of your mouth determines the shape and size of your upper airway. And so if you think breathing is important and I think we can all agree it is and there is a difference between just breathing and breathing, well, then the shape and size of your mouth is important because that also includes sleeping well.

This episode is produced by my team at Must Amplify, an audio marketing company that specializes in giving a voice to a brand and making sure the right people hear it. If you would like or are thinking about doing a podcast or even would like a strategy session to add your voice to your brand in a powerful way. Go to w w w dot must amplify dot com backslash. Darren that's w w w must amplify dot com backslash Darren.